I recently had the opportunity to watch the 1984 hip-hop film "Beat Street" on the big screen, and was amazed by its earnest sincerity in depicting the conditions of New York in the 1980s for young people. I had been recommended it by someone whose taste in culture I value a great deal, and I can now see why- hip-hop as a culture and as a social movement provides an excellent blueprint for how to create and nurture what for the purposes of this guide I will refer to as a "Living Culture".
Beat Street is not, of course, the first hip-hop film; that honor goes to Wild Style from 1983. I watched Wild Style too, and each of them have their pros and cons. Wild Style is more focused around the Graffiti aspect of Hip-Hop than the MC'ing or DJ'ing, whereas Beat Street gives roughly equal screen time to all pillars of hip-hop with its various subplots. Wild Style is more socially conscious in its depiction of a young Graffiti artist who is caught between the approval of the high art world and the respect of his peers from the slums, whereas Beat Street is directed by the same guy who made Miami Vice so it is a more polished, narratively tight entry in the Hip-Hop canon.
As I said I'd been recommended these two films for a long time because they supposedly constituted their own genre, which I found very interesting. It is fascinating to consider that, for a brief point in the early 1980s, "Hip-Hop Film" was its own distinct label. Of course, one could say they are merely a subgenre of musicals, but that would be doing them a disservice. Nor would it be fair to call them "documentaries" exactly, since while they do feature real hip-hop acts of the time and depict the world of hip-hop realistically, they are mostly scripted and follow a traditional narrative structure. So you cannot really call them anything but "Hip-Hop films," that is the most accurate term.
It's 2026 now and hip-hop is gradually fading from cultural memory, the Kendrick/Drake tiff is several years in retrospect and seemed to serve as a sort of grand climax between the earnest, sincere roots of a genre born from abject poverty and the ceaseless commercialization of said genre under the mechanisms of Capitalism. Hip-hop not only provides a look at organic culture in its early years, but in its later years is an example of how this culture can be plundered and necrotized into a shambling mass that does not serve the people it was created for.
One thing I have always respected about Hip-Hop (and you do not call it simply "rap" unless you want to expose your ignorance on the subject) is how it promotes literacy and critical thought about the world. Culture rescued many youths of the 1980s from becoming drug addicts, it encouraged self-expression and sincerity. You have to be literate if you want to succeed in hip-hop. Sure, if you just want to become the next Lil' Pump or 6ix9ine or Yeat, the flavor-of-the-week disposable trend that everyone emulates for a few months and then forgets about, you do not need to understand how words flow together. But if you want to compose good solid bars with double entendres and couplets and whatever, you will earn the legacy of Slick Rick or Kool Keith for yourself. It may not be as profitable, but you will have the respect of your fans.
People who claim that rap songs are only about violence or drugs are profoundly ignorant and in all likelihood racist. They are the type who will listen to a song like "Try That In A Small Town" by Jason Aldean which heavily implies the use of violence to solve social problems in backwater barbarian hick villages and not flinch, but then they will hear "Brooklyn Zoo" by Ol' Dirty Bastard and dismiss any potential value in his political statements because he uses profanity. To dismiss the obvious creative and artistic genius of someone like ODB, no matter who you are, is patently idiotic.
I am not nostalgic for the old-school 1980s type hip-hop, because I recognize nostalgia as a poison that prevents legitimate progress and discourages innovation. I cannot deny that the 1990s were probably the golden age for this sort of thing, and its prominence has passed, but there will always be good rappers who are talented and care about passing the legacy and awareness of hip-hop on to the future. While there are newer hip-hop films such as "Straight Outta Compton" and "8 Mile," it would not really be accurate to place them in the same category as "Wild Style" or "Beat Street". These early movies existed within a very specific context which can never be replicated or imitated, the boiling point of the near-apocalyptic conditions of the late 1970s and early 1980s in the Bronx.
