Journal Entry "Filipinos Represent: DJing as a Filipino Thing"

"Filipinos Represent: DJing as a Filipino Thing"

I thought it was refreshing to read about the influence of hip hop in the Filipino community and how hip hop plays a role in shaping their culture. At first encounter the author introduces to the reader that interviews will be conducted to learn more about hip hop and its establishment in the Filipino culture.  Hip Hop was first introduced into the community of African Americans but as generations forwards it is also embraced in other ethnicities and the Filipino community is one of them but it also raises questions to just how genuine they claim to like hip hop. I really like how detailed the author went to into explaining how Filipinos came about establishing their authenticity in the community that is deemed to only belong to the "blacks". What really amazes me is how organic that establishment of hip hop in their community can be, it was not anything like forced upon a Filipino individual at youth and rather it was spoken that it is “a part of us” type of tone. This authenticating strategy the author calls “Foregrounding Lived Experiences” where this particular community is able to relate and embrace the music as a widespread practice during their youth which later continued to grow as they become adult. By doing so they are not claiming hip hop as of their own, but rather they acknowledge the fact that it’s a work of art and it continues to grow within their community (P.51). Along the same idea, I thought it was very notable that Filipino individuals express their dedication to the values of hip hop and not having utter motives for money or fame (P.52).  I think that this point makes a very strong organic establishment of passion towards the hip hop world because nowadays since hip hop is well known in various cultures and we hear it everywhere it’s hard to fully pinpoint who is genuinely passionate about this genre of music as opposed to just liking it because others around them do.  I thought of this article as a wake up call for myself who also claims to be passionate about hip hop music but in terms of how much knowledge I have for the world of hip hop it is far shorter than I expected and reading this article gave me meaningful senses of what fully dedicated to hip hop means.