The Cultural Soul Project – Portland, OR

The Cultural Soul Project is anchored in Prophetic Hip-Hop Theory. This means we have a deep concern with how marginalized populations formulate and negotiate identity, while simultaneously finding a sense of Meaning, Being, and Purpose within various contexts of marginalization. As such, we submit that hip-hop, an indigenous, inner-city cultural art form created in postindustrial urban America, can provide hope, possibility, and resistance against the social, structural, and psychological marginalization that one confronts in society.

The Cultural Soul Project understands hip-hop as a legitimate cultural art form that reflects the lived experiences, lived realities, and cultural sensibilities of those who have been shaped by life on the margins in our society, and it can provide profound social commentary and social analysis on the systems and structures that have a disproportionate and detrimental impact on the lives of all People.

The Cultural Soul Project contends that hip-hop, as a cultural art form, can provide vivid articulation about the social conditions and social realities of all People shaped by life on the margins, while also providing respite from, and having fun within, the contemporary reality of social life. At the Cultural Soul Project, we assert that a Prophetic Hip-Hop Theory has the capacity to be transformational within the context of social life and creative with the resources at its disposal.