Incorporating Culture into Culture — Indian and American Hip-Hop
As the diasporic community continues to grow in America, the generations of immigrant families continue to grow as well. The 2nd and 3rd generations of children from immigrant families has to face their identities as a Hyphenated American, or _____-American.
Somehow, the _____-Americans must either choose between the binary of assimilation into the American culture or stay in the bubbles of their culture within the diasporic community. It’s difficult to not assimilate into the American culture when everything outside of the home or community is part of the American lifestyle. But as children of immigrant families, we should not reject our hyphenated identity. We can embrace both culture for we have the privilege of having this double-consciousness. As DuBois’s states from The Souls of Black Folk:
It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness, — an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
He understands that, under the dominant culture, people of immigrant families conform to that culture, yet also embraces their own culture. Raja Kumari is one of the few artists who embraces both of her identities in her music video. She is not only representing the American hip-hop culture, but she’s incorporating her own culture within the hip-hop culture.
The incorporations of cultures create openings for positive change towards a transnational pop culture as a dominant pop culture. Rather than leaving American pop culture as the dominant pop culture, there is room for possibility in transforming the pop culture as a transnational pop culture. Since the age of internet, building communities and reconnecting to a community is easier and faster. As Kathrin Kissau and Uwe Hunger has researched and stated from “The Internet as a means of studying transnationalism and diaspora:”
Using the internet to enable — and simplify — contact with their country of origin is a central motive for many of the questioned users, suggesting that their individual online sphere and online activities are influenced by their migratory experience.
With YouTube, the transnational community is much larger because of the access to many films, videos, and music. Essentially, youtube.com is creating a large transnational community and allowing others to access the community through the creation of media and uploading accessibility. Kumari is one of the many who can represent two culture as one. She attempts to connect to 4 kinds of audience; the Americans, the Indian, the _____-Americans, and mostly the Indian-Americans. There are many familiar cultural references that are combined to make a transnational culture statement. In her video, she wears the American flag as a head cover while she wears some Indian jewelry, She isn’t appropriating American culture. She’s transforming it into the kind of pop culture that communicates at a double-conscious level, except she’s not in this private world. She’s using the internet as a bridge to communicate to those who can understand having a double-consciousness, speaking to those who continuously fought between their binary identity. Her music video states that one should accept both identity, instead of fighting against the binary.
“Mute” is essentially giving back power to those who are in between the binary identity, quieting those who don’t want to understand people with the binary identity. Quieting those who look down upon any groups of _____-Americans as not “real” Americans. “Mute” shows that _____-Americans are Americans that can twist and shape the cultures of America. The music video shows that the dominant pop culture is becoming a transnational pop culture.
