“Rapping is the art and engineering of language divided by math” — Bomani Armah
Excerpt from an interview between Bomani Armah and Jessica Wallach (lightly edited)
My students call me Baba Bomani. I am a hip hop artist, producer, videographer, educator, and a family man. I am blessed with a full time job making rap songs with kids. I want to be famous for the quote “Rapping is the art and engineering of language divided by math”. Over years, I have been fortunate to uncover and discover that language, math, and engineering are tools your favorite songwriters and rappers use on a regular basis.
In my classroom, I use all three – language, math, and engineering – in my lesson plans to teach students to write rap songs. Students use the writing process, learn how to mind map, and use 21st century skills. We discuss words with each other and learn how to collaborate.
Students figure out the rhythm of the words that we need to say, which is basically a math problem. It’s number bonds. It’s ratios, it’s fractions. We’re figuring out the math of how to get our words to the beat that we want. It’s basically learning how to take a project from inception to completion. Once you can do that with songwriting, you can do that with absolutely anything. You use all these elements from other disciplines in order to make it happen.
Putting the concept in action
One of my favorite groups to work with is a group of fifth graders in Silver Spring, Maryland. First, they learn how to write a rhyme by writing about themselves. It’s the easiest way to make students feel comfortable while creating a rhyme. Usually they are really comfortable with writing about themselves and they can make up stuff. I’m not going to double check.
After we do that, then each group writes a rhyme about a topic. Something that they learned in fifth grade, like Paul Revere’s Ride, or PEMDAS (parenthesis, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction), or the Water Cycle. Then we as a class write a rhyme of 4 or 8 or 16 bar rhymes, depending on how much time we have.
We find and discuss the keywords. We find the rhyme words, and we come up with a couple of things and quatrains and 48 bars about the topic. The final product, the rhyme itself, is a great mnemonic device to help you remember whatever topic it is you were working on, but the process of making the rhyme is where all the magic is happening. The process of having to rub ideas off of other people and come up with rhyme words and learning context and discovering your vocabulary.
Read the blog post: Creating a new normal
Watch Bomani in action: Writing Process, Engineering Design Process
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