With the rise of First Nations owned and created television content at the turn of the century, came a demand to see an accurate representation of Aboriginality that could look at Aboriginals as both here and modern. From 2003-2006, the first Aboriginal made and produced television series entitled Moccasin Flats, I argue, used modern day hip-hop discourse to both engage and dissect a host of complex issues facing modern day urban Aboriginal society. This research project mobilizes multiple methodologies; including: 1.) Eco’s code and sign function semiotic analysis, which operates to identify various hip-hop codes in the text; 2.)Hall’s method of articulation to look at how meaning is fixed in the discourse surrounding the show; and finally 3) Deleuze’s rhizomic approach to identity to see how the shows main characters are constructed in a way to highlight the paradoxical and undercut certain flirtations with essentialization. This three-tiered methodological process paints a picture of a new complex use of discourse to accentuate different facets of aboriginality that had previously been the sole product of dominant hegemonic institutions which relied on racist stereotypes. By dissecting how identity is formed on Moccasin Flats, I will show how aboriginal filmmakers construct a self-reflexive space where the character is perpetually in the process of ‘becoming’ and identity is always a site of negotiation.

M.A.(Media Studies), Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, 2009 / This research will critically analyse “conscious” hip-hop music and the way in which it contests media and mainstream ideas in the media. Conscious hip-hop refers to rap music that critically engages with hegemonic discourses and popular culture. It is framed and named in this manner by both the performers/ artists themselves as well as by leading hip-hop scholars within South Africa and globally. This research uses the music of Godessa and Brasse Vannie Kaap to interrogate representations of Black identities and gender in society.

Thesis advisor: Juliet Schor / There is an emerging pairing between the grassroot hip hop movement and urban sustainability initiatives that I call hip hop ecology. The synergy between hip hop and environmentalism defies stereotypes of the whiteness of the environmental movement and the forms of discourse that are used to raise awareness of the ecological crisis. This dissertation builds from my work in the Boston Public Schools, where for four years, I have taught environmental science using environmentally-themed (green) hip hop. In these classes I have asked students to express their learning in their own creative verse. I present three studies that situate the connection between hip hop and environmentalism in social and educational contexts. The first is a comparative content analysis of environmental science textbooks and green hip hop tracks that will help define the sociotextual scene of the urban environmental classrooms where I worked. The second research site is the community, where I interviewed "hip hop ecologists," activists and emcees who work directly on urban sustainability and environmental justice while producing hip hop with green themes. The second study provides an in-depth look at how these young environmental activists of color navigate the racial dynamics of the movement and try to sustain their careers as leaders and artists. The third study is an ethnography where I synthesize four years of classroom teaching and analyze the various cases where constructs of race and nature intersected, deconstructing both the social interactions in the classroom as well as the green hip hop lyrics written by the students. The implications of a hip hop ecology are that we as environmental practitioners actively rethink what counts as an environmental text and what part of our own creativity we tap as educators who endeavor to promote a more racially diverse and powerful movement for sustainability. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

