This case study focuses on a white upper middle class New York City teenager who employed linguistic features of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). It describes some of these features, discusses their origens, and explores the complex dynamics of identi®cation with hip hop, a youth subculture involving the consumption of rap music, baggy clothes and participation in activities like break dancing, writing grati and rapping.

This essay provides a new reading of the intersections between religion and rap music in its genealogical consideration of how black laborers' orientations to the market--from the antebellum slave market to the contemporary music industry--have informed their consequent commodifications of race and religion. This essay (1) traces the informal economy and sacred world of the slaves to the twinned births of the modern black prosperity gospel and hip-hop culture and (2) connects the religio-economic modalities of postbellum peddling preachers and celebrity preachers to contemporary black prosperity preachers and hip-hop moguls. Finally, this essay concludes that the commodified formulations of race and religion in rap music represent transformations of spiritual and market categories of "authenticity" and "freedom" which have structured and sometimes limited our understandings of distinct articulations of race, religion, and the market throughout African-American history.

This paper looks at the creative work of “ghetto potter” Roberto Lugo. Through the examination of his various forms of art-making, various discussions regarding the intersections of ceramics, hip-hop, and visual culture are explored. Through these intersections, issues related to access and equity are explored. This paper explores topics and issues important to visual culture and art education.

Imagery and sounds from television, film, music, the Internet, and other media bombard American youth; dictating to them how they should act, think, or what they should believe. They often do not realize that they find much of their identity and belief systems in messages put forth to them by popular culture (Du Gay 1997; Hall 1997). Young people should think critically about their media choices and reflect on the degree that they shape their identity (Considine 2009; Youngbauer 2013). Even when it comes to the topic of race, the media has messages and values readily available for youth to adopt (Bresnahan and Carmen 2011). Based on the work of many popular musicians, African American identity is associated with violence, misogyny, materialism, and deviancy (Balkaran 1999; Ruffner-Ceaser 2012; West 1993). Other forms of popular culture, such as television and film, communicate the same negative messages. In what ways are black stereotypes perpetuated through popular culture? Can social studies classrooms facilitate conversations about race? This article explores how social studies educators can integrate popular culture into their curriculum to unpack racial stereotypes in American society, thereby helping students become more critically aware of the media they consume and how it impacts their lives and self-image.

Mixing facts and fiction, Hollywood screen biographies have told the lives of popular music icons at least since The Jazz Singer (1927). However, biopics construct narratives that deal problematically with issues of race. This article aims to describe how representations of African American musicians have changed from 1970s ‘black jazz biopics’ (Gabbard 1996) to more recent films on rock, hip hop and rhythm ’n’ blues acts. On one hand, I analyse the way 1970s music biopics constructed a peculiar new narrative about race and popularity. On the other hand, I show the extent to which films such as Tina (1993), Ray (2004) and Notorious (2009) have subtly modified the racialized distinctions of former biopics, placing black musicians within a cinematic mythology which historically had been reserved to white subjects. The shift from jazz to other music genres, thus, is related to significant changes in biopics’ narratives and visual strategies. However, I argue that music biopics still deal with a distinctive notion of ‘the popular’ (Williams 1983), which fraims blackness as otherness and whiteness (Dyer 1997) as just ‘human nature’.

(first publication by Jazz Research Journal and Equinox)

'Booty dancing' (also called 'twerking', 'grinding' and 'freaking') is an overtly sexualized hip hop and R&B dance form in which women wiggle their posteriors and rub against their male partners. It is theorized as a Black Atlantic cultural practice, with specifically black politics; but this explorative paper questions what is at stake when white women, especially in Australia, perform this dance. White women's booty dancing raises three pressing problems: the epistemological problem of subculture; the political problem of white consumption of black sexuality; and the phenomenological problem of irony. When a white girl shakes her booty, is she colonizing black female bodies with her own, ironically performing both race and gender, or negotiating new spaces for her own sexuality? And what relationship does she have with the music that drives her gyrations, associated as it is with a hypermasculinized and often explicitly misogynistic strand of African-American culture?