I don't live in The Bronx so I am able to accept that as a Denverite I may never see a cultural panacea as profound or intense as the initial wave of hip-hop, but there are many good MCs here in Denver who I have been fortunate enough to see at shows and who interpret the pressing conditions facing Denver in their own unique way. Denver rap, like all Denver-based subgenres of music, is extremely underrated and goes overlooked by people who do not live here, but that means, as someone who has lived next to Colfax my entire life, I am able to appreciate it all the more.
To be a "Living Culture," a culture counterintuitively needs to be capable of accepting death. Something can only really "live"- that is, grow and develop and take shape alongside events in real time- if it is capable of accepting and reckoning with the passage of time. In "Beat Street," there is a subplot involving the graffiti artist Ramon, who wrestles rival graffiti artist "Spit" to death on the third rail of the subway and is electrocuted in the process. This is an extremely morbid turn of events in what is up until that point a relatively lighthearted coming-of-age narrative. It is necessary to provide the finale of the movie with weight, though, since the big hip-hop show at the end is a celebration of Ramon's life where all his friends gather to appreciate the impact his art has left on the city.
As the song at the climax of the film goes, "Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust- where the good die young, as all thy must- 'cause life must life, death must die- and the tear shall fall from the living eye." This is a good encapsulation of how death can provide life with meaning, tragedy can provide life with substance, and why more commercialized music, such as Barry Manilow or whatever, does not possess that substance. We tend to appreciate artists who died young and faced some hardships in their day, such as Kurt Cobain or XXXTentacion or Jeff Buckley or Tupac or Joe Meek. We tend to become tired of acts who tour around forever and ever and ever and outlive their relevance. Much better to be a Jim Morrison than a Kid Rock.
I have tried my best to bring New Wave into the modern day, to serve as a conduit through which the culture of Denver New Wave can be remembered and canonized. This is quite a challenge! There are not nearly as many local new wave artists as there are hip-hop artists, far less than there were back in the 1980s, and being a majority Caucasian genre, new-wave is often dismissed as something with no cultural merit. But I hope to bring it to the forefront, as it is the kind of music I enjoy the most and I am not embarrassed to admit as much. My knowledge of New Wave is extensive and I believe it has immense potential since, like hip-hop, it is a genre focused on perpetual innovation.
I have faced many challenges in my quest to bring contemporary New Wave into prominence, the largest of these being the ignorance of my peers, who often confuse New Wave music with New Age music, or even assume that I invented New Wave since they have never seen or heard any music as eccentric as what I am capable of bringing to the table. I have heard from people who claim my music is "just for me" when really, I am trying to share culture with anyone who will appreciate it. And in an environment like Denver, where the population is constantly fluctuating and nobody can even name a popular Denver artist from a decade ago, let along fifty years ago, it is important to recognize and categorize information about the art of the past, to gain an appreciation of the context under which you exist. By listening to Denver artists of the past I come to recognize that I have a purpose and a function in the present, and I can build on their work while simultaneously creating something new.
It should be mentioned again that I am not by any means "nostalgic" for new wave. I just happen to legitimately like New Wave more than Jack Harlow or Yeat or Post Malone or whatever other crap is shoved down my throat by the big record executives. I respect the New Wave of the 1980s but I am more than capable of admitting that whatever New Wave I create must address the pressing concerns of the present moment, of the here and now. I appreciate a New Wave movie like "True Stories" in the same way I appreciate a hip-hop movie- as a unique document of its time, the 1980s, which has passed. I do not burn my music or films to cassette because I am "nostalgic" for cassette technology, like some whimpering millennial- I do it because I recognize that cassette technology has legitimate utility and merit and is a better way of consuming media than via the internet.
Everyone my age is beginning to realize this. The manufactured culture of big supervised media can no longer account for the disparities and cracks in the simulacra with which we have been presented. More and more people are turning to live music because they would rather exist in the here and now and mean something than die while fed banal regurgitated trash over the Internet. People are getting out into the streets, making friends, chasing financial success less. The myth about Gen Z being shiftless or illiterate is largely propagated by millennials and older generations who would like to ignore and de-legitimize our cultural achievements and contributions. It is unhealthy, the degree to which older people fetishize and drag out the past while ignoring the world directly in front of them. This is the endpoint of nostalgia, a type of "dead culture".
