Walking into the Graduate Student Center yesterday afternoon, students were greeted with a stereo playing rap music.
Kenyan rap music, that is.
The music of popular Kenyan rap duo Gidigidi Majimaji were part of a lecture given by David Samper, a recent graduate of Penn's Graduate Program in Folklore and Folklife.
Samper's lecture, entitled "Africa is still our mama: rap music and revitalization of tradition in Nairobi, Kenya," is the first installment of the Graduate Student Center's "Show and Tell" series.
"Show and Tell" is designed to help Penn graduate students feel more comfortable sharing their research with an assembled audience.
Before a group of eight students, Samper, who spent three years living and teaching in Kenya, discussed the ways in which young Kenyan rap musicians participate in constructing youth identity without leaving behind traditional African values.
"I think rap as a formative outlet has grown for many reasons," he said.
Samper cited the urban accessibility of rap as an art form and the longstanding tradition of Kenyan choral groups as significant causes.
"These rappers are the voices of their generation," Samper said. "They feel a responsibility to bring back traditional values to their music."
Samper said Kenyan rappers created an original language for their music called "Sheng," which mixes Kishwahili, English, ethnic languages, Indian film dialogue and the names of politicians.
Lyric topics are varied and range from AIDS to tribalism to romantic relationships.
For example, lyrics to a popular Kenyan rap song read, "Remember my girlfriend, I bought you everything from clothes to sanitary pads... If you don't come back I will commit suicide by hanging from a rope."
Samper commented that most Kenyan rappers view western commodities as the new form of "enslavement," and destroy traditional African values and language.
Reactions to Samper's lecture were mixed.
"I thought the lecture was very good," said Eunice Omanga, a first-year Environmental Science graduate student from Kisumu, Kenya. "The facts are correct, from my Kenyan point of view."
Henry Doctor, a fourth-year doctoral student in demographics who is originally from Malawi, felt differently.
"I was more interested in how these young African men revitalize traditions," Doctor said. "I hoped there would be more time for questions, instead of all listening."
