tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/kendrick-lamar-34183/articlesKendrick Lamar – The Conversation2022-10-26T12:29:48Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1898502022-10-26T12:29:48Z2022-10-26T12:29:48ZRap artists have penned plenty of lyrics about US presidents – this course examines what they say about Reagan and the 1980s<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489515/original/file-20221013-14-avelq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C30%2C3421%2C2253&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Numerous rap songs criticize the Reagan administration for its complicity in the illicit drug trade.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-ronald-reagan-campaigning-for-a-second-term-of-news-photo/594771010?phrase=Ronald%20Reagan&adppopup=true">Wally McNamee/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Text saying: Uncommon Courses, from The Conversation" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/uncommon-courses-130908">Uncommon Courses</a> is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.</em> </p>
<h2>Title of course:</h2>
<p>“Rap, Reagan and the 1980s”</p>
<h2>What prompted the idea for the course?</h2>
<p>Actually, it was Donald Trump’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-donald-trump-came-up-with-make-america-great-again/2017/01/17/fb6acf5e-dbf7-11e6-ad42-f3375f271c9c_story.html">Make America Great Again</a> movement. People seemed shocked by his campaign slogan. But it wasn’t the first time in the U.S. that an entertainer had acted as a populist politician to win the allegiance of working-class white voters who feared losing their socioeconomic status. That distinction more rightly belongs to Ronald Reagan, who used the phrase first in his 1980 campaign.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489513/original/file-20221013-24-kjid11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A campaign button emblazoned with the faces of two men is topped with the words 'Reagan-Bush in '80'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489513/original/file-20221013-24-kjid11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489513/original/file-20221013-24-kjid11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489513/original/file-20221013-24-kjid11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489513/original/file-20221013-24-kjid11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489513/original/file-20221013-24-kjid11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=697&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489513/original/file-20221013-24-kjid11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=697&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489513/original/file-20221013-24-kjid11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=697&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A 1980 Ronald Reagan campaign button employed the use of the phrase ‘Let’s Make America Great Again.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_522618">Smithsonian Institution</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
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<p>Many of my students, who came of age during the Obama administration, enjoyed the 2016 song by YG and Nipsey Hussle titled “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlIREcAu0PI">FDT</a>,” which is an acronym for “F— Donald Trump.” The song’s <a href="https://genius.com/Yg-fdt-lyrics">lyrics</a> criticize Trump for campaigning for the White House by trying to <a href="https://time.com/3923128/donald-trump-announcement-speech/">breed resentment against immigrants from Mexico</a>. I realized then that, just as today’s rappers are weighing in on politics, I could teach a course about how rap artists in the 1980s – and even afterward – dealt with the politicians from that era, chief among them President Reagan.</p>
<h2>What does the course explore?</h2>
<p>It uses hip-hop as a tool to understand the sociopolitical, economic and cultural factors that affected the lives of Black youths during the 1980s – the era of “<a href="https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/heres-why-reaganomics-is-so-controversial-video">Reaganomics</a>.” That’s the <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/reaganomics.asp">name given to Reagan’s economic policies</a>, which called for deregulation of the markets, widespread tax cuts, less spending on social programs and more spending on the military.</p>
<p>For instance, we use Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s classic 1982 hit “The Message” to examine the disappearance of middle-class factory jobs from American cities during a period of <a href="https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2002/03/bought.htm">globalization</a> and <a href="https://www.edweek.org/education/education-spending-declined-during-80s-report-says/1991/06">cuts to public school funding</a>.</p>
<p>The group rapped:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“<em>My son said, Daddy, I don’t wanna go to school<br>
‘Cause the teacher’s a jerk, he must think, I’m a fool<br>
And all the kids smoke reefer, I think it’d be cheaper<br>
If I just got a job, learned to be a street sweeper</em>”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Students also examine the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s through the lyrics of Too $hort’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ9ioPrZ6_c">Girl That’s Your Life</a>” from 1983, N.W.A’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ei_zhL_YTY">Dopeman</a>” from 1987, and Killer Mike’s 2012 song “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lIqNjC1RKU">Reagan</a>,” which holds the Reagan administration <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/index.html">complicit in creating the crack cocaine epidemic</a>.</p>
<p>Raps Killer Mike: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“<em>Just like Oliver North introduced us to cocaine / In the 80s when them bricks came on military planes</em>.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Why is this course relevant now?</h2>
<p>It allows students to see the effects of the loosely regulated market economy of Reagan’s America, which led to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/45131666">profound wealth gaps</a>. </p>
<p>To get a sense of the implications of the Reagan 1980s, I also have students listen to Kendrick Lamar’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YARwQQntqp8">Ronald Reagan Era</a>,” which came out in 2011 and deals with the flow of drugs, crack cocaine in particular, into Lamar’s native Compton, California, and Los Angeles during the late 1980s. The song also illuminates how drugs negatively affected his neighborhood and childhood. Lamar was born in 1987.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490105/original/file-20221017-19-6eidfe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two men speak while holding microphones" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490105/original/file-20221017-19-6eidfe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490105/original/file-20221017-19-6eidfe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490105/original/file-20221017-19-6eidfe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490105/original/file-20221017-19-6eidfe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490105/original/file-20221017-19-6eidfe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490105/original/file-20221017-19-6eidfe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490105/original/file-20221017-19-6eidfe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Kendrick Lamar, right, and Killer Mike are among the rap artists who’ve made songs that mention Ronald Reagan in the title.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andrew Chin and Matthew Baker Getty Images</span></span>
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<h2>What’s a critical lesson from the course?</h2>
<p>As various rap artists have pointed out, the violence that takes place in urban communities is directly connected to the world of politics.</p>
<p>As a group called Above the Law, part of a coalition of artists called the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9892864/">West Coast Rap All-Stars</a>, stated in the 1990 song “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pmg6c0PASYk">We’re All in the Same Gang</a>”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“<em>violence don’t only revolve from drugs and thugs and gangs that bang; most times it’s a political thang.</em>” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>A key lesson is that much of the praise for Reagan, a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10511431.2019.1708602">revered figure</a> in the conservative movement, did not always match the effects of his policies. For instance, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/01/trump-is-giving-arthur-laffer-presidential-medal-freedom-economists-arent-laughing/">modern economists have questioned</a> the purported benefits of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/01/trump-is-giving-arthur-laffer-presidential-medal-freedom-economists-arent-laughing/">Laffer curve</a>, which is an <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/laffercurve.asp">economic analysis</a> that shows the relationship between tax rates and tax revenue, and which was used to support the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/taxnotes/2021/09/03/reagans-tax-cut">Reagan tax cuts</a>. Reagan also embraced <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-bad-is-inequality-trickle-down-economics-thomas-piketty-economists-2021-12">“trickle-down” economics</a>, a theory that tax breaks and other benefits for business will ultimately help everyone, but economists say these benefits rarely, if ever, reached the most marginalized. </p>
<h2>What materials does the course feature?</h2>
<p>• “<a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9780230616196">Ronald Reagan and the 1980s: Perceptions, Policies, Legacies</a>,” edited by Cheryl Hudson and Gareth Davies</p>
<p>• “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/625232/reconsidering-reagan-by-daniel-s-lucks/">Reconsidering Reagan: Racism, Republicans, and the Road to Trump</a>,” by Daniel Lucks</p>
<p>• “<a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/9780700616510/hip-hop-revolution/">Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap</a>,” by Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar</p>
<p>• The 1985 movie “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089444/">Krush Groove</a>,” starring Sheila E. as well as Joseph Simmons and Daryl McDaniels of the pioneering rap group <a href="https://www.rundmc.com/">Run-DMC</a>.</p>
<h2>What will the course prepare students to do?</h2>
<p>The class prepares students to communicate their points of view to the public in creative and concise ways, much as rappers do in their songs. Specifically, they must write 16 bars. They also critically evaluate readings, songs and albums by doing a “5-Mic Review” <a href="https://www.hiphopnostalgia.com/2014/01/the-source-mic-system-for-album-reviews.html">in the way of the groundbreaking rap magazine The Source</a>. Finally, they do a group project that involves constructing a soundtrack for a movie or a hip-hop playlist.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189850/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stefan M. Bradley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ronald Reagan may have been known as ‘The Great Communicator,’ but rap artists don’t view his legacy through such rose-colored glasses. A professor of Black studies and history takes a closer look.Stefan M. Bradley, Professor of Black Studies and History, Amherst CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1655252021-08-09T12:27:11Z2021-08-09T12:27:11ZHip-hop holiday signals a turning point in education for a music form that began at a back-to-school party in the Bronx<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415012/original/file-20210806-21-s6c8ki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C0%2C4479%2C2807&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">DJ Kool Herc is considered the "sonic originator" of hip-hop. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/american-dj-kool-herc-performs-with-dj-jerry-dee-at-the-news-photo/177754517?adppopup=true">Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Whenever I teach courses on hip-hop at the University of Virginia, I provide a brief overview of where hip-hop music began. One of the important dates I use is Aug. 11, 1973. That’s when DJ Kool Herc, who was 18 at the time, threw a “Back To School Jam” for his sister Cindy in the South Bronx – in the rec room at 1520 Sedgwick Ave., to be specific.</p>