The foibles of the world do not bother me, though, since I have been hosting a weekly New Wave jam in the park where I encourage any musician to come and share music and drink Squirt and have a fun time. By helping to propagate culture in this way, I feel legitimately useful. I see the difference I am making in the world and the values I am sharing, and each week I come up with a fun new activity. This past week, we played "VHS Jenga" where I stack up 12 layers of VHS tapes. It was incredibly fun and is something I will always remember. I have been amazed by the wide range of talent that shows up, their willingness to engage with my ideas earnestly, their relief at getting offline for a little bit. There is a mutual respect produced.
So here in no particular order are the elements of "living culture" as I see them, as someone who is trying my best to recognize living culture when I see it and reject dead culture when I see it.
1. Living Culture is REACTIVE. This is an obvious one. Living culture responds to the immediate circumstances surrounding it and the context in which it exists. Kendrick Lamar, for instance, generally makes music that is an honest and pointed reflection of the world surrounding him. An album like "Good Kid, M.A.A.D City" makes many of the same points as an album like "Illmatic" by Nas, both being albums about growing up in hostile environments, except Kendrick's album is updated to be about his life specifically, he does not merely regurgitate the points made by Nas because Kendrick is a different person with a different life. Kendrick creates hip-hop for the 2010s and 2020s which evolves and changes as the times evolve and change, as an artist it is his role to serve as a barometer through which the collective consciousness of the public is channeled into a coherent statement, a record and a document of existence. This is something a rapper like Drake cannot do as well, because he grew up in a life of privilege in Canada and the so-called "Toronto sound" he claims to represent is for the most part a cheap regurgitation of American music. He has not evolved much in the 20 years he has been active, nor have his production sensibilities.
The same goes for other genres. An Australian band like King Gizzard produces a cheap pastiche of better psychedelic American music from bands like Jefferson Airplane or MC5 who actually lived in the late 1960s and experienced the political turmoil inherent to the era. The countercultural movement of that period did not simply materialize from nothing, it was a direct response to the pressing conditions of the time. When I hear MC5, I hear raw unfiltered human passion. When I hear King Gizzard, I hear cheap overrated junk, an insincere cash grab designed for gullible Millennials. King Gizzard's culturally appropriative music stands in stark contrast to an Australian band like Midnight Oil, who create music that sounds and looks and feels Australian and is actually about real Australian issues. They do not need to sell out to an American audience.
2. Living Culture is NOT DEPENDENT ON MONEY. This is an important one. Money can be great for some things, but it is also a filter which acts in opposition to the proliferation of culture. If you are convinced that you need a ton of money to succeed artistically, you will never try and your dreams will be crushed. The less connected you are to a volatile and deeply flawed economic system, the more honest you can be about the problems you face. This is why, during recessions, the dominant "white" culture usually recedes into the background and cannot honestly express its dissatisfaction with the conditions of the world, whereas mediums like Hip-Hop or punk explode. Hip-Hop is a relatively "low-entry" genre. All you need, ultimately, is your voice and a message. Beats are good, but if you don't have a big turntable to produce them, you can find someone to beatbox with you.
I have personal experience with many spheres of music and I have arrived at the conclusion that when money is involved, the message will inevitably be distorted. The best shows are not given with any kind of expectation of a huge payout. For a while, I tried doing paid shows and I was screwed over completely by middlemen- booking agents and managers- who did not appreciate or respect the scope of my creative ambition, and who were poisoned by monetary incentive to ostracize me. What is even more sick is that some of them claimed to "provide opportunities to disenfranchised groups" but openly mocked me for being autistic. So after a long time doing paid shows and being underappreciated and fed through the wringer, I decided that playing for free at open mics and occasionally selling a tape here or there was not only more sustainable but actually more profitable in the long run. Today, my open mic at the park does not even have a permit, because I believe that parks and other public open spaces should not come with a "pay-to-use" aspect. I just set up in the grass and stuff gets going and we have a good time, and anyone who has a problem with it can fuck right off.
