Rock music is a loosely defined genre of popular music that entered the mainstream in the mid 1950's. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rhythm and blues, country music and other influences. In addition, rock music drew on a number of other musical influences, including folk music, jazz, and classical music.
The sound of rock often revolves around the electric guitar or acoustic guitar, and it uses a strong back beat laid down by a rhythm section of electric bass guitar, drums, and keyboard instruments such as organ, piano, or, since the 1970s, synthesizers. Along with the guitar or keyboards, saxophone and blues-style harmonica are sometimes used as soloing instruments. In its "purest form", it "has three chords, a strong, insistent back beat, and a catchy melody."[1]
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, rock music developed different subgenres. When it was blended with folk music it created folk rock, with blues to create blues-rock and with jazz, to create jazz-rock fusion. In the 1970s, rock incorporated influences from soul, funk, and latin music. Also in the 1970s, rock developed a number of subgenres, such as soft rock, glam rock, heavy metal, hard rock, progressive rock, and punk rock. Rock subgenres that emerged in the 1980s included New Wave, hardcore punk and alternative rock. In the 1990s, rock subgenres included grunge, Britpop, indie rock, and nu metal.
A group of musicians specializing in rock music is called a rock band or rock group. Many rock groups consist of an electric guitarist, lead singer, bass guitarist, and a drummer, forming a quartet. Some groups omit one or more of these roles and/or utilize a lead singer who plays an instrument while singing, sometimes forming a trio or duo; others include additional musicians such as one or two rhythm guitarists and/or a keyboardist. More rarely, groups also utilize stringed instruments such as violins or cellos, or horn sections of saxophones, trumpets or trombones.
Rock and roll evolved in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and quickly spread to the rest of the world. Its immediate origins lay in a mixing together of various popular musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues, gospel music, and country and western.[2] In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music for a multi-racial audience, and is credited with first using the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the music.[2]
There is much debate as to what should be considered the first rock & roll record. One leading contender is "Rocket 88" by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats (in fact, Ike Turner and his band The Kings of Rhythm), recorded by Sam Phillips for Sun Records in 1951. Four years later, Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" (1955) became the first rock and roll song to top Billboard magazine's main sales and airplay charts, and opened the door worldwide for this new wave of popular culture. Rolling Stone magazine argued in 2004 that "That's All Right (Mama)" (1954), Elvis Presley's first single for Sun Records in Memphis, was the first rock and roll record[3]. But, at the same time, Big Joe Turner's "Shake, Rattle & Roll", later covered by Haley, was already at the top of the Billboard R&B charts. Other artists with early rock and roll hits included Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Gene Vincent.
The 1950s saw the growth in popularity of the electric guitar, and the development of a specifically rock and roll style of playing through such exponents as Berry, Link Wray, and Scotty Moore. It also saw major developments in recording technology such as multitrack recording developed by Les Paul, the electronic treatment of sound by such innovators as Joe Meek, and the Wall of Sound productions of Phil Spector. All these developments were important influences on later rock music.
The social effects of rock and roll were worldwide and massive. Far beyond simply a musical style, rock and roll influenced lifestyles, fashion, attitudes, and language. In addition, rock and roll may have helped the cause of the civil rights movement because both African American teens and white American teens enjoyed the music. However, by the early 1960s, much of the initial musical impetus and social radicalism of rock and roll had become dissipated, with the growth of teen idols, an emphasis on dance crazes, and the development of lightweight teenage pop music. The early 60's did see the rise of the Motown sound. From 1961 to 1971, Motown had 110 top 10 hits, and artists such as Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, The Four Tops, and The Jackson 5, were all signed to Motown labels. All five of these Motown artists have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
In the United Kingdom the trad jazz movement brought visiting blues music artists to Britain. While BAC was developing the Concorde, Lonnie Donegan's 1955 hit "Rock Island Line" was a major influence, and helped to develop the trend of skiffle music groups throughout the country, including John Lennon's The Quarrymen. Britain developed a major rock and roll scene, without the race barriers which kept "race records" or rhythm and blues separate in the US.
Cliff Richard had the first British rock 'n' roll hit with "Move It", effectively ushering in the sound of British rock. At the start of the 1960s, his backing group The Shadows was one of a number of groups having success with instrumentals. While rock 'n' roll was fading into lightweight pop and ballads, British rock groups at clubs and local dances, heavily influenced by blues-rock pioneers like Alexis Korner, were starting to play with an intensity and drive seldom found in white American acts.
