Music in American Cultures 31 March 2015

Hip hop

•  Musical features •  Historical context •  Key early songs

Hip-hop = “A form of rhythmic storytelling

accompanied by highly rhythmic, electronically based music [. . .] a black cultural expression that prioritizes black voices from the margins of urban America.” (Tricia Rose, hip hop scholar)

Musical features

•  Track (DJ) – Breakbeats & scratching

•  Rapping (MC) – Rhythmic speaking

•  Sampling – Technology and aesthetic

Turntables and mixer

Musical features

•  Track (DJ) – Breakbeats & scratching

•  Rapping (MC) – Rhythmic speaking

•  Sampling – Technology and aesthetic

“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” Gil Scott-Heron

Wildstyle Grandmaster Flash

Hip-hop culture

Colonial Period 1600s-1865

spirituals, ballads, corridos, roots of powwow

Reconstruction 1865-1940s

minstrelsy, blues, Tin Pan Alley, early country, dixieland, swing

Civil Rights Era 1940s-1970s

freedom songs, huelga songs, bebop

De-industrialization Late 1970s-1990s

Hip-hop, grunge

Urban results of de-industrialization, white flight, and ghettoization:

•  Abandonment

•  Increased policing

•  Drugs and drug economy

•  Gangs

Grandmaster Flash

•  From the Bronx

•  Pioneer in DJ technology

•  Continued development

of breakbeat •  Innovator in use of

sampling

1.  How does the song describe the physical environment?

2.  What kinds of people appear in the song? Who are the characters?

3.  What is the tone of the lyrics? Does the speaker seem optimistic or pessimistic? How can you tell?

It’s like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder How I keep from going under It’s like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder How I keep from going under Broken glass everywhere People pissing on the stairs You know they just don’t care I can’t take the smell, I can’t take the noise no more Got no money to move out, I guess I got no choice Rats in the front room, roaches in the back Junkies in the alley with the baseball bat I tried to get away but I couldn’t get far ‘Cause a man with a tow-truck repossessed my car Don’t push me ‘cause I’m close to the edge I’m trying not to lose my head It’s like a jungle sometimes…

Standing on the front stoop Hanging out the window Watching all the cars go by Roaring as the breezes blow Crazy lady living in a bag Eating out of garbage pails Used to be a fag-hag Said she danced the tango Skipped the light fandango The zircon princess seemed to lost her senses Down at the peepshow, watching all the creeps So she can tell the stories to the girls back home She went to the city and got social security She had to get a pimp She couldn’t make it on her own [chorus]

My brother’s doing bad on my mother’s TV She says, “you watch it too much, it’s just not healthy” All My Children in the daytime, Dallas at night Can’t event see the game or the Sugar Ray fight The bill collectors they ring my phone And scare my wife when I’m not home Got a bum education, double-digit inflation I can’t take the train to the job There’s a strike at the station Neon King Kong standing on my back Can’t stop to turn around Broke my sacrophiliac A mid-ranged migraine Cancered membrane Sometimes I think I’m going insane I swear I might hijack a plane [chorus]

Sugarhill Gang •  From New Jersey

•  Created by record producer

•  First Top 40 hip-hop

song •  Turn of hip-hop to

broader, more commercial genre

1.  What is the subject matter?

2.  What economic circumstances are represented?

3.  What is the speaker’s tone?

I said a hip hop a hippie to the hippie To the hip hip hop and you don’t stop A rockin’ to the bang bang boogy Say upchuck the boogy To the rhythm of the boogity beat Now what you hear is not a test, I’m rappin’ to the beat And me, the groove, and my friends Are gonna try to move your feet See I am Wonder Mike and I like to say hello To the black, to the white, the red, and the brown The purple and yellow But first I gotta bang bang the boogie to the boogie Say up jump the boogie to the bang bang boogie Let’s rock, you don’t stop Rock the riddle that will make your body rock

Well so far you’ve heard my voice But I brought two friends along And next on the mic is my man Hank Come on, Hank, sing that song Check it out, I’m the c-a-s-an-the-o-v-a And the rest if f-l-y Ya see I go by the code of the doctor of the mix And these reasons I’ll tell ya why Ya see I’m six-foot-one and I’m tons of fun And I dress to a T Ya see I got more clothes than Muhammad Ali And I dress so viciously I got bodyguards, I got two big cars That definitely ain’t the wack I got a Lincoln Continental and a sunroof Cadillac

So after school I take a dip in the pool Which really is on the wall I got a color TV so I can see The Knicks play basketball Hear me talking ‘bout checkbooks, credit cards More money than a sucker could ever spend But I wouldn’t give a sucker or a bum from the rucker Not a dime ‘til I made it again Ya go hotel, motel, whatcha gonna do today Ya say I’m gonna get a fly girl, gonna get some spankin’ Drive off in a def OJ Everybody go, hotel, motel, Holiday Inn Say if your girl starts actin’ up, then you take her friend Master Gee, am I mellow It’s on you, so what you gonna do…

•  Hip-hop is born out of poor communities in the wake of de-industrialization

•  Merges traditional African American cultural and musical aesthetics with new technologies

•  Employs new instrumental and vocal techniques previously not heard in mainstream popular music