The market here in Denver focuses mainly on soft acoustic guitar music and does not encourage wild raucous New Wave, but this is not a problem as long as you accept that your music is not incentivized or approved of by "the market". Who cares what "the market" wants? Build your own parallel market. If you don't have electricity, just bang on some damn trash cans, or whip out a sharpie and doodle on an electric box. Nobody can tell you not to, and the right people will find and latch onto your stuff. Here in Denver there is a particular graffiti artist called "Fuck You Pay Me" who just writes "Fuck You Pay Me" on everything. It's hilarious, and I love their work. Odds are they will never be paid, but they contribute to our city's culture way more than some boring, church-approved guitar music with no character or substance.
3. Living Culture is INCLUSIVE. Living Culture does not reject people of any particular demographic. If you restrict culture to only one demographic, you risk missing out on a unique viewpoint you may not have considered. Hip-Hop, for instance, has always celebrated diversity. In addition to the African-American community of the early 1980s, the early hip-hop scene also had many prominent Puerto Ricans and Jews and other white-passing demographics who could share their own unique experiences and cultivate solidarity. There were also a ton of well-known female MC's. Hip-hop was not really prone to the same toxic sexism or racism as other music was around the same time. All that mattered was your skill on the mic.
Occasionally, someone toxic or racist will take advantage of your generosity and try to poison your culture with seeds of intolerance or ignorance. It is important to counteract this, but so long as your culture has built-in failsafes against such toxicity, and you only reject someone as a last resort, you can overcome bad actors. Once someone exposes themselves as a racist or misogynist or some other variety of blithering idiot, all you need to do is denounce their behavior as morally wrong and tell them you do not feel safe around them anymore.
4. At the same time, Living Culture RESISTS HOMOGENEITY. This may seem to contradict the last point, but all it really means is that to live, a culture must be unique and distinct and recognizable. The forces of greed would like to make all experiences the same miserable slog. Living Culture resists this by maintaining a sense of identity. There are many types and subgenres of Hip-Hop, for instance, but they are all Hip-Hop. The west coast sound is different from the east coast sound, boom bap is different from jazz rap, but to be effective and mean something, hip-hop cannot be sterilized or folded into the overarching meaningless noise of broader culture. If all genres are mixed together, and nobody stays in their own unique lane, all we are left with is bland "Stomp Clap Hey" music.
I do not need a band that puts every single genre into a blender. Much like mixing all the colors together, you only end up with a brown cultural sludge. I would rather hear MC5 rock the fuck out and make excellent rock music that is specific to Detroit than see them try to play like Dave Brubeck and fail miserably.
This is why some people absolutely hate jazz and some people love jazz. Jazz is a very gatekeep-y, insular genre with immense respect for itself, it resists outside influence at all costs. I have tried and failed to sing at jazz clubs. Invariably I am told by the bandleader to get off the stage because I am getting some note wrong or it is some kind of solo or whatever. Really, these shows should not be called "jams" because, unlike a freestyle hip-hop cypher, where everyone is just allowed to get on the mic and have fun with a pre-recorded beat that sounds good no matter what you throw on top of it, jazz is for neurotic perfectionists who claim to appreciate "improvisation" but only so far as it still sounds distinctly like jazz. It would be a lot more fun to just sit back and listen to the jazz than to try to participate in it and to be humiliated with my lack of understanding.
I can understand why people would be annoyed at figures like Keith Jarrett who insist that before a show, everyone must cough a bunch so that nobody coughs while he's on the piano. But at the same time, I can respect how jazz is a genre so inherently human and so resistant to potential bad actors that it walls itself off completely from the outside world. I would never presume to assume that I, a new wave musician, could join the Belonging Quartet and start jamming out on a song as intricate and wonderful as "Long As You Know You're Living Yours," and that is OK. Some things I am just not good at, and I can accept as much. True diversity comes when people respect each other's skill levels and unique preferences.
5. Finally, Living Culture CREATES VALUE. Living culture gives back to people, it enriches lives, it fights back against the forces of entropy and decay. It justifies existence. I am lucky enough to live in a big city like Denver where there is something interesting going on every day and there are many figures like me who are well-educated and care about the preservation of ideas and read a lot.