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<img alt="Flyer for the Back to School Jam hosted by DJ Kool Herc" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414431/original/file-20210803-25-spxunc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414431/original/file-20210803-25-spxunc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414431/original/file-20210803-25-spxunc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414431/original/file-20210803-25-spxunc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414431/original/file-20210803-25-spxunc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414431/original/file-20210803-25-spxunc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414431/original/file-20210803-25-spxunc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Flyer for the Back To School Jam hosted by DJ Kool Herc.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The landmark back-to-school party thrown by the Jamaican-American DJ, whose given name is Clive Campbell, will be officially and rightly recognized on Aug. 11, 2021, as <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-resolution/331/text">Hip-Hop Celebration Day</a>, as designated by Congress. August 2021 has also been designated as Hip-Hop Recognition Month, and November 2021 will be recognized as Hip-Hop History Month.</p>
<p>The hip-hop holiday, if you will, represents yet another milestone for hip-hop as its stature and prominence as a literary art and musical form continue to grow. </p>
<h2>Multiple origins</h2>
<p>Of course, the true genealogy of hip-hop is far more varied and complex than a single back-to-school party in the Bronx.</p>
<p>In his introduction to the “<a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300141917/anthology-rap">Yale Anthology of Rap</a>,” historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. writes that the first person he heard “rap” was his father, who was born in 1913, as he was “signifying,” or playing “<a href="https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1994-02-11-1994042244-story.html">the Dozens</a>,” a pastime in which participants trade searing insults about one another’s relatives, typically their mothers, as a way <a href="https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1994-02-11-1994042244-story.html">to teach mental strength</a>.</p>
<p>In the 1968 memoir of Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/28698/soul-on-ice-by-eldridge-cleaver/">Soul On Ice</a>,” Cleaver – in an entry dated Aug. 16, 1965 – describes a type of rap he heard in the wake of the <a href="http://crdl.usg.edu/events/watts_riots/?Welcome">Watts uprising</a>, a six-day-long rebellion in the predominantly Black neighborhood in Los Angeles sparked by a violent exchange between police and bystanders when a young Black motorist was stopped and arrested by a member of the California Highway Patrol. </p>
<p>He refers to young men he calls “low riders” assembled in a circle on the basketball court after leaving the mess hall in Folsom State Prison that previous Sunday morning. The Watts uprising had been going on for four days by then. The men “were wearing jubilant, triumphant smiles, animated by a vicarious spirit.” A round of signifying hand gestures turned to speech after one asked, “What they doing out there? Break it down for me, Baby.”</p>
<p>Cleaver writes that one of the low riders stepped into the middle of the circle and began to speak:</p>
<blockquote><p> “They walking in fours and kicking in doors / dropping Reds and busting heads / drinking wine and committing crime / shooting and looting / high-siding and low-riding / setting fires and slashing tires / turning over cars and burning down bars / making Parker mad and making me glad / putting an end to that ‘go slow’ crap and putting sweet Watts on the map / my black ass is in Folsom this morning but my black heart is in Watts!” </p></blockquote>
<p>Cleaver describes the laugh shared by the men in the cipher – or small, circular gathering – as “cleansing, revolutionary,” as “tears of joy were rolling from (the speaker’s) eyes.”</p>
<p>California rapper Ras Kass named his <a href="https://www.discogs.com/Ras-Kass-Soul-On-Ice/release/405225">debut album</a>, released in 1996, after Cleaver’s book.</p>
<h2>Kool Herc, the pioneer</h2>
<p>Herc is described in the Yale anthology as “the man most often mentioned as the sonic originator of hip-hop.” He invented “the break” by using two turntables – and two copies of the same album – to extend a song’s instrumental, typically highly percussive, portion. He then took the signifying that Gates and Cleaver describe and performed a version of it over the separated song breaks he blasted on his sound system. His breaks and banter bade dancers to improvise to the music he played. Tricia Rose, author of pioneering hip-hop scholarship including “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/black-noise-rap-music-and-black-culture-in-contemporary-america/oclc/29358082">Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America</a>” writes that “DJ Kool Herc was a graffiti writer and dancer first before he began playing records.”</p>
<p>Though modern graffiti writing is said to have originated in the 1960s when a 12-year-old Philadelphia kid named Darryl McCray began tagging his nickname, “Cornbread,” on the Philadelphia Youth Development Center walls, and then eventually all around the city, DJ Kool Herc embodied all of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/hip-hop">original elements</a> of hip-hop: DJing, emceeing, break dancing, and graffiti writing.</p>
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<h2>Worldwide phenomenon</h2>
<p>In the years since that back-to-school party, hip-hop has become a well-recognized global phenomenon. It is <a href="https://www.musicianwave.com/top-music-genres/">one of the most widely consumed musical forms</a> worldwide. It is also a widely sampled and highly scrutinized cultural movement.</p>
<p>Since hip-hop began as a back-to-school party, it follows that it should be taught in the halls of academia. College classes <a href="https://booksandideas.net/U-S-Hip-Hop-Studies-Formation-Flow-and-Trajectory.html">as far back as the 1980s</a> have taken up hip-hop culture and artists as the objects and subjects of study.</p>
<p>In 2013, the Hiphop Archive and the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University established the <a href="https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/newsplus/nasir-jones-hiphop-fellowship-established-by-hiphop-archive-and-du-bois-institute/">Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellowship</a>. The fellowship – named after the rapper Nas – is meant for select scholars and artists with “exceptional capacity for productive scholarship and exceptional creative ability in the arts, in connection with Hiphop.”</p>
<p>Kendrick Lamar’s “DAMN.” received the <a href="https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/kendrick-lamar">2018 Pulitzer Prize for music</a>. In 2019, New Orleans rapper Mia X <a href="https://www.nola.com/gambit/news/the_latest/article_4a31cb67-7ec1-5964-9a21-503d05170dc5.html">joined the music industry faculty</a> at Loyola University. She is <a href="https://www.xxlmag.com/a-history-of-rappers-in-college-classrooms/">one of many rappers and producers</a> to teach at a university. Black Thought from the widely acclaimed rap band The Roots will be <a href="https://www.kennedy-center.org/whats-on/explore-by-genre/hip-hop/2021-2022/roots-black-thought/">hosting a residency at the Kennedy Center</a> in October 2021 during which he will talk with contemporaries about art, inspiration and creative consciousness.</p>
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<h2>A hip-hop dissertation</h2>
<p>My own forays into academia are squarely rooted in hip-hop. I <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/07/15/537274235/after-rapping-his-dissertation-a-d-carson-is-uvas-new-hip-hop-professor">accepted my current job</a> – assistant professor of hip-hop – after I submitted my doctoral dissertation as a <a href="http://phd.aydeethegreat.com">rap album and digital archive</a> in 2017. </p>
<p>I had few academic models for my work to follow – those laid out by Gates’ father, people like the low riders from Cleaver’s memoir, scholars like Tricia Rose and pioneers like DJ Kool Herc. I wanted my work, in rap form, to <a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/11738372/i_used_to_love_to_dream">be the scholarship</a> on its own. Hip-hop has always been academic to me, even though it often seems as though making music, DJing, break dancing or doing graffiti painting as scholarship are usually acceptable only outside of formal spaces of learning, as part of an alternative curriculum. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414436/original/file-20210803-16-hr79bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414436/original/file-20210803-16-hr79bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414436/original/file-20210803-16-hr79bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414436/original/file-20210803-16-hr79bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414436/original/file-20210803-16-hr79bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414436/original/file-20210803-16-hr79bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414436/original/file-20210803-16-hr79bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Cover of A.D. Carson’s Dissertation Album, ‘Owning My Masters: The Rhetorics of Rhymes & Revolutions.’</span>
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</figure>
<p>Congress’ formal establishment of a hip-hop holiday and month of recognition – at least in 2021 – lends credence to the notion that hip-hop finally deserves a place in academia as a discipline of its own. From my perspective, it is long overdue that hip-hop be seen not solely as a subject of study but as a tool to continue to produce new knowledge and new ways of presenting it.</p>
<p>Hip-hop’s influence on other disciplines is as abundant as its influence on other music and art forms. Perhaps soon, in celebration of Cindy and Clive Campbell’s historic “Back To School Jam,” some students will be going back to school to become fully immersed in the academic rigors of the culture being celebrated nationally on Aug. 11.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165525/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>A.D. Carson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With Congress designating Aug. 11, 2021, as Hip-Hop Celebration Day, a scholar and performer of the art form makes the case for hip-hop to become more prominent in American academe.A.D. Carson, Assistant Professor of Hip-Hop, University of VirginiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1372652020-06-25T17:15:22Z2020-06-25T17:15:22ZHow women’s untold histories shaped South Africa’s national poet<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330681/original/file-20200427-145560-3f1wmw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Keorapetse Kgositsile with US author Alice Walker, 1996.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anacleto Rapping/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/a-tribute-to-keorapetse-kgositsile-south-africas-poet-laureate-89700">Keorapetse Kgositsile</a>, the South African-born poet who passed away in 2018, lived in exile in the US from 1962 to 1975 and was at the centre of the country’s 1960s and ’70s <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/148936/an-introduction-to-the-black-arts-movement">Black Arts Movement</a>. Informed by his South African and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/tswana">Tswana</a> background, the poet makes a case for multiple inflections of voices, geographies, and histories in the making of transnational black modernity.</p>
<p>Analysing his work offers ways in which African poetry can disrupt dominant thinking on <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/b/black-atlantic">Black Atlantic</a> studies, particularly <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/arts/paul-gilroy-holberg-prize.html">Paul Gilroy’s</a>
1993 text <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674076068">The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness</a>. The Atlantic world referred to by Gilroy tells the histories of Europe, Africa and the Americas, two hemispheres joined by the Atlantic ocean and exchanging influence. Kgositsile’s poetry can be read as challenging the direction of influence from north to south.</p>
<p>Uhuru Phalafala <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369801X.2020.1718539">considers</a> the rich oral traditions passed on from Kgositsile’s grandmother and mother as a key system of knowledge that informed and shaped his black radical imagination. Aretha Phiri interviewed her.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Aretha Phiri:</strong> Your <a href="https://stias.ac.za/events/revising-the-black-atlantic-african-diaspora-perspectives/">colloquium paper</a> situates the celebrated poet-in-exile at the centre of and as uniquely influential to the Black Arts Movement?</p>
