21st Century Blues...
From Da ´Hood. Aspekte zum Thema Rap-Music
The topic of the present study is Rap-Music, this loudest and clearest voice of the black American popular culture within the last twenty years. The analytic and theoretical work focuses on the specific linguistic means used in this poetic form and their historical tradition. The fundamental idea is that both Blues and Rap-Music are first of all forms of poetry and only in the second place forms of music. By this means we get a most promising approach to research, which not simply attributes Rap-Music to the Blues-Genre but gives a solid foundation for this classification. Consequently constant historical phenomena can be systematically described and examined as well as changes and modifications. Using such a cultural-historical and sociological point of view many aspects of controversy like Rap and sexism, Rap and aggressiveness or Rap and violence appear in a completely different light than they do in a big number of journalistic or eurocentric utterances often dominated by morality. Beginning with the lexical characteristics of Black American English (BAE) which is the basis of both, Bluespoetry and Rappoetry, "21st Century Blues ... From Da 'Hood" uncovers the historical as well as the sociological dimension of this autonomous language. The largest space then is taken by the examination of verbal techniques provided by BAE. Their description and the following attempt to trace out a comprehensive systematic analytic instrument based on this linguistic patterns build the focal point of the present study. Forms of verbal challenge and techniques of verbal manipulation like Rapping, Woofing, Shucking, Jiving and the exchange of ritual insults known as Signifying and Playing the Dozens are the most important constant factors of oral culture in the USA. They can be expressed in Bluespoetry as well as in Rappoetry. To illustrate the theoretical system drawn in this study, the reader is supplied with a great number of examples. Blueslyrics and excerpts from contemporary raps are used to reveal the usefulness in interpreting these poetic forms of expression. Furthermore, like the audio-samples often used in Rap-Songs, they give short insights into the historical, political and social circumstances of the particular period of time.