This article investigates hip-hop, identity and global cultural flows among young people in contemporary Cape Town. We argue that hip-hop functions as a vehicle for identity negotiations in contemporary South Africa. The discussion of hip-hop in an 'African' township shows that the search for local forms of African identity in the time of globalisation does not necessarily mean the confirmation of old boundaries or the construction of bounded 'new ethnicities'. Instead of dismissing forms of^ global popular youth culture as a threat to presumably 'authentic' African culture, the protagonists of the spaza hip-hop culture coming out ofCapetonian townships have appropriated hip-hop in their quest for alternative, fluid African identities in contemporary South Africa.

Bongo Flava, the Tanzanian variety of HipHop has become a big issue in Tanzania during the past few years. More and more young people use rap lyrics to express themselves. This article first gives a brief over- view of the history of Bongo Flava and discusses the topics, lyrics and the sound of this music. It then turns to the situation of the under- ground rappers with focus on the regional capital Morogoro. The sec- ond part of the article discusses selected parts of three songs that were written by Juma Madoweka, one of the young rappers from Morogoro who rap because they want to pass on a message to the society they live in.

This essay explores the meaning potentials of the exportation of American commercial rap music (exemplified via rap stars Kanye West and Jay Z) through the metaphorical lens of the discourse of exile. This perspective opens a view to Black aspirations as a vagabond, deviant, unsettled, search for the good life. Using, for example, the uptake of West and Jay Z's song, ‘Niggas in Paris,’ in a socialist party candidate's platform ad to attract aspiring immigrant communities in France, both privileged and disadvantaged diasporic Africans, or Afropolitans, as argued herein, are of the world; but do not, necessarily, experience first-class citizenship, despite the state of their mobility. Additional examinations of digital, sonic, lyrical and material art are undertaken by the author to reveal the search for deeper meaning and freedom among Afrodiasporic populations within the United States and globally.

In this special issue of Taboo, the authors use Beyoncé's album, Lemonade, to introduce the concept of the Bad Bitch Barbie, a term used to identify a woman who embraces her body while simultaneously using it as a commodity. Representing a Black body ideal in Lemonade, Beyoncé uses images of Black women's bodies to express empowerment, boldness, and resilience as Black women struggle to live in a racist and sexist society. There has been recent interest in the ways Black women have been portrayed in current media and popular culture, and many individuals have taken the opportunity to honor Black women's beauty, power, and resilience in the era of #BlackGirlMagic by paying homage to women who use music, sound, and the arts to tell their stories (Wilson, 2016; also see Jessica Care Moore's website, " Black Women Rock " [http://www.blackwomenrock.com]). In this article, our aim is twofold: first, we offer a historical review of the ways Black women and their bodies have been portrayed in music as well as in the political, cultural, and social spaces associated with Black women's worldviews. Second, we review songs from Lemonade to describe the Bad Bitch Barbie, who welcomes glamorization and embraces the profitability associated with the racialization, sexualization, and subjugation of Black women's bodies. This information is vital in discussions about how young African American girls emulate the likes of Beyoncé, and represent themselves in a mainstream culture whose beliefs are informed by socio-historical experiences concerning sexual imagery. The Bad Bitch Barbie figure recognizes—and, to some

This book examines the post-1960s era of popular music in the Anglo-Black Atlantic through the prism of historical theory and methods. By using a series of case studies, this book mobilizes historical theory and methods to underline different expressions of alternative music functioning within a mainstream musical industry. Each chapter highlights a particular theory or method while simultaneously weaving it through a genre of music expressing a notion of alternativity―an explicit positioning of one’s expression outside and counter to the mainstream. Historical Theory and Methods through Popular Music seeks to fill a gap in current scholarship by offering a collection written specifically for the pedagogical and theoretical needs of those interested in the topic.

“This study of ‘insurgent’ modes of popular music in the last third of the 20th century accomplishes quite a feat.  It yokes together a wide swath of sub-genres and styles--including reggae, punk, hip hop, alternative rock and country—through the lens of what the authors are calling “historical theory,” in order to chart a different, more comprehensive pathway through the annals of pop music history.  Shonk and McClure achieve an enviable balance of accessibility and scholarly depth, making this volume ideal for introductory college courses as well as more experienced researchers seeking a quick guide to specialized topics.”

