three page
Resistance through Music RRS 480
Agenda ❖ Reading overview
❖ Choose a film
❖ Reminder: forum due Sunday by 11:59pm
Image source: pinterest
“Born and raised in Harlem and the Bronx in New York City, Tricia Rose graduated from Yale University where she received a BA in Sociology and then received her Ph.D. from Brown University in American Studies. She has taught at NYU, and UC Santa Cruz and is currently Chancellor’s Professor of Africana Studies and the Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. Rose also serves as Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives. In addition to her duties at Brown, Professor Rose sits on the Boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Color of Change and Black Girls Rock, Inc.
Rose is an internationally respected scholar of post-civil rights era Black U.S. culture, popular music, social issues, gender and sexuality. She has been awarded for her teaching and has received several scholarly fellowships including ones from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the American Association of University Women.”
Bio/Image Source: TriciaRose.com
Who are our authors?
Megan Thee Stallion is a rapper/songwriter from Houston, Texas.
“Megan has scored major streaming numbers, earned comparisons to the likes of Trina and Lil Kim and signed a record deal with 300 Entertainment. Her music is unapologetically Southern, with her thick Houston accent bouncing effortlessly over sensual and bare trap beats, allowing her lyricism and delivery to shine through. On releases like her 2018 mixtape Tina Snow, which has been streamed more than 11 million times across all platforms, she offers a refreshing female perspective to a Southern rap scene whose stars remain largely male, and presents herself as a peer to unapologetically confident internet-first stars like Cupcakke, Rico Nasty, Cuban Doll, City Girls and Saweetie.”
Bio Source: Rolling Stone Image Source: GQ
Who are our authors?
The Birth of Hip Hop
“All Aboard the Night Train: Flow, Layering, and Rupture in Postindustrial New York” by Tricia Rose ● Chapter 2 in the book Black Noise from 1994
○ One of the first academic books to study hip hop; today, it is considered foundational to Hip Hop Studies
● Rose defines hip hop as “a cultural form that attempts to negotiate the experiences of marginalization, brutally truncated opportunity, and oppression within the cultural imperatives of African-American and Caribbean history, identity, and community” (21)
● Rose explores three main research Q’s (see p. 26): ○ What is hip hop culture, and what contributed to its
emergence? ○ What are some of the defining aesthetic and stylistic
characteristics of hip hop? ○ What is it about the postindustrial city in general and the social
and political terrain in the 1970s in New York City specifically that contributed to the emergence and early reception of hip hop?
Rose (cont’d) ● Rose emphasizes the importance of locating hip hop “within the context of deindustrialization” (22)
○ By 1970s, there was a significant decrease in federal funding for social services in the city, an increase in displacement of mostly Black/Latinx folks, and loss of industrial jobs
○ New York = a city marked by extreme increasing wealth and income inequality along racial lines ■ “Between 1978 and 1986, the people in the bottom 20 percent of the income scale experienced an
absolute decline in income, whereas the top 20 percent experienced most of the economic growth. Black and Hispanics disproportionately occupied this bottom fifth. During this same period, 30 percent of New York’s Hispanic households (40 percent for Puerto Ricans) and 25 percent of Black households lived at or below the poverty line” (28)
○ Mainstream depictions of South Bronx = negative, racist/classist (see p. 33) ○ This history = the backdrop for the emergence of hip hop culture; these were the living conditions of the youth
who created hip hop culture in New York ■ “Although city leaders and the popular press had literally and figuratively condemned the South Bronx
neighborhoods and their inhabitants, its youngest Black and Hispanic residents answered back” (34)
● Rose discusses the three main elements of hip hop culture: ○ Graffiti, breakdancing, and rap ○ Explores how young people of color used these elements to resist racialized, gendered, and classed narratives
about Black/Latinx youth ○ Rose’s important gender analysis; youth resisting some social inequalities while enforcing others
Clip from “Black Noise @ 25: Scott Poulson-Bryant and Tricia Rose”
“Why I Speak Up for Black Women” by Megan Thee Stallion ● Published Oct. 13, 2020 in The New York Times
● Megan discusses the specific discrimination and violence that Black women often experience in different contexts/industries both currently and historically. She also reflects on her own experiences of violence and sexism
● “In every industry, women are pitted against one another, but especially in hip-hop, where it seems as if the male-dominated ecosystem can handle only one female rapper at a time. Countless times, people have tried to pit me against Nicki Minaj and Cardi B, two incredible entertainers and strong women. I’m not “the new” anyone; we are all unique in our own ways. Wouldn’t it be nice if Black girls weren’t inundated with negative, sexist comments about Black women? If they were told instead of the many important things that we’ve achieved?”