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Critical Theory to a Beat
By Donna Mejia

Dr. Kalonji Nzinga is a marvel. If you鈥檝e not seen the CU Boulder Assistant Professor of Learning Sciences & Human Development deliver a critical theory talk as a flawless, rhymed, and metered rap, then please pause whatever you are doing and treat yourself to this video: 听
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Nzinga, a Crown Institute Faculty Fellow, describes himself as a 鈥渢rans-disciplinary researcher and storyteller studying how the cultural worlds we are part of affect our perceptions, our ethical imagination, and our development.鈥�听As the director of CU Boulder鈥檚 popular Laboratory for Ritual Arts & Pedagogy (RAP)听Lab, Nzinga studies how young people come to understand moral concepts like authenticity, loyalty, and justice as they mature, and provides them a unique space to explore their own artistry and poetics.
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He credits a friend, Hamadi, for introducing him to the rap music canon and ethos as a youth. Nzinga would visit his local library in his native Ohio town and check out cassette tapes and CD鈥檚, hungrily exploring as many sounds and artists as possible. As a young musician (a sax player), he found processing literary brilliance through the lens of music to be a profoundly compelling and transformative broadening of his intellectual horizons. His engagement with rap music also provided affirmative reflections of cultural pride, African diasporic experiences, and a sense of belonging鈥攁 contrast to the literary canon of his boyhood鈥檚 schoolrooms. Nzinga鈥檚 early passions have endured, and fuel his aim to create healing, fortifying spaces for youth through language, literature, and arts education. In addition to directing CU Boulder鈥檚 RAP Lab, he has designed an initiative called Lyripeutics. Lyripeutics invites students to closely study issues of morality within the context of their lived experience, culture and environment. Students then translate those observations into lyrics and beats. Rather than be distanced observers, or passive consumers of their lives, Nzinga鈥檚 program provides youth opportunities to situate themselves as creators and meaning-makers. This approach is empowering, transforming and galvanizing; students are given testing grounds to invest as stakeholders in larger conversations about ethics, power, identity, opportunity, fairness, value, and so much more.听 He states,

In rap--and any popular culture--we have such celebrity worship that it results in a certain distancing between artists and consumers. I think the A-HA moments to me are when youth realize they can create.听 I think there's just so much confidence that comes from being able to tell your story, knowing you have some level of linguistic mastery to manifest ideas, and connect expressively to your body. The craft of an MC is self-inventing. There is agency and liberation that comes from not being apologetic about who you are. Witnessing those moments of insight are powerful for me.

Such early self-determination and self-definition experiences have the charged potential of a maturation short-cut of sorts. To administer these transformative experiences for youth at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Lyripeutics team of researchers, designers, and facilitators quickly adapted the entire curriculum from an in-person program to a remote, online format with their collaborative partners, Carla Cari帽o and her students at North High School (Denver, CO). The team found that their own creative process of collectively sharing their works and inspirations with each other provided a vitalized model of creative community for their students too. The success of their first season has been undeniable, and they are now onto working with a second generation of participants at North High School. The team includes Karia White, Alexander Williams, Shawn Trenell O鈥橬eal, Michael Acuna, Arturo Aldama, Marlene Palomar, Nya Simmons, Cesar Almeida, Anurag Andra, and Anne Fritzson, and Ass茅tou Xango.

You are invited to view the brilliance, inventiveness, and artistry of student-participants and instructors in this collectively authored from Lyripeutics.
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The recognition of rap as part of the literature canon has been sluggish in conventional educational systems. Nzinga conjectures that as this sentiment and convention inevitably shifts, we will recognize the signature values of rap arts were affected by the rise and influence of figures such as Muhammad Ali and Malcom X, who were both critical of dominator cultures and white supremacy. The playful, rhymed, and poetic word-play they utilized to speak truth to power with precision often carried rhythm too. Nzinga points out how things like mutual respect, trust, and collective care were also modeled through the supportive friendship of these two accomplished icons. Nzinga is particularly interested in promoting and prioritizing the craft鈥檚 gifts of belonging and creative self-actualization鈥� again, the ability to inhabit one鈥檚 experiences and identity without apology. Powerful verbal jousting and competitive bravado will always be part of rap鈥檚 history, but the art has a much more dimensionalized manifestation that is often flattened by its commercialization.
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Nzinga also offers that Rap is not blameless in perpetuating inequity. He has actively challenged male-dominated spaces in hip hop education. He explains,

"The DNA of the learning environment has to be altered. That means collaboration with women, female producers, and lyricists. Last year was an improvement in representation over anything I鈥檝e done in the past, because in the past most of the instructional team was male."

听Including women in the design work extends to building women鈥檚 longevity through the entire rap genre as producers, writers, and music industry executives. He is intent on modeling that restorative effort with consistency by centering women鈥檚 voices. To further challenge assumptions of gender, some members of the Lyripeudics design and education team use non-binary pronouns, and all bring their own expertise in curating inclusive spaces.
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Hip hop is a crucial history and political movement that bears witness to people finding their voice. Nzinga reflects,

Students were able to share their stories and have their classmates and instructors hold a space that was affirming, with active listening. The lyripeutic participants produced such amazing art: videos, poems, and all kinds of artistic products. Their final projects include artist鈥檚 statements about the meaning of the art to them, and definitions of what wellness looked like for them.听

The quality, intentions, and questions that Nzinga and his talented team witnessed from students inspired them deeply, and was one of the most powerful outcomes. Seeing the capacities of students transforming into community builders and leaders is a promising future worth shouting to the world鈥� ideally to the accompaniment of a juicy, crunchy, thick, and funky beat.