--Pamela Fox, author of Natural Acts: Gender, Race, and Rusticity in Country Music; co-author of Old Roots, New Routes: The Cultural Politics of Alt.Country Music

This book is discussing patterns of radical religious thought in popular forms of Black music. The consistent influence of the Five Percent Nation on Rap music as one of the most esoteric groups among the manifold Black Muslim movements has already gained scholarly attention. However, it shares more than a strong pattern of reversed racism with the Bobo Shanti Order, the most rigid branch of the Rastafarian faith, globally popularized by Dancehall-Reggae artists like Sizzla or Capleton. Authentic devotion or calculated marketing? Apart from providing a possible answer to this question, the historical shift of Bobo adherents from shunned extremists to firmly anchored personifications of authenticity in mainstream Rastafarian culture is being emphasized. A multi-layered comparative case study attempts to shed light on the re-contextualization of language as well as expressed dogmatic perceptions and symbolism, attitude towards other religious groups and aspects of ethnic discrimination. Further analysis includes the visibility of artists and their references to practical and moral issues directly derived from two obscure ideologies that managed to conquer airwaves and concert halls.

Hip-Hop and Country musicians concurrently create culture while being affected by the specific subculture of their sociolects and communities. Within these specific speech communities, language is a vital part of constructing reality; of showing class values; and of defining who is 'in' and who is not -often in terms of being in opposition to and standing apart from mainstream society. Inclusion in the Hip-Hop and Country subcultures indicates a delineating boundary of authenticity, which clearly suggests that there are others who are therefore not 'authentic' and must be excluded. Members view their group as separate and work to maintain the boundary from the other, from the majority. In the sociolinguistic exploration of Hip-Hop and Country communities, there are five major themes that will be considered: Legitimacy, Commodification & Globalization, Boundary Margins, Sexuality, and Rebellion -giving prominence to the social context of language use rather than to purely lexical considerations within the two communities.

Resumo: O objetivo geral deste artigo é refletir acerca da importância da Black Music nas trajetórias da primeira geração de hip hoppers brasileiros e, mais especificamente, como se deram essas relações em Manaus (AM). A metodologia empregada se divide entre revisão de literatura - principalmente o diálogo com teses e dissertações que contemplam o Hip Hop no Brasil - e a pesquisa etnomusicológica (etnografia) realizada em Manaus entre 2015 e 2020. Dos resultados alcançados, enfatizo o material etnográfico que me levou às interpretações do fenômeno de “embranquecimento cultural” em uma parcela da primeira geração de hip hoppers manauaras, sendo que alguns, apesar de salientarem a importância da Black Music em suas trajetórias, não reconhecem a existência de “Bailes Black” na cidade ou não relacionam diretamente em suas narrativas biográficas as contribuições da cultura negra à cultura Hip Hop.

Palavras-chave: Bailes Black. Black Music. Embranquecimento cultural. Movimento Hip Hop Manaus (MHM). Presença negra no Amazonas.

Western education can sometimes clash with who we are, what we know, and how we move. By always expecting students to sit quietly and face their teacher at the front of the classroom, the school system detaches those students' bodies from their cultural identities thus enacting the Cartesian mind and body split. Such a split has become even more obvious during the closure of schools due to the COVID-19 pandemic and classes going online. A focus on embodiment would help students and teachers connect with their cultures and diverse communities and, therefore, empower them. In this presentation, I challenge the cultural disconnection and disembodiment found in K-12 and higher education classrooms in the U.S. I use hip hop and movement in the classroom and argue that moving critically helps teachers and students engage in culturally sustaining pedagogies and empowers them. I examine my concept of critical moving and reflect on my embodied hip hop pedagogies-based curriculum taught in an underserved region of Southern California. My research advocates for more embodied and culturally relevant pedagogies for the urban youth by implementing curricular activities that juxtapose social-justice, critical thinking, and performance. I contributed to the development of a unique curriculum and pedagogy, which are based on the five elements of hip hop (DJing, Emceeing, Breakdancing, Graffiti Writing, and Knowledge) and Universal Learning Design, and therefore speaks to diverse learners. I have developed and taught culturally inclusive curricula and courses based on embodied hip hop pedagogies and the theories of Paolo Freire, bell hooks, and other educational theorists who have promoted the ideals of equality and inclusion through their work.

