From B-Boys to Broadway: Activism and Directed Change in Hip-hop

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-236
Author(s):  
Courtney Bliss
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Development Communication ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
The Us ◽  
Combination Of Theories ◽  
Directed Change ◽  
Dominant Paradigm ◽  
Direct Change

In this article, I examine how the dominant paradigm of development led to the Bronx being in a state of ruin, the development of hip-hop culture as a self-empowerment tool, and how that tool is used to direct change in blighted urban areas around the US through rap at all levels—from street corners to the Broadway stage. I use a combination of theories from development communication, ethnomusicology and popular culture to perform my analysis and conclude that hip-hop culture empowers individuals and communities to make change in their neighbourhoods. I also conclude that Lin-Manuel Miranda, coming from that culture, has gone on to bring this empowerment and directed change to Broadway to make fundamental changes there that have an impact that reach far from the hallowed halls of the Great White Way.

From Jim Crow to Jay-Z

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miles White
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Black Male ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Young Male ◽  
Black Masculinity ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Body ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Action Films ◽  
Jay Z

This multilayered study of the representation of black masculinity in musical and cultural performance takes aim at the reduction of African American male culture to stereotypes of deviance, misogyny, and excess. Broadening the significance of hip-hop culture by linking it to other expressive forms within popular culture, the book examines how these representations have both encouraged the demonization of young black males in the United States and abroad and contributed to the construction of their identities. The book traces black male representations to chattel slavery and American minstrelsy as early examples of fetishization and commodification of black male subjectivity. Continuing with diverse discussions including black action films, heavyweight prizefighting, Elvis Presley's performance of blackness, and white rappers such as Vanilla Ice and Eminem, the book establishes a sophisticated framework for interpreting and critiquing black masculinity in hip-hop music and culture. Arguing that black music has undeniably shaped American popular culture and that hip-hop tropes have exerted a defining influence on young male aspirations and behavior, the book draws a critical link between the body, musical sound, and the construction of identity.

scholarly journals Book Review. The Rhizome of Blackness: A critical ethnography of Hip-Hop Culture, Language, Identity, and the Politics of Becoming.

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Leigh-Anne Ingram
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
North American ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Black Identity ◽  
Black Youth ◽  
Critical Ethnography ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Language Identity ◽  
Black Popular Culture

This book review analyzes Awad Ibrahim's 2014 book, entitled: The Rhizome of Blackness: A critical ethnography of Hip-Hop Culture, Language, Identity and the Politics of Becoming, published by Peter Lang. This review introduces the rhizomatic analysis used in the book to theorize the complex and multifaceted nature of Black identity within the North American context. It gives an overview of the critical ethnographic projects Ibrahim uses to illustrate the ways that Black youth are forced to deny their complex identities to fit into dominant White society, while also finding a heteroglossia of expressions in a third space through Black popular culture. The book review supports Ibrahim's proposal of using Hip-Hop and Black popular culture for a project of diversification to validate Black youth, while asking if using Hip-Hop might foreclose other opportunities to learn about expressions of Black culture beyond the confines of North American Corporate media. The book review argues that the Rhizome of Blackness provides important messages for educators about Black identity and the social construction of identity and nationhood.

Translocal style communities

Pragmatics ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Samy Alim
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Linguistic Anthropology ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Global Era ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Youth Agency ◽  
The Many

This article addresses issues that lie at the intersection of debates about language, Hip Hop Culture, and globalization. Critically synthesizing a wide range of recent work on Hip Hop and foregrounding issues of youth agency as evidenced by Hip Hop youth’s metalinguistic theorizing, the article presents an empirical account of youth as cultural theorists. Hip Hop youth are both participants and theorists of their participation in the many translocal style communities that constitute the Global Hip Hop Nation. Highlighting youth agency, the article demonstrates that youth are engaging in the agentive act of theorizing the changes in the contemporary world as they attempt to locate themselves at the intersection of the local and the global. The article concludes by calling for a linguistic anthropology of globalization characterized by ethnographic explorations of and a theoretical focus on popular culture, music, and mass-mediated language as central to an anthropological understanding of linguistic processes in a global era.

Latina/o-Asian Encounters

2021 ◽  
pp. 141-198
Author(s):  
B. V. Olguín
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Western Asia ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Writing Genres

Chapter 3 commences the recovery of an expansive plurality of globalized supra-Latinidades by exploring Latina/o-Asian wartime encounters in life-writing genres, wartime cinema, and performative popular culture such as spoken word and Hip Hop from WWII to the War on Terror. In addition to reassessing established and canonized texts about Latina/o wartime encounters with specific Asian nations, peoples, and cultures from WWII, the Korean War, and the US war in Vietnam, the chapter also recovers the neglected legacy of Latina/o exoticist and neo-Orientalist Latina/o travelogues in Cold War China and, more recently, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Turkey. The wide range of these Latina/o encounters with the broader transcontinental space of Eurasia, the colonialist chronotope of the “Orient,” and equally complicated notion of the Ummah, or global community of Muslims, involves a multiplicity of transversal LatinAsian violentologies. These pressure for radical expansions of Latina/o mestizajes beyond conventional frameworks predicated upon Judeo-Christian and Mesoamerican legacies, and also extend through and beyond Latina/o mulattaje paradigms that weave Africa and the continent’s wide gamut of ethnicities, cultures, and religions into the mix. The wide violentological variations in these case studies span transcontinental Eurasia, the Levant (the eastern Mediterranean part of western Asia), Northern Africa, and the Americas. They thus further challenge the lingering resistance paradigm and other teleologies, and ultimately militate for a radical globalization of Latina/o Studies.

