Modern Native Voices: The Medium of Hip-Hop

Modern Native Voices: The Medium of Hip-Hop

3:00 pm: Spoken Word performance in the Native American Voices gallery 
4:00 pm: Panel Discussion and Q&A session 
8:00 pm: Concert in Widener Auditorium

Join the Penn Museum for a unique program featuring Native American rap and hip-hop artists (shown above, left-right) Frank Waln, Def-I, and Tall Paul. The artists will kick off the event with spoken word performances in the "Native American Voices" gallery. The event then moves to the Widener Auditorium for a panel discussion. The artists will share their complicated and diverse personal experiences as Natives and their paths to discovering rap and hip-hop. With the artists coming from Minnesota, New Mexico, and South Dakota, the audience will have the opportunity to hear individual perspectives across tribes within the modern world, and within a modern form of musical performance art. The panel ends with a Q&A session. After a break for supper, the event concludes with a live evening performance featuring each of the participating artists.

For a preview of the artists, see the following music videos: 

Frank Waln performing "My Stone" on MTV Rebel Music

Tall Paul performing "Prayers in a Song" on MTV Rebel Music

Def-I performing with Frank Waln at "Council of Emcees" at Penn in 2013

Sponsored by Natives at Penn, Greenfield Intercultural Center and Dubois CPPP, the Native American & Indigenous Studies Initiative, and the Penn Museum. Native American Voices public programming is generously underwritten by Delaware Investments/Macquarie Group Foundation. 

Event Organizer: Talon Ducheneaux. See our Facebook page for more information.