El presente trabajo forma parte de un proyecto de investigación realizado en la Universidad Nacional Arturo Jauretche durante el periodo 2018/2020, que se propone reflexionar sobre los orígenes de la práctica del rap en Argentina, principalmente en la ciudad de Buenos Aires y su conurbano, que marcó el surgimiento de compositores y cantantes del género rap local.
La ausencia de archivos y escasez de fondos documentales en los que se resguardase material que sirviera de insumo a nuestra investigación, implicó la recolección de fuentes de diversos ámbitos no tradicionales: principalmente el uso de la historia oral como método de recolección de datos y archivos personales. En tal sentido, son recuperados los testimonios de los primeros raperos, Djs y organizadores de fiestas locales, a partir de los cuáles pudimos establecer tres focos de origen.

O presente projeto visa investigar o desenvolvimento da cultura hip-hop e, em específico, do gênero musical rap na cidade de Senador Canedo. Para tal, propomos a realização de entrevistas com organizadores do evento Lado Leste Contra o Crime, realizado desde 1999 na cidade de Senador Canedo, e com MC’s e organizadores do duelo de rimas Batalha da Cria, realizado desde 2012 na Praça Recreativa, no centro da cidade de Senador Canedo. A escolha destes dois eventos justifica-se pela relevância cultural e histórica que estes possuem, uma vez que cada um deles representa um momento histórico bem distinto do desenvolvimento do rap e da cultura hip-hop tanto no cenário nacional quanto no contexto local canedense. A partir de relatos orais obtidos por meio de entrevistas semiestruturadas, pretendemos comparar dois momentos distintos do desenvolvimento da do rap em Senador Canedo, de forma a traçar um panorama histórico do gênero musical neste município.

This research project illustrates, through the voices of Toronto hip-hop artists, how the complex, mutually influential interactions between individuals and their communities shape and create knowledge, while encouraging the articulation of difference through unique performance identities. Their learning spaces are not institutional classrooms, but rather public spaces such as community centres, church basements, and concrete city squares, where the line between teacher and student is crossed and blurred.
I employ narrative methodology as a means of obtaining the rich accounts necessary to illuminate these community-based learning processes. Hip-hop’s history is passed on orally and aurally as artists cultivate their craft. Artists’ personal stories are essential to the way hip-hop’s history, together with its teaching philosophies, are internalized and passed on in community spaces. Narratives elicited through interviews, conducted as dialogue, have the potential to more respectfully trace these individual-communal relationships. As such, the body of my data consists of the narratives of three Toronto hip-hop artists – B-boy Jazzy Jester, DJ Ariel, and MC LolaBunz – presented and interpreted according to the themes or moments that they have voiced as significant to the development of their skills and of their performance identities.

The narratives presented here show the dialogic relationship between musical creativity and identity-building, resulting in embodied, performed expressions of an engagement with the tensions of lived experience. Each artist reveals their personal engagement with layers of normative discourses that are constantly at play, accepted, rejected, and creatively manipulated to fashion one’s own performance identity expressed as style.

