Hip Hop and Indigeneity

Dan ConwayDaniel.Conway@uts.edu.au

A process – not an end-state. Dynamic. Social, economic, cultural, technological, ecological,

consciousness. Multi-dimensional. Contested term. Global capital? Questions:

◦ How does it happen? Causes? Combination of factors?◦ What are the effects?◦ Uniform process or uneven?◦ Continuation of previous processes – or totally new?◦ Does it create new forms of hierarchy and inequality?◦ ‘National’, ‘regional’, local’ – what do these terms now

mean?◦ Rhizomatic systems!

Globalisationz

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nJmGrNdJ5Gw

Rhizomatic systems

DELEUZE, G. & GUATTARI, F. (1987) A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia, Burns & Oates.

Wallerstein, 1974. The ‘Core-periphery model’.

World Systems Theory

Globalisation goes both ways.

Resistance (Cameroons) -> Musical resistance -> Abeng becomes conch.

African roots -> Instrumentation, drums. Slavery -> Language. Poverty -> DIY culture and soundsystems. Religion -> Rastafarianism. Globalisation -> Imitating RnB. Innovation -> Reggae.

Example: Jamaica

The Police UB40 Skrillex

UK Ska Punk The Clash

Culture Club 10cc The Wiggles

The Specials Madness Cold Chisel

Men At Work Massive Attack Eric Clapton

The Cure Sublime Bad Brains

Fishbone The Herbs Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons

Ace of Bass Manu Chao Millie Small

Prodigy Living Colour Portishead

Influenced…

etc…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEgCkOfl4jE

And even…

What is local? Western craving for authenticity. ‘Real’ and

‘Simulated’. (Frith) Local desire for autonomy. Rousseau – idealisation of ‘native’ states. Nostalgia.

The Vigor of Creole Forms“One aspect of this is that we may well

entertain the idea, as a counterweight especially to radical diffusionism, that the transnational flow of culture can give the periphery access to a wider cultural inventory, providing new resources of technology and symbolic form to refashion and quite probably integrate with what exists of more locally rooted materials.”

-Hannerz, 1989

A Libyan rebel fighter scrambles from a ditch carrying a rocket propelled grenade (RPG) to reach the battle scene with forces loyal to leader Moamar Gaddafi, just a few kilometres outside the oil town of Ras Lanuf on March 9, 2011.

“The center mostly speaks, and the periphery mostly listens, without talking back.”

“Radical diffusionism offers the scenario of a disappearance of cultural differences. "One conclusion still seems unanimously shared", claims the prominent media researcher Cees Hamelink; "the impressive variety of the world's cultural systems is waning due to a process of'cultural synchronization‘ that is without historical precedent" (Hamelink 1983:3).

Horror tales are told: "The incredibly rich local musical tradition of many Third World countries is rapidly disappearing under the onslaught of dawn-to-dusk North American pop music.“

-Hannerz, 1989

“Popular Nigerian music stars such as Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Sunny Ade and Ebenezer Obey hardly fear the foreign competition, and do not enact pale copies of it, but perform in their own styles of global bricolage. The juju music which has in recent years been the dominant popular music form in western Nigeria, for example, combines inspirations from more traditional Yoruba music and highlife, another and rather earlier established popular music form. From modest origins in palm wine bars, it has moved up to large bands performing in night clubs and selling their record albums in large editions.”

-Hannerz, 1989

But…

“There can be some particular vigor, then, in the hybrid, or as I prefer to think of them, creolized and creolizing cultural forms which grow between center and periphery. Much of what is new in the global ecumene nowadays, for instance in literature and music, seems to come from here.”

- Hannerz, 1989

‘Third Cultures’

- Pieterse, 1994

Is the flow of ideas and culture from the periphery to the core a form of resource pillage? Or anti-hegemonic infiltration?

A continuum of Hybridisation?

Assimilation Superficial aspects of

local culture are ‘pasted’ onto new ideas/practices.

Leans towards centre.

Destablisation

New ideas are changed, subverted,

made to fit local ideas and practices. Leans towards

periphery.

Pieterse, 1994.

And just what IS western culture?

“If there is a lesson in the broad shape of of this circulation of cultures, it is surely that we are all already contaminated by each other…”

- Kwame Appiah, 1992

Contemporary Western music =Blues (African) + European harmony

Ie: A Hybrid.

Indigenous (local) + HipHop (global)

Ie: A Hybrid.

SyncreticCreole

Cross-culturalMontageBricolageMélange

Cross-over

Indigenous music (well, all music) is an expression of lived experience.

Identity – how we choose to be seen and negotiate our social worlds.

Musical practice is an expression of cultural norms and values.

Can be used as a vehicle for resistance and anti-hegemony.

Can be exported/appropriated back to the ‘core’.

IDENTITY

STEGER, M. (2010) Globalization: A Very Short Introduction, New York, Sterling.

DELEUZE, G. & GUATTARI, F. (1987) A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia, Burns & Oates.

Optional Readings

Bradley, L., Bass Culture: When Reggae Was King. Penguin Books, 2000.

STAVRIAS, G. (2005) Droppin' conscious beats and flows: Aboriginal hip hop and youth identity. Australian Aboriginal Studies, 2, 44-54.

HANNERZ, U. (1989) Culture between center and periphery: Toward a macroanthropology. Ethnos, 54, 200-216.