By the end of 1962, the British rock scene had started with beat groups like the Beatles drawing on a wide range of American influences including soul music, rhythm and blues and surf music. Initially, they reinterpreted standard American tunes, playing for dancers doing the twist, for example. These groups eventually infused their original rock compositions with increasingly complex musical ideas and a distinctive sound. In mid-1962 The Rolling Stones started as one of a number of groups increasingly showing blues influence, along with The Animals and The Yardbirds.
British rock broke in the United States in January 1964 with the success of the Beatles. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was the band's first number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, starting the British Invasion of the American music charts. The song entered the chart on January 18 1964 at number 45 before it became the number one single for 7 weeks and went onto last a total of 15 weeks in the chart.[4] It also held the top spot in the United Kingdom charts. A million copies of the single had already been ordered on its release. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" became The Beatles' best-selling single worldwide.[5] Their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show February 9 is considered a milestone in American pop culture. The broadcast drew an estimated 73 million viewers, at the time a record for an American television program. The Beatles went on to become the biggest selling rock band of all time and they were followed by numerous British bands.
In late 1964, The Kinks, The Who and The Pretty Things represented the new Mod style. The Rolling Stones broke in late 1964 as well. Their first international number-1 hit was "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", recorded in May 1965 during the band's third North American tour. Released as a US single in June 1965, it spent four weeks at the top of the charts there, and established the Stones as a worldwide premier act.[6] Towards the end of the decade, British rock groups began to explore psychedelic musical styles that made reference to the drug subculture and hallucinogenic experiences.
Glam rock emerged out of the English Psychedelic and art rock scene of the late 1960s, defined by artists such as T. Rex, Roxy Music, Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel, and David Bowie, also with origins in the theatrics of groups such as The Cockettes, performers such as Lindsay Kemp, and acts such as Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd (as represented in David Bowie's cover of See Emily Play) and Eddie Cochran (as represented by T. Rex's cover of Summertime Blues). The commonly accepted origin of Glam rock was when Tyrannosaurus Rex - a band produced by Tony Visconti and championed by the legendary John Peel - frontman/singer Marc Bolan changed the band's name to T. Rex, releasing the number 1 UK single Ride A White Swan in December 1970, ushering in Glam rock and the band as a pop phenomenon. Following soon after were other notable acts such as Slade and Roxy Music, and eventually David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust persona, who brought Glam rock its relatively novel and modest popularity in America, and leading to American artists such as Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, New York Dolls, Jobriath, and Alice Cooper adopting Glam or Glam-influenced styles.
Glam itself was a nostalgic mesh of various styles, both visual art and music, ranging from 1930s Hollywood glamor, to 1950s pin-up sex appeal and rock n' roll teenage rebellion, to pre-war Cabaret theatrics, to Victorian literary and Symbolist styles, to ancient and occult mysticism and mythology (such as Bowie's references to Aleister Crowley's "starman" in his song of the same name, and themes of reincarnation and self-invention in T. Rex's Cosmic Dancer). Glam is most noted for its sexual and gender ambiguity and androgyny, and use of theatrics.
Throughout glam rock's popularity, many bubble-gum acts - such as Elton John, Slade, Gary Glitter, and Alvin Stardust - adopted raunchier and more sexual takes on Glam style. Other previously famous acts such as The Rolling Stones and Lou Reed re-invented themselves in a glam fashion, often to great success (including Reed's biggest hit single, "Walk On the Wild Side"). However, glam's success in America was modest at best, with artists such as T. Rex and Roxy Music having only a fraction of the success they had in the UK. However, glam went on to influence many other genres, including punk, new wave, goth, jangle pop, college rock, and grunge, with artists as diverse as Siouxsie Sioux, Johnny Rotten, Billy Corgan, Peter Murphy (whose band Bauhaus covered T. Rex's Telegram Sam and Bowie's Ziggy Stardust), and Adam Ant citing glam artists as key influences. Glam has since enjoyed sporadic modest revivals through bands such as Chainsaw Kittens.
Progressive rock bands went beyond the established rock music formulas by experimenting with different instruments, song types, and musical forms. Some bands such as The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Moody Blues and Procol Harum experimented with new instruments including wind sections, string sections, and full orchestras. Many of these bands moved well beyond the formulaic three-minute rock songs into longer, increasingly sophisticated songs and chord structures. With inspiration from these earlier artists, referred to as "proto-prog", it flowered into its own genre, initially based in the UK, after King Crimson's 1969 genre-defining debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King.
