Hip-hop movement jolts young voters

As a boy coming of age in Seattle’s Filipino community, George Quibuyen had no voice. At parent-teacher conferences, they pondered his “pathological shyness” while he grooved to rap by LL Cool J and Run DMC on tapes borrowed from older kids.

It was just a hobby at first, like Nintendo or the Garbage Pail Kids, but Quibuyen couldn’t help but admire the confidence of MCs who spoke their minds without worries. He’d penned a few cheesy love poems for the girls, but otherwise his rhymes were largely imitative.

Then, at 14, he heard “Illmatic,” Nas’ 1994 album about life in the projects.

For Quibuyen, that changed everything.

At 24, he is now the voice of Seattle rap duo Blue Scholars; he goes by Geologic, or Geo. A decade ago, Nas’ rhymes taught him to see poetry as an emotional, even political, outlet, but it was hip-hop that paved the way.

For Quibuyen and much of his generation of teens, twenty- and thirtysomethings, hip-hop is a second language, the cultural currency of their lives. Now, from voter-registration drives to agenda-forming conventions, hip-hop’s energy is being harnessed to politicize the nation’s young, a population notoriously detached from the electoral process.

In June, 1,000 registered delegates, more than half of them 25 years old and younger, attended the first-ever National Hip-Hop Political Convention in Newark, N.J. Hammering out a platform including health care, education, criminal justice and human rights, “we made a great leap forward, solidifying for this generation that they can have an impact,” said convention spokesman Bakari Kitwana.

And the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network (HSAN), launched in 2001 by Def Jam Records founder Russell Simmons, continues its mission to register millions of new voters at hip-hop events nationwide.

When not making music, Quibuyen helps teens organize hip-hop shows or acts as education director of AnakBayan, an arm of the Filipino Workers Action Center. Last year, he coordinated an exhibit about hip-hop’s Asian-American influence at Seattle’s Wing Luke Asian Museum.

His role with AnakBayan isn’t hip-hop-focused, but like him, many kids have been shaped by hip-hop culture and perspectives, which then informs their workshops for immigrants, the poor and people of color.

Roots of hip-hop

Left to fester in the U.S. recession of the late 1970s, poor black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods in New York’s Bronx crafted the cultural milieu of music, dance, art, fashion and attitude that has gone worldwide. But while socially conscious rap has been relegated mostly to independent radio, hip-hop’s power is in its popularity, accessibility and rebel outlook.

As writer Yvonne Bynoe noted in a 2003 article in ColorLines magazine, hip-hop didn’t arise from any political or economic movement, the way the Black Arts Movement piggybacked on the black power movement of the 1960s.

Bynoe, author of “Stand and Deliver: Political Activism, Leadership and Hip-Hop Culture,” charges that the civil-rights establishment, distracted by the bling and bubblegum face of commercial rap, missed the chance to take advantage of hip-hop’s potential for political power. Only recently, with Newark’s hip-hop convention and Russell Simmons’ HSAN, are serious attempts being made to reclaim that power – and they’re coming from within.

And there’s much work to do. While more than two-thirds of the country’s registered voters cast ballots in the 2000 election, estimates culled by Pew Charitable Trusts say only 37 percent of registered voters 18 to 24 went to the polls.

“The majority of our generation is cynical,” says hip-hop writer Samuel Chesnau. “It’s hard to see real change with your vote, unless you really take the time to read between the lines.”

“I think we live in an era where people want to see immediate change,” says Marc Matsui, 24, who along with fellow University of Washington students Chesnau, Quibuyen and John Noonan founded the concert-oriented Student Hip-Hop Organization of Washington (SHOW). “When it doesn’t happen, people become a little complacent.”

Youth creativity

Hip-hop was formed largely by African-American culture, but its sensibilities attract a diverse palette of practitioners. “I think hip-hop is for anyone who identifies with struggle,” Quibuyen says.

For all of its power, some caution that hip-hop isn’t enough. In her recently released book, author Bynoe doubts the medium’s ultimate power to mobilize.

Instead, she says, the community has to develop new political weapons and leadership models. People younger than 40, she says, don’t connect with the politicians who supposedly represent them. With cultural outsiders so focused on the materialistic, exhibitionist excess of commercial rap, meaningful dialogue gets lost in the mayhem.

Voter-registration drives and celebrity-cameo-powered protests are only half the picture. “You can only get butts in a seat,” Bynoe says. “But once the concert is over, is there a mechanism in place to engage the people who came out?”

Unless newly registered voters actually use their power, politicians won’t notice. Not to diminish grassroots efforts, she says, but “at some point people have to learn to lobby. We need to become more sophisticated.”

Power to educate

Quibuyen knows it’s a mistake to expect too much from hip-hop. Its greatest power remains its ability to educate. “To expect anything more without getting out into the community, and doing work outside the art, would be self-defeating,” he says.

His parents weren’t pleased at first with their son’s extracurricular activity. “They still don’t think I take it as seriously as I do,” he says. “When I tell them I have to perform, they’re like, ‘Oh, don’t you have to go to work tomorrow?’ “

But the boy who would not talk has found his voice, and the Blue Scholars’ acclaimed, self-titled debut tackles social issues while echoing working-class, paycheck-to-paycheck concerns and the sensibilities of an immigrant population.

While Quibuyen says it’s rare that someone admits to being moved by one of his songs, the most memorable comment came from someone who said an acquaintance about to join the military backpedaled after hearing the Blue Scholars’ song, “Blink,” part of which goes:

“Talk is cheap

War is expensive

I speak cause it’s free

And these words are my weapon

Don’t think for a second

I will not question

American foreign policy, imperial aggression”

Quibuyen wrote “Blink” after attending an anti-war protest. For that man, he says, the song “inspired conversation with someone else that told him (enlisting) really wasn’t what he wanted to do.”

While anger inspires Blue Scholars’ music, it’s not about that: “You can be angry with the way things are and project that onto your music,” he says, “or you can channel it through a filter and uplift people. I hear a lot of angry hip-hop – but if it’s told without hope, it’s really depressing. It’s like, ‘Thanks for reminding me that the world is messed up – what now?’ “