I had the honour of meeting Dessa, a
rapper, hip hop artist, singer, spoken word artist, and writer from
Minneapolis, Minnesota in the USA. She was in South Africa to deliver a
Critical Theory Seminar at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University on
Wednesday, May 13, 2015.
The audience attending the seminar were
diverse and interactive during discussions on feminism, race relations and the
creative process of writing and performing rap music. Dessa is a member of
the indie hip hop collective Doomtree. She spoke on the
ethnic and cultural differences between the
members of the group, and thought those differences to be part of their strength.
Dessa doesn’t write or sing as a form of therapy
because she thinks that’s what friends and therapists are there for. She
prefers to only share personal information when doing so seems to be in the
service of a promising song or essay.
She knows what it feels like to be
exposed to sexual and racial discrimination, but doesn’t consider herself to be
a "feminist" because it is a term that has been evolving with each
wave of feminism.
Dessa attended the University of Minnesota, where she earned a B.A. in philosophy, before becoming a
full-time artist. Since 2005, Dessa has appeared on numerous Doomtree albums,
as well as on the other members' solo albums. Dessa's debut solo EP, False Hopes,
was released in 2005.
She completed and released a book of
creative non-fiction titled Spiral Bound. Dessa's first solo album, A
Badly Broken Code, was
released in 2010. In 2011, she released Castor,
the Twin, and in 2013,
released Parts of Speech.
Hip hop as music and culture formed
during the 1970s, and performed particularly among African
American youth
residing in the Bronx.
It is a populous form of art and expression whether by the people of for the
people. More than any genre of music the crowd plays a role in performance and
movement. Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music,
or hip-hop music, consists of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly
accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted.
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