This study is a biography of the life experiences of Nathaniel Clark Smith (1877-1934), an African-American musician, music educator and composer who lived during the early part of America's music education's history. Smith became one of the first international bandmasters to organize bands, orchestras, and glee clubs in schools and industries in the United States. Smith was raised and attended school on a military post. He later received a B.S.M.A. from the Chicago Musical College and a Masters in Composition from the Sherwood School of Music. He taught music at five educational institutions: Tuskegee Institute, Western University, Lincoln, Wendell Phillips and Sumner High Schools. Some of his students became prominent musicians. They were Lionel Hampton, Nat "King" Cole, Milton Hinton, Bennie Moten and Charlie Parker. Smith also worked with industries. He conducted the newsboys band for the Chicago Defender Newspaper and he became the music supervisor for the porters of the Pullman Railroad Company. Smith was stated to have introduced the saxophone to African-Americans and he was considered as one of the first composers to notate spirituals. Smith published over fifty works in America. One of his compositions received a copyright from England. His Negro Folk Suite, published by the Lyon and Healy Publishing Company, was performed by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. It received a John Wanamaker Award. His Negro Choral Symphony received a copyright in 1934. Smith became co-owner of the first Music Publishing Company owned by African-Americans, the Smith Jubilee Music Company.

This study investigates the expressive youth movement hip hop, a predominately black male subculture defined through participation in the competitive activities of graffiti writing, rapping and breakdancing. The general objective is to determine what is being communicated through these expressive forms, to whom, how, and finally to suggest why it is being communicated. The extent to which the encoded messages are consistent with reports of the subculture's goals is then discussed. It is asserted that hip hop operates as an alternative identity management and problem-solving mechanism within the black American ghetto. Drawing on traditional aspects of black cultural identity and expressiveness, hip hop creates a distinct way of life, reflecting a constructive and optimistic philosophy, to challenge the existing roles of the street hustler and gang member. Developed in the inner city boroughs of New York City in the late 1960's and early 1970's, hip hop functioned as a non-violent means of projecting a self-image and of measuring self-worth. It continues to be used to confront fundamental issues in a fight to overcome the restrictions of ghetto living, providing an expression of both an aesthetic and a cultural style based on the pursuit of excellence. The focus of the study is a form and content analysis of a selection of recorded raps, which parallels an interpretation of the messages conveyed in the musical form with assertions made by insiders regarding the functioning of hip hop. The thesis explores the hip hop male persona and worldview, his social relations and his role in the community, as they are articulated in the raps. The results of this analysis are then applied to a discussion of hip hop graffiti and breakdancing symbolism. The study concludes that the three expressive forms are communicating the cultural agenda of its members as well as providing the means through which to achieve their goals. It is contended that within hip hop, members empower themselves through aggressive self-glorifying imagery and role-playing, and that they apply this sense of greatness to motivating their community, outlining a strategy for coping with their existence by re-energizing it and transforming it into a positive experience. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

This thesis examines the symbolism of thirty-five slave songs that existed in the pre-Civil War South in the United States in order to gain a more profound insight into the values of the slaves. The songs chosen were representative of the 300 songs reviewed. The methodology used in the analysis was adapted from Ralph K. White's "Value Analysis: The Nature and Use of the Method." The slave songs provided the slaves with an opportunity to express their feelings on matters they deemed important, often by using Biblical symbols to "mask" the true meanings of their songs from whites. The major values of the slaves as found in their songs were independence, justice, determination, religion, hope, family love, and group unity.

Thesis submitted in: Dec. 1998. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 103-[105]). / Abstract also in Chinese. / Chapter Chapter One: --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1. --- Signifying: An African American Speech Act --- p.1 / Chapter 2. --- Brief Background of Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson --- p.4 / Chapter 3. --- Blues Craze --- p.5 / Chapter Chapter Two: --- Blues Genre --- p.8 / Chapter 1. --- Defining' the Blues --- p.8 / Chapter 2. --- Interpretations of the Blues Genre --- p.12 / Chapter 3. --- Three Downhome Blues Singer's Interpretations of the Blues --- p.15 / Chapter 4. --- """You wanta signifyin' like" --- p.18 / Chapter Chapter Three: --- Signifying and the Blues --- p.20 / Chapter 1. --- Signifying --- p.21 / Chapter 2. --- Implicature --- p.24 / Chapter 3. --- Face Threatening Acts --- p.34 / Chapter 4. --- Off Record FTAs --- p.35 / Chapter 5. --- Off Record FTAs and Signifying --- p.36 / Chapter 6. --- Off record FTA and Signifying in Blues --- p.39 / Chapter 7. --- Signifying and Call-and-Response --- p.42 / Chapter 8. --- Signifying and the Guitar --- p.47 / Chapter 9. --- Signifying and T in Blues Recordings --- p.51 / Chapter 10. --- Signifying and Spirituals --- p.54 / Chapter Chapter Four: --- Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson --- p.60 / Chapter 1. --- Robert Jonhson (1911-1938) --- p.60 / Chapter 2. --- Blind Lemon Jefferson (1897-1929) --- p.81 / Chapter Chapter Five: --- Conclusion --- p.98 / Bibliography --- p.103

Thesis advisor: Corey Creekmur, Kim Marra. Includes bibliographic references (p. 330-356).