Race Rebels

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miles White
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Black Male ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Black Body ◽  
Black Music ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Elvis Presley ◽  
Male Subjectivity ◽  
New Millennium

This chapter discusses whiteness, masculine desire, and the animating absent black presence now inverted since its inception in minstrelsy. It shows how the triumph of hardcore rap makes it clear that the transgressive black body, primitivism, and cross-racial desire continue to find value in the marketplace of global popular culture well into the new millennium. The chapter also looks at a number of successful white performers of black music styles, including Elvis Presley, Vanilla Ice, Eminem, and Brother Ali; and addresses whether there are more or less ethical ways in which white and other youth may engage hip-hop culture and appropriations of black male subjectivity.

The Sound of the Fury

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurice J. Hobson
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Rap Music ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Black Arts Movement ◽  
Arts Organizations ◽  
Social Commentary ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Black Arts ◽  
The City

Chapter six focuses on Mayor Maynard Jackson’s creation of the City of Atlanta’s Bureau of Cultural Affairs, the first institution within city government dedicated to the support of artists, their creative expressions and arts organizations. The goal of the Bureau was to make all forms of art—established and experimental—more accessible to Atlanta’s citizens. The Bureau empowered a multitude of artists and arts organizations through city funded grants and broke new ground in stabling a niche for black musical genres such as jazz and classical music as well as alternative films. This set the stage for Atlanta to boom in terms of black popular culture, as Jackson’s black political power yielded an expressive arm, a black arts movement unique to Atlanta, making it ripe for popular culture to be spewed and accessed critically. “Dirty South” rap music evolved out of this black arts movement, and opened black Atlanta to social commentary from a new generation of artists that lived in the underbelly trampled over by Atlanta’s pursuit of a global commercial center. This counter-narrative and demonstration, gave a southern perspective of popular culture spewed and assessed critically in the city. It was grounded in Hip-hop and centered on this particular sector of youth culture, the meanings and significance of a recently self-defined southern–style of rap and Hip-hop culture and was established and promoted by Organized Noize’s OutKast and Goodie Mob, rap groups hailing from Atlanta’s Southwest side. Their music imbibed an aesthetic that was particular to the South in general and Atlanta in particular but was consumed by markets nationwide. In this music, artists call out Atlanta’s black politicians and their governing practices. Using popular culture from Atlanta provides a useful scope through which to view the lingering tensions and trends that were particular to Atlanta as a result of the “Olympification” of the city.

Hip-Hop and Haring: Pop Culture and Interdisciplinary Learning for the General Music Classroom

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-13
Author(s):  
Martina Vasil
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
High Stakes Testing ◽  
General Music ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Interdisciplinary Learning ◽  
Music Classroom ◽  
Hip Hop Music ◽  
Interdisciplinary Projects

Teachers are searching for accessible, relevant, and engaging lessons for students as elementary classrooms grow more diverse and high-stakes testing constrict curricula and recess time. General music teachers may consider implementing lessons that blend popular culture with collaborative, interdisciplinary projects. Artist Keith Haring was inspired by 1980s hip-hop music and drew break dancing figures in much of his artwork. Both Haring’s artwork and hip-hop culture have broad appeal and are accessible to students. The purpose of this article is to share an exploratory series of lessons that used hip-hop music and dance in conjunction with the artwork of Haring. The author provides a brief background on 1980s hip-hop music and break dancing and the artwork of Haring, then delves into the details of the collaborative art and music project completed with grades K–5. Tips for bringing popular culture into the general music classroom are offered.

Introduction

2011 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Christopher Driscoll
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Academy ◽  
Annual Meeting ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Hip Hop Culture

At the 2010 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion held in Atlanta, GA, a group of young scholars organized a wildcard session titled “What’s This ‘Religious’ in Hip Hop Culture?” The central questions under investigation by the panel were 1) what about hip hop culture is religious? and 2) how are issues of theory and method within African American religious studies challenged and/or rethought because of the recent turn to hip hop as both subject of study and cultural hermeneutic. Though some panelists challenged this “religious” in hip hop, all agreed that hip hop is of theoretical and methodological import for African American religious studies and religious studies in general. This collection of essays brings together in print many findings from that session and points out the implications of hip hop's influence on religious scholars' theoretical and methodological concerns.

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