The TED Talk video with the British MC and a hip-hop scholar Akala presented an exciting look at the legacy of William Shakespeare. The speaker offers the audience and the viewers to participate in a quiz where he delivers a line, and people have to guess whether it is by Shakespeare or a modern rapper. Surprisingly, most people could not tell the difference when the context of the quote was taken away. This acts as evidence of how William Shakespeare can be regarded as a part of hip-hop culture and how hip-hop culture and ideas can be traced back to the days of Shakespeare. Hence, he can be considered the first hip-hop MC.
The English poet, and writer, William Shakespeare is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language. His legacy had a massive influence on the generations of writers to come. In addition, his plays helped shape the theatre into the way that we know it today. However, the themes that he covered in his plays and poems are universally appealing to the audience of any generation because it touches human emotions, which are common for any class or level of education. This is what also differentiated Shakespeare from other writers that were not accessible to a general audience and were written by a limited amount of people who had access to books and could read. Hip-hop is also providing a way of delivering messages in an accessible and exciting manner.
In addition, Akala provides a message that the way hip-hop is represented in the mainstream media is not the way hip-hop was created by its founders. According to Acala, hip-hop culture is based on five essential elements – DJing, MCing, graffiti art, breakdance, and knowledge (Akala n.p.). The latter is an element that is frequently overlooked; however, hip-hop is an intelligent movement, which means that it aims to spread knowledge and educate its listeners through delivering a message in various art forms. The same applies to William Shakespeare, who managed to deliver a complex and sophisticated message through his plays and poems to the audience, which was mostly illiterate.
There is a notion that Shakespeare was a person that worked and created for educated elites, as his language was posh. However, this statement cannot be true because the “posh” language itself was developed more than a hundred years after Shakespeare’s passing (Akala n.p.). Instead, the language of his plays was the same language that was spoken by the majority of people. Therefore, Shakespeare was educating his audience, who could not read or write but could see a play that they would understand.
In conclusion, all the evidence provided by Akala’s TED Talk speech was really insightful on both hip-hop and Shakespeare. In addition, it was exciting to watch as the speech included flawless musical performance, which is rare for public speeches. The fact that Shakespeare’s art was performed in one of the most accessible art forms at the time and the fact that the language it was delivered was not “posh” but simple and representative of the way people spoke at the time confirms the statement that Shakespeare was hip-hop both rhythmically and culturally. Although Shakespeare did not DJ or dance, his legacy can be attributed to hip-hop culture, as it contained one of the five most important elements of hip-hop – knowledge. He was spreading knowledge with his messages, and he cared about the education of the audience through his art.
Work Cited
Akala, Kingslee James Daley. “Hip Hop & Shakespeare? Akala at TEDxAldeburgh”, TED Talks YouTube [Video], 2011.