1. The reason these three regions and genres of music were selected was to help us understand the problems of real current day and prior past Africans throughout the world and how even through war, genocide and slavery Africans still managed to resist in anyway possible through forms of different types of music that are highly influential today. From Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat in Nigeria, Reggae coming out of Rasta societies in Jamaica and Slave Spirituals/Hip Hop coming out of oppressed black communities in the United States the music touches the hearts and souls of many throughout the world facing discrimination currently and those who have resisted against it. The readings all connect together through means of struggle, coping and resistance …show more content…
The songs had experiences, religion and nonreligion. In “A Question of Origins” we see “Slave Spirituals” being discussed here. It begins by discussing the topic of slave religious music and how the music has created a large sum of literature and the views “early collectors and students had and how different the music had sounded to anything else” (p. 11) and how attracted the music was. In “The Quest For Certainty: Slave Spirituals” discusses the most commonly known form of slave music such as “sacred song” in which the author uses the term “sacred not in present usage as something antithetical to the secular world; neither the slaves nor their african forebears ever drew modernity’s clear line between the sacred and the secular”. The Slave songs seem to target both religion and …show more content…
Alridge, Alridge connects the “hip-hop worldview” and stated “it is nothing other than an updated face on the old-far, crude, anti-humanistic values of hedonism and materialism….It is ironic, in fact, that black youth in poverty-level and weak working class families, who struggle to design a regime of self-respect and discipline in matters of education and interpersonal friendship, get no assistance whatsoever from these respects from hedonistic, materialistic, nihilistic, sadistic and misogynistic ideas and values propagated by most hip-hop entertainers” (p. 227) but this was not always the case, as during the civil rights era hip-hop was formative and the author argues that although “Hip Hop has not dramatically changed oppressive institutional structures of organized itself at anywhere near the level of civil rights organizations, it shares a critique of the problems that plague U.S African Americans and other oppressed people throughout the world. These shared ideas and common ideology present possibilities for an improved discourse between the two generations” (p. 228). This connects together because like the other forms of African created music through language and resistance, Hip Hop is using the same formula of vocalizing and combining serious problems that still affect Africans today. The author makes this connection with several points. Hip Hop reinvigorates and expands these four ideas and
Conversation about hip hop has contributed to its current state of crisis. Rose writes about how over-generalized criticisms in conversations about hip hop lead to ugly stereotypes and disdain for young black people. Hip hop has become a sort of scapegoat for people
When looking at the landscape of Hip-Hop among African Americans, from the spawn of gangsta rap in the mid 1980s to current day, masculinity and an idea of hardness is central to their image and performance. Stereotypical to Black masculinity, the idea of a strong Black male - one who keeps it real, and is defiant to the point of violence - is prevalent in the genre. This resistant, or even compensatory masculinity, encompasses: the hyper masculinity rife in the Western world, misogyny, and homophobia, all noticeable in their lyrics, which is in part a result of their containment within the Black community. The link of masculinity and rap music was established due to this containment, early innovators remaking public spaces in their segregated neighbourhoods. A notion of authentic masculinity arose from the resistant nature of the genre, but the move to the mainstream in the 90s created a contradiction to their very image - resistance. Ultimately, this in part led to the construction of the masculinity defined earlier, one that prides itself on its authenticity. I’ll be exploring how gender is constructed and performed in Hip Hop, beginning with a historical framework, with the caveat of showing that differing masculine identities in the genre, including artists
The origins of African American religious music are directly linked to the Negro spirituals of enslaved Africans. One cannot research religious music of blacks in this country without first exploring these spirituals. The spirituals were part of a religious expression that enslaved people used to transcend the narrow limits and dehumanizing effects of slavery. It was through the performance of the spirituals that the individual and the community experienced their God, a God who affirmed their humanity in ways whites did not and a God who could set them free both spiritually and physically. These “sacred songs” were also used as secret communication. That is not to say that all spirituals functioned as coded protest songs or as some sort of secret language. The structure of the spirituals and the way in which they were created and performed allowed for flexibility in their function and meaning.
George covers much familiar ground: how B-beats became hip hop; how technology changed popular music, which helped to create new technologies; how professional basketball was influenced by hip hop styles; how gangsta rap emerged out of the crack epidemic of the 1980s; how many elements of hip hop culture managed to celebrate, and/or condemn black-on-black violence; how that black-on-black violence was somewhat encouraged by white people scheming on black males to show their foolishness, which often created a huge mess; and finally, how hip hop used and continues to use its art to express black frustration and ambition to blacks while, at the same time, refering that frustration and ambition to millions of whites.
Hip hop has become one of the most commercially promoted and financially successful forms of media in recent years. But as its profits have risen it has become a scapegoat for the many of the public criticisms of young black people. These topic have been discussed in Tricia Rose’s novel “The Hip Hop Wars What We Talk About - And Why It Matters”. The state of hip hop has fallen because the trinity of commercial hip hop has become main topic and caused a lot of controversy. This book is appealing to a person who want to know how hip hop has changed in the past decade and it points out many different attitudes toward hip hop in the Unites States.
