A group of 25 students gathered in Golding Auditorium Tuesday evening to discuss the implications of the popularity of hip-hop culture and Latin music with Profs. Marisol Negr?n (ROCL) and Emmett Price (AAAS) in an event titled "Where is the Love? Rapping about Music, Community, and Society." Negr?n specializes in Latin pop culture, while Price is a visiting professor from Northeastern University and is teaching a "Hip Hop Culture" course this fall. With a bucketful of issues to cover in only a few hours, students munched on pizza and cookies, while Prof. Faith Smith (AAAS), who mediated and organized the event, opened the discussion with the question: "Who owns hip hop? Who owns Latin music?" Price answered with another question, asking, "Which hip-hop culture are you talking about?" and explained that culture is a living organism, always changing and evolving, so the hip-hop culture of 30 years ago is not the same organism as the one today. Referring to Faith's question of ownership, Price said consumers demand control of the culture, as do the corporations that sell it.

Negr?n added that the relationship between the participants and the culture has changed in both hip-hop and Latin culture, particularly when a new question of authenticity developed. "Salsa and hip hop emerged at the same time, on the same streets in New York," she said, adding that the second-generation Puerto Rican population in America was ostracized from salsa because it was seen as a "sneaker street culture" that identified more with black youths and hip hop.

The conversation delved into specific issues surrounding the representation of women, the appropriation of culture and the danger of categorizing "national" cultural ideas-like the stereotype of the homophobic Caribbean, the macho Latin-instead of discussing these problems within a broader context. Price also brought up the problem facing hip hop today in marketing adult content to kids and, more importantly, the lack of conversations about it between adults and kids that has amplified the problem. Tying into this idea of education through conversation, Negr?n asked, "When we have this knowledge, do you change what we allow said around us? Can you look at the world in the same way? If not, have we failed as teachers? Have you failed as students?"

Although the meat of the conversation seesawed between the professors, students added their own thoughts as well, looking at how, and if, these issues still resonate today. Negr?n pushed the idea that through learning about where the music and culture comes from, local knowledge will help consumers understand and appreciate it more, while Price turned out a handful of eloquent analogies regarding the indefinable "hip-hop card" and the initial idea of hip hop as a unifying force rather than a culture of exclusivity.

The event was sponsored by the Latin American and Latino Studies, African and Afro-American Studies and Romance and Comparative Literature Departments.