DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — In a classroom at the House of Urban Culture, tucked away in the narrow streets of Dakar, Senegal, Aminata Thiam claps her hands in time with a beat she created on her computer.
“You just have to find the loop that you want. Cut it, duplicate the sample, and then add your effects,” she says.
She is teaching a beatmaking class to five young women, each working intently on beats of their own on the computers in front of them. 0 seconds of 59 secondsVolume 90%.
Thiam, 31, is a beatmaker, one of only a few women in Senegal who call themselves such. Their discipline is the art of “making beats, making rhythms,” Thiam says. She traces a line from American DJs like Afrika Bambaataa and DJ Kool Herc, credited as among the founders of hip-hop, to beatmakers today.
Those DJs made beats in the 1970s and ‘80s using synthesizers or by isolating specific beats in a song and playing them on a loop by switching between two record players. “Now when we talk about beatmaking, we are talking about doing this with a computer,” Thiam says, crediting technology — including the advent of software — with democratizing the art.
The House of Urban Culture sees a rotating crew of anyone and everyone part of Senegal’s burgeoning hip-hop scene — rappers, slam poets, skaters and even the graffiti artists whose works adorn the walls. The center that opened in 2018 hosts rap concerts and beatboxing festivals, and offers free training in everything from DJing to photography in an effort to transform young people’s interest in hip-hop into professions.
Thiam’s stage name is “Myamy the Ay Girl,” a mixture of English and Wolof that means “the girl who can.” She was first drawn to beatmaking as a student a decade ago in Dakar, where a beatmaker had installed a studio at her university. She later trained with a program called Hip Hop Akademy, which now partners with the House of Urban Culture. Her current class here is only open to women — a necessity, she says, if there is to be any kind of equality in the field.
“Not just for music, but for audiovisual work, for cinema,” she says, emphasizing that knowing how to make music on a computer isn’t just applicable to hip-hop.
Although widespread access to computers has made beatmaking more accessible, the reliance on technology has also created a barrier inhibiting many of her students from continuing their work after the course has ended.
“In one household you may find that almost all of the men have a computer, but the women might only have a phone,” she says.
According to the 2020 GSM Association Mobile Gender Gap Report, women in Senegal’s urban areas have almost the same access to the internet as men, but much less financial autonomy: Only 26% of women have bought their own smartphone, compared to 68% of men.
“I always liked music, but I didn’t want to be a singer,” she said. “I wanted to do something different.”