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The Value of Studying Popular Music |
Music is one of the most frequently employed, popular media for adolescents, “devoting approximately four and five hours a day listing to music and watching music videos” (Christenson & Roberts, 1998, p. 8). In a study conducted in 1990, when high school students were asked which media they would take with them if they were stranded on a desert island, at all grade levels, music media was the preferred top choice, even over television (Roberts & Henriksen, 1990). |
Uses of music |
The appeal of music relates to adolescents’ uses of music (Christenson & Roberts, 1998, Dominick, 1996) for a range of different purposes: |
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information about political or cultural issues or social/romantic relationships.
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diversion, relaxation, release, distraction, intensifying mood.
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constituting social relationships, either solitary, imagined experiences or sharing musical experiences with others.
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withdrawal or escape into one’s own private listening experience
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defining personal identities.
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Jazz |
Another important music genre is jazz, which, as some critics note, is one of the most important American art forms of the 20th century. In “What is Jazz?” Dr. Billy Taylor, noted jazz pianist, historian, and educator, shares glimpses of his extensive knowledge of jazz music from its roots in the African-American slavery experience, through the early days of ragtime, and onward through swing, bop, and progressive jazz.
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Classroom: Defining Jazz |
The history of jazz as portrayed in the PBS Ken Burns series on Jazz demonstrates how certain artists continually built on previous artists by refining their techniques and creating new ways of using the trumpet, sax, bass, and drums. A key moment in the history of jazz was the Harlem Renaissance and the rise of jazz artists such as Duke Ellington. |
During that era, writers such as Langston Hughes wrote poetry that was highly influenced by jazz rhythms.
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Classroom: Visualizing Jazz Scenes of the Harlem Renaissance
[study of poems by Langston Hughes (“The Weary Blues,” “Red Silk Stockings,” “Juke Box Love Song”) and song lyrics by Duke Ellington (“Take The A Train,” “It Don't Mean A Thing,” “Drop Me Off in Harlem”)] |
Classroom: Transcending Poetry, Jazz, Rap, and Hip Hop
studying how poetry, jazz, hip hop and poetry reflect the culture of the time.
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Click here for an extensive site on the history of jazz with links to a lot of different aspects of ja:zz. |
Webquest: Jazzing It Up |
For further reading |
Michael Jarrett (1999). Drifting on a read: Jazz as a model for writing. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. |
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Soul/Motown
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Another important music genre is that of soul/Motown music of the 1950s–1970s as performed by James Brown, Ray Charles, Jackie Wilson, Booker T. & The MGs, Eddie Floyd, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, as well as the Motown groups/singers: The Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, The Marvelettes, The Supremes, The Temptations, Martha and the Vandellas, Mary Wells, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, and Junior Walker and the All-Stars.
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history-of-rock.com: Soul Music
classic motown
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As illustrated in the documentary, Standing in the Shadows of Motown, the backup band The Funk Brothers played an important role in providing new forms of musical background for the Motown groups through the use of inventive bass guitar and additional percussion/violins.
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funk45.com |
Another documentary, Only the Strong Survive, portrays a number of important soul singers of the 50s to the 70s: Wilson Pickett, Sam Moore, Ann Peebles, the late Isaac Hayes, Rufus and Carla Thomas, Jerry Butler, The Chi-Lites, and Mary Wilson. |
As illustrated in the shift in the focus in the content on racial conflict in the lyrics of the Temptations and Marvin Gaye’s music in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Motown genre eventually began to address the racism facing African-American culture during that period. |
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For further reading:
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Kempton, A., McDonald, R., & Kennedy, R. (2003). Boogaloo. New York: Knopf.
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Merlis, B., Seay, D., & James, E. (2001). Heart & soul: A celebration of black music style in America 1930-1975. New York: Watson-Guptill.
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Posner, G. (2002). Motown (e-book: download: Adobe Reader). New York: Random House.