<p><strong>Uhuru Phalafala:</strong> It was a time when African Americans were seeking to define their identities, with Africa as key metaphor. Kgositsile happened to not only come from that continent, but also used his mother tongue, Setswana, spiritual practices, and music from southern Africa in his work. By interweaving Tswana vernacular with the black diaspora parlance, he affirmed African America’s legitimate affiliation to the continent, as seen in the example of his influence on “the grandfather of rap music”, <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/last-poets-1968/">The Last Poets</a>. </p>
<p>He also came from a <a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/brief-history-anc">mass liberation movement</a> that was experienced in politics of armed confrontation, generated solidarities with other liberation organisations, and adept in decolonial politics. His work became a resource for his contemporaries. Today, when we look at, for example, Kendrick Lamar’s influential album, <em>To Pimp A Butterfly</em>, and the number of <a href="https://medium.com/cuepoint/the-oral-history-of-kendrick-lamar-s-to-pimp-a-butterfly-622f725c3fde">references</a> to South Africa in it, we must understand it as grounding itself in the foundation that people such as Kgositsile laid in the sixties and seventies. South Africa will always have an enduring place in the African American imagination. </p>
<p>This is diaspora consciousness. He also admired Nina Simone’s sound, which he called “future memory” to signal that it is not new or emergent, but reminiscent of the protest tradition of South Africa.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344086/original/file-20200625-33546-1a7woun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344086/original/file-20200625-33546-1a7woun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344086/original/file-20200625-33546-1a7woun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344086/original/file-20200625-33546-1a7woun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344086/original/file-20200625-33546-1a7woun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344086/original/file-20200625-33546-1a7woun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344086/original/file-20200625-33546-1a7woun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones), 1975, best known member of the Black Arts Movement that embraced Kgositsile.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bettmann/Getty Images</span></span>
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</figure>
<p><strong>Aretha Phiri:</strong> In focusing on the oral traditions inherited from his female lineage, you make a case for the specific use in his poetry of a “matriarchal archive”? </p>
<p><strong>Uhuru Phalafala:</strong> The colonised come from different conceptions of time (temporalities). Colonial temporality is not only racialised but also gendered. The arrogant coloniser inaugurated the beginning of history in his assumption that we did not have a history before he arrived. “History” began with the arrival of the coloniser, and marched forward in a linear fashion. With time, black men accessed modernity’s time – through missionary education and working in the mines – at a different period than women. </p>
<p>We now know that when anti-colonial wars were fought they were primarily and solely about the emergence of the black race from subjugation. When women and queer people attempted to bring the particularities of their oppression to the agenda they were told to wait. When independence was achieved those doubly and triply marginalised did not attain their independence at the same time with their countries because they continued to fight against black patriarchy. </p>
<p>If we backtrack we can then make certain observations. A type of double location of time was constructed when the colonisers’ history was instituted: theirs and ours. Because of lack of contact with missionary education and industrialisation, loosely speaking – of course there were women who accessed modernity – women occupied a different temporality. One of continuity from precolonial to colonial time, with its attendant way of life, philosophies, worldview, oratory practices, etcetera. </p>
<p><strong>Aretha Phiri:</strong> In describing this archive, how do you guard against potential accusations of advancing a gendered essentialist claim? </p>
<p><strong>Uhuru Phalafala</strong> I do not wish to rehash gendered essentialist claims. This is just historical process. My grandmother never set foot in a classroom but has a world of knowledge, so to say. Men who were later ferried to missionary schools, or those who went to work in the mines en masse, existed in a double location of time. The flow from precolonial to colonial time was interrupted by modernity’s time, fashioning a coexistence of the two. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/black-and-queer-women-invite-the-black-atlantic-into-the-21st-century-131057">Black and queer women invite the Black Atlantic into the 21st century</a>
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<p>These men came face to face with the colonial alienation and “first exile” from their home cultures which were denigrated by colonial assumptions of superior culture. This is how temporality is also gendered. The women who suffered the blows of this history, mostly in the rural countryside, continued to live life on their own terms, without their men. They continued to practise their indigenous ways of knowing – which are not an event but an ongoing process. </p>
<p>These knowledges evolved with time and did not freeze in some dark past. They progress, transform, and evolve as humans do. Today when we call for decolonisation we are actually wanting to retrieve this knowledge that was silenced and erased by the multiheaded hydra of colonialism. Where can we find it if not from those who had little contact with this hydra? In my view black women, in the context of southern Africa, are that “matriarchive”. </p>
<p><em>The book Black Radical Traditions From The South: Keorapetse Kgositsile and the Black Arts Movement by Uhuru Phalafala will be published shortly.</em> </p>
<p><em>This article is part of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=%23BlackAtlanticsSeries">series</a> called Decolonising the Black Atlantic in which black and queer women literary academics rethink and disrupt traditional Black Atlantic studies. The series is based on papers delivered at the <a href="https://stias.ac.za/events/revising-the-black-atlantic-african-diaspora-perspectives/">Revising the Black Atlantic: African Diaspora Perspectives</a> colloquium at the <a href="https://stias.ac.za">Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137265/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aretha Phiri is an NRF rated researcher and has been a fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Uhuru Portia Phalafala's research is supported in part by the National Research Foundation of South Africa.</span></em></p>A study of the late Keorapetse Kgositsile shows how the poet influenced black American culture. It also shows how his mother and his grandmother’s oral traditions in turn influenced him.Aretha Phiri, Senior lecturer, Department of Literary Studies in English, Rhodes UniversityUhuru Portia Phalafala, Lecturer, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1025152018-10-02T14:42:07Z2018-10-02T14:42:07ZFive reasons to end the conspicuous silence of music in classrooms<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236185/original/file-20180913-177947-1tnag05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kendrick Lamar performing in Portugal.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jose Sena Goulao/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>One of the main challenges that we educators face is getting our students to actively interact with course content, and perhaps explore its application to “real life”. One of the solutions to this age-old problem seems to be right under our ears. </p>
<p>A few years back I stumbled upon the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1318699?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">article</a> “Music and Cultural Analysis in the Classroom: Introducing Sociology through Heavy Metal” by Jarl Ahlkvist. He explores cultural analysis of music as a pedagogical tool for enhancing the learning experience of sociology students who are new to the discipline. Ahlkvist beautifully illustrates the value of using music as a bridge between theory and reality, and as a way to get students to actively interact with course content. Since this chance encounter I try – perhaps, not enough – to use music in more or less the same way in my course.</p>
<p>On hearing that hip-hop artist <a href="http://www.kendricklamar.com/">Kendrick Lamar</a> was <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/04/regina-carter-kendrick-lamar-pulitzer/558509/">awarded</a> the Pulitzer prize for his album <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/dec/21/the-best-albums-of-2017-no-2-kendrick-lamar-damn">“Damn”</a> earlier this year I couldn’t wait to share the news with my class and my colleagues teaching English literature. I imagined that they would share my excitement and enthusiasm about what the award meant for the hip-hop community and Lamar’s fans. </p>
<p>But this wasn’t the case.</p>
<p>Many of my colleagues didn’t even know who the iconic artist was. Students didn’t understand the big deal as they hadn’t really listened to the album as social commentary. My exchanges highlighted what I believe is the general disregard that South Africa’s schools and universities have for music as a tool for teaching. They haven’t grasped that it’s of equal scholarly importance to the written word.</p>
<p>This palpable absence of music in the lecture halls of South Africa’s universities and schools is problematic for a range of reasons. At some point it must be addressed, either for the sake of progress or at least experimentation. </p>
<p>But, for now, let me share my initial thoughts. To stimulate discussion around music and its potential role within the context of higher education I have distilled these into five concrete ideas.</p>
<h2>Literature is not superior to music</h2>
<p>As a record collector it’s glaringly obvious to me that an album is capable of providing as much social commentary, intellectual depth and perspective as a novel could. In fact, an album might, in addition, provide a more robust text for analysis within the context of lecture. </p>
<p>If, for instance, one is teaching a class on colonialism in Zimbabwe, you could draw on the text of the novel <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270683743_Nervous_Conditions_by_Tsitsi_Dangarembga">“Nervous Conditions”</a> by <a href="https://blogs.stockton.edu/postcolonialstudies/body-in-the-context-of-postcolonial-studies/tsitsi-dangarembgas-nervous-conditions-a-postcolonial-feminist-reading/tsitsi-dangarembga-biography/">Tsitsi Dangarembga</a> to explain colonial subjectivity. But you could also play <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/zimbabwes-powerful-music-of-struggle"><em>Chimurenga</em></a> music and analyse it beyond the constraints of the written word. <em>Chimurenga</em> is music from Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle against colonial rule.</p>
<h2>Music is the literature of the streets</h2>
<p>There’s another reason for the urgent need to include sonic literacy in curricula. It’s to do with access.</p>
<p>Generally speaking, people engage with music more than with books. For example, someone might not read a book on <a href="https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/">“Black Lives Matter”</a> – the movement started in 2013 that grew in opposition to violence against black Americans – but they will engage with an album like Lamar’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/dec/18/best-albums-of-2015-no-1-to-pimp-a-butterfly-by-kendrick-lamar">“To pimp a butterfly”</a> from 2015. It not only provided the soundtrack of the times, but also provided <a href="https://medium.com/cuepoint/the-oral-history-of-kendrick-lamar-s-to-pimp-a-butterfly-622f725c3fde">social commentary</a> as impactful as any book published on the topic. </p>
<p>Also, music is more accessible and readily available than books. It’s therefore often the best medium to reach larger numbers of people. </p>
<h2>Music reflects the times</h2>
<p>The music of Afrobeat pioneer <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/fela-kuti-mn0000138833/biography">Fela Kuti</a> is a powerful telling of what was happening in Nigeria in the 1970s. It also reflects what ordinary people were experiencing and addresses the burning issues of the time. </p>
<p>The same can be said of artists like American icon <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/nina-simone-mn0000411761">Nina Simone</a>, Jamaican reggae superstar <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/bob-marley-mn0000071514">Bob Marley</a> and the “Lion of Zimbabwe”, <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/thomas-mapfumo-mn0000581262">Thomas Mapfumo</a>. </p>
