Samoan hip-hop

Samoan hip-hop includes hip-hop music, artists and culture in Samoa. At the root of hip-hop culture in Samoa is a focus on dancing, stemming from the importance of dance in traditional Samoan culture. According to Katerina Teaiwa from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, hip-hop culture is important for Samoan youth and the arts are transforming Samoans, including those outside of Samoa.^[1] This is especially visible among Samoan youth in California, Hawaii, and other communities in the Samoan diaspora. In Los Angeles, Samoan youth often engage in a style of hip-hop dancing called popping-and-locking.

According to April Henderson, young, recently-arrived Samoans in multi-ethnic neighborhoods seek status and respect by mastery of the "physical vocabularies" of dance or sport, aware of the accents that mark them as 'foreign'.^[2] Many hip-hop artists and dancers travel back and forth between Samoa and their other homes, creating channels for Samoan hip-hop to continue to develop and transform.

In the 2009 novel, South Pacific Survivor: In Samoa, Poly hip-hop is central to the assassin, a troubled character.^[3]

Samoan hip-hop artists

• Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E.
• David Dallas
• Drew Deezy
• King Kapisi
• POETIK
• Mareko
• Onefour
• Savage
• SCRIBE

References

1. Teaiwa, Katerina Martina. "Dances of Life: American Samoa." http://www.piccom.org/dancesoflife/samoa.html
2. Henderson, April K. "Dancing Between Islands: Hip Hop and the Samoan Diaspora." In The Vinyl Ain’t Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 180-199. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 200"
3. Daley, Kevin (20 December 2009). South Pacific Survivor: In Samoa. ISBN 9780984403301.