Origins of Hip-Hop Culture
While many credit the Bronx, New York, and rightly so, with being the mecca of hip-hop culture, its development, in Paul Gilroy's words, grew out of the "cross-fertilization of African American vernacular cultures with their Caribbean equivalents" (1993, 103). Among those vernacular cultures are West African bardic music and dance styles transmitted to the Americas by enslaved Africans through the trans-Atlantic slave trade. West African bardic music relates to the griot (or jeliya), an African historian, musician, and storyteller who extemporaneously provides historical information through song. Because of griots' role in keeping tradition and cultural awareness, African communities afford them great respect and royal status. For example, the following is a song that describes the meaning of the word "jeliya."
Bards of West Africa: The Griot Summit
Over time, native African practices transformed themselves into African American poetic renderings articulated in many different forms. For instance, performed sermons, blues, girls' game songs, and ritualized games including the "dozens" or "snaps" (rhyming couplets between two people dueling about one's mother or each other's relative), were, and are still used extensively in storytelling traditions such as the celebrated toast known as "The Signifying Monkey." Verbal play typical of celebratory toasts included repetition, mimicry, metaphor, boasting, exaggeration, formulaic expression, humor, and above all, signification, commonly called "signifyin'' among Black vernacular speakers. In the video, Doug Hammond demonstrates this rhetoric style.
The Signifying Monkey [ 00:00-00:00 ]
Even though this lesson focuses on rap music, especially its lyrical content, it is essential to keep in mind that rap is only one element of what scholars, artisans, cultural critics, and journalists refer to as hip-hop culture. Over the last forty years, hip-hop culture has progressed from a relatively unknown and largely ignored inner-city culture into a global phenomenon. Thus, throughout this lesson, you will find the term "hip-hop music" is used just as much as "rap music." Though each will be explained, the most significant point here is to know music is the central subject.
The four foundational elements of hip-hop culture (breakdancing, graffiti, DJing, and MCing) are manifest in youth culture around the globe, including Ghana, India, Japan, France, Germany, South Africa, Cuba, and the UK. Hip-hop's global expansion and recognition are unique, considering its geographical and humble beginnings in the South and West Bronx. Its international popularity suggests and reflects the diversity of its cultural origins-moreover, rap music and other elements of the culture in marketing and advertising signal mainstream acceptance. Its prominence in popular culture questions the aggressive and malicious treatment that hip-hop frequently receives in the public sphere. With its attendant complexities and apparent contradictions, hip-hop is one of the most difficult cultural phenomena to define.