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Gerson Martinez is a renowned Latino lecturer, traveling mainly throughout New Jersey to talk about issues ranging from how African culture has influenced that of Latinos, to workplace diversity training. Last Wednesday night, however, he visited Rowan to talk about the history of hip-hop.

The lecture was put on by the ladies of the Lambda Theta Alpha Latin Sorority to educate people on how hip-hop came to be.

“We hosted another program on African American influences on Latin culture,” said Yareidis Perez, vice president of Lamda Theta Alpha sorority Inc. “Since hip hop is such an important staple between the Latin American and African American Cultures we started to talk about it and we realized that many of us didn’t know a lot about where hip-hop originated. We thought it was important to get a full understanding of how hip-hop began.”

Martinez opened up by describing how hip-hop originally became popular among impoverished blacks and Latinos who couldn’t afford to get into the disco clubs popular during the early 80s.

Martinez went through the events that shaped hip-hop chronologically, talking first about Afrika Bambaataa. Bambaataa was a young black man from the Bronx who, after a life-altering visit to Africa during the early 80s, began to create modern hip-hop based on the traditional music played by the griots of western Africa. In order to pass down their culture, the griots would combine drum beats with spoken word. Bambaataa went on to echo this concept with his music.

Martinez then went on to explain how many black power organizations realized this was a good way to grab the attention of America’s youth, hosting block parties and break dancing competitions to get kids involved in black-power movements.

According to Martinez, there are nine elements of hip-hop: graffiti, break dancing, emceeing, deejaying, fashion, beat boxing, slang, street knowledge and even entrepreneurialism.

“You think you always talked like that?” asked Martinez of the audience. “That’s slang you’re speaking.”

Over the course of his hour-long presentation, Martinez showed that in the last 25 years or so, hip-hop has become ingrained in American culture, influencing everything from the clothes we wear right down to the way we express ourselves verbally.

Certain groups in particular had a stronger effect on mainstreaming hip hop; Run-D/M/C was the first, when they covered Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way.”

One of the ironies of hip-hop history, as Martinez sees it, is the drug element. Originally, it was common for hip-hop artists to speak out vocally against drug use.

Michael Christian (pen name William Cane) has been doing research into the field of kissing since 1989, when he began putting out ads in a number of newspapers to find out just what makes up a good kiss. His first book, “The Art of Kissing,” was written from the responses he received during his three years of research and data collection.

Regularly a professor of english at The College of Staten Island, Christian tours more than 400 colleges all over the country instructing students and faculty alike on how better to please their lovers while making out.

“The truth is, that I was always interested in what my partners might have been thinking about,” says Christian, explaining that he had been curious about the subject.

His show here at Rowan certainly raised a few eyebrows, with audience participation at an all-time high for a SUP event. Christian asked questions of the audience like, “What do you wish your partner would do while kissing?” and “What do guys like, as opposed to girls?” and managed to get a number of responses out of people who enjoyed everything from facial caressing to wild hair pulling and lip biting.

Four Rowan University students acted as his models during the show, performing the many different kisses on each other. At first they seemed nervous and a little bit uncomfortable, but as the show went on, they relaxed and eventually let loose with a barrage of over-the-top, demonstrative smooches. Two even dressed up in giant tongue costumes during the final segment to demonstrate, in detail, the inner workings of a proper French kiss.

Christian made a relatively lucrative career out of his stage show, claiming he makes as much money doing two weeks worth of these performances as he does from a whole year of teaching.

Christian has written several follow up books, including, “The Book of Kisses,” “The Art of Kissing: Book of Questions and Answers,” and “Kiss Like a Star.”

“They wanted me to write ‘The art of Holding Hands,’ but I drew the line there,” Christian said. “I’m not gonna write a whole book on just how to hold hands.”

The books detail over thirty different kinds of kisses, ranging from the exotic to the mundane. Christian’s favorite kiss is a combination of a few exhibited at the show.

“My favorite is Lip-o-Suction, where the boy is kissing the upper lip, and then he goes to the lower lip,” explained Christian. “A lot of creativity could be involved in that, and plus, you could also do that to music. So it combines some of the aspects of the music kiss, which is a lot of fun.”

“The Art of Kissing” has been translated into 19 different languages, and is most popular in Germany.

In addition to kissing, Michael Christian is currently doing research into the field of birth order and how it affects people’s personalities.

Click here to listen to an interview with Michael Christian.

Listen to The Whit’s Mid-Week Podcast