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Zolten, J. J. (2003). Great god a'mighty - the dixie hummingbirds: Celebrating the rise of soul gospel music. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Hip/hop and Rap |
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Rap music emerged out of a Hip-Hop culture of the 1960s and 1970s with its emphasis on political expression and resistance through graffiti, modes of dress, language, and social practices. In a paper on the evolution of rap, Henry Rhodes describes how DJ’s and street performers created a new forms of musical expression:
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Dick Hebdige, in his book “Cut ‘N’ Mix,” described Jamaican ‘toasting’ as when the Jamaican disc jockies talked over the music they played. This style developed at dances in Jamaica known as “blues dances”. “Blues dances” were dances which took place in large halls or out in the open in the slum yards. “Blues dances” were a regular feature of ghetto life in Jamaica. At these dances black America R&B records were played. Jamaicans were introduced to these records by black American sailors stationed on the island and by American radio stations in and around Miami which played R&B records. Some favorite R&B artists were Fats Domino, Amos Melburn, Louis Jordan, and Roy Brown. There was a great demand for the R&B type of music, but unfortunately there were no local Jamaican bands which could play this type of music as well as the black American artists. As a result, ‘sound systems’ (comprised of DJs, roadies, engineers, bouncers) which were large mobile discotheques were set up to meet this need.
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The record playing systems of ‘sound systems’ had to be large so people could hear the bass by which to dance according to Hebdige. The major player in the ‘sound systems’ was the DJ. Some notable Jamaican DJs were Duke Reid, Sir Coxsone, and Prince Buster. They were performers as well as DJs. For example, Duke Reid dressed in a long ermine cloak with a pair of Colt 45s in cowboy holsters with a cartridge belt strapped across his chest and a loaded shotgun over his shoulder. This outfit was topped off with a gilt crown on his head. Just as there were to be DJ battles (competition) in the Bronx, they would occur first in Jamaica with one DJ trying to out play another DJ. As in both ‘battles’, here in the U.S. and Jamaica, the competition boiled down to who had the loudest system and the most original records and technique. It was not uncommon for things to get out of hand and for fighting to erupt during these DJ battles at the Jamaican “blues dances” once the crowds got caught up in this frenzy. It was said that Duke Reid would bring the crowd under control by firing his shotgun in the air.
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At first Jamaican toasting began when DJs would ‘toast’ over the music they played with simple slogans to encourage the dancers. Some of these simple slogans were “Work it, Work it” and “Move it up”. As ‘toasting’ became more popular so did the lengths of the toasts. One of the first big “toasting” stars was a Jamaican named U Roy (his real name was Ewart Beckford). Another technique which developed along side ‘toasting’ was called ‘dubs’. ‘Dubbing’ was when the record engineers would cut back and forth between the vocal and instrumental tracks while adjusting the bass and the treble. This technique highlighted the Jamaican ‘toasting’ even more.
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There are four areas which Jamaican ‘toasting’ and American rap music have in common. First, both types of music relied on pre-recorded sounds. Second, both types of music relied on a strong beat by which they either rapped or toasted. American rap music relied on the strong beat of hard funk and Jamaican “toasting” relied on the beat from the Jamaican rhythms. Third, in both styles the rapper or toaster spoke their lines in time with the rhythm taken from the records. Fourth, the content of the raps and toasts were similar in nature. For example, as there were boast raps, insult raps, news raps, message raps, nonsense raps, and party raps there also existed toasts that were similar in nature.
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Rhodes notes that rap groups then emerged who had an appeal to a larger audience: |
Run-D.M.C. was the first black rap group to break through to a mass white audience with their albums, Run-D.M.C and King of Rock. These albums led the way that rap would travel into the musical mainstream. Even though Run-D.M.C. dressed as if they came right off the street corner, this was not the case. Run and D.M.C came from middle class families, they were never deprived of anything and they never ran with a gang. One could never tell this by their dress or from the raps they made. Run-D.M.C. records were produced under the Def Jam label which had as one of its founders a Jewish punk rocker named Rick Rubin. Russell Simmons, Run’s brother, was to later take control of the Def Jam label in 1989, however this can not take away from the fact that this so-called militant rap group was at one time being produced by a white person. What is even more startling is that one of the most militant rap groups, Public Enemy, was also produced by Rick Rubin. Just as Run-D.M.C. came from middle-class families so did Public Enemy. Members of Public Enemy grew up in suburban Long Island towns with successful middle-class professional parents.
