Performing Identity/Performing Culture: Hip Hop as Text, Pedagogy, and Lived Practice

by Michelle Bae-Dimitriadis

This is the first book-length ethnography of young people and their uses of hip-hop culture. Drawing together historical work on hip hop and rap music as well as four years of research at a local community center, Greg Dimitriadis argues that contemporary youth are increasingly fashioning notions of self and community outside of school in ways that educators have largely ignored. After exploring the historical evolution of hip hop through analysis of important artists and groups such as the Sugarhill Gang, Run-D.M.C., Eric B and Rakim, Public Enemy, N.W.A., and the Wu-Tang Clan, Dimitriadis demonstrates the ways rap texts have been picked up and used by young people at a local community center in the Midwest. His studies are how two teenagers constructed notions of a Southern tradition through their use of Southern rap artists like Master P and Eightball & MJG; how young people constructed notions of history through viewing the film Panther , a film they connected to hip-hop culture more broadly; and how young people dealt with the life and death of icon Tupac Shakur through the construction of resurrection myths. Drawing on the best impulses of cultural studies, Performing Identity/Performing Culture opens new spaces at the intersections of education, media studies, communication, and anthropology – broadening the kinds of questions we ask about young people and their often misunderstood relationship to and with popular culture.

148 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2001

Reviews

[Sally Sugarman · Rating 4 out of 5]

. As the editors say in the preface, this is a book that combines text and context; not just analyzing texts but also looking at how people use these texts. There is a point that the author makes however, is that we can not just be optimistic and see reader response or viewer response as a full exercise of power since the economic and social realities still exist, however filtered by the media. The information as well as the theoretical approach is valuable. Hip-Hop originally was a performance piece, local and responsive to the immediate audience. There was a give and take between the performer and the audience who responded directly. Hip-Hop was graffiti as well as music. It was narrative and dress and a way of talking about the realities of the black world. When it became commercialized and done in record studios, women were marginalized because the studios were male oriented. Losing contact with the direct audience, artists talked to a wider audience. There was different kind of rap. West Coast rap was harsher and louder because people listened to it in their cars; East Coast was less so because it was listened to within people’s houses, their bedrooms and then there was Southern rap. Technology affected the type of music because of where people listened to it. Boom boxes were an assertion of people’s rights to public space. When the author talks about the irrelevance of education, he makes the point that Black history is taught in only one month, the shortest month of the year. The emphasis is on Martin Luther King and his non-violence. The way in which black kids learn their history is through the media. He discusses Panther, a Mario Van Peebles movie and the way it helps black kids reconstruct their history. When he shows them the section of Eyes on the Prize that talks about the Black Panthers, it does not engage them in the same way. There is too much talk. They focus on the action. The author traces gangsta rap back to a folk hero, Stackolee, who was a black outlaw, pointing out how a vulnerable people need an invulnerable hero. He contests Cornell West’s view that the contemporary youth are nihilistic and without hope since the black middle class has moved out of the ghetto, leaving youth with no role models. Dimitriadis says that they just form their identities from different materials. He explains what Tupac means to the kids and the way he is a folk hero, almost a Christ figure who rises from the dead. Since he survived five bullets in an early assassination attempt, the kids can not believe he is really dead. This is reinforced by the release of further records, videos and movies after his death. Tupac is particularly appealing because besides showing his strong side, he also shows the side that cares about his mother and women. Besides everything else, this book is erudite as well as accessible. Dimitriadis quotes Kenneth Burke’s The Grammar of Motives as he analyzes the music and the movies. This is a short book, 127 pages, but it is incredibly rich. In looking at how the south figures in teenagers’ lives, he talks about claiming kin and how important this and how kinship is fluid because of the fluidity of family relationships. Children will often disclaim their father’s children, but not their mother’s. More important than blood ties, however, are relationship ties. The children live in a world where trust is hard to come by and they have to rely on themselves. For this reason, friendship is highly valued. The kids talk about “playing” the opposite sex, getting what they can for as little as they can give. However, the flip side is that they do value the rare relationship that is more than that. The picture is a complex one and Dimitiradis manages to convey that complexity most effectively.

[D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative work that discusses hip hop culture through a dialogue with black youth. This work brings together varies disciplines and perspectives to create an expanded dialogue of hip hop - reality and perception