Hip Hop History in the Age of Colorblindness

  • Loren Kajikawa University of Oregon
Keywords: rap, hip-hop, race, history, politics

Abstract

This essay outlines a critical pedagogy for teaching about hip hop and rap at a time when the music has become so firmly a part of mainstream U.S. culture. No longer controversial in the way that it was in the 1980s and 1990s when popular music studies was first becoming established, teachers can no longer assume that rap is politically progressive or that their students are committed to the black struggle because they are fans. Although it’s not a bad thing that scholars and teachers now spend less time arguing for hip hop’s legitimacy as music, there’s also something disconcerting about white students’ casual acceptance of rap as “their†music at a time when profound racial inequities still exist in employment, education, incarceration rates, etc. With over three decades of recorded music history, there’s no problem filling a syllabus. But should a hip hop survey cover more than the succession of artists, styles, and sub-genres? What could a critical pedagogy for rap music look like at a time when politicians and pundits encourage us to put race behind us?

Author Biography

Loren Kajikawa, University of Oregon
Loren Kajikawa serves as Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology and Musicology at the University of Oregon’s School of Music and Dance. He teaches a variety of courses on music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including Hip Hop Music: History, Culture, Aesthetics.
Published
2014-07-12
Section
Roundtable