Performing Arts and Culture: 1980s-1990s - Essay Example

While the New York Transit Authority and the police opposed them by all means, the city was rocked by the DJs, MCs, and B-boys whose new moves, new sounds, and breakdance battles around the street corners catalyzed the evolution of a new dimension of performance arts (“The Original Style”). These films particularly helped expand the hip hop culture’s appeal beyond New York. The hip hop culture was omnipresent in the performing arts of the 1980s and the 1990s because young Black Americans, who were freshly coming out of the civil rights movement saw it as a way of demonstrating the limitations of the movement to the wider world.

The conservatives vigorously opposed hip hop because it romanticized law-breaking, the culture of gangs, and violence. Hip hop expanded beyond boundaries in the 1990s (Katz 180). It had become practically synonymous with the culture of American youth especially because it was loved by the legions of the white youth. “White fans no longer listen to hip-hop on the sly or surreptitiously rhyme in front of the mirror; they form bands and rhyme on MTV” (Aaron). The underlying connotations of the growing hip hop culture were the growing influence of Black Americans on the culture and media of America.

Hip hop music culture of the 1980s and 1990s lent Black Americans their unique identity in media and literature and served as a platform for them to portray their concerns to the society and the world at large.