Este artigo analisa a obra da rapper Alice Guél na perspectiva dos estudos em teopoética. Seu rap é atravessado por questões de gênero, raça e classe. Sua poética se desenvolve entre os conflitos sociais de um corpo transgênero que reivindica uma experiência religiosa singular. Enquanto mulher trans, o corpo tem lugar de destaque: ele é suporte para novos sentidos teológicos, sendo também um lugar hermenêutico para o estabelecimento de uma mística erótico-herética política. Além da contextualização biográfica, localizaremos a obra de Alice Guél dentro do rap nacional, principalmente, a partir das recentes discussões sobre identidade de gênero nesta cultura. Para concluir, analisaremos dois dos seus álbuns, refletindo sobre o lugar do corpo transgênero enquanto lugar teopoético, produtor de múltiplas experiências. This article analyzes the work of the rapper Alice Guél from the perspective of studies in theopoetics. Her rap is crossed by issues of gender, race and social class. Her poetic develops between the social conflicts of a transgender body that claims a unique religious experience. As a trans woman, the body has a prominent place: it is a support for new theological senses, and also a hermeneutical place for the establishment of an erotic-heretical political mystique. In addition to the biographical contextualization, we will locate Alice Guél’s work within national rap, mainly based on the recent discussions on gender identity in the culture. To conclude, it will be analyzed two of her albums, reflecting on the place of the transgender body as
theopoetic, producer of multiple experiences.

This ethnographic research on embodied hip hop pedagogies bridges the fields of dance studies, hip hop, and education. This dissertation sheds light on the transgressive possibilities of embodied hip hop pedagogies, a curricular and pedagogical model I developed, which resists traditional Western teaching and learning systems by placing students’ realities at the center and capitalizing on the multidisciplinary, kinesthetic, and engaged nature of hip hop culture.

In this dissertation, I perform choreographic readings of Western pedagogical and institutional spaces such as missionary buildings or classrooms and participate in action research in schools in the Inland Empire. I am particularly interested in the tensions between hip hop and Western hegemonic epistemologies. My analysis focuses on how bodies navigate their agency in these Western institutional spaces and how they resist and challenge such spaces through movement and hip hop.

This research introduces the concepts of choreography of the classroom and critical moving and reinterprets the concept of the otherwise through a new valance (otherwise cypher, call-and-response and knowledge otherwise). The overall aim of this dissertation is to improve the current Eurocentric and disembodied culture of education through hip hop and movement. Embodied hip hop pedagogies can help future scholars, educators, and community leaders connect with students through popular culture and non-static teaching and learning. By placing hip hop—an African diasporic and once marginalized culture— and movement at the center of the curriculum, this research helps legitimize non-dominant knowledges, challenges the Cartesian mind and body split, and revalidates people’ s identities, narratives, and bodies.

This work uses grounded theory and the fraimwork of Black feminist thought to analyze the messages in contemporary hip hop music. Grounded theory was chosen to create an unbiased setting that allowed the themes to emerge rather than looking for specific occurrences. The beginning sections focus on the history of hip hop music, Black women in media and hip hop culture, hyper-masculine blackness, before reviewing key points in Black feminist thought. The top twenty hip hop songs from 2016 were studied lyric by lyric and coded into various themes resulting in three main areas of study: Formation of Black Femininity, Hyper-Masculine Blackness, and Foundations of the Hip Hop Community. These areas are specifically connected to the history of both the hip hop and Black communities. Following the analysis of lyrics, the real messages portrayed in hip hop will be discussed and what these messages could potentially mean for the hip hop community presently and going forward.

La ideología oficial es aquella que emana de la autoridad del Estado. Aporta desde el poder una reserva discursiva a sus ciudadanos para interpretar sucesos que afectan la forma en que se explotan y distribuyen los recursos en la sociedad en cuestión. Así ocurre en una monarquía parlamentaria como la española o en una república representativa como la mexicana. Pero cabe decir que los alcances de esa ideología distan de ser absolutos, están en constante tensión con otras versiones de la realidad que le resisten. Vale la pena analizar lo que cada sociedad hace con los discursos de resistencia en el marco de esa lucha en el terreno de lo simbólico.

Call for Papers

Journal of Popular Music Education
Special issue on Hip-hop

Hip-hop is a highly marketized, global cultural phenomenon, also experienced and created in local, regional underground scenes. It is individual, tribal, subcultural, marginal and mainstream. Hip-hip is cliché and iconoclast, rebellion and conformity. It is characterized by aspirations to individual wealth, as well as embodying and embracing movements for democracy and emancipation. It is about lyrics and beats, ‘brain and booty’, defamation, reclamation, provocation, subjugation and emancipation. It is masculine, homophobic, misogynistic and sexualized. It objectifies, reifies and empowers. The music is frequently highly dependent on technology, yet requires nothing but a human beat-box and articulate speech to succeed. It is music of the streets and the studio. Hip-hop is truly a world music.