<p>These artists have managed to be the mouthpieces of particular generations and social movements. Their music has provided guidance in periods of turmoil. With this understanding in mind, how can we ignore these iconic voices when we engage with the context in which they are embedded?</p>
<h2>Music is a vehicle toward the ‘decolonial’</h2>
<p>As academics endeavour to decolonise learning spaces they need to consider why the written word takes priority over the spoken. Also, they should question why certain texts are treated with greater respect despite their obvious chronological and socio-cultural irrelevance. </p>
<p>And, why do academics generally treat text that’s accompanied by music as non-intellectual and inferior? I believe that music is an underutilised tool when it comes to steering curricula away from strictly Western and colonial models that have cemented the privilege of certain texts and modes in the knowledge economy.</p>
<h2>Remain in the groove</h2>
<p>It’s fairly safe to say that a substantial section of the novels and poems that have become permanent, canonical fixtures in curricula across the globe are outdated. This is particularly true since the advent of the internet and social media which have dramatically changed our reality, and how we (and our students) relate to it. </p>
<p>Within a fast moving, highly technologised and globalised era, music provides an analytical framework and sounding board for understanding a rapidly transforming society. To engage with society in real time we can’t always afford to wait for books to be published. We have to listen to the music, and dance while we’re at it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102515/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Shakib Bhatch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Music is an underutilised tool when it comes to steering curricula away from strictly Western and colonial models.Michael Shakib Bhatch, Lecturer of English. PhD Candidate in Afrofuturism and African Studies, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1034692018-09-24T10:07:53Z2018-09-24T10:07:53ZJazz isn’t dead: it’s just moved to new venues<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237108/original/file-20180919-158228-1y01ijl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African rising jazz star, Thabang Tabane.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lidudumalingani Mqombothi</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When, a few weeks back, Johannesburg’s largest jazz venue, The Orbit, <a href="http://www.jhblive.com/News-in-Johannesburg/news-and-alerts/the-orbit-needs-your-help/109544">posted</a> a crowd-funding appeal to stay afloat it prompted the usual flurry of concern that the genre might be on its deathbed. </p>
<p>That’s nothing new. Nearly half a century ago rock musician and musical maverick Frank Zappa’s <a href="https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3d7diu">“Be-Bop Tango”</a> (1973) first asserted that jazz wasn’t dead, but just smelled funny. Zappa’s track alluded to debates about the impact of the then revolutionary jazz style of <a href="https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/what-is-bebop-jazz/">bebop</a> after World War II.</p>
<p>But the question also threaded through commentary on <a href="https://study.com/academy/lesson/cool-jazz-history-characteristics-musicians.html">“cool” jazz</a>, on the demise of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/sep/08/british-traditional-jazz-chris-barber-band-humphrey-lyttleton-acker-bilk">British “trad” jazz</a> under the assault of pop groups such as the Beatles, on <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110306162117/http://allmusic.com/explore/style/smooth-jazz-d4447">“smooth” jazz</a>, on Wynton Marsalis’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/1999/jun/23/artsfeatures1">jazz neoclassicism</a> and much more. Now that hip-hop has become the <a href="https://www.awal.com/blog/takeaways-from-nielsens-2017-end-music-report">unchallenged behemoth</a> of the US music industry, it’s being heard again. </p>
<p>But the music industry now occupies a new, digital landscape, and the “Is jazz dead?” debate has several – not just one – aspects. The statistics tell us less than half of the story.</p>
<h2>Health of a genre</h2>
<p>First, the demise or rise of an individual venue tells us very little about the health of a genre. Even when The Orbit was flourishing in 2015, its owners were <a href="http://www.financialmail.co.za/life/music/2015/06/11/orbit-jazz-club-a-place-for-all-to-play">voluble</a> about the difficulties of maintaining a big, double-decker space that needed to fill every night to cover its costs. </p>
<p>In a country such as South Africa only a tiny minority of a population far smaller than that of the US have disposable income to spend on high-priced clubs. Jazz is only one music niche among many (the <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/in-south-africa-gospel-music-reigns-supreme/2996581.html">biggest by far</a> is gospel), so devising the right business plan is a conundrum many venues have failed to solve.</p>
<p>Second, assessments of the health of any genre depend on how you define that genre. Worldwide, what is defined as jazz by commercial analysts may not coincide with the definitions of consumers. A case in point is the landslide success of what the analysts may define as crossover artists, such as pianist <a href="http://www.robertglasper.com/">Robert Glasper</a>, or hip-hop artists such as the award-winning <a href="http://www.kendricklamar.com/">Kendrick Lamar</a>, whose sound is shaped by the inputs of multiple jazz musicians, including saxophonist <a href="https://www.kamasiwashington.com/">Kamasi Washington</a> (and as of March 2018 veteran pianist <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/herbie-hancock-mn0000957296">Herbie Hancock</a>) – but the jazz that fans hear in this music is not recorded in the statistics.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Rapper Kendrick Lamar got help from his jazz friends.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Third, international comparisons based on the fortunes of, say pop singer <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/ed-sheeran-mn0002639628">Ed Sheeran’s</a> multimillion <a href="http://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/the-top-40-biggest-albums-of-2017-on-the-official-chart__21316/">selling</a> “÷” (pronounced “divide”) as compared to any jazz album fail to compare like with like. The business model for the music of pop artists such as Sheeran is based on fast, high-volume sales shortly after release. It was the fastest selling album ever by a solo male artist – 672,000 in its first week of release in March 2017. It sold 2.7 million in 2017.</p>
<p>John Coltrane’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Both-Directions-At-Once-Album/dp/B07D4ZWCHX">“Both Directions at Once”</a>, which was released earlier this year half a century after the saxophonist’s death, will sell far fewer copies immediately. But it will likely continue selling, in some format or on some platform or other, for a further 50 years or more. </p>
<p>Fourth, the technology and value chain of the music industry have transformed over the past decade. Intermediaries have been removed from the supply chain. Digital downloads and more recently streaming have sidelined the major record labels as sources of music. What they sell, and the official figures they provide, are a fraction of the music that is consumed. </p>
<p>It’s easier for smaller music niches to thrive. Compact, low-cost recording technology allows for self-publishing independent of labels, and those products can reach global buyers online. The detail of most of this activity, however – and of what’s happening in the growing arena of jazz vinyl – is far below the radar of those collecting data on industry trends. South Africa has been a fast <a href="https://www.pwc.co.za/en/assets/pdf/entertainment-and-media-outlook-2017.pdf">follower in this movement</a>, with the shift to streaming proceeding apace. </p>
<p>South African jazz artists are now self-publishing their music at an increasing and unprecedented rate. The music is original and often contemptuous of commercial genre marketing categories.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237280/original/file-20180920-129871-1n0txzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237280/original/file-20180920-129871-1n0txzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237280/original/file-20180920-129871-1n0txzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237280/original/file-20180920-129871-1n0txzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237280/original/file-20180920-129871-1n0txzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237280/original/file-20180920-129871-1n0txzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237280/original/file-20180920-129871-1n0txzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">South African experimental composer, Gabi Motuba.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Delwyn Verasamy/Mail & Guardian</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Music writer</h2>
<p>Over the past few months alone, my work as a music writer has brought me flurry of new releases. These have included a piano trio <a href="https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/bokanidyertrio">outing</a> from Bokani Dyer, an Argentinian/South African <a href="https://arielz.bandcamp.com/releases">collaboration</a> from bassist Ariel Zamonsky, a vocal/string quartet <a href="https://urbanlifestylesa.co.za/2018/08/14/its-personal-with-gabi-motuba/">song series</a> from avant-garde composer Gabi Motuba, <a href="https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/claudecozens6">explorations</a> of rhythm patterns from Norway-based Cape Town drummer Claude Cozens, the <a href="https://thabangtabane.bandcamp.com/album/matjale">debut</a> of young Thabang Tabane, who plays the indigenous South African <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/malombo-jazz-mn0001009208">malombo style of jazz</a>, and the <a href="http://www.sibumash.com/">third album</a> from Durban-based pianist Sibu Masiloane. That isn’t, by any means, everything that has been released during the period.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘We Will Be Home’ by Tumi Mogorosi and Gabi Motuba.</span></figcaption>
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<p>All these artists find audiences when they play, and those audiences are overwhelmingly young. As well as at comfortable metropolitan jazz clubs, there are now events at more informal, less expensive venues. In addition, audiences are growing for events around the discourses of jazz, such as the current series of Johannesburg discussions on jazz photography themed around the <a href="http://www.transafricaradio.net/index.php/2018/09/10/expression-the-couch-sessions-with-siphiwe-mhlambi/">exhibition</a> of photographer Siphiwe Mhlambi.</p>
<p>For a musician anywhere, surviving and prospering within the genre called jazz has never been easy, and it still isn’t. But the story is not summed up by the figures cited in international media commentaries.</p>
<p>Jazz author <a href="https://stuartnicholson.uk/">Stuart Nicholson’s</a> 2005 <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Dead-Has-Moved-Address/dp/0415975832">book</a> on the US scene posed the question differently: Is jazz dead? Or has it moved to a new address? To which the answers are: no, yes – and one of those addresses is definitely South Africa.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103469/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For a musician anywhere, surviving and prospering within the genre called jazz has never been easy, and it still isn’t.Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/979252018-07-10T04:36:54Z2018-07-10T04:36:54ZShould white Australian fans rap along to the n-word at a Kendrick Lamar concert?<p>US rapper Kendrick Lamar’s <a href="https://www.livenation.com.au/artist/kendrick-lamar-tickets">Australian tour</a> kicks off this week, culminating in a headline appearance at the music festival <a href="https://www.splendourinthegrass.com/">Splendour in the Grass</a>. </p>
<p>Lamar’s most recent album, DAMN., not only topped the charts in the US, Australia, and around the world, but was also the first rap album to be awarded the prestigious <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-kendrick-lamars-pulitzer-win-blurs-lines-between-classical-music-and-pop-95213">Pulitzer Prize for Music</a>. Lamar’s historic victory provides hip hop with a level of critical recognition that has long escaped it, even as its popularity has spread from black and Latino neighbourhoods to white America and beyond. </p>
