The LSU Museum of Art puts a spin on hip hop by featuring an art exhibit and a historical lecture.
Mid City Redevelopment Alliance creative placemaking coordinator Lynley Farris is giving a lecture titled “The Roots of Hip Hop: Caribbean Culture and Influence on a Modern American Art Form” on Feb. 18. The genre encompasses rapping, rhythmic and rhyming speech, sampling and beatboxing which will all be discussed in the lecture.
The presentation examines Caribbean traditions which helped generate hip hop in the U.S. during the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Diving into the history of hip hop, Farris will move from its African and Caribbean origins to the Bronx in New York, and she will also cover the significance of the adolescent quest for identity.
“It’ll look at the issues in NYC at the time that led to teenagers with Caribbean heritage to channel their roots into a new art form that we now recognize as hip hop,” Farris said.
Her lecture coincides with the museum’s existing exhibit “The Carnival, the City, and the Sea”. This exhibit contains paintings depicting varying aspects of Haitian and Caribbean traditions, beliefs and practices. Farris will discuss the cultural roles present in the art.
“With these paintings one can read many signs and symbols,” Farris said. “For some it might be Voodoo, or historical politics of the area, but for me many of the paintings have excellent examples regarding the formation of hip hop.”
Coordinator of school and community programs at the LSU Museum of Art Lucy Perera said the history of Haiti is extremely rich and interwoven. She hopes people come away from the program not only with a richer understanding of Haitian history, culture and tradition, but also having made connections on how Haiti and its people have influenced the hip hop genre.
Farris said she wants people to know that hip hop is a rich art form that reflects a complicated society and has deeply permeated our culture to the point that everyone experiences it in some way.
“It’s not just a thing teenagers watch on TV and it’s definitely not just a ‘black thing,’” Farris said. “It’s an influential contemporary art form.”
Farris works to grow and transform the Mid City District of Baton Rouge by cultivating arts, culture and community. She has a masters degree in African diaspora art.
For the last six years, she has been a working artist. Farris has also been steadily researching, writing, lecturing and publishing on hip hop.
“One paper in grad school on graffiti led me down a slippery slope of hip hop, focusing all my further graduate research and work on the subject,” Farris said.
Perera recognizes Farris as a prolific artist who is very community minded. She is familiar with Farris’ work with Mid City Redevelopment and knows of her hip hop background, African diaspora studies and experience teaching Haitian art classes.
“I thought it would be great to bring in a new perspective on the art providing a different angle that departs from the straight up art-historical type lecture,” Perera said about Farris’ work.
The lecture will be held tonight at 6 p.m. Admission is free for University students with I.D. All other adult tickets are $5.

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Wingate Jones

Lynley Farris is giving a lecture on the history of hip hop and its influences on Thursday, Feb. 18, 2016 at The Shaw Center for the Arts