Yo: An Introduction (Part 2)

Yo. Where I’m from, this word is an invitation. It implies community. It carries an understanding. It is an energetic call of inclusion. It is ours; an elegant, Ebonic two-word distillation of an ethos. The opposite of formal, it means that we are the same, equal. It means that we have an understanding, an expectation. It is a call to listen. Because context is everything. Its tone carries a million meanings. As in Yo! (Good to see you!) or Yo! (Can you believe that?) or Yooo? (What is going on?) The word can also be a warning, an indication to pay close attention to whatever comes next. The only absolutes are that it is quintessentially New York,  specifically African American and definitively hip-hop.

At least that is what I used to believe. Before I learned that what I thought was our culture call actually originated in Italy??! And the story goes something like this, and only rings true to me because I have heard my own southern Italian husband, his father, his brothers, their friends all exclaim, “Wahl-yo!” as a call to stop whatever you are doing and pay attention. It implies exasperation and disbelief, kind of like “For real, are you serious right now, bro?”: So apparently, some pioneer paesano in Philly started to holler it enough from their stoops that the word started to assimilate and seep its way into the local dialect and morphed into a shorter iteration- yo. New York is just a hop, skip and a jump away so it makes sense that the word would travel north and hit the streets of the Lower East Side and East Harlem. Being the melting pot that it is, it wasn’t long before everybody in New York was using the word, with black people especially keen on it. It was a word already baked into the baby hip-hop cultural movement of the early 1970s and the use of the word blew up around the world with its explosive growth in the late eighties and early nineties.

So when I post an entry in this section, I am calling out to you, wherever you are in the world, and proudly preaching to the choir. The ones who use the word, who know. The bonafide New Yorkers. The ones who belong to the city’s unique community of black culture. All of the hip-hop heads, worldwide. To you, out there in Wailea or Washington State or Walla Walla. Wherever you are, you will find glimmers of my culture celebrated in ways that I hope are resonant and recognizable, informative and interesting. No matter who you are. Because as we have just learned, the specific is universal. There are threads of everything in everything. And selfishly, this section will scratch the itch of the near-constant nostalgia I experience living on this slow little analog island. Not itchy enough to ever leave, but there is a need for a little relief. To stay connected. To reminisce. To discover. To re-discover. To share. About what will always be my city. Always be my mirror. Always be me...Yo! Come take a peek over my shoulder. Check it out.