<p>However being a hip hop fan in Australia is not straightforward. For many, rap’s narratives of urban American hustle feel worlds removed from life here. These issues come to fore around the question of whether white fans in Australia should rap along to the “n-word”. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The song DNA. from Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning album DAMN.</span></figcaption>
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<p>In May this year, at the Hangout Music Festival in Alabama, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-23/rapper-kendrick-lamar-asks-white-fan-not-to-sing-n-word/9789938">Lamar invited a white fan on stage</a> to rap over his song M.A.A.D city. The young woman began to rap with the confidence of a true fan, delighted to be sharing space with him. “Man down, where you from, n—a Fuck who you know, where you from, my n—a?” she rapped, until Lamar abruptly cut the music. </p>
<p>“Woah, you gotta bleep one single word, though” he cautioned. “Did I not –” she asked, clearly embarrassed by her mistake. “You didn’t,” Lamar replied. The woman tried to continue but faltered and was ushered off stage to a smattering of uneasy applause.</p>
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<p>The n-word can be found throughout Lamar’s music, including his hits HUMBLE., which <a href="http://musicfeeds.com.au/news/kendrick-lamar-wins-triple-js-hottest-100-2017/">topped Triple J’s Hottest 100 poll</a> in 2018, and Alright, from his previous album To Pimp a Butterfly. After the incident in Alabama, <a href="https://variety.com/2018/music/opinion/kendrick-lamar-rappers-should-stop-using-n-word-1202818977/">some people asked</a>, if the word is so bad, why should anyone be using it? But in spite of hip hop’s ubiquity in mainstream culture, and the existence of local versions in Australia (such as in Indigenous and white working class cultures), hip hop remains specific to black America - and the n-word is one of its vital gatekeepers. </p>
<p>Most hip hop fans understand that when a black American rapper says “n—a”, they are reclaiming the word from its <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/cultureshock/teachers/huck/section1_2.html">original, derogatory use</a> to degrade and humiliate enslaved Africans in antebellum America. Just as some feminist movements have reclaimed words like “slut,” and LGBT communities have reclaimed the homophobic slur “queer,” “n—a” has become part of the exclusive lexicon of modern day black America. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-kendrick-lamars-pulitzer-win-blurs-lines-between-classical-music-and-pop-95213">How Kendrick Lamar's Pulitzer win blurs lines between classical music and pop</a>
</strong>
</em>
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<p>The n-word is one crucial means through which hip hop reminds white listeners of the chasm of culture and experience between them and black America. Whether white American listeners are compelled – like the stereotypical white suburban youth devouring gangsta rap – or repelled by this, they cannot ignore it. </p>
<p>White people have a role in hip hop, but it is overwhelmingly a passive one – to listen, to take criticism, to be, at times, the butt of a joke or the target of aggression. And, most importantly, to learn. The presence of white people in hip hop, in particular their avid listenership, is part of what lends the n-word its ongoing subversive power in this space.</p>
<p>Indeed the self-deprecating white rapper Lil Dicky addresses this issue head on in his song Freaky Friday. Taking the film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0322330/">Freaky Friday</a>’s classic “body swap” trope, Dicky has R&B star Chris Brown sing as if he were Lil Dicky, finally allowed to engage in hip hop culture on a level unreachable to the white hip-hopper. Brown, acting as Dicky, asks, “Wait, can I really say the n-word? What up, my n—a?”</p>
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<p>The premise of the joke is that white hip-hoppers secretly, perhaps even subconsciously, yearn to use the n-word – although not for the racist reasons that some might fear. White hip hop artists and fans want to sing along to their favourite song without stopping short, breaking character, remembering with a sobering pause that they are part of a world that privileges whiteness. They want hip hop to know how down they really are, the same way that punk or emo fans are able to don the image and lifestyle of their subculture.</p>
<p>But the rules are different for white fans of hip hop. In this way, perhaps, the music can make white people feel, if only momentarily, the way black Americans are made to feel with quotidian regularity. “There’s been so many things a Caucasian person said I couldn’t do,” Lamar said in defence of <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2018/06/kendrick-lamar-cover-story">his stance on the n-word</a>. “So if I say this is my word … please let me have this word.”</p>
<p>As Solange, another recent visitor to Sydney, spells out in her song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Njp2vaBzgto">F.U.B.U.</a> – a song that explicitly reminds black audiences that her music is “for us, by us” – “don’t be sad if you can’t sing along/Just be glad you got the whole wide world.” </p>
<p>Australian white fans of Lamar should bear this in mind as we welcome him back to our shores - and stay silent when the n-word appears.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Kendrick Lamar’s tour starts in Perth tonight.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97925/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tara Colley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The n-word is a means through which hip hop reminds white listeners of the chasm of culture and experience between them and black America.Tara Colley, Casual lecturer, United States Studies Centre, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/951772018-05-06T11:33:01Z2018-05-06T11:33:01ZWhy hip-hop needs to be taken more seriously in academic circles<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216173/original/file-20180424-57614-v09k28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Q-Tip (L) of A Tribe Called Quest performing in 2013.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gian Ehrenzeller/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Jazz’s current <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/oct/06/new-cool-kamasi-kendrick-gave-jazz-new-groove">generation</a> of stars grew up in these genre-fluid times with hip-hop. Concurrently, a significant number of hip-hop artists have been <a href="https://www.cbcmusic.ca/posts/19652/jazz-meets-hip-hop-badbadnotgood-kendrick-lamar">integrating</a> jazz into their music. As American saxophonist Kamasi Washington <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/oct/06/new-cool-kamasi-kendrick-gave-jazz-new-groove">puts it</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We’ve grown up alongside rappers and DJs, we’ve heard this music all our life. We are as fluent in <a href="http://www.j-dilla.com/">J Dilla</a> and <a href="https://www.drdre.com/">Dr Dre</a> as we are in <a href="http://mingusmingusmingus.com/mingus">Mingus</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/john-coltrane">Coltrane</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A unique new American university course, exploring the historical connections between jazz and hip-hop, was recently announced. The only surprise is that it took so long for such a course to be designed.</p>
<p>One of the pioneers in fusing hip-hop with jazz, the legendary American rapper, producer and DJ <a href="http://www.defjam.com/artists/q-tip">Q-Tip</a> and esteemed jazz author <a href="https://tisch.nyu.edu/about/directory/clive-davis-institute/1417614318">Ashley Kahn</a> will present a seven class <a href="https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2018/april/q-tip-joins-nyu-clive-davis-institute-faculty--co-teaches-course.html">course</a> from September 5. The course, to run at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute Of Recorded Music, will be among the first in the world to explore the under appreciated intersections and relationships between the two genres.</p>
<p>Heavily influenced by jazz, Q-Tip is best known for being a founder member of A Tribe Called Quest - a hip-hop collective <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/a-tribe-called-quest-mn0000478982/biography">described</a> by the respected All Music website as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Without question the most intelligent, artistic rap group during the 1990s, (who) jump-started and perfected the hip-hop alternative to hardcore and gangsta rap.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A Tribe Called Quest’s sophomore album “The Low End Theory” from 1991 was a paradigm shift in hip-hop’s <a href="http://observer.com/2016/09/a-tribe-called-quest-sparked-hip-hops-love-affair-with-jazz-on-low-end-theory/">relationship with jazz</a>. They set a benchmark for jazz-oriented approaches in 1990s hip-hop. The trio <a href="https://digable-planets.bandcamp.com/">Digable Planets</a>, rapper Guru’s <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/jazzmatazz-vol-1-mw0000098545">“Jazzmatazz”</a> project and more recently <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/kendrick-lamar-mn0002709646">Kendrick Lamar</a>’s <a href="https://www.grammy.com/grammys/news/pimp-butterfly-kendrick-lamar-shares-history">“To Pimp A Butterfly”</a> (2015) would follow.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Kendrick Lamar’s ‘King Kunta’ from the jazz-influenced album, ‘To pimp a butterfly’.</span></figcaption>
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<p>I have long compared hip-hop with jazz. From their respective displaced origins, political messages, and continually shifting and reinventing of music paradigms, both genres have moved generations and offered alternative histories to the western mainstream canon of knowledge.</p>
<p>While news of Q-Tip’s programme is hugely welcomed, the idea that hip-hop – and jazz artists are teaching in institutions in the US is not new. What’s missing is the permanence that a full programme in hip-hop studies can offer, a chance to pursue real critical and engaged inquiry through both practice and theory. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Jazz (We’ve Got)’ from A Tribe Called Quest’s influential second album The Low End Theory.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>What’s going on</h2>
<p>For many years, socio-politically charged artists like <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/nov/19/chuck-d-interview-hip-hop-fact-book-public-enemy">Chuck D</a> and <a href="https://www.krs-one.com/">KRS-One</a> have delivered weighty lectures and seminars. Pioneers such as <a href="http://www.oldschoolhiphop.com/artists/deejays/jazzyjay.htm">DJ Jazzy Jay</a> have given talks on the missing histories of hip-hop. </p>
<p>More recently, <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/killer-mike-mn0000771261/biography">Killer Mike</a>, <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/chance-the-rapper-mn0003115050">Chance the Rapper</a> and <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/talib-kweli-mn0000158801">Talib Kweli</a> have given talks and taken part in discussion panels on topics connected to race relations, streaming services and religion in hip-hop.</p>
<p>Concurrently, there is a recent wave of academics pushing the growing field of hip-hop studies. It was triggered by the early academic texts of authors like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1982/12/19/books/nonfiction-in-brief-101729.html">Craig Castleman</a> and <a href="http://www.triciarose.com/">Tricia Rose</a>, and crystallised in <a href="http://sites.psu.edu/comm292/wp-content/uploads/sites/5180/2014/10/FormanNeal-Thats_the_Joint_The_Hip_Hop_Studies_Readerbook.pdf">“That’s the Joint!: The Hip Hop Studies Reader”</a> from 2003. In January this year, a new <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/series.php?ser=cshhs">hip hop studies book series</a> was launched by the University of California Press. Led by H Samy Alim and Jeff Chang it promises to be hugely successful in extending the debate worldwide. </p>
<p>Educators like Bronx native Dr <a href="http://www.edmundadjapong.com/">Edmund Adjapong</a> are using the essence of hip hop in the classroom, and finding strategies for connecting with students in the urban realm. Other notable hip-hop-led teaching methodologies are discussed in Marcella Runell and Martha Diaz’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3108171-the-hip-hop-education-guidebook-volume-1">“Hip-Hop Education Guidebook: Volume 1”</a> – it contains lesson plans for the incorporation of hip hop into the study environment. Several UK institutions are launching hip hop modules such as SOAS University of London, where a theoretical elective “Global Hip-Hop” runs, also University of Cork have launched a module exploring hip-hop and post-colonial perspectives which are much welcomed. </p>
