Eldonna May, Morgen Chawawa

Eldonna May
Wayne State University, Detroit MI

A gifted performer, pedagogue, presenter and researcher, Eldonna L. May, certified online professor, is a faculty member of the Music Department at Wayne State University where she lectures in music history and humanities. Dr. May has authored 15 articles for The New Grove Dictionary of Music, 2 ed., and New Grove Online including inaugural articles for Brazeal Dennard, The Society of Black Composers, Jin Hi Kim and Aaron Dworkin, among many others. She has presented and published papers at both national and international conferences in musicology and research – the International Conference on Analyzing Popular Music 2012 (U. Liverpool), Botho College Interdisciplinary Research Conference 2012 (Gaborone, Botswana), to name a few. Dr. May is listed in Who’s Who in Music and the International Who’s Who of Women in Music, is a member of the American Musicology Society, Delta Omicron International Music Fraternity and the American Federation of Musicians.

Morgen Chawawa
Botho University, Botswana

Dr. Morgen Chawawa is the Research Manager at Botho University, Gaborone, Botswana. He was Director of a San Community Development and University Engagement Project in Ghanzi District, Botswana in 2012 – a project funded by the Kellogg Foundation, USA in partnership with BA ISAGO University, Gaborone, Botswana. He is a graduate of Georgia State University, Georgia, USA and Immanuel Theological Seminary, Georgia, USA. He taught Political Science at DeKalb College, Atlanta, USA for six years. He was also a lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe and Chair of the Department of Educational Management, Zimbabwe Open University.

Talk Title: Jesus Raps: The Cultural and Emotional Impact of Spirituals in Hip-Hop in the United States and South Africa 

Rap’s biggest international impact has been in Africa and the Caribbean, where local acts have adapted hip-hop’s strut and swagger to fit their daily realities. The hip-hop movement is a culture that is being promoted to South Africans as superior and as a means to entry into the global (American) market. Many earlier hip hop artists in America such as Public Enemy, Kool Herc, Queen Latifah, Boogie Down Productions and others have been replaced by commercialized, mutated hip-hop that obstructs media today, such as 50 Cent, Ludacris, Lil Jon, Snoop Dog and others who degrade women, promote violence and drug use and reinforce stereotypes. Early South African pioneers of hip-hop with messages of reality and resistance such as Junior, Daddy Showkey, Pretty and Baba Fryo have been replaced/overshadowed by flashy hip-hop artists such as 2Face, Black Face, etc., who also mutilate the music and look to American ‘pop’ hip-hop for inspiration and imitation.

This paper examines the works of contemporary hip-hop music celebrities who have incorporated elements of Negro Spiritual into their works such as Kanye West (Jesus Walks), MC Hammer (Let’s Get It Started), along with influential Kwaito artists such as Arthur Mafokate (Don’t Call Me Kaffir) and Madoza (Uzoyithola Kkanjani, translated., ‘How Are You Going To Get It, If You Don’t Get Up And Go For It.’) in the context of their impact upon the emotional socio-economic conditions of marginalized African-Americans, relegated to the fringes of society through racist class oppression; and South Africans who live in some of the poorest, most deprived and most dangerous places on Earth.