A pesquisa objetiva analisar em que medida as expressões estéticas do hip-hop, em especial a dança breaking, coadunam-se com a ideia de Béthune (2003) de telescopia histórica, de acordo com a qual tais manifestações tenderiam a atualizar a tradição cultural afro-americana e afro-brasileira por meio de um olhar estético contemporâneo, como estratégia de luta e de fortalecimento sociocultural para a juventude negra e periférica. Desse modo, considerando as necessidades da educação pública brasileira, pretende-se propor estratégias didáticas para preparar essa juventude para o futuro, garantindo-lhe uma educação justa. A proposta é priorizar o desenvolvimento de habilidades e de competências necessárias para o desenvolvimento da juventude periférica, concebidas neste trabalho como letramento de reexistência. Ou seja, que propicie uma leitura crítica do mundo com base em uma interpretação do corpo negro que se abre para uma afromemória. Nesse sentido, esta pesquisa repensa o corpo do (a) jovem negro (a), como portador de uma afromemória, cujos sentidos são ressignificados por meio da dança breaking, relacionando-a com a herança cultural trazida dos (as) africanos (as) escravizados (as), por meio do diálogo entre as experiências estéticas ancestrais e contemporâneas. Dessa maneira, pretende contribuir para a reinvenção de uma educação afrocentrada. As reflexões apresentadas priorizam as leituras da filosofia do campo negro apresentadas por Molefi Asante (1988, 2003), Achille Mbembe (2014) e Frantz Fanon (1968, 2008) e, especificamente, do hiphop, tomou-se como base os trabalhos de Ana Lúcia Souza (2011) e Marc Lamont Hill (2014). Tais leituras foram feitas no sentido de orientar a pesquisa de campo realizada na ONG Casa do Zezinho, situada no Capão Redondo e em algumas escolas municipais de São Paulo, como parte de dois projetos de políticas públicas realizadas pelo grupo de pesquisa, O Hip-Hop e as Culturas afro-brasileiras, do qual faz parte esta dissertação, sob coordenação da orientadora, cujo objetivo foi propiciar a formação de professores (as) das redes públicas de ensino, a título de contribuição para a efetivação de políticas públicas amparadas pela lei 10.639/03, e, desse modo, contribuir para a decolonização do currículo. / The research aims to analyze to what extent aesthetic expressions of hip-hop, especially breaking dance, are consistent with the idea of \"historical telescopy\" developed by Béthune (2003), according to which such manifestations would tend to update the Afro-American and Afro-Brazilian cultural traditions through a contemporary aesthetic view, as a strategy of struggle and socio-cultural strengthening for black and peripheral youth. Thus, considering the needs of Brazilian public education, the research intends to propose didactic strategies to prepare these youth for the future, guaranteeing a fair education. The idea is to prioritize the development of skills and of competences necessary for the development of the peripheral youth, conceived in this work as \"literacy of reexistence\". That is, to provide a critical reading of the world based on an interpretation of the black body that opens for an afromemory. In this sense, this work rethinks the young black\'s body as a carrier of an afromemory, whose meanings are resignified through breaking dance, relating it to the cultural inheritance brought by enslaved Africans, through the dialogue between ancestral aesthetic experiences and contemporary art. In this way, it intends to contribute to the reinvention of an Afro-centered education. The reflections presented prioritized the readings of the black field philosophy presented by Molefi Asante (1988, 2003), Achille Mbembe (2014) and Frantz Fanon (1968, 2008) and specifically of hip-hop. Ana Lúcia Souza (2011), Marc Lamont Hill (2014). These readings were done in order to guide the field research carried out at the Casa do Zezinho NGO, located in Capão Redondo and some municipal schools in São Paulo, as part of two public policy researches carried out by the research group Hip Hop and the Afro-Brazilian Cultures, in which this current research is inserted. Under the coordination of the research tutor, the objective of the research group was to provide training for teachers in public education systems, as a contribution to the implementation of public policies covered by Law 10.639 / 03, and thus contribute to the decolonization of the curriculum.

In this thesis, I examine the ways in which a growing number of Indigenous artists in the United States and Canada are using hip hop not only as a form of artistic expression, but also to vent frustration about and to draw attention to contemporary issues affecting their communities. These artists participate in a tradition of politically conscious performance that has influenced and been influenced by Indigenous social movements across North America. Indigenous hip hop serves to affirm and redefine twenty-first century Indigenous identities, disrupting and reinterpreting stereotypical representations of Native Americans in a process which I describe as an “authenticity loop.” By utilizing artistic choices and strategic representations of indigeneity, the artists I examine have firmly established that they along with their communities are not remnants of the past, even as they maintain a continuity between previous generations and the present day.

No description available.

Objetivo dessa tese é trazer uma visão ampla do Hip Hop. Diferentemente do que se têm afirmado em outras pesquisas, no nosso caso interessa tomar o movimento como conjunto, a fim de entender de que maneira, de um lado, existem diversas formas de compreender esse fenômeno e, de outro, como a dicotomia entre política e cultura torna-se central num debate. Antes de reiterar a polaridade nossa meta é mostrar como esses conceitos dialogam, e de uma forma e a um só tempo, tensa e ambígua. Para tanto analisamos o Hip Hop paulistano, sobretudo, a partir da visão de três posses e do gangsta rap. Nesses locais e nesse estilo musical, política e cultura funcionam como verdadeira moeda de troca.

