Hip Hop as a Movement Week kicked off last Monday with daily events during the eight-day hip-hop festival. These events were designed to cover the four elements of hip-hop: DJs, B-Boys, MCs and graffiti artists.

Jamie Yancovitz, financial specialist for the MultiCultural Student Coalition, described the movement and its programming.

“The conference is meant to demonstrate hip-hop as an educational tool and a powerful social force. Hip-hop promotes unity across socioeconomic backgrounds, and we want to put out a message that inspires activism with these events,” Yancovitz said.

The festival reached a peak yesterday with a panel discussion regarding the successes and failures of Plan 2008, a plan to increase diversity on campus initiated in 1998. This was the sixth panel discussion of the week, which highlighted the importance of student interaction with performance artists and emphasized the significance of student participation within the local hip-hop community. This year the festival is called “Hip Hop on the Front Lines,” a theme that denotes the discursive conflict that Hip Hop as a Movement is currently embroiled in. The numerous panel discussions were meant to address the relevance of hip-hop as well as its viability as an underground and disestablishmentarian means of expression.

“Hip-hop is on the battlefield right now, and our aspirations are to push hip-hop to the limits of its definition,” Yancovitz said.

One of the most notable events was “Breakin’ The Law,” a B-boy and B-girl battle featuring international breaking crews. The battle was last Friday and Saturday at the Goodman Community Center. Afterward, a discussion was held with a break-dance crew from Cambodia. These panel discussions bring national and international talent to the same level as the passionate students, creating an interesting dynamic.

“Because the conference revolves around knowledge and learning, we don’t just want the artists to perform when we book them; we want to provide a way for students to interact with artists to share talent and share ideas,” Yancovitz said.

Wale, UCB and Colin Munroe perform tonight at the Terrace to wrap up the week of events. The show is free, but the hip-hop programming continues beyond Hip Hop as a Movement Week with Line Breaks (presented by the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives). The events continue until April 25 with panel discussions featuring nationally recognized hip-hop theater artists (including Kamilah Forbes, executive director of the New York Hip Hop Festival) and performances by HBO Def poet Beau Sia and Broadway Def poet Lemon. Line Breaks also includes shows produced exclusively by students on campus enrolled in the First Wave program, which provides a dynamic atmosphere for young artists to get involved with hip-hop theater and general artistic production. Student performances are April 23 and April 25 at the Wisconsin Historical Society and the Wisconsin Union Theater, respectively.

More information can be found on Hip Hop as a Movement Week at www.oddworx.com/hiphopweek.