Journal of Popular Music Education

Posted: November 4th, 2016 | Filed under: Calls for Papers | No Comments »

Special issue on Hip-hop

Hip-hop is a highly marketized, global cultural phenomenon, also experienced and created in local, regional underground scenes. It is individual, tribal, subcultural, marginal and mainstream. Hip-hip is cliché and iconoclast, rebellion and conformity. It is characterized by aspirations to individual wealth, as well as embodying and embracing movements for democracy and emancipation. It is about lyrics and beats, ‘brain and booty’, defamation, reclamation, provocation, subjugation and emancipation. It is masculine, homophobic, misogynistic and sexualized. It objectifies, reifies and empowers. The music is frequently highly dependent on technology, yet requires nothing but a human beat-box and articulate speech to succeed. It is music of the streets and the studio. Hip-hop is truly a world music.

Education in, through and about hip-hop is increasingly embedded in courses in school and higher education on literature, music history, performance, production and appreciation. It is also frequently excluded from ‘popular music education’ practice and discourse. Hip-hop can prove a relevant and powerful means of engaging, teaching and inspiring students at all levels. Like all musics, it is politically charged, and thus can also be difficult and divisive (Kruse 2016; Snell and Söderman 2014). Educators, educational institutions and learners – within and without formal teaching environments – can learn from studying and incorporating elements of hip- hop culture (Söderman and Sernhede 2015). With hip-hop musicians, dancers and visual artists embracing change faster than teachers and curricula can imagine relevant pedagogical approaches, new opportunities for education constantly emerge. This special issue of JPME invites colleagues to submit papers on topics including, but not limited to:

• Interplay and interdependence of elements of hip-hop culture (graffiti, break dancing, emceeing, DJ-ing, fashion);
• Hip-hop as a global and globalized, local phenomenon;
• Hip-hop and marginalization;
• Commercial hip-hop and popular culture; • Hip-hop as radical / emancipatory praxis and process;
• Hip-hop and/as appropriation;
• Hip-hop and/as language;
• Authenticity and hip-hop;
• Pedagogy, hip-hop and activism;
• Dangers of hip-hop education;
• Music of the oppressed and marginalized;
• Hip-hop, gender, homophobia and misogyny;
• Music, technology and the hip-hop classroom;
• Negotiating performance, (social) media and intellectual property in hip-hop performance;
• Identity in hip-hop performance and production.

Please email manuscripts of between 6,000 and 8,000 words (double-spaced, Times New Roman, font size 12) for the attention of editors Gareth Dylan Smith and Bryan Powell to jpmejournal@gmail.com by 1 June 2017.