The aim of this study was to critically explore the constructions of Muslim identities in selected Black African American popular music composed before and after the 11th of September 2001. This study is interdisciplinary because it used popular culture theories developed by Hall, Strinati, Storey and Gilroy’s concept of the Black Atlantic. Postcolonial literary theories of Bhabha, Spivak and Fanon were also used. The study demonstrated that the content and style of the lyrics by Public Enemy, Talib Kweli, Paris, Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West, Scarface, Miss Eliot, Missundastood, Erykah Badu and KRS-One have been influenced by Islam’s religious versions of the Nation of Islam, Five Percenters or Nation of Gods and Earths and Sunny Islam. Individual singers also manipulated the spiritual symbols and cultural resources made available to them in the Islam religion. Black African American singers more or less share common historical experiences, but they constructed and depicted Muslim identities differently because of their class, generational and gender backgrounds. Chapter one introduced the area of study, justified it and adopted an eclectic theoretical approach in order to account for the diverse constructions of Muslim identities in the songs composed by black African American hip hop singers. Chapter two provided an extended review of literature for the study. Chapter three explored the influence of the Nation of Islam on the singers and its creative manipulation by the black singers. Chapter four explored religious hybridity because the lyrics draw from Islam and Christian eschatological values. Chapter five used lyrics by three black female singers and revealed how they reconfigured differently, Black Muslim identities in a musical industry predominantly patronised by male singers. Chapter six explored the use of language in signifying different meanings of Muslim-ness in order to arrive at different definitions of pan Black Islamic musical consciousness. Chapter seven concluded the study by summarising the central argument of the study which was that black African American singers have referenced cultural symbols from Islam and in the process manipulated Islam’s religious metaphors to suggest different and alternative models for the black communities in the United States of America. / English Studies / D. Litt. et Phil.

The aim of this study was to critically explore the constructions of Muslim identities in selected Black African American popular music composed before and after the 11th of September 2001. This study is interdisciplinary because it used popular culture theories developed by Hall, Strinati, Storey and Gilroy’s concept of the Black Atlantic. Postcolonial literary theories of Bhabha, Spivak and Fanon were also used. The study demonstrated that the content and style of the lyrics by Public Enemy, Talib Kweli, Paris, Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West, Scarface, Miss Eliot, Missundastood, Erykah Badu and KRS-One have been influenced by Islam’s religious versions of the Nation of Islam, Five Percenters or Nation of Gods and Earths and Sunny Islam. Individual singers also manipulated the spiritual symbols and cultural resources made available to them in the Islam religion. Black African American singers more or less share common historical experiences, but they constructed and depicted Muslim identities differently because of their class, generational and gender backgrounds. Chapter one introduced the area of study, justified it and adopted an eclectic theoretical approach in order to account for the diverse constructions of Muslim identities in the songs composed by black African American hip hop singers. Chapter two provided an extended review of literature for the study. Chapter three explored the influence of the Nation of Islam on the singers and its creative manipulation by the black singers. Chapter four explored religious hybridity because the lyrics draw from Islam and Christian eschatological values. Chapter five used lyrics by three black female singers and revealed how they reconfigured differently, Black Muslim identities in a musical industry predominantly patronised by male singers. Chapter six explored the use of language in signifying different meanings of Muslim-ness in order to arrive at different definitions of pan Black Islamic musical consciousness. Chapter seven concluded the study by summarising the central argument of the study which was that black African American singers have referenced cultural symbols from Islam and in the process manipulated Islam’s religious metaphors to suggest different and alternative models for the black communities in the United States of America. / English Studies / D. Litt. et Phil.

Advances in technologies of voice profiling shed new light on questions of listening and its entanglement with antiblackness as a structuring paradigm of modernity. To contest current conceptions of listening with regards to the question of race and antiblackness while also shining light on the potentials offered by blackness, this dissertation engages listening at three distinct sites that are entangled with this modern question of voice profiling AI. In the process, this dissertation elaborates on the ethical stakes involved in listening itself. Chapter 1 excavates the way in which the ears of enslaved Black lives were ritualized. It centers an analysis of the role of the punishment of ear cropping and how this performed both a claim over slaves’ belonging and an inhibition on their freedom. Scholarship from Hebrew law aids in uncovering the meaning of the specific form of punishment. The chapter concludes by comparing the conception of slaves’ ears to Black artistic expressions such as Harriet Jacobs’s various methods of narration in Incidents of a Slave Girl and Blind Tom Wiggins’ unique use of clusters and graphic notation in Battle of Manassas, so as to demonstrate their methods of resistance and refusal to a claimed all-encompassing regime of listening. Chapter 2 engages modern notions of sound and listening. The way in which sound is theorized and engaged in modern digital technologies is entangled with the conception of what listening is and what it entails. Hermann von Helmholtz provides an axis after which sound and listening, as well as the relation between an inner world of perceptions and an outer world of sensations, has to be engaged as a question of listening as entangled in societal questions. The chapter critically elaborates alongside questions of categorical distinction in sound, such as the use of skull shapes as referents for AI listening, instrument classification systems, and the general question of the form of sound, or sound as object. The concluding Chapter 3 discusses, alongside Sylvia Wynter’s work and Roscoe Mitchell’s piece S II Examples (date) the kinds of questions we must pose in the development of modern AI listening technologies to move past antiblackness. Immanuel Kant’s theorizing of race and his influence on Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s classification of skulls relate tomodern voice profiling AI technology directly through the question of using cranial shapes. Wynter’s work challenges both a turn to varieties that do not allow the addressing of structural antiblackness, and a continuation of claims to proper knowledge on the basis of antiblackness. Ultimately, Wynter aids us in hearing Mitchell’s continual shapeshifting practice on the saxophone as a proposal towards a refiguring of our conception of sound, listening, and us.