Feb. 8, 2026, 4:00 a.m. CT
- Salina artist Cash Hollistah received the 2026 Governor’s Excellence in Arts Education Award.
- Hollistah uses hip-hop in school workshops to teach students about literary devices like similes and metaphors.
- He hopes his success shows other Kansas artists they can achieve recognition without leaving the state.
- Hollistah also uses his platform to showcase other Kansas artists and blend musical genres.
One Salina artist is being recognized for showing people how art, particularly hip-hop, has its place in everyday life.
Cash Hollistah was given the Excellence in Arts Education Award at the 2026 Governor’s Arts Awards last week.
Being from Salina, Hollistah said he is proud to represent this part of the state, and for being recognized for education using a different and unique kind of art, hip-hop.
Knowing art can be made in Kansas
Hollistah said he is proud to receive this award, particularly as it seems to give him confirmation that his choices have led him on the right path.
His hope is that other musicians and artists can understand it’s possible to do these things in Kansas.
“I hope that confirmation that you can,” he said. “You don’t have to move away.”
For many artists, he said there seems to be a consensus that to do bigger things, they need to leave the state and go to other bigger places.
“I’ve been in it for a while and it just shows that you can do it from a town of this size,” he said.
Using a platform to recognize other artists
By having this success, he also hopes he can continue to recognize and give platforms to other Kansas artists, as seen in situations like his 2025 Smoky Hill River Festival Mixtape, where he brought Kansas artists to the stage for a live set that blended and transcended genres.
He said he loves to skew the expectations of the people that want to listen.
“Cool stuff is cool stuff,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what genre or what field. If it’s cool, I like to be a part of it.”
That particular set was an opportunity to showcase those things he thinks are cool and the artist friends he believes in.
“I wanted to do it in a mixtape style,” he said. “If you remember mixtapes back in the day, it would be different genres, but there would be a DJ that would seamlessly blend some things in an open format.”
By doing this, it’s not just another show or another set of Cash Hollistah, but something that people can remember and hopefully find something new they enjoy.
Showing generations the art that is hip-hop
Education for Hollistah isn’t just about showing and exposing audiences to new things, but also about getting into the classroom to show kids what art can be.
In his workshops that are brought into the schools, students look at music, particularly hip hop and how those lyrics, rhythms and rhymes relate to what it is they are learning in traditional education.
“They don’t necessarily think about how the things they’re learning in English class correlate to the music their listening to,” he said. “I’m able to tell them, the similes and metaphors that your…teacher is telling you about? Your favorite rapper is using them all the time.”
For students who might not enjoy or listen to rap and hip-hop, he hopes that this kind of learning will give them a better respect for the craft.
“At the end, we’ll give them prompts to, like write eight lines of things that rhyme,” he said. “Then, it’s telling them, ‘if you have trouble writing eight lines, imagine having to four more lines, then another four more lines, adding a hook, then adding something else. That’s just one song.'”
He said at the end of the day, his education is about giving people, whether it’s kids in the classroom or adults that might come to a set of his, a healthy respect for the art of hip-hop and music.
“I think, hip-hop, at its most lyrical, is one of the best writing art forms out there,” he said. “(A lot of) people think about hip-hop negatively, but you can put this up there with Shakespeare. It has that same lyrical density.”