<p>And within the structure of academia, multidisciplinary work is being increasingly explored as creative silos are challenged, which comes at a time which sees cuts in arts education across the board. This offers two opportunities for practitioners and theorists of hip-hop culture to strategically influence and enhance educational institutions. </p>
<p>Firstly, the multidisciplinary content of hip-hop’s knowledge base presents theoretical richness in the fields of sociology, visual and sonic arts, religious, gender and cultural studies, critical race theory and art history. Secondly, the variety in the skill base of hip-hop practice supports performance, dance and music production. It also provides a range of design disciplines as well as confidence building skills in teamwork, presentation and public speaking methods.</p>
<h2>What’s missing</h2>
<p>If hip-hop culture can be such a positive force in the dynamics of education, why is it not commonplace to find such an ethos embedded within academia in Europe and Africa? I would suggest this is due to hip-hop’s origins and transatlantic journey. </p>
<p>Since its inception in 1973 hip-hop spent almost a decade in the US evolving into its identifiable elements of rap music, graffiti and knowledge. Its global export through various music and film representations only happened in the early eighties. During that decade the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03057070.2011.552540?scroll=top&needAccess=true">influence</a> of hip-hop on South Africa during apartheid critically addressed issues surrounding racism and the class struggle. In Europe, hip-hop has also grown and developed into its own over a period of 35 years. Yet in terms of a creative educational arena upon which to draw, it still remains liminal.</p>
<p>Why is it that the theoretical work seems to be gathering more momentum than the practical applications in university teaching? Perhaps the depth and length of researchers’ inquiries have already laid the foundations for the progression of hip-hop studies. </p>
<p>Within teaching situations the idea of hip-hop studies as a discipline is relegated to the occasional, informal and semi-structured workshop session. These seem to exist at school-level or after-school clubs only. Activities like these are, of course, very welcome. However, educators and practitioners need to be mindful that their positive contributions are built upon. It should lay foundations to frame bigger questions for teaching and learning opportunities.</p>
<p>There is a marked difference between hip-hop artists and practitioners visiting academic institutions and academics developing hip-hop research from within academic institutions. A greater synergy between academics and practitioners is needed to progress hip-hop studies and be taken seriously as a core area for study.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95177/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam de Paor-Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A greater synergy between academics and practitioners is needed to progress hip hop for it to be taken seriously as a core area for study.Adam de Paor-Evans, Principal Lecturer in Cultural Theory / Research and Innovation Lead, School of Art, Design and Fashion, Faculty of Culture and the Creative Industries, University of Central LancashireLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/952132018-04-23T20:09:35Z2018-04-23T20:09:35ZHow Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer win blurs lines between classical music and pop<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215851/original/file-20180423-75126-dea8d2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kendrick Lamar in the music video for Humble</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvTRZJ-4EyI">Screenshot from Youtube</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The awarding of the 2018 Pulitzer Music Prize to Kendrick Lamar for his album DAMN. has attracted considerable controversy. The American rapper edged out the young <a href="http://michaelgilbertson.net/">Michael Gilbertson</a>, who wrote a string quartet in a traditional format, and <a href="http://www.tedhearne.com/">Ted Hearne</a>, who created a modernist setting of a contemporary text for voices, electric guitars and percussion. </p>
<p>Some have <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-kendrick-pulitzer-reactions-20180420-story.html">read the decision</a> as a sign of low art (music designed for popular consumption, often with an eye on financial reward) vanquishing high art (esoteric music of transcendent purpose.) Yet to argue this is to prejudice Lamar on the basis of the style of his music. </p>
<p>Like Lamar’s previous albums, the music of DAMN. is effortlessly creative, with constant attention to shadings of mood and beat. There are many contributors, in the fields of production, vocals and sampling, and the timing throughout is both artful and innovative. As a personally-lived document of life for black Americans today, DAMN. is unique.</p>
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<p>Yet to some critics, the decision elevates a form of music that has no place among the esteemed offerings of past recipients (which historically has included some of America’s pre-eminent composers in the European art-music tradition). What is it about hip-hop music, and rapping in particular, that so offends?</p>
<p>From its roots as a black American sub-culture, rap music has been a music of defiance. Think of Public Enemy’s Fight the Power (1989), or N.W.A.’s Fuck tha Police (1988). It is a style of music that is powerful through its minimal drum machine/beatbox accompaniment and rhythmically-intoned verse. In the art-music tradition, however, strongly held political views are seldom expressed and, moreover, the forms are often instrumental and wordless. Unlike notes, words have meanings which, typically, can be defined. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_music">Some argue</a> music is of a higher form when abstracted from such simple correspondences. </p>
<p>Music imperceptibly exposes our prejudices. This is evident in popular mischaracterisations, such as the idea that all young people avoid the orchestra, or generations of older people’s intolerance of popular forms. Rap music can be deliberately uncongenial: it is often intentionally abrasive, and its singular focus on expressing its message has frequently paralleled an almost pathological aversion to melody.</p>
<p>We all listen to music differently. When discussing music, one can be swamped by subjectivity; with beauty being in the eye (or ear) of the beholder, argument can seem futile. While we may never completely overcome our biases, I believe that there are some universal terms that we should be able to make use of when we’re assessing music - whether it is art or pop, high or low - such as creativity, authenticity, innovation and uniqueness. DAMN. scores powerfully on all of these.</p>
<h2>The brilliance of DAMN.</h2>
<p>The lyrics of DAMN., despite frequent swearing (a vernacular trait common to hip hop), attest to Lamar’s sincerity and faith in music as a path to social healing. In this way, they are straightforwardly authentic.
An example of Lamar’s philosophy can be found in these lines from the song Pride: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>See, in a perfect world, I’ll choose faith over riches/I’ll choose work over bitches, I’ll make schools out of prison/I’ll take all the religions and put ‘em all in one service/Just to tell 'em we ain’t shit, but He’s been perfect, world.</p>
</blockquote>
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<p>Given the powerful way DAMN.’s lyrics portray societal issues, it may be that politics shaped the awarding of this year’s prize at least as much as the musical accomplishments. (A performance of Lamar’s 2015 single, Alright, from his previous album, To Pimp a Butterfly, created controversy when staged on the roof of a police car. The song, which includes the words “and we hate the po-po [police]/Wanna kill us dead in the street fo sho” was described by Lamar as one of hope. Fittingly, it became an anthem for the Black Lives Matter movement.)</p>
<p>Arguably, to Pimp a Butterfly, with its recurrence of a progressively revealed poem outlining the rationale of the rapper’s life-view, might constitute a more conceptually unified artwork than DAMN. Yet DAMN. rewards repeated listening – another element for assessing artistic validity. The album works on many levels, alternating songs that focus on notions of “weakness” and “wickedness”, and it also can be listened to in a reversed track-order (as acknowledged by the composer as an intentional element of its design).</p>
<h2>Righting a wrong</h2>
<p>The first Pulitzer Prize for Music was awarded in 1943. Its early recipients included the composers Howard Hanson, Virgil Thomson, Walter Piston and William Schumann. The initial beneficiaries were conservative in their style, and their winning works were typically in abstract instrumental forms, such as the symphony and the concerto, devoid of textual elements which can complicate the evaluation of music. </p>
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<p>Without a centuries-long European heritage on which to draw, America (much like Australia) was late to develop a “national” musical style of its own; yet as it did, composers such as Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber were duly recognised.</p>
<p>During this time, American music dominated the world through jazz and Broadway musicals, yet absent from the winner’s list are names such as Jerome Kern, George Gershwin and Cole Porter. Apparently, in the eyes of the judging panel, popular music was made of inferior stuff. It took decades for jazz to be recognised with a Pulitzer Music Prize, and it was not awarded to an African American until 1996. </p>
<p>Despite recent efforts to address these issues through posthumous citations to black and popular-leaning musicians, the list of Pulitzer winners has remained a roll-call of composers in what one might call the “university” tradition of art-music. Some forms, such as rock, have never been recognised. More positively, female composers have increasingly featured since 2010. </p>
<p>Importantly, though, the award to DAMN. rights another wrong. Ragtime music, pioneered by black Americans such as Scott Joplin, gained first recognition in the works of the white Irving Berlin. Jazz, an African American music beyond question, achieved national acceptance under Paul Whiteman (also white).</p>
<p>Later, “swing” would rise to its greatest popularity through the recordings of Benny Goodman. With the 2014 award of a Grammy to white rapper Macklemore, it may have seemed this trend was continuing. Fittingly, then, the Pulitzer board has given its first music prize for rap to a black American.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95213/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Davie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Whether it is art or pop, high or low, terms such as creativity, authenticity, innovation and uniqueness can help us judge a work of music. And Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. brims with these qualities.Scott Davie, Piano tutor and Lecturer, Sydney Conservatorium Music, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/725182017-03-05T10:36:37Z2017-03-05T10:36:37ZAfrofuturistic, cosmic jazz comes to the Motherland<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159131/original/image-20170302-14714-18pc15p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Saxophonist Kamasi Washington will be performing at the 2017 Cape Town International Jazz Festival.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>The golden era days of <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/style/jazz-rap-ma0000012180">jazz-rap</a> occurred during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Hip-hop artists of the time sampled jazz and funk records to create their sound. </p>
<p>Unlike then, we are now entering an age where jazz and funk artists are redefining the boundaries and the sound of hip-hop. The <a href="http://www.capetownjazzfest.com/">Cape Town International jazz festival</a> has tapped into this new age. A number of these musical trailblazers are coming to the African motherland soon, where their musical prowess will be showcased at the annual festival.</p>
<p>Some context on these musicians: They do this delineation by fusing genres like <a href="http://pitchfork.com/features/pitchfork-essentials/9724-astral-traveling-the-ecstasy-of-spiritual-jazz/">spiritual/cosmic jazz</a>, <a href="http://www.stereogum.com/1822964/p-funk-albums-from-worst-to-best/franchises/counting-down/">Pfunk</a> and <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/subgenre/west-coast-rap-ma0000002932">West Coast hip-hop</a> with ideologies of <a href="http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/6001/Black-Consciousness.html">black consciousness</a>, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.za/entry/your-far-out-guide-to-afrofuturism-and-black-magic_us_5711403fe4b0060ccda34a37">Afrofuturism</a> and <a href="http://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1012&context=blackstudfacproc">syncretic black spirituality</a>.</p>
