Soul Sonic Forces- Technology, Orality, and Black Cultural Pratice in Rap Music
Soul Sonic Forces begins with the ideals and the many differences between Western music and Rap. In the beginning it talks about a music chariman who recognizes the art form of rap music but could not seem to tolerate it in his own home. This relates back to the authentication of art work, who gets the say in art and who gives art its own aura but the people who are supposed experts in the field.
Western music has been known as the moving point from where all sounds can come from. The harmony you hear from a musical piece compared to the rythems of rap is entirely different. Rap in itself is a form of art, the beats and the rythems dating back to African drum or war sounds. Repetition in the music in Western music has been hidden so that if sounds were reproduced, they would be done so with growth and accumulating popularity, while in rap, the beats were made to be repeated so they can grow in strength and power.
The new uses of technology has put music on a whole different level and the different ways you could make beats and rythems has been mainly the engineers job given to workers while the producers who made the music would say that the many beats and rythems were just the engineers playing with the machine or breaking it in someway.
The difference sin Western and Rap music is very different, it really is like the subculture which became the mass culture after awhile. The expression in rap let the oppressed blcak population give in to their feelings while the rest of society looked down upon them and anything that they might do. What society doesn't understand, it shuns, but soon society will eventually turn on itself and a new part of ideals and values will form from the many groups of subcultures.
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2 comments:
It may sound crazy, but if you really think about it we all actually rap all the time. When we speak, our words come out in a certain rhythm, dont they? Our speaking gets higher and lower and pitch when we want to emphasize a strong word in a phrase, right?
I don't think that society shuns rap music. It's just that there is a very big argument as to whether or not the word music should be after rap. It may seem like mass culture in one society, and a subculture or non-existant in another. I think african rhythms and beats are implemented all around the world now, as are Western classical techniques and styles. But technology and the use of machines to simulate a sound can be a very complicated subject as to what can really be called authentic.
The legitamacy of rap as an art form IS still being questioned even if their has been a greater acceptance over the last couple years. Yes, rap is accepted in Genearation X and the Y2K children but it's our parents and grandparents (ie the heads up in the art world) who are the ones of are rejecting it as music. A grammy does go out to the hip hop artist of the year, but my grandmother will continously question it's authenticity. Besides the fact, it is the last genre of contemportaty music where it's authenticity is even questioned. I know many people who hate country , but still consider it music.
-Samantha Blum
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