The Peabody Conservatory will offer a Bachelor of Music degree in Hip Hop. It’s a new initiative for the 167-year-old conservatory, a division of Johns Hopkins University. Noted musician and current Peabody faculty member Wendel Patrick, who teaches a course called “Hip Hop Music Production: History and Practice,” will head the department.
“I am beyond excited to officially share this news,” Patrick announced this month on social media. “This is something I have been quietly working on for several years at the Peabody Conservatory, and it’s officially here. The first Bachelor of Music Hip Hop Performance Major Degree Program, with specializations in Turntable Performance, Rap Performance, Beatbox Performance and Hip Hop Production.”
Founded in 1857 and affiliated with Hopkins since 1977, Peabody is the oldest conservatory of dance and music in the United States, officially known as the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University.
Details about the new Hip Hop degree can be found on Peabody’s website. Peabody is now accepting applications for the undergraduate degree program and its website provides a detailed list of “audition requirements” for prospective candidates. It states that approval from the Maryland Higher Education Commission is “pending,” and that additional faculty members are to be announced.
“Whether you’re a turntablist, rapper, beatboxer or producer, you thrive on making music that engages a crowd and excites people,” the website states. “And the Peabody Conservatory’s new undergraduate degree program in Hip Hop can help you take your skills to the next level.”
Private instruction
The new Bachelor of Music in Hip Hop “will combine the resources and strengths of Peabody’s industry-leading Music Engineering and Technology programs with the Conservatory’s long history of excellence in performance training,” the website continues. “The department is headed by award-winning composer, producer, beatmaker, pianist and professor Wendel Patrick.”
While students will follow the “one-on-one studio model of a traditional conservatory education,” Peabody states, they’ll also have an opportunity to develop their skills with a private instructor.
Besides taking private lessons with specialists, students will learn about “the cultural history and sociopolitical environment in which Hip Hop was born; developments in style, technique and technology; and the genre’s rise in popularity and influence.”
They’ll also take courses in Peabody’s Breakthrough Curriculum, which is designed to help students develop the business and career skills they’ll need to succeed as artists. “Leveraging our affiliation with Johns Hopkins, you’ll have opportunities to share your ideas and collaborate across disciplines with artists, engineers, and innovators at one of the world’s leading universities,” Peabody’s website states.
The announcement of the new degree program comes one year after another Baltimore institution, the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA), joined with the Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) to open a blockbuster exhibit about Hip-Hop entitled, “The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century.”
Alter ego
Wendel Patrick (wendelpatrick.com) is the alter-ego of classical and jazz pianist Kevin Gift. According to a 2019 Baltimore Sun article by Baynard Woods, Wendel Patrick is actually the name of Gift’s twin brother, “who died when he was a baby, and he began to use the name when he stepped out of the world of classical music, in which he had spent much of his life, and immersed himself in electronics and hip hop.”
According to Peabody, the musician’s five albums, Sound, Forthcoming, JDWP, Passage and Travel were all produced without the use of sampling, with Patrick playing every note. In addition, he didn’t use any instruments, instead crafting every note electronically.
Peabody’s website lists Patrick as an associate professor in the Department of Music Engineering & Technology. It describes him as an artist who is “equally at home performing on stage with his band, behind two turntables, beatboxing, improvising or playing a Mozart Concerto with orchestra.”
In its biography of Patrick, Peabody notes that he has toured Europe on several occasions and performed throughout the world with spoken word artist and poet Ursula Rucker. In 2014, he traveled to Australia as a guest lecturer, speaking about music production and entrepreneurship in the arts at The Australian Institute of Music in Sydney and Melbourne.
Baker Artist Award winner
In 2011, Patrick co-founded with Erik Spangler the Baltimore Boom Bap Society, which performs improvised hip-hop shows with various musicians and emcees. In 2016, he collaborated with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Igor Stravinsky’s “The Soldier’s Tale.” He has been heard on NPR stations on Out of the Blocks, a radio documentary program that he co-produces with radio producer Aaron Heckin for WYPR in Baltimore. He is also a photographer and videographer whose work has been shown at the Baltimore Museum of Art, and he shoots all of the accompanying photography and videography for Out of the Blocks.
Wendel Patrick/Kevin Gift majored in both music and political science at Emory University and earned a Master of Music degree in Piano Performance at Northwestern University School of Music.
From 2001 to 2013, he was a full-time faculty member at Loyola University Maryland, teaching piano, introduction to music theory, music history, and electronic music program. In 2015, he won the Mary Sawyers Baker Grand Prize in the annual Baker Artist Awards program. He was a Nasir Jones Hip Hop Fellow at Harvard University in 2021-2022. He also taught at the Maryland Institute College of Art before joining Peabody.
On its website, Peabody describes Patrick’s Hip Hop course as “the first course of its kind to be taught at a major traditional music conservatory anywhere in the United States.”
