The Africanist Aesthetic in Global Hip-Hop: Power Moves

Within the construct of the "global-hood," Osumare examines how an expressive culture that began in the impoverished working-class black and Latino communities in New York has developed into a performative and social phenomenon that incorporates verbal skills and other creative elements such as dance and music. Central to Osumare's argument is the concept of an Africanist aesthetic, a term coined by dance scholar Brenda Gottschild and defined by Osumare as "a processual mode of Expressivity that privileges the negotiation of the self in the moment through a complex use of rhythmic timing, verbal or non verbal rhetorical strategies, and multiple layers of meaning that draw from its sociocutural context and audience" (12).