Thesis (Ph.D.)--Bowling Green State University, 2009. / Document formatted into pages; contains xi, 452 p. : col. ill. Includes bibliographical references.

Adolescents living in peri-urban settings in South Africa face multiple challenges to realising their own health and wellbeing. A lack of opportunities exists for young people to gain practical skills and the self-efficacy necessary to address these challenges. One area in which they have the potential to make an impact is that of water-related disease. In this context Jive Media Africa, a media agency with a focus on health communications, initiated the Hip Hop Health project. The project made use of hip hop centred community music making to enable 60 young people from three schools in peri-urban communities in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, to share, with their broader communities, findings from research tasks that they had undertaken in the area of water and health. This qualitative case study explored the affordances of this community music making process for the adolescents involved. The study employed thematic analysis of thick descriptions of video excerpts, song lyrics and focus group transcriptions, drawing strongly on a Freirean construct of conscientisation and on youth empowerment theory. This research suggests that the writing and performance of hip hop songs empowers young people to engage with complex issues affecting their health and wellbeing. Through this process they gained hope for their futures, as individuals and as a community. The overarching theme of empowerment is supported by three subthemes, each of which was facilitated by the creation and performance of hip hop songs. In ‘becoming’, young people gained knowledge and were empowered as individuals. Through ‘belonging,’ the learners forged mutually supportive relationships with their peers, families and the broader community. Finally, through ‘believing’, young people began to conceptualise the future as holding hope and possibilities, based on their learnings and the experiences of the process. In this sense, empowerment was seen to take place at both an individual and a community level, and demonstrated elements of building critical consciousness through cycles of action and reflection. The findings hold relevance for programmes that seek to address other issues impacting adolescent health and wellbeing by empowering participants through community music making using hip hop and rap. / Dissertation (MMus)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / University of Pretoria / Music / MMus Musicology / Unrestricted

An individual's identity development involves the intersection of several factors, including race, class, gender, and sexuality. Historically, enslaved women's identities were sexually, culturally, and politically framed on the plantations through the lens of white male hegemony. The double jeopardy of being African American and female in a white patriarchal society has generated a legacy of struggle to resist the images constructed such as Matriarch, Aunt Jemima/Mammy, Sapphire, and Jezebel to name a few. The resistance legacy of African American women like Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, and Mary Church-Terrell, has expanded into the musical sphere of popular culture. Blues artists such as Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, and Bessie Smith expressed their resistance to oppression and repression aesthetically. Through musical expression, African American women performers have formulated a space where they can protest the hegemonic paradigms of sexual and racial inferiority. In contemporary popular culture this musical space is in Hip Hop. Contemporary African American women rap artists are continuing the struggle to overcome the characterizations and undertake the monumental task of demystifying the racist and sexist ideologies framing their identity. This thesis examines the ways that African American women convey the challenges they face both within the Hip Hop micro-culture and as African American women struggling in a white patriarchal macroculture. In addition, African American women rap artists' employment of rap music as a medium to develop their own identities, whether negative or positive by "Black feminist" or "womanist'' standards is also explored. This study includes a survey of student attitudes toward these issues.