CMS 390 P
Orality, Community and Rap
Dr. Jürgen Streeck
471-1955
jstreeck@mail.utexas.edu
Office hrs M 2-3, WF 12-1
CMA 7.136

Class description

This class investigates the global Hip-Hop Nation as a paradigmatic speech community: a community exclusively constituted by particular ways of using language and other forms of symbolism and growing through the circulation of symbolic forms through communicative networks. While maintaining a focus on the rhetorical practices of rap we will also address rap's socio-cultural history; relationships between language and music; poetics; embodied and indexed identities, among other topics and relate these to theories of genre, orality, community, and interaction.

Assignments

(1) Preparation of one class-meeting: receive questions, summarize main points of literature, provide discussion outline (20%).

(2) Write an analysis of an example of the rhetoric of rap, drawing upon the literature read up until October 20 (5 pp., details to be discussed, due October 27, 20%).

(3) Write a 15 pp. paper that is responsive to at least 4 of the following themes:

• rap as oral and postliterate proactice
• rap's rhetorical practices
• hip-hop as a paradigm for ways in which communicative practices and language constitute communities
• social and cultural criticism in hip-hop
• oral and electronic intertextuality (voices and sampling)
• hip-hop has created its own public
• hip-hop as a (underutilized?) political force
• hybridity and authenticity
• local and global identities
• social memory
• orality, language, improvisation, speaking
• language ideologies in hip-hop
• agency and communicative competence

Program/Schedule

Reading

Books

Bakhtin, M. M. (1986/1952-3). Speech genres and other late essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Havelock, E. A. (1963). Preface to Plato. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Krims, A. (2000). Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Morgan, M. (2002). Language, Discourse and Power in African American Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Potter, R. A. (1995). Spectacular Vernaculars. Hip-Hop and the Politics of Postmodernism. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Rose, T. (1994). Black Noise. Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Hanover & London: Wesleyan University Press.

Reading packet

Allen, E. J. (1996). Making the strong survive: The contours and contradictions of message rap. In W. E. Perkins (Ed.), Droppin' Science. Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture (pp. 159-191). Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Bennett, A. (1999). Hip hop am Main: The localization of rap music and hip hop culture. Media, Culture & Society, 21, 77-91.

Berliner, P. F. (1994). Thinking in Jazz. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Ch.s 4 (Getting your vocabulary straight) and 8 (Composing in the moment)

Boyd, T. (1994). Check yo self before you wreck yo self: Variations on a political theme in rap music and popular culture. Public Culture, 1(1), 289-311.

Brennan, T. (1994). Off the gangsta tip: A rap appreciation, or forgetting about Los Angeles. Critical Inquiry, 20(Summer 1994), 663-693.

Caglar, A. S. (1998). Popular culture, marginality, and institutional incorporation: German-Turkish rap and Turkish pop in Berlin. Cultural Dynamics, 10(3), 243 261.

Decker, J. L. (1994). The state of rap: Time and place in hip hop nationalism. In A. Ross & T. Rose (Eds.), Microphone Fiends. Youth Music and Youth Culture (pp. 99-121). New York: Routledge.

Demers, J. (2003). Sampling the 1970s in hip-hop. Popular Music, 22(1), 41-56.

Finnegan, R. (1977). Oral Poetry. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Ch. 3 (Composition)

Forman, M. (2000). 'Represent': race, space and place in rap music. Popular Music, 19(1), 65-90.

Forman, M. (2002a). The 'Hood Comes First. Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip Hop. Middletown, CT: Welseyan University Press. Ch. 2 (‘Welcome to the city’), 6 (Boyz n girlz in the ‘hood) and 8 (The hood took me under)

Forman, M. (2002b). No sleep ‘til Brooklyn. American Quarterly, 54, 1, 101-127.

Gates, H. L. (1988). The Signifying Monkey. New York: Oxford University Press. Ch.2 (The signifying monkey and the language of signifyin(g))

Gerard, M., & Sidnell, J. (2000). Reaching out to the core: On the interactional work of the MC in drum & bass performance. Popular Music and Society, 24(3), 21 39.

Gilroy, P. (1993). The Black Atlantic. Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ch. 3 (Jewels brought from bondage)

Hansen, S. (2002). Hip-hop nation. Salon.com(July, 10, 2002).

Kelley, R. D. G. (1996). Kickin' reality, kickin' ballistics: Gangsta rap and postindustrial Los Angeles. In W. E. Perkins (Ed.), Droppin' Science. Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture (pp. 117-158). Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Middleton, J., & Beebe, R. (2002). The racial politics of hybridity and 'neo-eclecticism' in contemporary popular music. Popular Music, 21/2, 159-172.

Ong, Q. J. (1982). Orality and Literacy. London: Routledge. Ch.3 (Some psychodynamics of orality)

Orlando, V. (2003). From Rap to Raï in the Mixing Bowl: Beur Hip-Hop Culture and Banlieue Cinema in Urban France. Journal of Popular Culture, 36(3), 395-415.

Potter, R. A. (1997). Not the same. Race, repetition, and difference in hip-hop and dance music. In T. Swiss & J. Sloop & A. Herman (Eds.), Mapping the Beat. Popular Music and Contemporary Theory (pp. 31-46). Oxford: Blackwell.

Robins, K., & Morley, D. (1996). Almanci, Yabanci. Cultural Studies, 10(2), 248-254.

Streeck, J. (1992). The Converse Conversation of Rap. Univ. of Texas at Austin: unpubl. ms.

Walser, R. (1995). Rhythm, rhyme, and rhetoric in the music of public enemy. Ethnomusicology, 39(2), 193-217.

Warner, M. (2002). Publics and counterpublics. Public Culture, 14(1), 49-90.

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