To Make Song Without Singing

Hip Hop and Popular Music in Senegal

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4270809
AutoresCatherine M Appert (autor de correspondencia)
Año2015
Volumen46
Número4
Páginas759-774
Fecha de publicación2015-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaNew Literary History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0028-6087 • E-ISSN: 1080-661X
EditorialProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/nlh.2015.0039
OpenAlexW2296761586
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas4
Referencias citadas18

Examining the intersections of indigenous and popular genres in Senegalese music, this article outlines the processes through which concepts of song and singing changed-or were codified-through recording technologies in a semiformal musical economy, and shows how the seemingly universal phenomenon of singing (in this case, vocal performance writ large) has been inscribed as both indigenous and hegemonic through particular historical and social processes. I argue that hardcore rappers in the 1990s conflated "singing" as the melodic vocal practice foregrounded in popular song with "singing" as a performative affirmation of interconnected historical and contemporary power imbalances. Their musical practices were informed both by global hip hop trends and by this local, politicized history of singing. Localized tropes of hip hop realness thus went beyond what the voice uttered to question how it uttered, constructing an opposition between "hardcore" and "commercial" hip hop that pivoted on melodic vocal performance as much as on lyrical content

Acoustics · Aesthetics · Art · Hegemony · Indigenous · Melody · Music education · Musical · Opposition (politics) · Performative utterance · Political science · Popular music · Singing · Sociology · Visual arts · Vocal music · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · History · Law · Music · Music History and Culture