N/A

Japan is currently undergoing a subtle but pervasive social upheaval, a period of broad structural reform and soul-searching triggered by the rigors of the collapse of the hyperinflated "Bubble Economy" of the late 1980s. As the nation confronts the irretrievable loss of that economic mass delusion, it is turning instead to the reclamation of a quality of life sacrificed for much of the 20th century to national ambition for first military, and then economic pre-eminence. Historian Jeff Kingston has claimed that the ongoing changes, ranging from the reduction of working hours to the institution of freedom of information laws, have been equal in magnitude to those following the Meiji Restoration and Japan's defeat in World War II. Arguably, they represent the long-delayed fruition of postwar democratizing reforms. This dissertation examines the role of American popular music, and particularly hip hop, in reflecting and shaping these changes. Starting with the 1920s and 1930s, when jazz-loving "modern girls" stood for the alluring and threatening decadence of urbanization, the influence of American music on Japan has been strong for decades. This influence came to full flower during and after Japan's surrender and subsequent occupation, as exemplified by successive trends for everything from rockabilly to country and western to folk. Though obviously the condition of occupation enhanced the exchange of musical texts, and did exercise particularly economic pressure on Japanese musicians to adopt American styles, it is not simply a case of cultural adaptation motivated by domination of force. The central testament to this is the eventual role African-American music - not just jazz, but rock, funk, and soul - took on as the 'music of resistance,' initially in connection with the student protests that marked Japan in the 1960's. Such an articulation shows the powerful role of Japanese desire, particularly on the part of youth, for the America represented by popular music. Most recently, hip hop has shown the continued attraction African-American music holds for Japanese people, and youth in particular. Hip hop reached Japan in the early 1980s and entered the mainstream with East End X Yuri's million-selling pop-rap singles of the mid-1990s. Its prominence continues to this day, in many cases embodied in Japanese artists who imitate African-American styles and sounds wholesale. Such imitation has been roundly criticized by international critics and commentators, condemned as contextless cultural theft and a testament to Japanese insensitivity on matters of race. In my study I examine a cadre of contemporary musicians who, while equally dedicated to hip hop, firmly resist such uncritical imitation of blackness, instead emphasizing their own unique musical and cultural innovations. I argue that this transition from imitation to innovation mirrors a broader cultural shift away from widespread deference to authority and towards a greater openness to innovation and change, and is just one way that the work of Japan's underground hip hop artists resonates with the ongoing 'quiet revolution.' Hip hop has encountered a few particularly important ongoing social changes: that from a lifetime employment system to one increasingly characterized by temporary and part-time labor; from a self-declared homogenous society to a multicultural one; and, more generally, from one defined by elite emphasis on social compliance and loyalty to a wider acceptance of iconoclasm and individuality. It is tempting to classify this as the transition from an 'oppressive' system to a 'free' one - from bad to good. But there are complexities and ambivalence inherent in the emergent situation. For example, while the new employment model provides much greater flexibility for individuals and frees them from the past tyranny of the corporate system, it also exposes them to much greater financial uncertainty. The rising sense of self-worth among minorities, for which hip hop is an important channel, simultaneously threatens to transform these identities into objectified fetishes. Individuality is not without its costs. Meanwhile, hip hop is also being deployed in ways that reinforce the old model of deference and authoritarianism, particularly by artists who promote revisionist histories and the revival of militarism. The significance of hip hop for social change derives from a long history of interaction between Japanese and African-American culture. This history resurfaces in hip hop recordings, as well as in the lifestyle of urban musicians and fans. This dissertation follows the daily lives and viewpoints of hip hop artists in Tokyo and throughout Japan, from some of its most successful to those just starting their careers. It tracks their music-making processes and their practices of cultural adaptation, and places them within the larger context of Japanese society. It ultimately describes how an art form derided as imitative and derivative has come to reflect the very unique contours of the new soil to which it has been transplanted.

With the rise of First Nations owned and created television content at the turn of the century, came a demand to see an accurate representation of Aboriginality that could look at Aboriginals as both here and modern. From 2003-2006, the first Aboriginal made and produced television series entitled Moccasin Flats, I argue, used modern day hip-hop discourse to both engage and dissect a host of complex issues facing modern day urban Aboriginal society. This research project mobilizes multiple methodologies; including: 1.) Eco’s code and sign function semiotic analysis, which operates to identify various hip-hop codes in the text; 2.)Hall’s method of articulation to look at how meaning is fixed in the discourse surrounding the show; and finally 3) Deleuze’s rhizomic approach to identity to see how the shows main characters are constructed in a way to highlight the paradoxical and undercut certain flirtations with essentialization. This three-tiered methodological process paints a picture of a new complex use of discourse to accentuate different facets of aboriginality that had previously been the sole product of dominant hegemonic institutions which relied on racist stereotypes. By dissecting how identity is formed on Moccasin Flats, I will show how aboriginal filmmakers construct a self-reflexive space where the character is perpetually in the process of ‘becoming’ and identity is always a site of negotiation.