Dalton Higgins

Topics

Presentations

Generation Rap

Trend Spotting: Counterculture to Popular  Culture

Black History, Culture, Music and Art

Summary Profile

Dalton Higgins is a music programmer, pop culture critic, author, broadcaster and journalist. He is also widely regarded as Canada's foremost expert on hip hop culture.

Hip hop is arguably the predominant youth sub-culture of this generation. Artists around the world have taken hip hop's blueprint and fused it with their own music, language, dance rituals and art to create something new and innovative.

Higgins' research has explored hip hop scenes in Europe, North America, Asia, Africa and more. He has interviewed the who's who of music practitioners, including: Public Enemy's Chuck D, Sudanese raptivist Emmanuel Jal, the UK's Killa Kela, and Filipino DJ luminary Q-Bert.

He notes American hip hop is questioned for being too commercialized to articulate the hopes, concerns and dreams of marginalized youth and community members - who it was originally created for. But outside the U.S., hip hop culture is often just the opposite - a political tool to mobilize disenfranchised communities around hard issues with little support from mainstream corporations or sponsors.

Higgins has his finger on the pulse of hip hop culture and is often consulted by the media to predict the future of the genre and the youth culture that spawned it, as hip hop spreads its tentacles to the furthest reaches of humanity. And through his experience as a pop culture reporter for some of North America's leading magazines, Higgins is able to project and dictate trends before they happen.

Dalton Higgins will captivate audiences by sharing why so many youths around the world incorporate hip hop culture, lifestyle, dress codes and language into their everyday lives, and use hip hop culture as their voice.

Highlights

• Winner of Canadian National Magazine Award
• Author of Hip Hop World & Co-author of two books: Hip Hop and Much Master T: A VJ's Journey
• Former host and writer for BMP TV's Urban Groove