american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang

CONTESTATORY URBAN AGENCY 181
world-disclosing, and unbounded by the limitations of reductive
cause and effect calculations. As such, the long-term political and
social effects of a performance are unknowable in advance. An artistic
performance, we could say, often enters the world as an Arendtian
“miracle” whose effects in the wider world are initially unknowable.
Finally, it seems fatuous to claim that at any moment in history one
can know the lasting sociopolitical effects of a single hip-hop show,
poem, novel, or painting. An element of the unknown accompanies all
forays into and out of what Arendt calls the public space of freedom
and action.
Ultimately, the live hip-hop show depends on the performances of
both artist and audience in a way that poetry, most other art forms, and
many political performances such as debates do not. For collective
agency to be enacted and for assent to be elicited and channeled into
creative energy, both artist and audience must “act in concert.” The
audience’s collective identity, then, is created intersubjectively between
themselves and between the artists and themselves. If we can view live
hip-hop as a way of making inroads against any notion of art as fundamentally
separate from its audience, the live hip-hop show at a small
club can be seen as a crucial element of localized participatory democracy.
In a country where actual participation in politics is becoming
increasingly more difficult and expensive, the hip-hop show stands
out as a remarkable event not only in the music industry, but in a
tradition of local participatory politics in American history.
However, as with any art form or consumer product, the greatest
power resides largely with audiences. The space of a live hip-hop
show, then, is enabled by the people who buy tickets and travel to
shows. Also, it is advantageous (but not necessary) for the audience to
know the artists’ music before they see them perform as it allows audience
members to recite song choruses when they are called to do so.
So in another way, the audience is in further control of the show’s
level of engagement depending on how familiar they are with the performers.
For these reasons, when hip-hop luminary Prince Paul told
the June 13, 2003, crowd at Cat’s Cradle that the future of hip-hop is
in their hands because they buy both profound and vapid hip-hop
records, he was largely correct.
The power of the audience may help democratize and make more
dynamic artistic performance, but even partial audience control over hiphop
music may have serious ramifications when one considers that a large
percentage of that audience will likely be white. According to one estimate
from “fans, promoters, and independent MCs who play live more
than half the year,” overall small club audiences are 85 to 95 percent