Hiphop Culture and Language Literacies

The readings for this week (Pennycook, Alim, Ibrahim, and Smith) direct our attention to the intersection between hip-hop culture, English language literacy, and pedagogy. We are given an insight into how transcultural flows through the transmodal expressions of language - dance, songs, movies - influence language learning, language performance, and identity configurations in different geopolitical locations. As I read about concepts and theories of origin, authenticity, localization, and indigenization of hip-hop culture and language, my mind went back to Sierra Leone. And I figured out that back home, indigenization of hip-hop culture takes many forms such as the use of hip-hop style with native language, or the emergence of what could rightly be referred to as "religious rap." This is the use of the rap-style of music with religious lyrics. The  following video is a rap music in krio - the lingua franca in SL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B3xTflr7tk. However, unlike the call by most of the World English (WE) scholars read this week, we don't seem to have adopted a critical language awareness approach in that country with regards this emerging hip-hop culture.