Search

Education research often examines popular music as a tool for achieving classroom learning outcomes. Approaching pedagogical uses of music through applied ethnomusicology reveals even more useful conclusions about the social context and pedagogical applications of bilingual popular music. Research with musicians and teachers in Minnesota and Manitoba indicates that Anishinaabemowin/English popular music encourages revernacularization by extending language use and cultural knowledge beyond the classroom. Rather than working solely through the English language, this educational approach strategically uses bilingual hip hop music in Indigenous languages and offers opportunities for students to form their own critical decolonial consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the gender practices of Taiwan's male-dominated rap scene, with particular attention to the sonic, textual, and ritual reverberations of Confucian ideologies. In the context of shifting gender roles driven by dramatic sociopolitical and economic change over the course of the past two and a half decades, I argue that artists reimagine and refashion Confucian gender regimes and notions of intra-group hierarchy to create critical new spaces for male sociality, avenues for male self-empowerment, and opportunities for the articulation of masculine identities not otherwise audible in Taiwan's popular music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically considers the legacy of hybridity in African popular music studies and questions whether contemporary African engagements with diasporic popular musics like hip hop call for new interpretations of musical genre. Through ethnographic research with hip hoppers in Senegal, I explore how practices of musical intertextuality reinscribe global connections as diasporic ones and challenge the conditions for musical hybridity. I argue that the formal parameters of musical genre themselves constitute conscious and strategic social practice that situates human actors in local and global place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the emergence of new conceptions of authorship, ownership, and the roles of composition in the modernization of flamenco. The period from the 1970s has seen a growth of compositional activity in the form of canciones aflamencadas which is more or less pop in orientation. Unlike the genres of hip-hop, Jamaican dancehall, and remixes, flamenco involves no use of new technologies but poses similar challenges in ways that are at once distinctive and distinctly modern.

A review of the DVD release of the music album "From Mambo to Hip Hop: A Bronx Tale."

The article explores rhyme and rhythm, two aspects of rap that define the genre and that the Japanese rappers found most difficult initially. The author recounts on the problems rappers found in their language. He discusses on the features of the Japanese language that rappers exploited to create rhythm and flow. Next, he questions whether the perceived advantages of the language are really true. He concludes by discussing the issue of imitation and innovation.

Focuses on the efforts of Asociación Hermanos Saí to promote rap in Cuba. Emphasis on the importance of the debates stimulated by rappers on a national and international level; Comments of the president of the association, Alpidio Alonso Grau on the importance of the debates; Embodiment of a struggle to change the world through ideas and music which starts in Cuba.

Focuses on Rap music's composition, origin and sociological value. Relationship between rap music and african american folklore; Comparison between rap and other musical genres; Function of rap music in present society.

Features rap music and its various characteristics. Debate on the rap's status as music; Transcription of rap music, with the example of `Fight the Power,' by Chuck D into Western musical notation; Concept of polyrythms in rap; Names and views of some popular rap singers.

The article reviews the music release "The Rough Guide to the Music of Kenya: Roots Benga, Coastal Taarab, Urban Rap," compiled by Douglas Paterson.