Tricky's Maxinquaye
Rhizomes, rap and the resuscitation of the Blues
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12737802 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Andrew Warnes (0000-0002-6094-6565, Russian State Agrarian Correspondence University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2009 |
| Volume | 6 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 223-237 |
| Publication date | 2009-07-13 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Atlantic Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1478-8810 • E-ISSN: 1740-4649 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14788810902981092 |
| OpenAlex | W2047084640 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 10 |
Generic markers today continue to organize Black Atlantic music into various received categories and traditions. However much postcolonialist thinkers rhapsodize about the syncretism of black dance music in general, the connoisseurs of particular scenes continue to take a protective attitude towards the object of their affection, and grow guarded about innovation or the prospect of making contact with other generic fields. Yet this process of segmentation, encouraged by a music industry for which genres and customer profiles go hand in hand, can only simplify our response to such radical works as Tricky's Maxinquaye. For although Tricky himself placed Maxinquaye firmly in the Rap lineage, such bald positioning effectively saluted some of his album's sources at the expense of others, presenting it as a limited work that comfortably inhabits an existing genre rather than challenging the very idea of categorisation. Only by consulting less circumscribed visions of cultural tradition, such as Deleuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus and the journalist Dorian Lynskey's map of pop genealogy Rock Underground, can we arrive at a more fluid position from which to assimilate the full range of genres on which Maxinquaye draws as well as the tension in which it holds them. In particular, Dorian Lynskey's decision to disassociate Maxinquaye from Hip Hop encourages the suspicion that Tricky overstated his identification with US rap, and that it masked a more potent love that he felt for a foregoing Blues tradition more willing to grasp the song as an opportunity to lament social pain. Via close lyrical readings, then, this article concludes that Maxinquaye aspires to the genre of Hip Hop yet cannot achieve this ambition because it cannot fight off the feelings of alienation that lure it back into the arms of this earlier songwriting tradition
Aesthetics · Affection · Art · Art history · Blues · Dance · Epistemology · Lament · Literature · Sociology · Vision · Anthropology · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · History · Music History and Culture · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |