Diversity and Global Culture - Essay Example

American culture is rich, complex and unique and emerged from the short and rapid European conquest of an enormous landmass sparsely settled by diverse indigenous peoples. Although European cultural patterns were predominant the people from Africa, Asia and North America also contributed to American culture. All of these groups influenced popular tastes in music, dress, entertainment, and cuisine. As a result, American culture possesses an unusual mixture of patterns and forms forged from among its diverse peoples. Though this diversity at times tends to strike a discordant note, all the same its complexity has created a society that struggles to achieve tolerance and has contributed to the production of a distinctively casual personal style that identifies Americans everywhere. The USA is strongly committed to democracy, in which views of the majority prevail, and strives for equality in law and institutions. The American Heritage College Dictionary defines hip hop as, "The popular culture of big city and especially inner city youth, characterized by graffiti art, break dancing, and rap music-of or relating to this culture." Hip hop is a cultural phenomenon that developed in the late 1970's in the Brooklyn and the Bronx, and a musical style emerged from it. Hip hop has become a pervasive element of popular culture and there are hip hop exercise videos, children's books, adult books, magazines, magazine articles and theses devoted to it. Further, hip hop's roots are much older and its use of music from other genres is reflected in Renaissance parody masses. The roots of this phenomenon lie in Jamaica of the 1940's and by the 1960's trucks fitted with sound equipment started playing American rhythm & blues records, in street corners, for the listening pleasure of the people in the neighborhood. Hip hop music, rap or rap music is a style of popular music, which consists of two main components, namely, rapping or MCing and DJing or audio mixing and scratching. Along with break dancing and graffiti or tagging, these compose the four elements of hip hop, a cultural movement that was initiated by inner-city youth, mainly the African Americans. This phenomenon was wide spread in the Farragut Projects in Brooklyn, NY. Some of the early DJs were Coxson Dodd, Prince Buster, Duke Reid, Maboya, Plummer and Kool DJ D who concentrated on disco music. One of them was Kool Herc who had immigrated from Jamaica and settled in the Bronx with his sound system he called "the Herculords." Kool Herc focused on rhythm & blues and funk records and one of his innovations was to play just the "break," or the musical material between the verses of a song, over and over again. He achieved this effect by using two turntables mounted with the same record. This came to be called "break-beat deejaying." People began to perform "strange, acrobatic twisting dance routines" to these episodes that came to be called "break dances" (Stancell, 1996). Kool Herc hired MCs or master of ceremonies who had to keep up a light banter between the songs with the audience. This was the origin of "rapping." DJ Hollywood, one of the early MC's at Kool Herc's parties would use rhyming verses in his rap. One of these included the words "hip hop" "which much later were used interchangeably to define the music of rap and the culture of those who attended Kool Herc's parties(Stancell, 1996)." Afrika Bambaata was another early figure in the rap and hip hop world. He participated in many competitions between DJs and MCs often termed as battles. In addition to rapping, these battles were decided on who had the more interesting collection of breaks to play. Afrika Bambatta's breaks were drawn from many genres, including rock, rhythm & blues, mambo, German disco and calypso (Stancell, 1996). This practice of hip hop of incorporating existing sounds like recorded samples of music by other groups in addition to voices or ambient sounds led to lawsuits when the groups involved failed to credit their sources(Romanowsky and George - Warren, 1995). Another early innovator DJ Grandmaster Flash extended Kool Herc's break beat deejaying by pre-cueing records to match the songs achieving a much smoother transition between songs. Many of the recordings in the discography identify the number of beats per minute for each song and this enables a DJ to match songs on this basis. Scratching, which involves moving a record back and forth underneath the needle, creating a scratching and percussive sound forming an important part of hip hop music, was developed by Grand Wizard Theodore. This technique has led to claims that with hip hop the DJ has become a musician and the turntable used in this way a percussion instrument(Stancell, 1996). Hip hop has ensured the continuing production of recordings in the LP format because the hip hop DJs would be unable to do scratching. Hip hop has invaded popular culture and is racist, sexist focuses on issues like social inequality and the danger of heroin use. From its early days when it was played in projects and some underground clubs; it has gained a profile that has led to its inclusion in the 1992 presidential debates over Sister Soljah. In the 20th Century Fox movie, Bulworth (Dowd, 1998), Warren Beatty plays a Senator who berates his opponents using rap. Hip hop is thus firmly entrenched. Hip-hop is a minority based cultural "movement" that has embraced corporate branding from its very inception. Run-DMC, an early and influential rap music group from New York City, pioneered the hip-hop and rap market in the 1980s with songs about their brand name shoes. By bringing the hip-hop street look to the stage, Run-DMC changed the image of rap. They were not only the first rap group to be regularly broadcast on MTV (Music Television) but in 1985 they became the first rap group to appear on the television program American Bandstand, hosted by media personality Dick Clark. It was formed in 1983 by three friends from New York. Rapper Joseph "Run" Simmons, rapper Darryl "DMC" McDaniels and disc jockey (DJ) Jason "Jam Master Jay" Mizell. The group released its first album in 1984, Run-DMC. Due to "Sucker M.C.'s," this recording became the bestselling rap album up to that time. In 1985 Run-DMC released its second album, King of Rock, and acted and performed in the motion picture KrushGroove, a fictionalized account of Run-DMC and the development of rap-music record label Def Jam. In 1985, violent incidents at rap concerts caused the national media to focus on rap as a reflection of violence and drug abuse among young black males. Mizell when asked by DJ Times what he was most proud of stated, "Believing in something and being a part of something you believe in and watching it work and coming from it," he said. "Back in the day, if someone said that hip-hop and rap was a fad, that was a joke to me because they just didn't know what they were talking about. ... Now it is on the No. 1 this, No. 1 that. And it isn't just about making hip-hop; we were able to make hip-hop for everybody" (Run - DMC star, 37, was hip - hop pioneer, 2002). By the late fifties young working-class Jamaicans had grown weary of mento and favoured rhythm-and-blues, "cowboy music" or bluegrass. Aspiring young Jamaican singers like Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Bob Andy and numerous others began singing imitations of American soul songs. The Jamaicans instinctively brought their own local musical cadences and rhythms to bear on the tunes being imitated. This coincided with an infusion of the very African music of the Afro-Jamaican cults, which was lifted straight from the "laboring" movements made by cult celebrants as they worked themselves up to the point of spirit possession. Both the movement and the accompanying rhythm were secularized in a manner similar to the crossover from gospel to soul music among African Americans, and a new musical form and accompanying dance, known as ska, was created. The music swiftly changed, first from ska to rock-steady and finally to reggae. Black Americans strongly resisted most versions of reggae but it rapidly became popular with the white college students of America and soon broke out of the campus circuit with the success of Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff and Peter Tosh (Davis and Simon, 1979). Despite this hybridization, certain elements of African-American hip-hop seem remained as such, like the negative image of hip-hop artists that is present in the media, in academia and in the general public. Rap is commonly perceived as violent and misogynistic but this should not be de-contextualized from the violence and misogyny that is inherent in contemporary capitalist culture. Harvard professor Cornel West states that, "rap is imprinted with the economic degradation that it intends to confront, and which at times it also reflects. The real obscenity is not the vulgarity coming from the mouths of the rappers but the society in which they were born and raised"(Younge, 2001). Hip-hop music has too often been the focus of censorship debates that function to de-legitimize a powerful method of black and working-class expression and resistance. Music is only one part of Hip-Hop culture, which encompasses four major elements: rapping, deejaying, break dancing and graffiti-writing. Beyond the rhyming style known as rapping or MC-ing, deejaying uses the turntable as an instrument that the MC raps over while listeners engage in the quasi-acrobatic gyrations of breakdancing. Rapping varies from the rhythmic vocal delivery of blues artists and the artistic jazz-influenced delivery of the Last Poets to the almost spoken-word delivery of Bob Dylan and Lou Reed. Graffiti ranges from the illegal stylized form of public art often spray-painted on walls to the signature design motifs on clothing, album covers, and posters. As an extension of graffiti, the creative spellings used by many "aerosol artists" ("Str8" for "straight" or "boyz" for "boys," for example) has constituted a unique vocabulary that has itself become a stylistic signature of the Hip-Hop movement and which has spilled over as a shorthand in computer chat rooms. Hip-Hop was criticized for its social merits and its merit as a musical form. The practice of borrowing fragments from other songs, often with a digital sampler, greatly influenced other forms of music to the point that, by the late 1990s, sampling-based sound collage became recognized as a legitimate musical art form. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Hip-Hop music remained one of the only outlets where an inner-city youth's opinion could be heard unfiltered by mass media censors, prompting artist Chuck D to proclaim that form of music to be the "Black America's CNN." By the late-1990s, Hip-Hop has become virtually synonymous with youth culture and its music and associated styles have been appropriated for TV ads, music videos, Pop and R&B songs, fashion magazines and in malls throughout the United States. By the late 1980s, Hip-Hop music was earning a lot of money and its annual record sales reached $100 million in 1988, which was two percent of the total music industry's sales. The next year Billboard added "Rap" charts to its magazine and MTV started Yo! MTV Raps, which quickly became the network's highest-rated show. Hip-Hop was generating $400 million annually by 1992, i.e. five percent of the music industry's annual income. These amounts doubled to $700 million in 1993. In 1995 Hip-Hop's annual sales rose to eight percent