Ch 8 - Zulus on a Time Bomb // Weekly reflection....
I thought this was a good chapter... it pairs well with the previous chapter about the boom in the record agency with "scouts" tracking down acts after sugarhill records / the sugarhill gang... it's a pretty different picutre-- FAB 5 FREDDY says on p 151 "I knew nobody had a sense or clue about anything because barely any real rap records had hit the market commercially, maybe 'Rappers Delight,' but nobody really understood it as like a scene."
And it was the picture of this as a vibrant scene that I liked about this chapter... graffiti in art galleries, how people came together to make documentaries and the reference to 'folkies'...
Being an ex-quasi-hippie and art school guy, I think I maybe just more readily relate to stories of installation peices and all that more than how Grandmaster Flash turned a toaster into a turntable with intuitive electrical engineering (umm... does anyone relate to that?)
The chapter goes pretty directly to the heart of our Greg Tate article-- talking about whether hip hop would become folk art or co-opted pop culture on p 158.... I think it would be really interesting to see what would the pop culture world be like and what would hip hop culture be like if hip hop had remained more of a local phenomenon... if that would make it more 'authentic'... (and would it be dominated more by manhattan folkies and suburban surveryors than the voices from the Bronx?)
I'm finding in reading the Chang text that it's hard to get a good sense of hip hop by reading these endless name-drops in b-boying, graff, DJing and MCing history... it's so confucsing and you don't get much of a sense of anyone's style or how this really all was distinct from modern hip hop culture... I'm glad we have had what multimedia stuff we've been able to use in class... Wish we could have more, though, on one hand, I want to understand hip hop culture like I understand all the sub culture of the rock and jazz world, and I realize that all of that is thr product of more than half my life learning names and styles... maybe I'll never really understand hip hop that way... what can I do about it? I guess it's better than if I were trying to fake the funk... :)
And it was the picture of this as a vibrant scene that I liked about this chapter... graffiti in art galleries, how people came together to make documentaries and the reference to 'folkies'...
Being an ex-quasi-hippie and art school guy, I think I maybe just more readily relate to stories of installation peices and all that more than how Grandmaster Flash turned a toaster into a turntable with intuitive electrical engineering (umm... does anyone relate to that?)
The chapter goes pretty directly to the heart of our Greg Tate article-- talking about whether hip hop would become folk art or co-opted pop culture on p 158.... I think it would be really interesting to see what would the pop culture world be like and what would hip hop culture be like if hip hop had remained more of a local phenomenon... if that would make it more 'authentic'... (and would it be dominated more by manhattan folkies and suburban surveryors than the voices from the Bronx?)
I'm finding in reading the Chang text that it's hard to get a good sense of hip hop by reading these endless name-drops in b-boying, graff, DJing and MCing history... it's so confucsing and you don't get much of a sense of anyone's style or how this really all was distinct from modern hip hop culture... I'm glad we have had what multimedia stuff we've been able to use in class... Wish we could have more, though, on one hand, I want to understand hip hop culture like I understand all the sub culture of the rock and jazz world, and I realize that all of that is thr product of more than half my life learning names and styles... maybe I'll never really understand hip hop that way... what can I do about it? I guess it's better than if I were trying to fake the funk... :)
posted by Unknown at 2:26 PM
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