<p>We also see more of an emphasis on collaboration between hip-hop artists and contemporary jazz musos. Not only well versed in the golden era hip-hop, these jazz musicians also know their way around the jazz of yesteryear. This interaction sees more interplay between traditional hip-hop sampling methods and a jazz-based composition, improvisation and performance aesthetic in hip-hop. A prime example of this development can be found in songs like Kendrick Lamar’s “For Free? (Interlude)”, “<a href="https://worldgalaxyrecords.bandcamp.com/track/astral-progressions-feat-kurupt">Astral Progressions</a>” by contemporary jazz trumpeter <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/josef-leimberg-mn0001717508/biography">Josef Leimberg</a> featuring rapper Kurupt and the works of artists like the Canadian jazz band, <a href="http://badbadnotgood.com/">Badbadnotgood</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘For Free?’ by Kendrick Lamar from his album, To Pimp a Butterfly.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Unlike in the golden jazz-rap era, jazz is no longer a mere sonic muse or pallet for beat makers. It’s now at the forefront of hip-hop production and is directly influencing the trajectory of the genre. For jazz this period marks a new era of fusion that’s heavily influenced by the open minded innovators of the fusion movement of the 1970s such as <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/herbie-hancock-mn0000957296">Herbie Hancock</a>, <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/miles-davis-mn0000423829">Miles Davis</a>, <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/weather-report-mn0000243527">Weather Report</a> and <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/tony-williams-mn0000791318">Tony Williams</a>. These musical revolutionaries were able to change the shape of jazz and other genres simultaneously through the redefinition and fusion of styles.</p>
<p>Something really magical is taking place at the moment. The last few years have seen a gradual increase of black artists who are really – as opposed to just aesthetically – tuned into the circuit-jamming frequencies and epoch-making ideas of <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/george-clinton-mn0000533117/biography">George Clinton</a>), <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/sun-ra-mn0000924232/biography">Sun Ra</a>, <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/2pac-mn0000921895/biography">Tupac Shakur</a>, <a href="http://malcolmx.com/biography/">Malcolm X</a> and everything in between and beyond.</p>
<p>As a scholar of Afrofuturism, a DJ and record collector I am extremely grateful that the Cape Town International Jazz Festival has booked some of these gifted young artists that have built this movement over the last few years.</p>
<p>I’m particularly excited to witness, in my own city, the stellar art of <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/laura-mvula-mn0003052732/biography">Laura Mvula</a>; <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/taylor-mcferrin-mn0001881073/biography">Taylor McFerrin</a> and <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/marcus-gilmore-mn0000935640/credits">Marcus Gilmore</a>; <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/kamasi-washington-mn0000772447">Kamasi Washington</a> and <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/digable-planets-mn0000826762">Digable Planets</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Laura Mvula</strong></p>
<p>I can best describe Birmingham native Mvula’s music as ethereal, spaced out vocal jazz with gospel and African choral roots. She sounds unique, exploring themes of blackness, spirituality and space in an elegant manner. </p>
<p>Her style is minimal, clean and elegant with a particular knack for making full use of emptiness and space. Listening to her music makes me feel like I’ve been teleported to church in outer space. Worth noting is that her African surname is of no significance to her music – it’s simply her Zambian husband’s surname.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Laura Mvula’s musical feel is well illustrated in this song ‘That’s alright’.</span></figcaption>
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<p><strong>Digable Planets</strong></p>
<p>The title of <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/digable-planets-mn0000826762">Digable Planets</a>’ 1993 jazz-heavy debut release “<a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/reachin-a-new-refutation-of-time-and-space-mw0000616174">Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space)</a>” is an apt and clear indicator of the musical direction they were taking during that period. This particular album served as my first introduction to jazzy hip-hop and the idea of “space, jazz and blackness”. Their second release “<a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/blowout-comb-mw0000119422">Blowout Comb</a>”, which is super Afrocentric and created around themes of Black Nationalism, black urban culture, jazz and entomology, took me further down the rabbit hole of Afrofuturism .</p>
<p>For me the group exemplifies my comparison between the golden era of hip-hop, the advent of late 90s <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/subgenre/neo-soul-ma0000004426">neo-soul</a> and the here-and-now, as they were one of the first groups to explore Afrofuturism, space, time travel, blackness and urban culture through the idioms of jazz and hip-hop. They definitely set the tone for this kind of expression and continued to do so even after their protracted hiatus which occurred between 1995 and their reunion tour of 2016.</p>
<p>During that period group member Ishmael Butler went on to establish another highly influential Afrofuturistic outfit, <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/shabazz-palaces-mw0002138257">Shabazz Palaces</a>, and Cee Knowledge created and recorded with the spaced out hip-hop/jazz band <a href="http://cosmicfunkorchestra.com/">Cee Knowledge and the Cosmic Funk Orchestra</a> while Lady Mecca went on to record her solo hip-hop offering, “<a href="http://prince.org/msg/8/431132">Trip The Light Fantastic</a>”. One simply cannot discuss Afrofuturism and jazz within the bounds of hip-hop without mentioning Digable Planets and their unique legacy.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Digable Planets with their hit ‘Rebirth Of Slick (Cool Like Dat)’</span></figcaption>
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<p><strong>Taylor McFerrin and Marcus Gilmore</strong></p>
<p>The idea that DJ, producer and multi-instrumentalist <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/taylor-mcferrin-mn0001881073/biography">Taylor McFerrin</a> is teaming up with jazz drummer <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/marcus-gilmore-mn0000935640/credits">Marcus Gilmore</a> is most thrilling because they have never recorded a collaborative album that showcases their collective sound. This collaboration is an argument in favour of the assumption that musicality is innate by way of one’s genes. Both these artists are direct descendants of two of the most prolific artists of our time.</p>
<p>Gilmore, who is the grandson of legendary jazz drummer <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/roy-haynes-mn0000290464">Roy Haynes</a>, recently recorded an album with the jazz fusion giant Chick Corea. Gilmore has also collaborated with foremost Afrofuturist <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/flying-lotus-mn0000717419">Flying Lotus</a> and <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/ravi-coltrane-mn0000401568">Ravi Coltrane</a>. Both are from impeccable jazz stock – the latter the son of jazz gods, <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/john-coltrane-mn0000175553">John</a> and <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/alice-coltrane-mn0000006143/biography">Alice</a>, and the former their grand nephew.</p>
<p>McFerrin, the son of <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/bobby-mcferrin-mn0000768367">Bobby</a>, is known for his left-field, futuristic fusion of electronica, jazz, soul and hip hop. He is affiliated to the aforementioned Flying Lotus’s experimental LA-based <a href="http://www.thefader.com/2015/08/26/brainfeeder-flying-lotus-label-interview">Brainfeeder</a> record label, a purveyor of some of the finest Afrofuturistic art of the last decade.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Gilmore and McFerrin in concert.</span></figcaption>
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<p><strong>Kamasi Washington</strong></p>
<p>Saxophonist <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/kamasi-washington-mn0000772447">Washington</a>’s multiple 2015 award winning debut studio album “The Epic” (also released via Brainfeeder) is one of the most important jazz albums of the last five years. It simultaneously garnered the <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/music/the-epic/kamasi-washington">respect of critics</a> and jazz purists, as well as audiences who wouldn’t otherwise listen to anything as musically complex.</p>
<p>Released as a triple disk on vinyl, “The Epic” is a worthy investment for any vinyl enthusiast and music lover.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Kamasi Washington and his band with ‘Clair de Lune’ from ‘The Epic’.</span></figcaption>
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<p>This phenomenal album, along with Washington’s work as a notable collaborator on a significant number of the most prominent Afrofuturistic, jazz, hip-hop and funk albums of the last five years, makes him an artist of great stature. One finds his name <a href="https://www.discogs.com/artist/324293-Kamasi-Washington?filter_anv=0&subtype=Writing-Arrangement&type=Credits">printed in the liner notes</a> of recent, groundbreaking albums by Kendrick Lamar, Josef Leimberg, Flying Lotus, Thundercat, Miles Mosely and Run the Jewels.</p>
<p>Washington definitely is an important part of the machinery that’s shaping the future sound of jazz, hip-hop and funk, in their individual forms and as a futuristic, experimental fusion projects.</p>
<p>The festival is an exceptional opportunity to engage with artists, who are relevant and progressive, especially in the Motherland. I sincerely hope that South Africa inspires their art and that we can absorb something from whatever they project.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72518/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Shakib Bhatch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Something really magical is happening at the intersection between jazz and hip-hop at the moment. Many of the artists involved will be playing at Africa’s foremost jazz festival.Michael Shakib Bhatch, Lecturer of English. PhD Candidate in Afrofuturism and African Studies, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/702232016-12-12T18:05:01Z2016-12-12T18:05:01ZYes, 2016 was crazy. But the future of art is bright and black<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149656/original/image-20161212-26048-1bxvh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The cover of Childish Gambino's album 'Awaken my love'.</span> </figcaption></figure><p><em>Review 2016: This has been a year most of humanity would like to forget with war, disasters, racism, sexism and, especially in arts and culture, the deaths of revered icons. But it is also in the arts and culture where people look for and find hope. The Conversation Africa has asked a number of our contributors to give us five books, records, buildings, works of art and so on, in their field that made a difference to them in 2016. Here is Michael Shakib Bhatch’s year in review.</em></p>
<p>In our haste to conclude 2016 (for various obviously bad reasons) we shouldn’t forget to reflect on all the wonderful works of art that inspired and distracted us from the craziness of this period. Below I share some of the grand works that made this year memorable for the right reasons. I limit myself through the lens of Afrofuturism and African studies specifically because this article has a word limit …</p>
<p>To recap quickly: the <a href="http://www.fabrikzeitung.ch/afrofuturism-reloaded-15-theses-in-15-minutes/">still relevant</a> term Afrofuturism was first coined by American cultural critic, <a href="http://markdery.com/">Mark Dery</a>, in his seminal 1994 essay <a href="https://thenewblack5324.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/mark-dery-black-to-the-future.pdf">“Black to the future”</a>.</p>
<p>Dery <a href="https://futuristicallyancient.com/tag/mark-dery/">defined</a> Afrofuturism as a: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of 20th century technoculture – and more generally, African-American signification that appropriates images of technology and a prosthetically enhanced – might, for want of a better term, be called “Afro-futurism.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>1. Josef Leimberg – "Astral Progressions”</h2>
