A musician stood in front of his keyboard in the center of a music classroom on a Friday night in late February. All around him, other students sang into microphones, danced in each corner of the room, played other instruments, and laughed with one another. Songs that the group knows well filled the classroom; covers of Jay Z and Erykah Badu’s songs are played.
The New School Hip Hop Collective is a student- run group “dedicated Hip-Hop space providing educational, musical, and social gatherings centering social activism and all elements of Hip Hop culture” according to the group’s Narwhal Nation page. The current president of the group, Kayla Donald, is a second year student at Lang studying Culture and Media. She became the president of the Collective in Fall 2019.
Besides jamming together for a few hours, Donald also organizes the group into discussions around all facets of Hip Hop during the group’s meeting time. Some members of the collective aren’t musicians, and are just hip hop appreciators who want to have discussions around hip hop culture. “Hip Hop is more than just music. The social aspects, economic, political, all of it. I would have a discussion topic each week,” Donald said. Some of these discussion topics include women in hip hop and capitalism in hip hop.
Some of the people that attend the Hip Hop Collective are not students of The New School. Members bring their friends from other universities and around the city which brings a different sense of community to The New School’s campus. “There’s some really legit talent here.” said Joshaua Dhir, a fourth year film and television production minor at New York University. Dhir heard about the collective through a friend who is a student at The New School.
“I do think that hip hop is underrepresented in the film soundtrack and score library.” Dhir said.
“We take the melody or take the cords and make it our own, and improvise on that.” Donald said.
While beat-boxing in between his sentences, the Collective’s faculty advisor Sam Sellers said, “It’s a pretty beautiful moment because the collective is self-directed and propelled by the students at the core.” Sellers said, “My philosophy is to support wherever is needed. This is it right now. This is the organic essence of it are these jam sessions on Fridays.”
As a part-time faculty member, Sellers said, “It’s hard to build with colleagues so to have a sustained relationship with a student group has been great.”
“I am very much outside of what I would have considered the qualifications to be on a hip hop collective.” said Dhir. He said the welcoming from the group made his experience. The free form jamming is what makes this collective special, said Dhir, and that the group’s purpose is “nothing other than personal artistic fulfillment.”
There is a core group of members that attends the collective every week, while many others come to check it out once or twice. “Sometimes people are really surprised by what they see and then they don’t come back, which is funny because we’re crazy and we don’t care.” Donald said. “That’s what I like about it.”
Part of the collective’s goal this semester is to meet and prepare songs to release on their own record.
Since the closing of campus due to the coronavirus pandemic, the collective has kept in touch virtually. According to Donald, Sam Sellers participated in a virtual open mic jam session on Instagram with The New School. The group has discussed meeting over the internet, but no formal virtual meeting or plan has been made during these trying times.
“The people who come back each week because we know it’s a place where we can unwind after a stressful week we can just relax and have fun.” Donald said. The club’s president said it’s “Our appreciation for Hip-Hop” that brings the group together.
