Samoan hip-hop includes hip-hop music, artists and culture in Samoa. At the root of hip-hop culture in Samoa is a focus on dancing, stemming from the importance of dance in traditional Samoan culture. According to Katerina Teaiwa from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, hip-hop culture is important for Samoan youth and the arts are transforming Samoans, including those outside of Samoa.[1] This is especially visible among Samoan youth in California, Hawaii, and other communities in the Samoan diaspora. In Los Angeles, Samoan youth often engage in a style of hip-hop dancing called popping-and-locking.
According to April Henderson, young, recently-arrived Samoans in multi-ethnic neighborhoods seek status and respect by mastery of the "physical vocabularies" of dance or sport, aware of the accents that mark them as 'foreign'.[2] Many hip-hop artists and dancers travel back and forth between Samoa and their other homes, creating channels for Samoan hip-hop to continue to develop and transform.
In the 2009 novel, South Pacific Survivor: In Samoa, Poly hip-hop is central to the assassin, a troubled character.[3]
↑ Henderson, April K. "Dancing Between Islands: Hip Hop and the Samoan Diaspora." In The Vinyl Ain’t Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 180-199. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 200"
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