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Hip Hop originated in the 1970s in the Bronx, when local neighborhood artists began to play records on record players in new, original ways, which led to the rise of early Hip Hop stars DJ Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash. Click here for an interactive timeline exhibit at the EMI Seattle Music Museum. |
In an article in The Nation (January 13, 2003), “'Stakes Is High': Conscious Rap, Neosoul and the Hip-Hop Generation,” Jeff Chang notes the shifts from the original Hip-Hop to more recent commercialized versions: |
Fifteen years ago, rappers like Public Enemy, KRS-One and Queen Latifah were received as heralds of a new movement. Musicians - who, like all artists, always tend to handle the question "What's going on?" much better than "What is to be done?" - had never been called upon to do so much for their generation; Thelonious Monk, Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder were never asked to stand in for Thurgood Marshall, Fannie Lou Hamer or Stokely Carmichael. But the gains of the civil rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s were being rolled back. Youths were as fed up with black leadership as they were with white supremacy. Politics had failed. Culture was to become the hip-hop generation's battlefield, and "political rap" was to be its weapon.
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Today, the most cursory glance at the Billboard charts or video shows on Viacom-owned MTV and BET suggests rap has been given over to cocaine-cooking, cartoon-watching, Rakim-quoting, gold-rims-coveting, death-worshiping young 'uns. One might even ask whether rap has abandoned the revolution.
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Indeed, as the central marker of urban youth of color style and authenticity, rap music has become the key to the niching of youth culture. The "hip-hop lifestyle" is now available for purchase in every suburban mall. "Political rap" has been repackaged by record companies as merely "conscious," retooled for a smaller niche as an alternative. Instead of drinking Alizé, you drink Sprite. Instead of Versace, you wear Ecko. Instead of Jay-Z, you listen to the Roots. Teen rap, party rap, gangsta rap, political rap - tags that were once a mere music critic's game - are literally serious business.
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"Once you put a prefix on an MC's name, that's a death trap," says Talib Kweli, the gifted Brooklyn-born rapper who disdains being called "conscious." Clearly his music expresses a well-defined politics; his rhymes draw from the same well of protest that nourished the Last Poets, the Watts Prophets and the Black Arts stalwarts he cites as influences. But he argues that marketing labels close his audience's minds to the possibilities of his art. When Kweli unveiled a song called “Gun Music,” some fans grumbled. (No “conscious” rapper would stoop to rapping about guns, they reasoned, closing their ears even as Kweli delivered a complicated critique of street-arms fetishism.) At the same time, Kweli worries that being pigeonholed as political will prevent him from being promoted to mass audiences. Indeed, to be a “political rapper” in the music industry these days is to be condemned to preach to a very small choir.
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“Political rap” was actually something of an invention. The Bronx community-center dances and block parties where hip-hop began in the early 1970s were not demonstrations for justice, they were celebrations of survival. Hip-hop culture simply reflected what the people wanted and needed - escape. Rappers bragged about living the brand-name high life because they didn't; they boasted about getting headlines in the New York Post because they couldn't. Then, during the burning summer of the first Reagan recession, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five released "The Message," a dirge (by the standards of the day) that seethed against the everyday violence of disinvestment. Flash was certain the record, which was actually an A&R-pushed concoction by Duke Bootee and Melle Mel, would flop; it was too slow and too depressing to rock a party. But Sugar Hill Records released the song as a single over his objections, and "The Message" struck the zeitgeist like a bull's-eye. Liberal soul and rock critics, who had been waiting for exactly this kind of statement from urban America, championed it. Millions of listeners made it the third platinum rap single.
