Rap music and the poetics of identity
This book explores in detail how rap music is put together musically, and how it contributes to the formation of cultural identities for both artists and audiences. It also argues that current skeptical attitudes toward music analysis in popular music studies are misplaced and need to be reconsidered if cultural studies are to treat seriously the social force of rap music, popular musics, and music in general. Drawing extensively on scholarship in popular music studies, cultural theory, communications, critical theory, and musicology, the author redefines "music theory" as meaning simply "theory about music," in which musical poetics (the study of how musical sound is deployed) may play a crucial role when its claims are contextualized and demystified. Theorizing local and global geographies of rap, the author discusses at length the music of Ice Cube, the Goodie Mob, KRS-One, Dutch group the Spookrijders, and Canadian Cree rapper Bannock. -- Adapted from publisher's description
Criticism, interpretation, etc
xii, 217 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
9780521632683, 9780521634472, 0521632684, 0521634474
41606292
Introduction : music theory, musical poetics, rap music
Music analysis and rap music
A genre system for rap music
The musical poetics of a "revolutionary" identity
Rap geography and soul food
Two cases of localized (and globalized) musical poetics
Postface