This year, hip-hop music celebrates 50 years of bringing rap and urban music to the world. Rap genre includes a number of different formats, including gangsta, horrorcore, trap, spaza, and the newest version dip hop. It is also seeing a new sub-genre of rappers who sign their raps instead of saying them.
As a number of celebrities that have appeared on “Dancing with the Stars” has proven, someone who is deaf or hard of hearing doesn’t have to hear the music in order to enjoy or perform to it.
Musician, dancer, singer, and professor Thomas Warfield at the Rochester Institute of Technology National Technical Institute for the Deaf has long conducted dance classes for and created productions for his non-hearing students.
The relatively new musical form known as Did Hop takes it one step further to provide members of the Deaf community with another outlet for their creativity. The format also proves that music is truly a universal language for everyone.
The growing community includes the artists Red Menace (formerly Polar Bear), Warren “Wawa” Snipe, Signkid, Marko “Signmark” Vuoriheimo, and Sean Forbes. Wawa and Sean Forbes were a part of the Hip Hop extravaganza that was halftime show at the Super Bowl in 2022.
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