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Full-Text Articles in African American Studies
The Mad Science Of Hip-Hop: History, Technology, And Poetics Of Hip-Hop's Music, 1975-1991, Patrick Rivers
The Mad Science Of Hip-Hop: History, Technology, And Poetics Of Hip-Hop's Music, 1975-1991, Patrick Rivers
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
In 1979, the first commercial recordings of hip-hop music were released. The music's transition from the parks and clubs of the Bronx to recorded media resulted in hip-hop music being crafted and mediated in a recording studio before reaching the ears of listeners. In this dissertation I present a comprehensive investigation into the history of the instrumental component of hip-hop music heard on recordings, commonly referred to as beats. My historical narrative is formed by: the practices involved in the creation of hip-hop beats; the technologies that facilitated and defined those practices; and the debates around these two aspects that …
Different Placements Of Spirit: African American Musicians Historicizing In Sound, Casey Hale
Different Placements Of Spirit: African American Musicians Historicizing In Sound, Casey Hale
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation examines two recent projects by African American musicians that enact critical and historiographic agency by reconstructing the music of the past: William Parker's project The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield, dedicated to re-imagining the works of the soul music icon with an ensemble featuring the poetic recitation of Amiri Baraka; and Marcus Roberts's reinvention of the Jazz Age rhapsodies of George Gershwin and James P. Johnson, Rhapsody in Blue and Yamekraw: A Negro Rhapsody. Rooted in African American interpretive traditions, and working both within and against such discursive categories as "jazz," "black music," and "American music," these artists …