I'm enjoying my new home at UW Tacoma very much. The students are all really enthusiastic and hard working; many of them fall into the "non-traditional" student category: they're a bit older, many work full-time jobs and have families. It's a very different environment from my old home--no music majors being the biggest difference. The student population here is also remarkably diverse.
I'm teaching this quarter a class on rap music. We're using Tricia Rose's Hip-Hop Wars as a primary text with supplemental readings from Jeff Chang's Can't stop, won't stop. Rose argues that hip-hop is in trouble; it's not the socially relevant art form that it used to be "back in the day" (Chang's book provides the relevant history of "back in the day"). I have long felt that rap music was once good and now it's (mostly) awful. Something happened, and I want to get to the bottom of it.
I've actually been struggling with this course quite a lot--more than I have with any other course in recent memory. What business do I have--a middle-class, white, university professor, steeped in the Western art music/academic tradition--teaching this class? What light could I cast on the topic that others can't?
We spent a little time addressing arguments that rap is not music. I felt comfortable there; it's my home turf, getting my hands dirty in "the music itself." We introduced some musical terminology from Adam Krims's book. And that's all could do from the music theory side.
Now, I mentioned there are no music majors here, so many of the activities that I would have used (transcriptions, close readings, sample-chasing, etc.) are to some extent off limits. So what is it that I hope to accomplish?
The students are giving group presentations on chapters from Rose's book, giving them an opportunity to share their experiences. Most of what we've been talking about boils down to hegemony: someone, somewhere, determines what is best for everyone. I use the metaphor of eight guys (undoubtedly older white males for the purposes of our class discussion) sitting in a secret mountain lair determining what is and isn't acceptable to society at large.
(from here)
Among the arguments we've heard so far (the first few chapters in Rose's book) are that hip-hop causes violence, hip-hop represents black dysfunctional ghetto culture, hip-hop is destroying traditional American values, and hip-hop hurts black people. The question that has pervaded all of these discussions is who determines these things?
Rose (and others) argue that structural racism has created the conditions from which rap music was born. The music doesn't cause these things; it simply reflects them and tries to address them by calling attention to them (or at least it did in the early days of rap; I think this is less the case with current commercialized rap music).
The argument that rap *causes* violence is moot: we live in a violent culture--violent movies, TV shows, video games, etc. Why is rap music any more dangerous than, say, Rambo (n.b.: the link is to a tribute to Rambo, featuring clips from all four movies. Kinda makes my case for me...).
As far as traditional American values, who determines what these values are? Who has conclusively determined that the patriarchal nuclear family of 1950s-era sitcom fame is the typical American family and that everything else is a dangerous aberration? How is Mitt Romney's wealth and the means by which he acquired it any different from Jay-Z's wealth and how he acquired it?
Certainly, I think some hip-hop casts black America in a bad light. I don't need to post links to any songs or videos here--I'm sure you can find them pretty easily on the radio or MTV. The question is why do artists create such songs if they hurt the culture, and (more importantly) why do they continue to sell?
My students and I agree that simply talking about these issues is a good first step toward fixing the problem, but it's a very big problem... Maybe that's what this course is meant to accomplish...
I'm teaching this quarter a class on rap music. We're using Tricia Rose's Hip-Hop Wars as a primary text with supplemental readings from Jeff Chang's Can't stop, won't stop. Rose argues that hip-hop is in trouble; it's not the socially relevant art form that it used to be "back in the day" (Chang's book provides the relevant history of "back in the day"). I have long felt that rap music was once good and now it's (mostly) awful. Something happened, and I want to get to the bottom of it.
I've actually been struggling with this course quite a lot--more than I have with any other course in recent memory. What business do I have--a middle-class, white, university professor, steeped in the Western art music/academic tradition--teaching this class? What light could I cast on the topic that others can't?
We spent a little time addressing arguments that rap is not music. I felt comfortable there; it's my home turf, getting my hands dirty in "the music itself." We introduced some musical terminology from Adam Krims's book. And that's all could do from the music theory side.
Now, I mentioned there are no music majors here, so many of the activities that I would have used (transcriptions, close readings, sample-chasing, etc.) are to some extent off limits. So what is it that I hope to accomplish?
The students are giving group presentations on chapters from Rose's book, giving them an opportunity to share their experiences. Most of what we've been talking about boils down to hegemony: someone, somewhere, determines what is best for everyone. I use the metaphor of eight guys (undoubtedly older white males for the purposes of our class discussion) sitting in a secret mountain lair determining what is and isn't acceptable to society at large.
(from here)Among the arguments we've heard so far (the first few chapters in Rose's book) are that hip-hop causes violence, hip-hop represents black dysfunctional ghetto culture, hip-hop is destroying traditional American values, and hip-hop hurts black people. The question that has pervaded all of these discussions is who determines these things?
Rose (and others) argue that structural racism has created the conditions from which rap music was born. The music doesn't cause these things; it simply reflects them and tries to address them by calling attention to them (or at least it did in the early days of rap; I think this is less the case with current commercialized rap music).
The argument that rap *causes* violence is moot: we live in a violent culture--violent movies, TV shows, video games, etc. Why is rap music any more dangerous than, say, Rambo (n.b.: the link is to a tribute to Rambo, featuring clips from all four movies. Kinda makes my case for me...).
As far as traditional American values, who determines what these values are? Who has conclusively determined that the patriarchal nuclear family of 1950s-era sitcom fame is the typical American family and that everything else is a dangerous aberration? How is Mitt Romney's wealth and the means by which he acquired it any different from Jay-Z's wealth and how he acquired it?
Certainly, I think some hip-hop casts black America in a bad light. I don't need to post links to any songs or videos here--I'm sure you can find them pretty easily on the radio or MTV. The question is why do artists create such songs if they hurt the culture, and (more importantly) why do they continue to sell?
My students and I agree that simply talking about these issues is a good first step toward fixing the problem, but it's a very big problem... Maybe that's what this course is meant to accomplish...