In the words of rapper Busta Rhymes, “hip-hop reflects the truth, and the problem is that hip-hop exposes a lot of the negative truth that society tries to conceal. It’s a platform where we could offer information, but it’s also an escape” Hip-hop is a culture that emerged from the Bronx, New York, during the early 1970s. Hip-Hop was a result of African American and Latino youth redirecting their hardships brought by marginalization from society to creativity in the forms of MCing, DJing, aerosol art, and breakdancing. Hip-hop serves as a vehicle for empowerment while transcending borders, skin color, and age. However, the paper will focus on hip-hop from the Chican@-Latin@ population in the United States. In the face of oppression, the Chican@-Latin@ population utilized hip hop music as a means to voice the community’s various issues, desires, and in the process empower its people.
In Total Chaos, Jeff Chang references Harry Allen, a hip hop critic and self-proclaimed hip hop activist. Harry Allen compares the hip hop movement to the Big Bang and poses this complex question: “whether hip-hop is, in fact a closed universe-bound to recollapse, ultimately, in a fireball akin to its birth-or an open one, destined to expand forever, until it is cold, dark, and dead” (9). An often heard phase, “hip hop is dead,” refers to the high occurrence of gangster rap in mainstream hip hop. Today’s hip hop regularly features black youths posturing as rich thugs and indulging in expensive merchandise. The “hip hop is dead” perspective is based on the belief that hip hop was destined to become the model of youth resistance and social change. However, its political ambitions have yet to emerge, thus giving rise to hip hops’ criticisms. This essay will examine the past and present of hip hop in o...
Slavery is a form of forced labor in which people are taken as property of others against their wishes and will. They are denied the right to leave or even receive wages. Evidence of slavery is seen from written records of ancient times from all cultures and continents. Some societies viewed it as a legal institution. In the United States, slavery was inevitable even after the end of American Revolution. Slavery in united states had its origins during the English colonization of north America in 1607 but the African slaves were sold in 1560s this was due to demand for cheap labor to exploit economic opportunities. Slaves engaged in composition of music in order to preserve the cultures they came with from Africa and for encouragement purposes..
These articles depict the controversies of the hip hop industry and how that makes it difficult for one to succeed. Many of these complications and disputes may be invisible to the population, but these articles take the time to reveal them.
Since hip-hop has expanded from the undergrounds in Bronx in the 70’s it has grew into a popular accepted music genre. Consequently, as it progressed from the golden age it gradually grew away from its original roots. If one were to evaluate the change of lyrics in hip-hop, they would see a difference between early hip-hop and today’s hip-hop. The current state of hip-hop is in a stage where things like hey young world are outdated. Instead of broadcasting out a positive message, hip-hop sends out a message of sex, drug, and violence. The early musicians who helped solidify hip-hop, by producing music that told stories on subjects of race, respect, or even music that had a positive message.
African-American music is a vibrant art form that describes the difficult lives of African American people. This can be proven by examining slave music, which shows its listeners how the slaves felt when they were working, and gives us insight into the problems of slavery; the blues, which expresses the significant connection with American history, discusses what the American spirit looks like and teaches a great deal from the stories it tells; and hip-hop, which started on the streets and includes topics such as misogyny, sex, and black-on-black violence to reveal the reactions to the circumstances faced by modern African Americans.
Contemporary, as well as older, Gospel music originated from the “Spirituals.” The spirituals, also known as the “Negro Spirituals or African-American folk songs,” were religious songs sung by the African Americans slaves in Southern America. The spirituals spawned from teachings of Christianity from slave owners, the church and even hymns. The songs were usually about love, hope, peace, oppression, freedom and even used as a secret code. The African American slaves would sing while working so much so that slave o...
Hip hop has multiple branches of style and is a culture of these. This essay will examine Hip Hop from the point of view of the following three popular music scholars, Johnson, Jeffries and Smitherman. It will delve deeper into their understanding of what hip hop is and its relation to the different people that identify with its message and contents. It will also identify the history of Hip hop and its transition into popular music. In particular this essay will focus on what hip hop represents in the black community and how it can be used as a social movement against inequalities faced by them. This will then open up the discussion for the how this has influenced society, and the impact it has had in terms of race issues which hip hop itself often represents through music.
Hip hop has permeated popular culture in an unprecedented fashion. Because of its crossover appeal, it is a great unifier of diverse populations. Although created by black youth on the streets, hip hop's influence has become well received by a number of different races in this country. A large number of the rap and hip hop audience is non-black. It has gone from the fringes, to the suburbs, and into the corporate boardrooms. Because it has become the fastest growing music genre in the U.S., companies and corporate giants have used its appeal to capitalize on it. Although critics of rap music and hip hop seem to be fixated on the messages of sex, violence, and harsh language, this genre offers a new paradigm of what can be (Lewis, 1998.) The potential of this art form to mend ethnic relations is substantial. Hip hop has challenged the system in ways that have unified individuals across a rich ethnic spectrum. This art form was once considered a fad has kept going strong for more than three decades. Generations consisting of Blacks, Whites, Latinos, and Asians have grown up immersed in hip-hop. Hip hop represents a realignment of America?s cultural aesthetics. Rap songs deliver a message, again and again, to keep it real. It has influenced young people of all races to search for excitement, artistic fulfillment, and a sense of identity by exploring the black underclass (Foreman, 2002). Though it is music, many people do not realize that it is much more than that. Hip hop is a form of art and culture, style, and language, and extension of commerce, and for many, a natural means of living. The purpose of this paper is to examine hip hop and its effect on American culture. Different aspects of hip hop will also be examined to shed some light that helps readers to what hip hop actually is. In order to see hip hop as a cultural influence we need to take a look at its history.
How Hip-Hop Destroys the Potential of Black Youth. N.p., n.d.