Progressive rock bands pushed "rock's technical and compositional boundaries"[8] by going beyond the standard rock or popular verse-chorus-based song structures. Additionally, the arrangements often incorporated elements drawn from classical, jazz, and world music. Instrumentals were common, while songs with lyrics were sometimes conceptual, abstract, or based in fantasy. Progressive rock bands sometimes used "concept albums that made unified statements, usually telling an epic story or tackling a grand overarching theme."[8] Progressive rock came into most widespread use around the mid-1970s. Few bands achieved major mainstream success, but large cults followed many of the groups. Pink Floyd, Yes, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Marillion, Rush, Jethro Tull, Genesis, and a few less notable others were able to work in hit singles to their otherwise complex and untraditional albums to garner a larger audience.
With the advent of punk rock in the late 1970s, critical opinion in England moved toward a simpler and more aggressive style of rock, with progressive bands increasingly dismissed as pretentious and overblown, ending progressive rock's reign as one of the leading styles in rock.[9][10] This was part of a wider commercial turn in popular music in the second half of the 1970s, during which many funk or soul bands switched to disco, and smooth jazz gained popularity over jazz fusion.
However, established progressive bands still had a strong fan base; Rush, Genesis, ELP, Yes, Queen, and Pink Floyd all regularly scored Top Ten albums with massive accompanying tours, the largest yet for some of them. From 1976 to 1980, heavy metal pioneers Led Zeppelin would display a minor prog-influence on their Presence and In Through the Out Door albums.
By 1979, by which time punk had mutated into new wave, Pink Floyd released their rock opera The Wall, one of the best selling albums in history. Many bands which emerged in the aftermath of punk, such as Siouxsie and The Banshees, Cabaret Voltaire, Ultravox, Simple Minds, and Wire, all showed the influence of prog, as well as their more usually recognised punk influences.
By the early 1990s, rock was dominated by slick and commercial glam metal, "hair metal" and arena rock artists. MTV had arrived and promoted this excessive focus on image and style. Disaffected by this trend, in the mid-1980s, bands in Washington state (particularly in the Seattle area) formed a new style of rock music which sharply contrasted the mainstream rock of the time.[15] The developing genre came to be known as "grunge", a term meaning "dirt" or "filth".[15] The term was perhaps seen as appropriate due to the dirty sound of the music and the unkempt appearance of most musicians. Grunge fused elements of hardcore punk and heavy metal into a single sound, and made heavy use of guitar distortion, fuzz and feedback.[15] The lyrics were typically apathetic and angst-filled, and often concerned themes such as social alienation and entrapment, although it was also known for its dark humor and parodies of commercial rock.[15]
Bands such as Green River, Soundgarden, the Pixies, the Melvins and Skin Yard pioneered the genre, with Mudhoney becoming the most successful by the end of the decade. However grunge remained largely a local phenomenon until 1991, when Nirvana‘s Nevermind became a huge success thanks to the lead single "Smells Like Teen Spirit".[16] Nevermind was more melodic than its predecessors and was an instant sensation worldwide, but they refused to buy in to corporate promotion and marketing mechanisms. During 1991 and 1992, other grunge albums such as Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger and Alice in Chains' Dirt, along with the Temple of the Dog album featuring members of Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, became among the 100 top selling albums of 1992.[17] The popular breakthrough of these grunge bands prompted Rolling Stone to nickname Seattle "the new Liverpool."[18] Major record labels signed most of the remaining major grunge bands in Seattle, while a second influx of bands moved to the city in hopes of success.[19]
While grunge itself can be seen as somewhat limited in range, its influence was felt across many geographic and musical boundaries. Many artists who were similarly disaffected with commercial rock music suddenly found record companies and audiences willing to listen, and dozens of disparate acts positioned themselves as alternatives to mainstream music; thus alternative rock emerged from the underground. This helped pave the way for bands such as the Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots who were initially stereotyped as grunge but later enjoyed commercial and critical success independent of the genre.
neděle 8. března 2009
Hip hop
Hip hop is a cultural movement built largely around the music genre of hip hop music, which developed in New York City during the 1970s primarily among African Americans and Latino Americans.[1][2] Hip hop's four main elements are rapping (or MCing, from Master of Ceremonies), DJing, graffiti writing, and b-boying. Other elements include beatboxing, hip hop fashion, hip hop slang, and recently VJing. Since first emerging in the Bronx and Harlem, the lifestyle of hip hop culture has spread around the world.[3]
When hip hop music began to emerge, it was based around DJs who created rhythmic beats by looping breaks (smalls portions of songs emphasizing a percussive pattern) on two turntables. This was later accompanied by "rapping" (a rhythmic style of chanting). An original form of dancing, and particular styles of dress, arose among followers of this new music. These elements experienced considerable refinement and development over the course of the history of the culture.
The relationship between graffiti and hip hop culture arises from the appearance of new and increasingly elaborate and pervasive forms of the practice in areas where other elements of hip hop were evolving as art forms, with a heavy overlap between those who wrote and those who practiced other elements of the culture. Beatboxing is a mainly percussive vocal form in which various technical effects of hip hop DJs are imitated.
The word "hip" was used as African American Vernacular English (AAVE) as early as 1904. The colloquial language meant "informed" or "current," and was likely derived from the earlier form hep. The term "hip hop" also followed logically the previous African-American music culture of "Bebop".
Keith "Cowboy" Wiggins, a rapper with Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five has been credited with the coining of the term hip hop in 1978 while teasing a friend who had just joined the US Army, by scat singing the words "hip/hop/hip/hop" in a way that mimicked the rhythmic cadence of marching soldiers. Cowboy later worked the "hip hop" cadence into a part of his stage performance. [4] The group frequently performed with disco artists who would refer to this new type of MC / DJ produced music by calling them "those hip-hoppers". The name was originally meant as a sign of disrespect, but soon came to identify this new music and culture. Other artists quickly copied the Furious Five and began using the term in their music; for example the opening of the song "Rapper's Delight" by The Sugarhill Gang in addition the verse found on Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's own "Superrappin'", both released in 1979. Lovebug Starski and DJ Hollywood then began using the term when referring to this new disco rap music. Hip hop pioneer and South Bronx community leader Afrika Bambaataa also credits Lovebug Starski, a Bronx DJ who put out a single called "The Positive Life" in 1981, as the first to use the term "Hip Hop," as it relates to the culture. Bambaataa, a former Black Spades gang member also did much to further popularize the term.
Jamaican born DJ Clive "DJ Kool Herc" Campbell is credited as originating hip hop music, in the Bronx, New York, after moving to New York at the age of thirteen. Herc created the blueprint for hip hop music and culture by building upon the Jamaican tradition of toasting, or boasting impromptu poetry and sayings over music, which he witnessed as a youth in Jamaica. [7]
Herc and other DJs would tap into the power lines to connect their equipment and perform, at venues such as public basketball courts and the historic building "where hip hop was born," 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, Bronx, New York.[8]
On August 11, 1973, DJ Kool Herc was a Dee Jay and Emcee at a party in the recreation room of 1520 Sedgewick Avenue in the Bronx adjacent to the Cross-Bronx Expressway.[9] It was not the actual "Birthplace of Hip Hop" -- the genre developed slowly in several places in the 1970s -- it was verified to be the place where one of the pivotal and formative events occurred.[9] Specifically, DJ Kool Herc:
“ extended an instrumental beat (breaking or scratching) to let people dance longer (break dancing) and began MC’ing (rapping) during the extended breakdancing. ... [This] helped lay the foundation for a cultural revolution. ”
Their equipment was composed of huge stacks of speakers, turntables, and one or more microphones.[10] In late 1979, Debbie Harry of Blondie took Chic co-founder and lead guitarist Nile Rodgers to such an event, as the main backing track used was the break from Chic's "Good Times".[11]
Herc was also the developer of break-beat deejaying, where the breaks of funk songs—the part most suited to dance, usually percussion-based—were isolated and repeated for the purpose of all-night dance parties. This breakbeat DJing, using hard funk, rock, and records with Latin percussion, formed the basis of hip hop music. Campbell's announcements and exhortations to dancers would lead to the syncopated, rhymed spoken accompaniment we now know as rapping. He dubbed his dancers break-boys and break-girls, or simply b-boys and b-girls. According to Herc, "breaking" was also street slang for "getting excited" and "acting energetically".[12] Herc's terms b-boy, b-girl and breaking became part of the lexicon of hip hop culture, before that culture itself had developed a name.
Later DJs such as Grand Wizard Theodore, Grandmaster Flash and Jazzy Jay refined and developed the use of breakbeats, including cutting and scratching.[13] The approach used by Herc was soon widely copied, and by the late 1970s DJs were releasing 12" records where they would rap to the beat. Popular tunes included Kurtis Blow's "The Breaks", and The Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight."[11]
Emceeing is the rhythmic spoken delivery of rhymes and wordplay, delivered over a beat or without accompaniment. Rapping is derived from the griots (folk poets) of West Africa, and Jamaican-style toasting. Rap developed both inside and outside of hip hop culture, and began with the street parties thrown in the Bronx neighborhood of New York in the 1970s by Kool Herc and others. It originated as MCs would talk over the music to promote their DJ, promote other dance parties, take light-hearted jabs at other lyricists, or talk about problems in their areas and issues facing the community as a whole.
Melle Mel, a rapper/lyricist with The Furious Five, is often credited with being the first rap lyricist to call himself an "MC".[14]
Hip hop as a culture was further defined in 1983, when Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force released a track called "Planet Rock." Instead of simply rapping over disco beats, Bambaataa created an innovative electronic sound, taking advantage of the rapidly improving drum machine and synthesizer technology. The appearance of music videos changed entertainment: they often glorified urban neighborhoods.[15]. The music video for "Planet Rock" showcased the subculture of hip hop musicians, graffiti artists and breakdancers. Many hip hop-related films were released between 1983 and 1985, among them Wild Style, Beat Street, Krush Groove, Breakin, and the documentary Style Wars.
These films expanded the appeal of hip hop beyond the boundaries of New York. By 1985, youth worldwide were laying down scrap linoleum or cardboard, setting down portable "boombox" stereos and spinning on their backs in Adidas tracksuits and sneakers to music by Run DMC, LL Cool J, the Fat Boys, Herbie Hancock, EPMD, Soulsonic Force, Jazzy Jay, Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, and Stetsasonic, just to name a few. The hip hop artwork and "slang" of US urban communities quickly found its way to Europe and Asia, as the culture's global appeal took root.
The 1980s also saw many artists make social statements through hip hop. In 1982, Melle Mel and Duke Bootee recorded "The Message" (officially credited to Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five), a song that foreshadowed the socially conscious statements of Run-DMC's "It's like That" and Public Enemy's "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos."[16]
During the 1980s, hip hop also embraced the creation of rhythm by using the human body, via the vocal percussion technique of beatboxing. Early pioneers such as Doug E. Fresh, Biz Markie, and Buffy from the Fat Boys made beats, rhythm, and musical sounds using their mouth, lips, tongue, voice, and other body parts. "Human Beatbox" artists would also sing or imitate turntablism scratching or other instrument sounds.
Early hip hop has often been credited with helping to reduce inner-city gang violence by replacing physical violence with dance and artwork battles. In the early 1970s, Kool DJ Herc began organizing dance parties in his home in the Bronx. The parties became so popular they were moved to outdoor venues to accommodate more people. City teenagers, after years of gang violence, were looking for new ways to express themselves. [17] These outdoor parties, hosted in parks, became a means of expression and an outlet for teenagers, where “Instead of getting into trouble on the streets, teens now had a place to expend their pent-up energy.” [17]
Tony Tone, a member of the pioneering rap group the Cold Crush Brothers, noted that “Hip-hop saved a lot of lives.”[17] Hip hop culture became an outlet and a way of dealing with the hardships of life as minorities within America, and an outlet to deal with violence and gang culture. MC Kid Lucky mentions that “people used to break-dance against each other instead of fighting.”[18] Inspired by Kool DJ Herc, once-gang leader of the Black Spades, Afrika Bambaataa created a street organization called Universal Zulu Nation, centered around hip hop, as a means to draw teenagers out of gang life and violence.[17]
Contrary to popular belief, the hip hop movement was not centered around violence, drugs, and weapons in the early days. Many people used hip hop in positive ways. The lyrical content of many early rap groups concentrated on social issues, as seen in seminal track "The Message (song)" by Grandmaster Flash. "Young black Americans coming out of the civil rights movement have used hip hop culture in the 1980s and 1990s to show the limitations of the movement."[19]. Hip hop gave young African Americans a voice to let their issues be noticed. It also gave young blacks a chance for financial gain by "reducing the rest of the world to consumers of its social concerns."[19]
This shows that hip hop's social impacts on the country have not been all negative. It has positively affected many youth and encouraged them to voice their opinions on world and personal issues. "Like rock-and-roll, hip hop is vigorously opposed by conservatives because it romanticises violence, law-breaking, and gangs".[19] Both hip hop and rock-and-roll were musical movements used by teens in order to express how they felt about certain issues. "Last night at the Waldorf-Astoria, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, who proved that hip hop was more than party music with their 1982 hit “The Message,” became the first hip hop group to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame" [20] Now hip hop and rock-and-roll are used together in many ways including rewriting songs where a rapper or rock band play with the other.
With the emergence of commercial and crime-related rap during the early 1990s, however, an emphasis on violence was incorporated, with many rappers boasting about drugs, weapons, misogyny, and violence. While hip hop music now appeals to a broader demographic, media critics argue that socially and politically conscious hip hop has long been disregarded by mainstream America in favor of gangsta rap.[21]
Though created in the United States by African Americans and Latinos, hip hop culture and music is now global in scope. Youth culture and opinion is meted out in both Israeli hip hop and Palestinian hip hop, while France, Germany, the U.K., Brazil, Japan, Africa, Australia and the Caribbean have long-established hip hop followings. According to the U.S. Department of State, hip hop is "now the center of a mega music and fashion industry around the world," that crosses social barriers and cuts across racial lines.[22] National Geographic recognizes hip hop as "the world's favorite youth culture" in which "just about every country on the planet seems to have developed its own local rap scene."[23] Through its international travels, hip hop is now considered a “global musical epidemic,”[24] and has diverged from its ethnic roots by way of globalization and localization.
Although some non-American rappers may still relate with young black Americans, hip hop now transcends its original culture, and is appealing because it is “custom-made to combat the anomie that preys on adolescents wherever nobody knows their name.”[25] Hip hop is attractive in its ability to give a voice to disenfranchised youth in any country, and as music with a message it is a form available to all societies worldwide.
Even in the face of growing global popularity, or perhaps because of it, hip hop has come under fire for being too commercial, too commodified. Artist Nas said it himself in his 2006 album Hip Hop is Dead. While this of course stirs up controversy, a documentary called The Commodification of Hip Hop directed by Brooke Daniel interviews students at Satellite Academy in New York City. One girl talks about the epidemic of crime that she sees in urban black and Latino communities, relating it directly to the hip hop industry saying “When they can’t afford these kind of things, these things that celebrities have like jewelry and clothes and all that, they’ll go and sell drugs, some people will steal it…”[26] Many students see this as a negative side effect of the hip hop industry, and indeed, hip hop has been criticized all over the world for spreading crime, violence, and American ideals of consumerism although much of the hip-hop dancing community still chooses to refer back to more "oldschool" types of hip-hop music that does not preach violence and drugs.
In an article for Village Voice, Greg Tate argues that the commercialization of hip hop is a negative and pervasive phenomenon, writing that "what we call hiphop is now inseparable from what we call the hiphop industry, in which the nouveau riche and the super-rich employers get richer".[19] Ironically, this commercialization coincides with a decline in rap sales and pressure from critics of the genre [27]. However, in his book In Search Of Africa, Manthia Diawara explains that hip hop is really a voice of people who are down and out in modern society. He argues that the “worldwide spread of hip-hop as a market revolution” is actually global "expression of poor people’s desire for the good life,” and that this struggle aligns with “the nationalist struggle for citizenship and belonging, but also reveals the need to go beyond such struggles and celebrate the redemption of the black individual through tradition.” [28]
This connection to "tradition" however, is something that may be lacking according to one Satellite Academy staff member who says that in all of the focus on materialism, the hip hop community is “not leaving anything for the next generation, we’re not building.”[29]
As the hip hop genre turns 30, a deeper analysis of the music’s impact is taking place. It has been viewed as a cultural sensation which changed the music industry around the world, but some believe commercialization and mass production have given it a darker side. Tate has described its recent manifestations as a marriage of “New World African ingenuity and that trick of the devil known as global-hypercapitalism”[30], arguing it has joined the “mainstream that had once excluded its originators.” [30] While hip hop's values may have changed over time, the music continues to offer its followers and originators a shared identity which is instantly recognizable and much imitated around the world.
From its early spread to Europe and Japan to an almost worldwide acceptance through Asia and South American countries such as Brazil, the musical influence has been global. Hip hop sounds and styles differ from region to region, but there is also a lot of crossbreeding. In each separate hip hop scene there is also constant struggle between “old school” hip hop and more localized, newer sounds.[31] Regardless of where it is found, the music often targets local disaffected youth.[32]
Hip hop has given people a voice to express themselves, from the "Bronx to Beirut, Kazakhstan to Cali, