Hip hop festival takes over IU for week

The average IU student could watch and listen to hip hop on MTV or BET, but he or she would likely miss hip hop that stimulates the mind -- rather than just the body with funky beats -- through positive social messages. \nTo find that kind of hip hop, an IU student simply has to stroll around campus this week, said senior Ron Gubitz, founder of Hip Hop Congress.\nThe IU chapter of Hip Hop Congress has organized a Hip Hop Awareness Week to unveil the music genre's social and entertainment importance. A week's worth of events will feature everything from graffiti and break-dancing to poetry readings and an MC contest, from today to Saturday. \nThe festivities begin today at 8 p.m. with a screening of the documentary "Paint the Town Blue" at Jordan Hall Auditorium. The film discusses the four elements of hip-hop that are central to this week's festival -- deejays, emcees, graffiti and break-dancers. \nFor the feature event, Grammy-nominated Planet Asia kicks off an all-ages, seven-act concert at 9 p.m. Thursday in the Buskirk-Chumley Theater.\n"Artistically, it will be very diverse," said graduate student Amer Ahmed, Awareness Festival chair. "We're trying to show people that hip-hop culture is not (one dimensional). The media doesn't show the range of hip hop. The artists are diverse racially and ethnically. We hope a wide variety of people will be represented."\nSuch a multi-faceted, time-consuming event needs to occur in a simple place like Bloomington, Gubitz said. He started the congress to connect hip-hop-loving college students while he was a student at University of Southern California. Some IU officials still shy away from fundraising for the congress, Gubitz said, because hip-hop conveys to them negative images, such as violence, drugs and murder. \nBut not all hip-hop discusses those topics, he said. \nThe week-long event will delve into such topics as social interaction, self-awareness and language, Gubitz says. Sisters and Sons of the Nile (S.O.N.), a Bloomington-based poetry group composed of seven IU students who sing and drum to poetry, tackles such a task. Their poem called "The Grid" argues that people have drawn too many lines through property and race, creating separation. Those lines need to be destroyed to allow unity, said Ahmed, a S.O.N. member.\nThis year's week-long, eight-event happening is a far cry from last year's one-day, unorganized event that featured four or five acts during "Dead Week" after Little 500. After forming the chapter two weeks before last year's festival, congress members have toiled for more than a year in improving the annual event.\n"We were so focused last year on having any event," Gubitz said. "This is incredible it's the whole week, and most of the events are free." \nThe event also aims to enrich students with non-commercial hip-hop. Thursday's concert brings in emcee Planet Asia, Binary Star (MCs and turntables that mix rap, hip hop, techno, dance and Motown), IsWhat? (profanity-free lyrics with bass and saxophone), Minus I (DJ, looping acoustic guitar, turntables), emcee Bedouin, S.O.N. and emcee Origin@l from Indianapolis.\n"It's bringing hip hop from all over the Midwest," Gubitz said. "I get to see stuff never heard before. This isn't like a lot of hip-hop concerts in Bloomington. You could get Redman and Method Man in Bloomington, but this is different."\nBefore Thursday's concert, independent actors from Memphis will perform "Through the Eyes of a Child," a play depicting street life from 6 - 8 p.m. at the Neal Marshall Black Culture Center.\nCongress members booked artists from such spots as Los Angeles, Detroit and Cincinnati through contacts at the congress's five active university chapters. Gubitz lured Planet Asia, for example, after the emcee headlined the congress's first show in April 2000 in Los Angeles.\nAhmed scheduled some of the week's acts through his networking as an artist. He talked to his friends at IntuitionNYC.com, a New York-based, hip-hop organization similar to Hip Hop Congress. The group will present Minus I, Bedouin and S.O.N. at Collins Hall from 7 - 9 p.m. Tuesday. Poetry will also be performed at Friday night's Poetry Slam at the IMUG. Attendees will determine the night's best poet.\nThe week also invites competition among attendees. The cash prize awarded to the winner of Wednesday's emcee battle at 10:30 p.m. at Space 101 comes from the admissions fee ($3). \n"It's a classic event that's going on," Ahmed said. "MCs and rappers improvise on the spot what they're going to speak about. It's a competition between the rappers to come up with the fastest and most clever thing on the spot."\nBeyond projecting something clever quickly, hip-hop also can unite people of different races and backgrounds, sophomore Alexander Fruchter, president of the congress's IU chapter Indiana said. Fruchter said he underwent a "reverse culture shock" when he came to IU after seeing white and black students sitting in separate sections at the Indiana Memorial Union.\n"My white, black and Chinese friends can all get together and feel like we're part of it," said Fruchter, who grew up in Chicago and attended a high school that was "80 percent" African American. "It sounds like people coming together to make a difference. It's a way to unite"