Selected Conference Paper Abstracts
Modern Motherless (and Fatherless) Children: Revisiting Samuel Floyd’s "Sometimes" Trope.
In his seminal study The Power of Black Music (1995), Samuel Floyd uses the spiritual "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" as a case study of repetition and revision—that is, Signifyin(g)—in black music. Floyd examines compositions by George Gershwin, David Baker, and Olly Wilson to illustrate the myriad inter-textual and inter-musical possibilities of this trope, arguing that in black music, "intragenre and cross-genre troping is widespread, with lines and phrases of songs being borrowed and used as needs and desires arise."
Based on close study of over thirty recent recordings (in a variety of genres) that revisit "Motherless Child," this paper appraises the current relevance of Floyd's "Sometimes" trope. Many of the songs in my study—particularly songs in genres such as folk, gospel, and blues—remain closely tied to the shape and sound of the original spiritual. More adventurous artists create new lyrics to trope the meaning of the spiritual; overlay modern instrumentation (such as drum machines) to freshen the sound; or sample bits of the spiritual for use in elaborate electronic mixes. And in a few hip-hop and R&B versions, the "Sometimes" trope is completely revised to better reflect a facet of today's urban reality: these songs ponder the fate of fatherless children. Ultimately I argue that while the spiritual continues to serve "as the source of a wide variety of musical expressions," these new expressions are as individual and diverse as the artists themselves and are not necessarily linked to black musical aesthetics.
Turning the Tables on Hip-Hop Virtuosity: "Legitimizing" the Art of Turntablism through Scratch Notation
Since the late 1980s, virtuoso hip-hop DJs known as "turntablists" have regularly "battled" each other in regional, national, and international competitions, earning prizes and bragging rights for creative, virtuosic performances. Armed with double turntable sets, vintage vinyl, and classic break-beats, turntablists produce elaborate compositions that foreground technical precision and virtuosic display. Because of their background as hip-hop DJs, turntablists are considered a significant, if somewhat under-recognized, part of hip-hop culture. Yet some turntablists are now seeking a wider, historically-minded audience and are making bids to "legitimize" their music as "art." Significantly, these turntablists have all turned to the same tool to facilitate their entry into the "art" world: notation.
In this paper I explain the basic premises of three "scratch" notation styles developed by DJs and turntablists (specifically, the methods developed by DJ A-Trak; DJ Radar; and John Carluccio in conjunction with DJ Catfish and DJ Raydawn). Using notated musical examples composed by DJ Rob Swift and DJ Radar, published writings by turntablists, and personal interviews with DJ A-Trak and DJ Radar, I also explore the "art music" rhetoric turntablists use to describe their own work and embed within their prescriptive notation systems. Ultimately I show that "scratch" notation methods not only serve as ready memory aids or performance cues; they also reflect turntablists' conscious efforts to both separate their art from the pop world and to be recognized as part of a much longer trajectory in the history of Western "art" music.
"My Flow Frequency is at a Million Megahertz": Mapping Rap's Verbal Styles
Rap devotees distinguish rappers by their flow, the musical application of the rapper's skills to a poetic line. Each rapper hones an individual flow style comprised of phrasing, rhyme scheme, rhythmic play, timbre, and accents. This paper describes several general types of flow, identifies distinguishing features of past and present styles, and offers new notational and analytical methods to map rap's many flow styles. Examples from rappers such as KRS-One, Run DMC, the Beastie Boys, Nelly, and DMX illustrate not only common characteristics of particular flow types, but also personal stylistic traits that complicate categorization.
(Re)hearing Rap Remixes
Rap remixing—the process of re-recording a song in multiple versions for a variety of venues (e.g., album, club, or radio)—has become an industry unto itself within the popular music world. While tailoring a song to its intended venue allows for maximum market saturation and therefore fills a practical economic need, remixing also offers artists and audiences multiple opportunities to creatively re-make, re-hear, and re-experience a given song. Remixes can be built on simple musical changes, such as a new bass pattern, an added sample, an extra chorus or verse, or a guest vocalist, but they can also be startlingly different from "originals," extending even to new lyrics and entirely new music. In other words, all musical elements may change, yet the artists involved still choose to call the "new" song a "remix."
