The UW-Madison’s award-winning Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives (OMAI), home of the First Wave Scholarship program and in partnership with the Wisconsin Book Festival, will present the 12th Annual Passing the Mic (PTM) Festival Oct. 20-22 in Overture Center’s Promenade Hall. This year the theme of the festival is “Hip- Hop Education in the Classroom and Beyond” and is in recognition of the growing importance and impact that hip-hop pedagogy and education is having at the local, national and global levels.
This year’s festival will also include the First Annual Hip-Hop Education Summit, featuring the signature artists headlining the Passing the Mic Festival and also Wisconsin educators who have attended OMAI’s ground-breaking Hip-Hop in the Heartland Educator’s Institutes.
All of the events are free and open to the public and registration is only required for the 1st Annual Hip-Hop Education Summit. Register for the summit today at is http://go.wisc.edu/ywfj73.
The internationally- and nationally-renowned artists and scholars invited to the Passing the Mic Festival reflect the global and national reach of hip-hop education and include: Senegalese artist Gunman Xuman, U.S. Ambassador for Hip-Hop Toni Blackman, American Book Award Winner Jeff Chang, NY Times Bestselling Author Chris Emdin (Columbia University) and Brian Mooney, author of one of the most important recent books on hip hop pedagogy in the classroom, Breakbeats Pedagogy.
Other highlights of the Passing the Mic Festival, which take place at Overture Center’s Promenade Hall, include the showcase of Midwestern youth artists, coined the Midwest Hip Hop All Stars, taking place on Thursday, October, 20th at 7pm; the First Wave Voices event taking place at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, October 21st; the showcase performance of the 10th Cohort of First Wave and Xuman, Toni Blackman and local musicians at 8 p.m. on Friday the 21st; and Rain Wilson’s revolutionary Hue Man show featuring First Wave alum Myriha Burton that will close the festival at 8 p.m. on Saturday, October 22nd.
This year, as in previous years, teams of Midwestern youth artists tied to local hip hop and spoken word grassroots organizations will be in attendance at the Passing the Mic Festival and Summit and will be representing Indianapolis, Detroit, Green Bay, Chicago, Milwaukee, the Twin Cities, the Menominee community and Madison.
SCHEDULE
Thursday, Oct. 20
7-9:30 p.m. :: Passing the Mic / All Elements Hip Hop Arts Showcase featuring Midwest Hip Hop All Stars
Hosted by Toni Blackman & First Wave
Friday, Oct. 21
5:30-7 p.m. :: First Wave Voices
Gloria Ladson Billings hosts First Wave poets as they put their unique poetic spin on the theme of the Passing the Mic festival, “Hip Hop Education in the Classroom and Beyond.”
8-9:30 p.m. :: Showcase: Making Waves Across the World
A joint performance by MC Legend Toni Blackman and Senegalese Sensation Xuman, and a special presentation by the 10th Cohort of First Wave.
Saturday, Oct. 22
10 a.m. – 2:45 p.m. :: Hip Hop Education Summit
Please note that you must register to attend this event.
3 p.m. : Jeff Chang Book Release
“We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation”
Madison Central Library, Rooms 301 & 302
About Jeff Chang’s We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation
In these provocative, powerful essays acclaimed writer/journalist Jeff Chang, author of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop and Who We Be, takes an incisive and wide-ranging look at the recent tragedies and widespread protests that have shaken the country. Through deep reporting with key activists and thinkers, passionately personal writing, and distinguished cultural criticism, We Gon’ Be Alright links #BlackLivesMatter to #OscarsSoWhite, Ferguson to Washington D.C., the Great Migration to resurgent nativism.
Chang explores the rise and fall of the idea of “diversity,” the roots of student protest, changing ideas about Asian Americanness, and the impact of a century of racial separation in housing. He argues that resegregation is the unexamined condition of our time, the undoing of which is key to moving the nation forward to racial justice and cultural equity.
6-7 p.m. : Brian Mooney and Chris Emdin Book Signing
A Room of One’s Own – 315 W Gorham St.
About Brian Mooney’s Breakbeat Pedagogy:
Breakbeat Pedagogy provides a groundbreaking framework for the inclusion of Hip Hop culture in schools. Working from the perspective of a classroom teacher, Mooney reflects on the story of Word Up!, a Hip Hop and spoken word poetry event that began with students in a New Jersey high school, making the case for a pedagogy with the potential to transform urban schools and the way we think about them. This is essential reading for any teacher committed to social justice and culturally responsive education.
About Chris Emdin’s For White Folks Who Teach In The Hood…And The Rest of Y’all Too:
Merging real stories with theory, research, and practice, a prominent scholar offers a new approach to teaching and learning for every stakeholder in urban education. Drawing on his own experience of feeling undervalued and invisible in classrooms as a young man of color and merging his experiences with more than a decade of teaching and researching in urban America, award-winning educator Christopher Emdin offers a new lens on an approach to teaching and learning in urban schools.
He begins by taking to task the perception of urban youth of color as unteachable, and he challenges educators to embrace and respect each student’s culture and to reimagine the classroom as a site where roles are reversed and students become the experts in their own learning. Putting forth his theory of Reality Pedagogy, Emdin provides practical tools to unleash the brilliance and eagerness of youth and educators alike both of whom have been typecast and stymied by outdated modes of thinking about urban education. With this fresh and engaging new pedagogical vision, Emdin demonstrates the importance of creating a family structure and building communities within the classroom, using culturally relevant strategies like hip-hop music and call-and-response, and connecting the experiences of urban youth to indigenous populations globally.
Merging real stories with theory, research, and practice, Emdin shows how by implementing the Seven C’s of reality pedagogy in their own classrooms, urban youth of color benefit from truly transformative education. Lively, accessible, and revelatory, For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood…and the Rest of Y all Too is the much-needed antidote to traditional top-down pedagogy and promises to radically reframe the landscape of urban education for the better.
8-10 p.m. :: Hue-Man featuring Rain Wilson, First Wave alum Myriha Burton, and follow-up panel discussion featuring community leaders
Esteemed performance artist, Rain Wilson, will be joined by First Wave alum Myriha Burton and other artists to perform pieces that will broaden, deepen, and stimulate conversations about police brutality and how it can be changed. A talk back with the artists and performers and a panel discussion featuring prominent community leaders will immediately follow the performance.
The Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives is a unit in the division of the Office of Diversity, Equity and Educational Achievement at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For a full schedule of events go to www.omai.wisc.edu or http://wisconsinbookfestival.org and for information on PTM email: fwscholarship@cdo.wisc.edu.