Hip Hop and Hope : exploring the affordances of hip hop centred community music making for enhancing adolescents’ engagement with the field of water-related diseases in peri-urban community settings in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Abstract

Adolescents living in peri-urban settings in South Africa face multiple challenges to realising their own health and wellbeing. A lack of opportunities exists for young people to gain practical skills and the self-efficacy necessary to address these challenges. One area in which they have the potential to make an impact is that of water-related disease. In this context Jive Media Africa, a media agency with a focus on health communications, initiated the Hip Hop Health project. The project made use of hip hop centred community music making to enable 60 young people from three schools in peri-urban communities in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, to share, with their broader communities, findings from research tasks that they had undertaken in the area of water and health. This qualitative case study explored the affordances of this community music making process for the adolescents involved. The study employed thematic analysis of thick descriptions of video excerpts, song lyrics and focus group transcriptions, drawing strongly on a Freirean construct of conscientisation and on youth empowerment theory. This research suggests that the writing and performance of hip hop songs empowers young people to engage with complex issues affecting their health and wellbeing. Through this process they gained hope for their futures, as individuals and as a community. The overarching theme of empowerment is supported by three subthemes, each of which was facilitated by the creation and performance of hip hop songs. In ‘becoming’, young people gained knowledge and were empowered as individuals. Through ‘belonging,’ the learners forged mutually supportive relationships with their peers, families and the broader community. Finally, through ‘believing’, young people began to conceptualise the future as holding hope and possibilities, based on their learnings and the experiences of the process. In this sense, empowerment was seen to take place at both an individual and a community level, and demonstrated elements of building critical consciousness through cycles of action and reflection. The findings hold relevance for programmes that seek to address other issues impacting adolescent health and wellbeing by empowering participants through community music making using hip hop and rap.