In this paper I assess selected rap remixes from 1989 to 2001 that appear on the same album with their respective "originals" in order to evaluate how close juxtaposition of different versions affects an audience's listening experience of a given song. I examine changes in remixing practices in recent years; the range of musical choices available to producers, mixers, and MCs in the production of remixing; the function of remixes on albums; and the differences in meaning and text-music relationships that result from remixing.
"Jazz at Night and the Classics in the Morning:" Negotiating Tensions between Musical Traditions in African-American Short Stories
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, African-American writers have explored various means of negotiating ethnicity and racism in fiction. In the preface to his 1921 edition of Book of American Negro Poetry, James Weldon Johnson urged African-American poets and writers to find their bases in African-American folklore. In the ensuing decades, writers such as Langston Hughes, Rudolph Fisher, James Baldwin, Henry Dumas, and LeRoi Jones, answered Johnson’s call by using African-American musical genres as markers of ethnicity and authenticity in their short-fiction. These authors use the blues, jazz, spirituals, and gospel to signify the African-American experience; music, musical imagery, and musical surroundings access the past and shared cultural values, and highlight essentialist African-American characteristics.
But Hughes and Baldwin also use musical themes to highlight cultural differences and racial conflicts. Racial and cultural differences between African-Americans and Euro-Americans are metaphorized as tensions between African-American and European musical traditions in short stories such as "Home" and "The Blues I’m Playing" by Hughes, and "Previous Condition" by Baldwin. In each of these stories, the protagonists are required to choose one musical tradition over another and their choices lead to very different ends: Roy’s tragedy, in the case of "Home," Oceola’s triumph in "The Blues I’m Playing," and Peter’s profound alienation in "Previous Condition." The ends these characters meet as a result of their musical choices is ultimately a reflection of their own conceptions of their "place" in the nexus of Afro-American and Euro-American society. Through tropes of musical difference, Hughes and Baldwin rework the concept of "double consciousness" first articulated by W. E. B. DuBois and find a fruitful method of negotiating racial and cultural tension in short fiction.
Knowledge, Wisdom, and Understanding: "Breaking Down" the Message of Five Percent Rappers
In a decade of mack daddies and drive-by-shooting posses, a few rappers stand out with their attention to spiritual matters. Many popular rappers, such as Wise Intelligent and Culture Freedom of Poor Righteous Teachers, Rakim, Lakim Shabazz, Brand Nubian, and various members of the Wu-Tang Clan, are members of the Five Percent Nation, a little-known religious sect based in New York City. These rappers see themselves as teachers and use their lyrics to negotiate various doctrines of Five Percenter faith. Because Five Percent rappers use their medium to spread their message to a national audience, their lyrics are primary texts--the sacral words of wise teachers.
One of the major themes explored in Five Percenter lyrics is the essential identity of the Five Percent Nation. Examining the lyrics of Wu-Tang Clan's "Wu Revolution" and Brand Nubian's "Meaning of the Five Percent" shows us the relationship between the Five Percent Nation and its parent organization, the Nation of Islam. The Five Percent Nation also places heavy emphasis on the relationship between man and mathematics, drawing on ancient numerological ideas. The Science of Supreme Mathematics, an esoteric numerological system, is rampant in Five Percenter rap; Five Percent doctrine teaches that mathematics is the key to understanding man's relationship to the universe. Close study of lyrics reveals that rappers use the Science of Supreme Mathematics in a variety of ways: by creating a narrative based on numbers, by using the meaning of numbers to prove a point, or by encoding hidden meanings within the internal sums or products of numbers. Finally, Five Percenters explore the very nature of God. They believe that each black man is divine and is in fact a God, a doctrine shared with the Nation of Islam. A brief sample of lyrics reveals the provocative nature of the Five Percenters's claim to godhood.
Rap lyrics by Five Percenters give us insight into an otherwise obscure religious sect and challenge the dominant media focus on violence and explicit language in rap. Although there is sometimes slippage between statements of faith and the demands of the pop music industry within the lyrics, rappers nevertheless invite us to look a little deeper for meaning.
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