Value is difficult to define detached from any monetary system, but it is fair to say that for the people living in the slums depicted in "Beat Street" or "Wild Style," a free, inclusive hip-hop show put on in an abandoned apartment building with nothing more than some vinyls and a few lights and some talented artists must have meant a lot. Adversity produces legitimate value because people realize- "Well, yes- I can actually just bring a bunch of snacks out to the park and have a free picnic and share ideas and opinions, and I will be doing the world a lot of good in the process."
If these are the characteristics of "Living Culture," what is "Dead Culture"? Well, as mentioned above, homogeneity kills culture. Hip-Hop may have started with extremely noble intentions under very specific conditions, but over time bad actors like Vanilla Ice and Jack Harlow got their fingers in the pie, so hip-hop has not been immune to the broader commodification and degradation of culture. Even so, hip-hop is much more alive than other genres. One genre I hold a seething contempt for is so-called "Americana". I am convinced that this genre is not even real. To posit that any one type of music could singularly define American culture- a nation of millions of people and thousands of demographics- is absurd. Most "Americana" is just country music. It offends me deeply that Americana is sometimes called the "Denver sound" by people who do not study the many great rappers or electronic acts who have left their mark on Colfax and Broadway in droves. The "Denver sound" is Sugarloaf, Jerry Corbetta and Ricky Kulwicki, it's the Fluid and LD-50 and the Aviators and Little Fyodor and many other sounds in many other varieties, but it is not and has never been cheap or sterile.
Obviously, the Internet and technology more broadly can have negative effects on culture if wielded poorly. A system where every piece of information can be transmitted instantly makes information cheap, and when human expression is devalued, human life is devalued. Those who do not value art do not value life. The devaluation of art by men who worship science as a god is a psychopathic anti-Humanist tendency.
Religious culture could be called "dead" in that it is subject to stigmata. For every popular genre of music, there is a specific Christian equivalent- Christian rock, Christian rap, etc. This is all trash. Christianity is a parasitic force that upholds the word of some disheveled 2,000-year-old dead narcissist and insists that he is somehow important. Culture cannot evolve in a healthy, organic way as long as such beliefs are held. In ripping off popular culture and removing all the fun, Christianity admits that it could not exist if there was not a wider world on which to feed. Its pathetic imitations of living culture cannot, of course, ever hope to match actual culture. Bibleman is never going to be as popular as Batman, because Bibleman is subject to arbitrary limitations that Batman is not. Batman endures as a popular character across 80 years because he is able to organically be reinterpreted by different writers, and he was created by Bill Finger with the noble goal of entertainment, not indoctrination.
Christian culture and other backwards religious movements such as Sharia Law shoot themselves in the foot by imposing completely arbitrary limitations on behavior and thought, and in doing so they produce weak people with defective brains. There is something inherently sick about Man's need to see God in the universe despite the objective fact that God does not exist. It is an illness, and it prevents one from appreciating the self-evident reality of existence. At any rate, religious culture cannot ever really hope to compete with broader culture, and as religion whittles itself down from polytheism to monotheism, from the worship of a diverse range of Gods of all genders and races such as Athena to blind gibbering Yahweh devotion, it becomes ever more irrelevant, and try as it might it cannot erase the legacy of great secular humanist figures such as Voltaire, whose mind and wit were incomparable.
The deadest culture of all, though, is of course Fascism. Fascism is deader than dead, it is where life is extinguished and everything goes dark and culture grinds to a screeching halt because so many arbitrary nonsense limitations are placed upon it that the human mind can no longer function as it must to survive. Fascism is a cultural implosion that must be avoided at all costs, and every time you help to facilitate "living culture," to push the envelope forward and innovate and think for yourself and exist in good faith with color and humor, you help to combat the rot of fascism.
These are simply some observations I have made- obviously, culture exists on a spectrum, the dead world of Fascism on one end and an absolute explosion of self-deterministic living free will on the other end- and we all exist somewhere in between to varying degrees. Hopefully this was somewhat informative. What you choose to do with this information is entirely up to you.