<p>In late November I was taken on a sonic journey through <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/subgenre/west-coast-rap-ma0000002932">West Coast rap</a>, <a href="http://www.openculture.com/2016/09/the-history-of-spiritual-jazz.html">cosmic spiritual jazz</a> and P-funk by California-based trumpeter and hip hop producer Josef Leimberg. His debut solo album: <a href="https://worldgalaxyrecords.bandcamp.com/album/astral-progressions">“Astral Progressions”</a> has been a staple in the car, home and office ever since. The album explores West Coast <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/subgenre/g-funk-ma0000011824">G-funk</a> and two major historical components of Afrofuturistic sound art: spiritual cosmic jazz in the vein of artists like <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/pharoah-sanders-mn0000330601">Pharoah Sanders</a> and <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/alice-coltrane-mn0000006143">Alice Coltrane</a>, and cosmic funk as created by <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/funkadelic-mn0000187581">Parliament-Funkadelic</a>.</p>
<p>Anyone who is a scholar of Afrofuturism will agree that the album really connects the dots (both sonically and stylistically) between then, now and the future. For me the album is part of a movement of deliberately conscious black music that is using ancient soundscapes to explore the future sound of black music. This conscious black music movement is to avant garde jazz musician, <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/sun-ra-mn0000924232">Sun Ra</a>, and funk master, <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/george-clinton-mn0000533117">George Clinton</a>, what the genre <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/subgenre/neo-soul-ma0000004426">Neo-Soul</a> is to <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/roy-ayers-mn0000345168/biography">Roy Ayers</a> (who successfully straddled bridged jazz, funk and disco in the mid 1970s and early ‘80s), with hip hop sandwiched right in the middle.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149657/original/image-20161212-26074-1mfw3cu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149657/original/image-20161212-26074-1mfw3cu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149657/original/image-20161212-26074-1mfw3cu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149657/original/image-20161212-26074-1mfw3cu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149657/original/image-20161212-26074-1mfw3cu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149657/original/image-20161212-26074-1mfw3cu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149657/original/image-20161212-26074-1mfw3cu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Josef Leimberg’s debut album Astral Progressions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jonathan Alcorn/Reuters</span></span>
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<h2>2. Childish Gambino - “Awaken, my love”</h2>
<p>Roughly 29 days before the closing of this year actor <a href="http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22671-awaken-my-love/">Donald Glover</a> under the guise of his rapper alter ego, Childish Gambino, made waves when he released <a href="http://www.npr.org/2016/12/09/504969213/childish-gambinos-new-album-is-a-funky-left-turn">“Awaken, my love”</a>, an album that draws heavily on the works of Funkadelic, <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/jimi-hendrix-mn0000354105">Jimi Hendrix</a>, <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/sylvester-sly-stone-stewart-mn0000751663">Sly Stone</a> and <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/prince-mn0000361393">Prince</a>. While many reviews of the album didn’t find it particularly Afrofuturistic in nature, I did. I feel that while it draws on the same influences as Neo-Soul artist <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/dangelo-mn0000134600">D'Angelo</a>, its sonic aesthetic leans more toward rapper <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/kendrick-lamar-mn0002709646">Kendrick Lamar</a>’s Afrofuturistic album <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/to-pimp-a-butterfly-mw0002835159">“To pimp a butterfly”</a>.</p>
<p>In my humble opinion Gambino (along with like-minded artists such as <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/sa-ra-mn0000955123">Sa-Ra</a>, <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/bilal-mn0000057280">Bilal</a>, <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/adrian-younge-mn0001646944">Adrian Younge</a>, <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/terrace-martin-mn0002366358">Terrace Martin</a>) is ushering in the stylistic progression of neo-soul to neo-psychedelic space funk (if you could call it that). The crazy thing about this is that the said “progression” is taking place during a sociopolitical period that is often likened to the late 60’s/ early 70’s: when George Clinton and Sly Stone altered soul and funk, and Hendrix altered the blues. I am very chuffed that I can bear witness to the development of this sound, especially within the context of the <a href="http://blacklivesmatter.com/about/">#BlackLivesMatter</a> movement and the looming Donald Trump administration.</p>
<h2>3. “Birth of a Nation” - Nate Parker</h2>
<p>Finally, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4196450/">a film</a> about one of the most important heroes of black resistance in the USA and beyond, <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/nat-turner">Nat Turner</a>. The movie, which is co-produced and directed by Nate Parker who also plays the leading role is significant in many ways. It is a prime example of the very necessary process of reclaiming and reframing of black history in order to change the trajectory of the future of black people worldwide.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149659/original/image-20161212-26051-1o2gwqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149659/original/image-20161212-26051-1o2gwqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149659/original/image-20161212-26051-1o2gwqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149659/original/image-20161212-26051-1o2gwqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149659/original/image-20161212-26051-1o2gwqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149659/original/image-20161212-26051-1o2gwqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149659/original/image-20161212-26051-1o2gwqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nate Parker, director of ‘Birth of a nation’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jonathan Alcorn/Reuters</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The film was shrouded in <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2016/08/timeline-of-the-nate-parker-rape-scandal.html">controversy</a> and was received with mixed feelings. Seventeen years ago Parker and a wrestling teammate were accused of raping a female student, while attending Penn State university. Parker was found not guilty. Four years ago the woman who accused him committed suicide.</p>
<p>With the release of “Birth of a Nation” in October and Parker’s raised profile the spotlight turned back on the case.</p>
<p>Despite one’s personal judgements of his character, the project might inspire other young black artists to boldly rewrite and reimagine the often skewed whitewashed historical accounts of black revolutionary action.</p>
<p>Hopefully soon someone might present the world with say, the story of the <a href="http://www.blackpast.org/gah/haitian-revolution-1791-1804">Haitian Revolution</a> (1791-1804) or of revolutionary hero, the late Burkinabe president <a href="http://qz.com/415257/why-burkina-fasos-late-revolutionary-leader-thomas-sankara-still-inspires-young-africans/">Thomas Sankara</a>, who was revered as the “African Che Guevara”. Who knows. Either way, Parker has sown the seed. </p>
<h2>4. “Luke Cage” TV series</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149660/original/image-20161212-26036-dgoa9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149660/original/image-20161212-26036-dgoa9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149660/original/image-20161212-26036-dgoa9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149660/original/image-20161212-26036-dgoa9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149660/original/image-20161212-26036-dgoa9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1110&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149660/original/image-20161212-26036-dgoa9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1110&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149660/original/image-20161212-26036-dgoa9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1110&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Poster for ‘Luke Cage’.</span>
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<p>I never was a fan of comics and superheroes but the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3322314/">“Luke Cage”</a> series might have changed my mind. The television series caught my attention for the same reasons as “Birth of a Nation” and “Awaken, my love”. Essentially it is an Afrofuturistic blaxploitation series with a brilliant retrospective, and futuristic score created by the great <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/adrian-younge-mn0001646944">Adrian Younge</a> and <a href="http://www.npr.org/people/390269464/ali-shaheed-muhammad">Ali Shaheed Muhammad</a>. What is not to love about this? </p>
<p>The series brings Afrofuturism and neo-psychedelic space funk to the living rooms of the masses and it is likely to be a strong point of reference for many years to come. I definitely will be watching more of the series in my spare time – you should too.</p>
<h2>5. “Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro – How far we slaves have come”</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://www.kwela.com/Books/19606">book</a> contains the speeches of two icons, Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro, who are equally loved, and hated by many. It offers us insight (via the speeches exchanged by these icons upon their first meeting in Cuba in 1991) into Cuba’s role in catalysing the end of apartheid. </p>
<p>It also sheds some light on how these two giants related to each other as revolutionaries. This is essential reading material, especially in the wake of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/26/fidel-castro-cuba-revolutionary-icon-dies">Castro’s death</a> and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-crisis-could-become-a-monster-if-zuma-is-left-unchecked-68350">current state</a> of the ruling ANC in South Africa. Ironically the book was republished by Kwela Books a few months prior to the passing of Castro who is often referred to as the world’s last revolutionary, this reaffirms my belief that revolutionary ideas do not die when revolutionaries do.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149661/original/image-20161212-26039-no5dqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149661/original/image-20161212-26039-no5dqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149661/original/image-20161212-26039-no5dqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149661/original/image-20161212-26039-no5dqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149661/original/image-20161212-26039-no5dqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149661/original/image-20161212-26039-no5dqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149661/original/image-20161212-26039-no5dqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Cover of Shabaka & the Ancestors’ debut album.</span>
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<p>In closing I would also like to make special mention of the album <a href="https://shabakaandtheancestors.bandcamp.com/">“Wisdom of the Elders”</a> by Shabaka Hutchings and the Ancestors as a key Afrofuturistic spiritual jazz release to come from South Africa this year (British saxophonist <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/shabaka-hutchings-mn0001092571/biography">Hutchings</a> recorded “Wisdom of the Elders” in Johannesburg in 2015 with some of South Africa’s finest young jazz musicians).
I’m waiting for the album which I ordered in vinyl format for further exploration. Don’t delay the purchase like I did.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70223/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Shakib Bhatch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In a gloomy year filled, a number of artists with an Afrofuturist perspective gave hope with inspired works of art.Michael Shakib Bhatch, Lecturer of English, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.