According to R. G. Collingwood, the historian does far more than simply present a series of facts to his audience. Such an individual actually re-enacts past thought...within the context of his own knowledge and therefore, in reenacting it, criticizes it, forms his own judgment of its value, [and] corrects whatever errors he can discern in it [my emphasis]. This groundbreaking re-assessment of what history is and what historians are supposed to do has recently opened up the field to all kinds of opportunities for scholars to reenact, critique, and revise historical record. However, I would argue that hip hop music is an art form that also reenacts, judges, and critiques both history and present-day culture by using bits of pre-recorded music as an intricate part of its incisive social commentary. In this thesis, I will use three songs to illustrate how hip hop as a musical genre achieves what Collingwood says true history should. The three songs are: Tupac Shakurs posthumously-released 1998 single titled Changes, Jay-Zs 2002 I Did It My Way, and Lupe Fiascos recently-released Daydreamin (September 2006). I will argue that, in each song, the artists rely on the irony of the sampled selection to reinforce the urgency of their messages, thus using reenactment as both a re-visioning of the artistic merits of the borrowed texts as well as a call for national redress of some of Americas most egregious and longstanding social ills.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-07262007-233648 |
| Date | 01 August 2007 |
| Creators | Birdsong, Destiny O. |
| Contributors | Jonathan Lamb, Lynn Enterline |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-07262007-233648/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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