Kyra Gaunt

She never really liked hip hop. It was something that was just heard, but never appreciated; at least not the lyrics. But, Kyra Gaunt, CEO and founder of Kyraocity, the inspirational campaign to empower your inner most desires has stepped forward and linked yet another historical approach to hip hop. The Games Black Girl’s Play: Learning the ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip Hop, her new book connects the hand clapping, body swinging beats to the tracks we hear today like Nelly’s Country Grammar.

I really like your personal motto: “Dare to be different than the recipe that brought you here.” How have you dared to be different?

Kyra: How I dared to be different. Everything that I did, I became a classical singer, when I thought that I’d be an R&B singer. I went to school and got voice degrees in classical music and then began studying popular music. My background was that I grew up in a lot of different places. I lived in every kind of place; from a farm to a city. I was petrified living in the city as a child; I lived in the D.C. area. When we would cross the state lines, I would become visibly shaken because of the ways black people were portrayed in the media. It has really been a journey of discovery of who I’ve become as a black woman. You have to give up who you are to be able to travel those distances.

You’re presently a professor of African American Music at Baruch College In New York, what exactly do you focus on through the topic of music?

Kyra: I wasn’t raised with hip hop. I was raised with a little bit of Go-Go. So when I walk into a classroom, I know some people are saying who is she and why a woman; what does she have to say? I talk about DJs and dancing and the MCs on top of that. I’m empowered to talk about the music of hip hop, not just the lyrics. To talk about race and Blackness as the center of it and who participates in it, although a lot of White people are interested in it. The third reason being, that women have always been involved in hip hop, and that quantity doesn’t determine quality.

Could you explain more about your development with Afro-Asian studies, and why it’s an important topic?

Kyra: Wow, that’s new. I don’t have much to say. I’ve been doing research about the relationships between African Americans and Africans in the city of Harlem. I accepted a position at Baruch College, and the majority of the students are Asian not white. So, I began thinking about how I could make my course forwarding as an African American course appeal to the community at Baruch College. I thought that it would be great that a black person could begin studying Asian culture. What if a scholar of African American music would go to Asia and study the influence of our music? What would it be like to uproot myself and experience another culture and look at who we are at that advantage point? It’s long overdue in my mind. It’s kind of exhausted about what we need to know about ourselves. We know that we’re from the hood, or from the south, we know that we can get down and get funky. What happens when you go to China and people are still dancing in blackface? Though, they don’t call it that there. So, you have to let go and see what’s different about that culture because most people aren’t that interested in us to degrade our culture. They are more interested in themselves. It’s going to be great to see what it is they are seeing. The only thing we see is that they are procreating us. We don’t necessarily know what they are seeing.

Your website stated many of the missions you are trying to implement through Kyraocity. Could you elaborate about your father/daughter mission? How and why are you so focused on this particular interaction?

Kyra: My scholarship and my song, my work as a professor, singer/songwriter are tied around race, gender and generation. These things really call me and my relationship with hip hop about being a woman and the culture being male dominated. My interactions with the men in my life was caused by my lack of relationship with my father. I took a course in 2002 that changed my life, it taught me how I could get in touch with my father. I figured if I hadn’t seen my Dad at 40 years old, what difference would it make. The course did an exercise around your relationship with your parents and what they owed you. What they owe you is your life and everything else is icing. But, the one thing your parents want to know is if you are okay. So the time between my Dad leaving me and now was that he just wanted to know that I was ok. My father was married and his family had no idea about me. It was a real blessing to have my dad back in my life and since then I’ve always had my dad. He was scared too, and I’ve never looked back. I realized that I’ve had a great life and if it wasn’t for him and my mom, I wouldn’t be here. So, I realized that there is a conversation needed between fathers and daughters. So, I knew that all that is missing is courage. When I perform and with my work with hip hop, I know that it is totally connected to the relationship with my dad. For years, I hated hip hop because of what it was saying about me as a woman. I have never listened to Wu-Tang because I was so pissed off about the representations of women. So after I reunited with my dad, I realized what difference it made because it was all about what I saw in the future. To allow young boys and young girls to realize that they can be a part of hip hop and they don’t have to show out to participate in hip hop. For me it’s about using the music and scholarship to make a difference. Instead of perpetrating that what we see in the videos is the truth, because we know it isn’t.

Many may argue that music is a universal language that has neither color nor boundary, do you agree?

Kyra: Nope! My whole perception is about comparatively looking at how people make different meanings of things, and how creative we are; the human race. I believe that you can get up to the universal with any culture. You learn things, you don’t come out of the womb knowing that music is universal or who James Brown is. What’s universal is the inclination of music, but not the kind of music you like.

Scheme: Can you define “black” music?

Kyra: Black is the music that people of African descent play and also the kind of music that people identify to. There was a group called Toto; a white rock group. But, growing up their song “Georgie Porgie Pudding Pie” was played on all the black stations; and that was black music, even though the artist were white. The music that we produce is black and the music identified by us, though not produced by us, could be seen as black music. If there were a definitive answer, it would be too easy and that wouldn’t be life. It has to be open like a cipher, like hip hop. I think the trouble people have, is when I say black, after a certain period, blackness has been referenced like a skin color issue. Skin color is a marker of race, but it doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t matter if you’re white or black, that’s not how people were brought up talking about blackness; skin color have nothing to do with it. I know a famous Greek R&B producer that introduced lots of black artists and he identifies himself as being black. You want to give people the chance to name themselves. There is a cultural conversation about what blackness is, and there is always a discrepancy. That’s what being human is about what I think you think and what you think I think. What is so wrong about coming into a class and learning about hip hop from a black context; I’m sure there is a professor teaching hip hop from an Asian prospective somewhere else. Though, I don’t know anyone that would deny that hip hop is a black musical form.

Your book: The games Black Girls play: learning the ropes from double-dutch to hip hop, suggests the connection between hip hop and the games young girls play…how did you determine that connection?

Scheme: Black girls’ musical games embody the rhyming that we see in hip hop that has been around much longer than hip hop. With their bodies, girls create beats. I thought, what is it, if it’s not the lyrics? It occurred to me one day that it was the beat. So, I looked at the music and the music was the game and the games were the men. I also found out that women do not sample from girls’ games. So, for me that evidence was the gender factor with the work. So, like race, it’s not your choice, it’s something you were born into. We were born into the conversation about gender. People haven’t found one example for me of a female artist sampling from a girls’ game. But, the book is really about girls’ games and the message around hip hop. This work is meant to stir up a conversation. I’ve talked to a lot of artist about it; I just didn’t include it because the book is more about the musical blackness regarding these childhood games. I wanted to make a connection between the music of young girls to adult men. So this book is to open the door to a lot of things that exist in the culture, but aren’t talked about. So, this is the first book, but the starting point of a future conversation.

What is the unknown and unpredictable that you are exploring? Are you referring to your everyday life and its uncertainties?

I empower people to do the things they already want to do. To really be who we truly are, and not trying to fix what’s going on; like there is something wrong with hip hop or women dancing in videos. So, if a person wants to watch Nelly’s “Tip Drill” they can, but I would want to have a conversation about “Tip Drill” in the public sphere and why it exists. So my concern is not about the artist, but about the FCC. What’s unpredictable is to not always go for the obvious but instead to argue what is really probing us. It’s a reflection of what is going on and the opportunity to discuss what that’s about!

www.myspace.com/kyraocity