Although music has seemingly always formed an integral part of human culture,
technological advances in contemporary society have increased both its accessibility
and portability, allowing for unprecedented production and consumption of a medium
that allows individuals to enact and display various social identities during day-to-day
life. Furthermore, recent research has demonstrated that youth consume more music
that any other age group. Thus music may be considered as a primary cultural
influence in the lives of youth. While the bulk of the research conducted in
understanding the form and function of this influence has been located in the
disciplines of sociology and musicology, Psychologists in Europe and America have
become increasingly interested in understanding the role of music in constructing and
maintaining identity during this critical period of development. As a contribution to
this field of application outside of these contexts and located within a qualitative
framework, this study explored the role of Rap/Hip Hop music, as one of the most
popular global and local genres of music, in the meaning and maintenance of identity
in a cohort of South African youth. The resultant thematic framework illustrated the
complex tensions negotiated by youth through assuming Hip Hop culture membership
in South Africa. Importantly, the study showed that the nature of Hip Hop culture; its
emphasis on self-expression, individuation and critical social awareness dovetails
with many of the traditional psychological developmental theories of youth identity.
Hip Hop consumption also implied appropriating identity markers from a wide range
of social influences, posing challenges to the application of traditional social identity
theory in accounting for in and out groupings. This was most pronounced in the way
that ‘remixing’, as a governing musical principle in Hip Hop seems to resonate as key
mode of identity and identification amongst its South African consumers. Thus, it
seems fitting that South African youth currently in the midst of cultural, economic and
political transitions would embrace an eclectic rather than rigidly bounded genre of
music with such enthusiasm. In some ways then Hip Hop in South Africa, appears to
provide youth with the means to remix past and present, old and new, global and
local, self and other.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/6628 |
| Date | 06 March 2009 |
| Creators | Cohen, Dror |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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