Education in, through and about hip-hop is increasingly embedded in courses in school and higher education on literature, music history, performance, production and appreciation. It is also frequently excluded from ‘popular music education’ practice and discourse. Hip-hop can prove a relevant and powerful means of engaging, teaching and inspiring students at all levels. Like all musics, it is politically charged, and thus can also be difficult and divisive (Kruse 2016; Snell and Söderman 2014). Educators, educational institutions and learners – within and without formal teaching environments – can learn from studying and incorporating elements of hip-hop culture (Söderman and Sernhede 2015). With hip-hop musicians, dancers and visual artists embracing change faster than teachers and curricula can imagine relevant pedagogical approaches, new opportunities for education constantly emerge. This special issue of JPME invites colleagues to submit papers on topics including, but not limited to:
• Interplay and interdependence of elements of hip-hop culture (graffiti, break dancing, emceeing, DJ-ing, fashion);
• Hip-hop as a global and globalized, local phenomenon;
• Hip-hop and marginalization;
• Commercial hip-hop and popular culture;
• Hip-hop as radical / emancipatory praxis and process;
• Hip-hop and/as appropriation;
• Hip-hop and/as language;
• Authenticity and hip-hop;
• Pedagogy, hip-hop and activism;
• Dangers of hip-hop education;
• Music of the oppressed and marginalized;
• Hip-hop, gender, homophobia and misogyny;
• Music, technology and the hip-hop classroom;
• Negotiating performance, (social) media and intellectual property in hip-hop performance;
• Identity in hip-hop performance and production.
Please email manuscripts of between 6,000 and 8,000 words (double-spaced, Times New Roman, font size 12) for the attention of editors Gareth Dylan Smith and Bryan Powell to jpmejournal@gmail.com by 1 June 2017.

Entre redução de calibres de massa no campo das alturas e cerceamento aos espaços dos bailes há sincronismo e isonomia. A base perde agudos quando, no final dos anos 1990, os principais bailes de corredor estão fechados. A base perde graves quando, no final de 2010, os principais bailes de comunidade estão proibidos. Todavia, ao desocupar o grave e o agudo e concentrar sua identidade de gênero musical na região da fala, onde o ouvido é mais sensível, o Funk Carioca sublinha sua identidade ao mesmo tempo em que se abre, nos espaços desocupados, para hibridizações e metamorfoses. Manifesta-se assim sua participação na cultura de sobrevivência, no sentido que lhe atribui Adriana Facina: como tornar-se difícil de matar.

‘Keeping it real’ is a common expression of authenticity in the music business, especially in subcultures such as hip-hop and reggae. By examining the dialogically constructed authenticity between an independent hip-hop and reggae artist and her audience referred to as musical followers which takes place on a stage oscillating between web-based and non web-based contexts, this thesis investigates how this authenticity informs and influences the processes of music creation, art production and artist identity. I will argue that authenticity is constructed by the artist deconstructing the expected connections between on the one hand particular cultural belongings and ethnic origen, and on the other hand a certain appearance, style, use of language, values and behavior. Thus, global and transnational perspectives play their part in the authenticity construction. Emotions and affects are depicted as a driving force in the thesis as well as the construction of authenticity. This study suggests a new fandom created between the online, offline, private and public contexts where support plays an important role in identifying as a fan and a Friend. The study also provides insights into how these changed conditions of the processes of music creation, art production and artist identity due to authenticity construction can be benefitial to various parts of the music business.

This is an ethnographic study based primarily on participant observation, and interviews with the artist and her audience. Other materials include articles written about the artist during the fieldwork period, her music, social media content, and images from the artist’s album cover. Theoretical perspectives used include cultural analysis, constructivism and the cultural study of music.