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Through the mid-1980s, Melle Mel, Afrika Bambaataa and Soul Sonic Force, Run-DMC and others took up the role of the young black lumpenrapper opposition, weighing in on topics like racism, nuclear proliferation and apartheid. And just as the first Bush stepped into office, a new generation began to articulate a distinctly post-civil rights stance. Led by Public Enemy, rappers like Paris, Ice-T, X-Clan, Poor Righteous Teachers and Brand Nubian displayed the Black Panther Party's media savvy and the Minister Louis Farrakhan's nationalist rage. Politics were as explicit as Tipper Gore's advisory stickers. As the Gulf War progressed, Paris's "Bush Killa" imagined a Black Power assassination of Bush the Elder while rapping, "Iraq never called me 'nigger.'" (Last year, he returned to cut an MP3-only critique of the war on Afghanistan, "What Would You Do?") Rappers' growing confidence with word, sound and power was reflected in more slippery and subtle music, buttered with Afrodiasporic and polycultural flavor.
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Many of these artists had emerged from vibrant protest movements - New York City's resurgent Black Power movement; the swelling campus antiapartheid / multiculturalism / affirmative action movement; local anti-police brutality movements. In each of these, representation was the cry and the media were a target. Rap "edutainment" came out of the convergence of two very different desires: the need for political empowerment and the need to be empowered by images of truth. On 1990's "Can I Kick It?," A Tribe Called Quest's Phife Dawg captured the mood of his audience sweetly and precisely: "Mr. Dinkins, will you please be our mayor?" But while Mayor Dinkins's career quickly hit a tailspin, hip-hop rose by making blackness - even radical blackness - the worldwide trading currency of cultural cool.
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In the new global entertainment industry of the 1990s, rap became a hot commodity. But even as the marketing dollars flowed into youth of color communities, major labels searched for ways to capture the authenticity without the militancy. Stakes was high, as De La Soul famously put it in 1996, and labels were loath to accept such disruptions on their investments as those that greeted Ice-T and Body Count's "Cop Killer" during the '92 election season. Rhymers kicking sordid tales from the drug wars were no longer journalists or fictionists, ironists or moralists. They were purveyors of a new lifestyle, ghetto cool with all of the products but none of the risk or rage. After Dr. Dre's pivotal 1992 album, The Chronic, in which a millennial, ghettocentric Phil Spector stormed the pop charts with a postrebellion gangsta party that brought together Crip-walking with Tanqueray-sipping, the roughnecks, hustlers and riders took the stage from the rap revolutionaries, backed by the substantial capital of a quickly consolidating music industry.
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Rap music today reflects the paradoxical position of the hip-hop generation. If measured by the volume of products created by and sold to them, it may appear that youth of color have never been more central to global popular culture. Rap is now a $1.6 billion engine that drives the entire music industry and flexes its muscle across all entertainment platforms. Along with its music, Jay-Z's not-so-ironically named Roc-A-Fella company peddles branded movies, clothing and vodka. Hip-hop, some academics assert, is hegemonic. But as the social turmoil described by many contemporary rappers demonstrates, this generation of youth of color is as alienated and downpressed as any ever has been. And the act of tying music to lifestyle - as synergy-seeking media companies have effectively done - has distorted what marketers call the "aspirational" aspects of hip-hop while marginalizing its powers of protest.
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Yet the politics have not disappeared from popular rap. Some of the most stunning hits in recent years - DMX's "Who We Be," Trick Daddy's "I'm a Thug," Scarface's "On My Block" - have found large audiences by making whole the hip-hop generation's cliché of "keeping it real," being true to one's roots of struggle. The video for Nappy Roots' brilliant "Po' Folks" depicts an expansive vision of rural Kentucky - black and white, young and old together, living like "everything's gon' be OK." Scarface's ghettocentric "On My Block" discards any pretense at apology. "We've probably done it all, fa' sheezy," he raps. "I'll never leave my block, my niggas need me." For some critics, usually older and often black, such sentiments seem dangerously close to pathological, hymns to debauchery and justifications for thuggery. But the hip-hop generation recognizes them as anthems of purpose, manifestoes that describe their time and place the same way that Public Enemy's did. Most of all, these songs and their audiences say, we are survivors and we will never forget that.
