Jumping on hip hop

Hip-hop music's sometimes sexually and violence-charged messages haven't fallen on deaf ears in area schools.

The thumping rhythms that for the most part evolved on the urban streets of the East Coast are entrenched in youth culture in the Cape Girardeau area. The sounds from car stereos in high school parking lots after classes end bear witness.

The lyrics of the songs show that the hip-hop genre, generally synonymous with rap, has good and bad actors in terms of moral quality. But the bad side seems to draw more attention.

In the 1990s, "gangsta" rap, with its themes of the violent life of the ghetto -- toting guns, doing drugs and seeing women as sex objects -- was personified by performers like Snoop Doggy Dogg, Dr. Dre, Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls.

While those rappers are either dead, out of rapping or have toned down their music, the criminal culture still exists in the industry. Last month Irv "Gotti" Lorenzo, founder of hip-hop label Murder Inc., now known as The Inc., was arrested on federal charges of laundering money for a violent New York drug ring.

Clearly, this is not a culture most parents want their children exposed to, and on the front lines of the battle are schools.

"I think it affects their respect of adults because most of the music encourages disrespect," said Janice Margrabe, principal of Eagle Ridge Christian School. "And their attitude affects their learning, because you're never going to learn from somebody if you don't respect them."

At her school, which is a private school, Margrabe said faculty screen not only what music is played at school functions, but also what music students take with them on school trips.

At public schools, the rules aren't as strict. Cape Girardeau's Central High School doesn't regulate what students listen to on their headsets when they're on school trips or on school grounds, as long as they keep it to themselves.

"That is a choice they would be making under the direct or indirect auspices of their parents as to what CDs they would purchase," said principal Dr. Mike Cowan.

However, at any school functions, the music must be deemed appropriate by school faculty and staff, making sure that if students get access to explicit music, it's not on the school's time.

At Notre Dame Regional High School, parent volunteers play the role of gatekeeper at school dances.

"Sometimes a student may come in and say 'Can you play this for us?' and sometimes an administrator won't be there," said assistant principal Brad Wittenborn. "So we count on the cooperation of those volunteers that we have that serve in those roles, so that's really not a problem for us."

Positive hip hop

Some Cape Girardeau students have taken a proactive posture on musical choice. About a month ago, some girls at Central started a hip-hop dance club.

The goal of the club, say organizers, is to bypass the negative aspects of rap and hip hop and provide a positive venue for students to enjoy those types of music while having fun dancing.

"The kids just wanted to have a hip-hop dance club, something where they could get together after school," said Nita Dubose, who sponsors the club along with fellow faculty member Crystal Cerny. "It's something positive for them to get together and do."

The club has more than 20 students. They dance to hip-hop music, but the choreography is far less suggestive than that seen in many rap videos.

"We don't want anything too provocative," Dubose said. "Sometimes it makes it difficult to find appropriate music."

On Thursday, when the group was practicing for a pep rally, they did routines to "Drop" by Pimbaland.

School officials review all the dance moves and the music to make sure they're appropriate for students, with no violence, explicit language or overly suggestive moves. In addition, there are rules for being in the club that were imposed by the students: Members must keep a C average, avoid disciplinary referrals, attend practices and speak without profanity.

Junior Nacoasha Davis serves as the club's president. During practices, she makes sure to keep members in line, barking out orders and maintaining the discipline necessary for such a group to deliver a proper performance. She chided some members Thursday for missing earlier practices.

Davis sees the goal of the club as partly to have fun, and partly to defeat bad stereotypes.

"For me it's a way to get people involved," she said. "You look around and see these minorities and think they're troublemakers. We're trying to pull them out of the bad situations. We want to come into something positive for minorities."

In the club, minorities and whites come together to express themselves in popular dance, and they're clearly having fun, yelling words of encouragement to each other as they show off their dance moves.

Cowan said he and the rest of the staff are extremely pleased with the club's first performance, which was at a pep rally Friday.

"The greater audience could see that the kids were able to dance to contemporary music that was popular but it wasn't a song that had overtly offensive lyrics, as many songs do," Cowan said.

He likes to remind people that many forms of popular music have questionable lyrics and subject matter, even the country music people in Southeast Missouri hold so dear. He recently had to turn down one student's request to sing a Hank Williams Sr. song at a school talent show because "almost every song was about getting drunk and shooting automobiles."

Both Cowan and Jackson High School principal Rick McClard said the violence and sexually explicit nature of the music students may listen to doesn't come up in his school often.

As with any sort of culturally controversial issue, the battle begins at home.

"We encourage our parents to know what our kids are listening to and to know what they're doing," Margrabe said. "As parents we need to be parents, and I'm certainly not a perfect one, but we're the ones given the mandate to raise our children. It's not our school's responsibility to raise our children."

msanders@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182