The nexus of college and hip-hop culture — tidily summarized as the trinity of rapping, b-boying and tagging — goes back at least as far as the mid-1980s, when Chuck D broadcast the first Public Enemy songs over Adelphi University airwaves.
For nearly a decade, Hartford’s Trinity College has hosted its impressive four-day International Hip-Hop Festival — this year running Thursday through Sunday, April 9 to 12 — programming American rapper-activists (Talib Kweli was last year’s headliner) alongside artists from Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and Connecticut, while weaving in a rich lineup of films, lectures, panel discussions and demonstrations. It’s all free and open to the public.
DJ Kool Herc, perhaps the most important early figure in the development of hip-hop in the Bronx, headlines this year’s big concert (Saturday, April 11, 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. in the Washington Room, on the second floor of Mather Hall). Earlier in the day, he’ll join author Jeff Chang, who wrote the seminal hip-hop history “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop”; Mexican rapper Bocafloja; scholar Hisham Aidi; and Senegalese hip-hop artist Waterflow in a panel discussion (11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in Rittenburg Lounge).
Other highlights include lectures and workshops on global feminism (Thursday, 2:55 p.m.), Tupac (Friday, 3:30 p.m.) and creative writing (Saturday, 9:45 a.m., hosted by Hartford’s Joey Batts); a screening of the landmark documentary “Wild Style” (Saturday, 3 p.m., with director Charlie Ahern in attendance); the annual b-boy/b-girl battle (Friday, 7 p.m.), judged this year by Paul Skee, Crumbs and Bboy Remind and hosted by Botswana Dopeskills; and a live grafitti exhibition (Gates Quad, in front of Mather Hall), which runs throughout the day on Saturday.
A full schedule of events can be found at trinityhiphop.com.