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In a readingonline.org article, Ernest Morrell describes how he integrated teaching about hip-hop culture into an English poetry unit. |
Given the social, cultural, and academic relevance of hip-hop music, a colleague and I designed a classroom unit that incorporated hip-hop music and culture into a traditional high school senior English poetry unit. We began the unit with an overview of poetry in general, attempting to redefine poetry and the poet's role. We emphasized the importance of understanding the historical period in which a poem was written in order to come to a deep interpretation. In the introductory lecture, we laid out all of the historical and literary periods that would be covered in the unit (e.g., the Elizabethan age, the Puritan Revolution in England, the Civil War, and the Post-Industrial Revolution in the United States). We placed hip-hop music and the Post-Industrial Revolution right alongside other historical and literary periods so that students could use a period and genre of poetry they were familiar with as a lens to examine the other literary works. We also wanted to encourage our students to re-evaluate how they view elements of their popular culture.
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The second major portion of the unit was the group presentation of a poem and a rap song. The groups were asked to prepare a justifiable interpretation of their poem and song with relation to their specific historical and literary periods and to analyze the links between the two. After a week of preparation, each group was given a class period to present its work and have its arguments critiqued by peers. In addition to the group presentations, students were asked to complete an anthology of 10 poems, 5 of which would be presented at a poetry reading. Finally, students were asked to write a five- to seven-page critical essay on a song of their choice.
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The students generated quality interpretations and made interesting connections between the canonical poems and the rap songs. They were also inspired to create their own critical poems to serve as celebration and social commentary. Their critical investigations of popular texts brought about oral and written critiques similar to those required by college preparatory English classrooms. The students moved beyond critical reading of literary texts to become cultural producers themselves, creating and presenting poems that provided critical social commentary and encouraged action for social justice. The unit adhered to critical pedagogy because it was situated in the experiences of the students, called for critical dialogue and a critical engagement of the text, and related the texts to larger social and political issues.
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A Chum Television Study Guide: Hip-Hop Consciousness
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Lots of sites related to Hip-Hop culture:
Hiphop-directory.com
The history of hip hop |
Vibe Magazine |
Hip-Hop/Rap Group sites:
hiphop-directory.com: hip hop and rap groups
Rapmusic.com
about.com: rap/hip-hop
b-boys.com
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For further reading: |
Chang, J. (2003). Can't stop, won't stop: A history of the hip-hop generation. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
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Dimitriadis, G. (2001). Performing identity/performing culture: Hip hop as text, pedagogy, and lived practice. New York: Peter Lang.
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Green, J. (Ed.). (2002). Rap and hip hop. New York: Greenhaven (essays for students grades 8 and up).
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Krims, A. (2003). Rap music and the poetics of identity. New York: Cambridge University Press.
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Maxwell, I. (2003). Phat beats, dope rhymes: Hip hop down under comin' upper. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
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Ramsey, G. (2003). Race music: Black cultures from bebop to hip-hop. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. |
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Punk |
As with Rap music emerging out of the Hip-Hop culture, punk music was an expression of adolescent punk culture that resisted traditional middle class, consumeristic culture, particularly mainstream dress, language, work habits, and music. As Charles Oh notes, punk music reflected a challenged to the traditional music industry:
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In the late 60’s and early 70’s, the music industry rang eerily familiar in its method of promoting trends over music. The public was being spoon-fed music that corporations simply intended to make a profit from. The backlash to this came to be known internationally as Punk rock.
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In New York, in the early 1970’s. Young, virtually unknown artists like Patti Smith, the Velvet Underground, and the Dolls of New York (changed later to New York Dolls) brought about a new style of “alternative-bohemian” entertainment, rooted in a “do-it-yourself” attitude. Short, frenetic songs, aggressive, sometimes confrontational stage presence, and angry messages against consumerism hit the stages at venues like New York’s CBGB’s, starting the movement that would be known as punk rock.