of the music industry's annual income. During the first half of 1998, Hip-Hop sales were up twenty-eight percent over 1997. Even though the West Coast-based gangsta rap genre was on the decline by the mid-1990s, many sub-genres and artists replaced it. Wu-Tang Clan, a New York City crew of nine talented MCs, became one of the major forces in Hip-Hop and by 1998 had two multi-platinum records. Puff Daddy sold millions of records making popular party raps, and the multicultural Fugees became one of the most successful crossover groups of the 1990s. Female artists like Foxy Brown, Lil' Kim, Lauryn Hill, Lady of Rage, Missy Elliot, Queen Latifah, Bahamadia, Heather B and others focused on women's profiles in the Hip-Hop industry. Also in the late 1990s, the art of deejaying underwent a renaissance, with turntable crews Invisibl Skratch Piklz, X-ecutioners and the Beat Junkies, as well as individual turntablists DJ Shadow, DJ Krush, DJ Faust, Kid Koala and Mixmaster Mike expanding the sonic possibilities of using two turntables, the work of DJ Q - Bert is fascinating to say the least(Q - Bert, 1997). The hip hop group Outkast, consisting of Big Boi or Antwan Patton and Andr "Ice Cold" 3000 (Andr Benjamin), won three grammys in the 2004 Grammy Awards, including album of the year. At present Hip-hop dominates the music industry like the Williams sisters dominate tennis. Hip-hop has great impact and influence. Rap music is just one element of Outkast's latest project, the two-disc "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below." These songs borrow from the sounds of big band, jazz, '70s soul, and other styles-all the while containing lyrics that deal with urban culture. The project is a venture into the history of African-American music and culture and American culture as a whole. True hip-hop fans view hip-hop as a culture, a way of life, a language, a fashion, a set of values and a unique perspective. Hip-hop has the ability to take the inner-city negative cash flow system of hustling, pushing, pimping, and banging, and turn it into a multi-million-or possibly even billion-dollar business. Hip-hop encompasses groups like Public Enemy using rap to criticize racism, oppression and poverty. The movement initiated by "Chuck D" in turning hip hop into a new political movement, involving young urban adults is reminiscent of the days of the civil rights movement. In the book Hip-hop America, Nelson George writes this about the culture of hip-hop and its influence: "Now we know that rap music, and hip-hop style as a whole, has utterly broken through from its ghetto roots to assert a lasting influence on American clothing, magazine publishing, television, language, sexuality, and social policy as well as its obvious presence in records and moviesadvertisers, magazines, MTV, fashion companies, beer and soft drink manufacturers, and multimedia conglomerates like Time-Warner have embraced hip-hop as a way to reach not just black young people, but all young people."(George, 1998). According to a rap artist, KRSONE, hip-hop connects to philosophy, religion, government and corporate America. He considers hip-hop to be a commentary on the neighbourhood with urban artists serving as inner-city journalists who use their rap, dance and graffiti to report what's going on in the city and in the world at large. Sometimes the reporting comes across with the soft melody of Marvin Gaye asking, "What's Going On" from the Motown era. Sometimes the reporting is done with the pride of James Brown's "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud." And at other times with the anger of the Isley Brothers', "Fight The Power." KRSONE always held the view that true hip-hop was a term that described the independent collective consciousness of a specific group of inner-city people. It was constantly growing and found expression through such elements as, Breakin' (dance), Emceein' (rap), Graffiti (aerosol art), Deejayin', Beatboxin', Street Fashion, Street Knowledge and Street Entrepreneurialism. Its discovery is attributed to Kool DJ Herc in the Bronx, New York around 1972. Artists like Afrika Bambaata established it as a community of peace, love, unity and having fun. He did this through Zulu Nation in 1974. Hip-hop has emerged as an independent and unique community possessing an empowering behavior and a truly international culture. Hip-hop moves beyond music into other forms: D.J., the M.C., dance, visual art, fashion, language, and big business. It's also cultural as it encompasses the culture of African-Americans, Latinos, and Urban America. Hip-hop evolved after a movement for civil rights, which had young people on the front lines. It represents the underclass of urban America. References. Stancell, Steven.(1996). Rap Whoz who: The World of Rap Music. New York: Schirmer Music, v-vi. Stancell, Steven.(1996). Rap Whoz who: The World of Rap Music. New York: Schirmer Music, vii. Stancell, Steven. (1996). Rap Whoz who: The World of Rap Music. New York: Schirmer Music. Romanowsky, Patricia and George-Warren, Holly, ed.(1995). The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll. New York: Fireside, 442-43. Dowd, Maureen. Liberties: The Bulworth Doctrine, The New York Times. Edition dated: April 29, 1998, A29. Run-DMC star, 37, was hip-hop pioneer. (October 31, 2002). Retrieved July 24, 2006, from http://archives.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Music/10/31/obit.jam.master.jay/ Davis Stephen and Simon Peter. (1979). Reggae Bloodlines. New York: De Capo. Younge, G. (June 21-27, 2001). Rhyme and Reason. Guardian Weekly, 18. Q - Bert. (1997). Retrieved July 24, 2006 from http://www.giantrobot.com/issues/issue08/qbert/index.html. George, Nelson. (1998). Hip Hop America. New York: Penguin. x. Read More