Students from four New England high schools competed at the Goethe Institut’s Hip-Hop Battle Boston last Saturday. The participating schools were: Boston Latin School, Boston, MA; ConVal Regional High School, Peterborough, NH; Cony High School, Augusta, ME; and Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School, Sudbury, MA.
Each school put forth two teams. ConVal sent Team “Dudelsack” (German for “bagpipe”), consisting of Grace Christensen, Alexis Cleary, Bronwyn Tyler-Wall, and Finn Wegmueller; Team “Die Bernsteins” was represented by Lenny Romard, Eddie Sulborski, and Greta Topping.
For the competition, the teams workshopped to write rap texts about a given topic, practiced their performance, improved their pronunciation and stage presence, and got inspiration from experts – all in German, of course!
The event was judged by a four-person jury comprised of representatives from the Goethe Institute, the German Consulate, the Berklee School of Music, and the German School in Boston, and Team “Dudelsack” emerged as the winner. As part of their first prize, their rap song will be professionally recorded in the weeks to come.
The Goethe Institut is a non-profit German cultural association that operates 159 institutes worldwide with the mission to promote the study of the German language abroad and to encourage international cultural exchanges. Around 246,000 people take part in Goethe Institut activities every year.