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Bands like the Ramones and the Talking Heads would evolve out of the punk rock movement, and become influences for those who shared a similar distaste in what was occurring in the music industry. Some say the underlying roots of punk was the frustration and anger from being treated as sheep, while others say punk stemmed from the “politics of boredom.” It was both.
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Malcolm McLaren has an indelible role in the history of punk rock, either beloved or hated for his managerial skills. In February of 1975, the New York Dolls, once a forerunner in punk, tried to revive a lagging career by hiring McLaren as their new manager. Understanding the value of shock, McLaren took the band and reintroduced them as born again communists. They draped themselves in communist flags and said catchy phrases like “better red than dead.” Unfortunately for the band, they continued to fail. Fortunately for McLaren, they continued to fail.
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After his attempt with the New York Dolls, McLaren relocated to England and teamed up with his friend Bernie Rhodes. The two nurtured a band that was arguably their greatest success, the Sex Pistols. McLaren and the Pistols adopted an anarchistic view of the world that made them instaneous celebrities. With spiked hair, tattered clothes, and safety pins as jewelry, they frequented talk shows and publicly badmouthed fellow artists, bands, and musicians. They spoke harshly of the British class system and the subjugation of the working class. They made news for concert violence and fighting with fans. The Sex Pistols were also as notorious for their brashness as they were for their inability to play their instruments.
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Their shock value not only brought them fame, but made them the single most recognizable punk band. Therefore, many believed that punk rock began with the Pistols, while others believed it made punk into a novelty and signified the beginning of the end.
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Despite the internal turmoil in the punk movement, punk rock made several things clear to international audiences. Punk Rock, in its subculture, managed to break down many barriers of expression and language. It made an indentation in the commericial music industry. It provided a fresh alternative to a boring, stagnant music scene.
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But most of all, punk’s legacy lies in its introduction of self employment and activism. It illustrated that anyone can do it themself, without reliance on the commercial media or the luxury of having financial abundance. Against the backdrop of mass consumer conformity, the punk rock movement made a statement of individuality that was heard worldwide.
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History of Punk/Heavy Metal music [ Seattle EMP Music Museum ]
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Punkmusic.com
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Punkbands.com |
MusicGirl [ female aspects of punk music ] |
See also:
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Greenwald, A. (2003). Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, the Web, and the Emo Generation. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin. |
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Folk |
Another genre central to the development of American music is folk music, made famous by Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Bob Dylan.
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It may difficult to define clear distinctions between early blues and folk music as reflected in the music of Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker, and Bessie Smith. |
Contemporary folk singers continue the early traditions of openly addressing social and personal concerns of everyday life as expressed in the songs by Altan, the Chieftains, Ani DiFranco, Ry Cooder, Sara McLachlan, Wilco, John Prine, and Los Lobos. |
Sites with lots of links to different aspects of folk music:
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Musical Traditions
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Folk Music Home Page
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The Mudcat Café [ for downloading folk music ] |
Folk music instruments |
Dirty Linen Magazine |
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Country |
Another genre is that of country music, that became increasingly popular during the 1970s/80s as an expression of Bible Belt, working-class cultural values, and then, the 1980s and 1990s, political beliefs. |
The Roughstock History of Country Music notes that country emerged out of earlier forms of bluegrass, folk, spiritual, and cowboy music of the 1920s and 1930s.
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Country Music Television
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Country Music Association |
Country Music Hall of Fame |
Nashville.net [ lots of links to country music sites ] |
Great American Country TV |
Webquest: country music |
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Cajun/Zydeco |
As with other genres, Cajun music emanated out of Louisiana as an expression of Cajun culture. Zydeco music is a hybrid of cajun and blues music. This music became increasingly popular in the 1980s and 1990s outside of Louisiana, particularly as a form of dance music.
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