Roots & Routes: Hip Hop as a Global Language
Panel Discussion and Performance
Location: StadtPalais, Konrad-Adenauer Str. 2, 70173 Stuttgart
Admission: Free
Language: English
Registration: Please register via anmeldung@daz.org
Hip Hop emerged from a very specific set of conditions — the Black and Latino communities of the South Bronx in the 1970s, shaped by poverty, displacement, and an extraordinary burst of collective creativity. Yet within decades it has traveled to every corner of the world, finding resonance with young people in contexts that look nothing like its birthplace.
During a panel discussion, American and German Hip Hop artists will discuss and explore this paradox: how an art form so deeply rooted in one community’s particular experience became a genuinely global language and what that journey reveals about how culture travels, transforms, and takes root in new soil. This discussion will also investigate what may get lost or distorted along the way: questions of appropriation, authenticity, and who gets to claim ownership of a culture that has, in many ways, left home. The panel will also address these questions in the context of Stuttgart’s Hip Hop scene and explore what it looks like from American and German perspectives.
Following the panel discussion, the Next Level artists will offer a glimpse into their work with a joint performance. Afterward, you’ll have the opportunity to join us for a casual gathering and conversation.
With: Corey James Gray, Next Level Site Manager; Kelli Forman, Next Level Dancer; BS, Next Level MC; Demetrius, Next Level Aerosol Artist; Frankie Leroux, Next Level Beatmaker; Fausan Abouharia, Underground Soul Cypher Board Chairman and Dancer; and a Next Level Academy participant.
In cooperation with: Next Level, Underground Soul Cypher e.V., and StadtPalais-Museum für Stuttgart
Kindly supported by: the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Meridian International Center, and the U.S. Consulate General in Frankfurt