Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T06:15:23.197Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hip hop: from live performance to mediated narrative

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Greg Dimitriadis
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Hip hop culture originated during the mid-1970s as an integrated series of live community-based practices. It remained a function of live practice and congregation for a number of years, exclusive to those who gathered together along NYC blocks, in parks, and in select clubs such as the now famous Harlem World or T-Connection. Early MCs (or ‘rappers’) and DJs, graffiti artists and breakdancers, forged a ‘scene’ entirely dependent upon face-to-face social contact and interaction. Indeed, the event itself, as an amalgam of dance, dress, art and music, was intrinsic to hip hop culture during these years. As one might expect, the art's earliest years went largely unrecorded and undocumented. However, in 1979, Sugarhill Records, a small label in New Jersey, released a single entitled ‘Rapper's Delight’. It was an unexpected event for many of hip hop's original proponents, those pioneers immersed in the art's early live scene. Grandmaster Flash comments:

I was approached in '77. A gentleman walked up to me and said, ‘We can put what you're doing on record.’ I would have to admit that I was blind. I didn't think that somebody else would want to hear a record re-recorded onto another record with talking on it. I didn't think it would reach the masses like that. I didn't see it. I knew of all the crews that had any sort of juice and power, or that was drawing crowds. So here it is two years later, and I hear ‘To the hip-hop, to the bang to the boogie’, and it's not Bam, Herc, Breakout, AJ. Who is this? (quoted in George 1993, p. 49)

Type
Articles
Information
Popular Music , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , May 1996 , pp. 179 - 194
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Adler, B. 1991b. Album notes to Run-DMC: Greatest Hits 1983–1991. Profile RecordsGoogle Scholar
Allah, B. 1993. ‘Can't Stop the Body Rock’, Rappages, 06, pp. 54–7Google Scholar
Anderson, B. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London)Google Scholar
Copeland, A. 1988. What to Listen for in Music (New York)Google Scholar
Cross, B. 1993. It's Not About a Salary: Rap, Race and Resistance in Los Angeles (London)Google Scholar
Fernando, S. H. Jr 1994. The New Beats: Exploring the Music, Culture, and Attitudes of Hip-Hop (New York)Google Scholar
Foucault, M. 1982. ‘The Subject and Power’, in Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. H. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow (Chicago), pp. 208–26Google Scholar
George, N. 1993. ‘Hip-Hop's Founding Fathers Speak the Truth’, The Source, 11, pp. 44–50Google Scholar
Hager, S. 1984. Hip Hop: The Illustrated History of Break Dancing, Rap Music, and Graffiti (New York)Google Scholar
Hall, S. 1992. ‘What is this “Black” in Black Popular Culture?’, in Black Popular Culture, ed. Dent, G. (Seattle), pp. 21–33Google Scholar
Hazzard-Gordon, K. 1990. Jookin': The Rise of Social Dance Formations in African-American Culture (Philadelphia)Google Scholar
Hebdige, D. 1987. Cut n Mix: Culture, Identity and Caribbean Music (London)Google Scholar
Keil, C. and Feld, S. 1994. Music Grooves (Chicago)Google Scholar
Manuel, P. 1988. Popular Musics of the Non-Western World (New York)Google Scholar
McClary, S. 1994. ‘Same as it ever was: youth culture and music’, in Microphone Fiends: Youth Music & Youth Culture, eds. Ross, A. and Rose, T. (New York), pp. 29–40Google Scholar
Meyer, L. 1956. Emotion and Meaning in Music (Chicago)Google Scholar
Rose, T. 1994. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (New England)Google Scholar
Small, C. 1987. Music of the Common Tongue (London)Google Scholar

Additional Reading

Abrahams, R. 1970. Deep Down in the Jungle: Negro Narrative Folklore From the Streets of Philadelphia (Chicago)Google Scholar
Adler, B. 1991. Rap: Portraits and Lyrics of a Generation of Black Rockers (New York)Google Scholar
Baker, H. Jr 1993. Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy (Chicago)Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dent, G. (ed.) 1992. Black Popular Culture (Seattle)Google Scholar
During, S. (ed.) 1993. The Cultural Studies Reader (New York)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, D. 1982. Big Road Blues (Berkeley)Google Scholar
Foucault, M. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York)Google Scholar
Gates, H. L. Jr 1988. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism (New York)Google Scholar
Grossberg, L., Nelson, C. and Treichler, P. (eds) 1992. Cultural Studies (New York)Google Scholar
Hebdige, D. 1991. Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London)Google Scholar
Jackson, B. 1974. Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me: Narrative Poetry from the Black Oral Tradition (Cambridge)Google Scholar
Jones, L. 1963. Blues People: Negro Music in White America (New York)Google Scholar
Keil, C. 1991. Urban Blues (Chicago)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murray, A. 1976. Stomping the Blues (New York)Google Scholar
Ogren, K. 1989. The Jazz Revolution: Twenties America and the Meaning of Jazz (New York)Google Scholar
Sidran, B. 1981. Black Talk (New York)Google Scholar
Southern, E. 1983. The Music of Black Americans: A History (New York)Google Scholar
Toop, D. 1991. Rap Attack 2: African Rap to Global Hip Hop (New York)Google Scholar
West, C. 1993. Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America (New York)Google Scholar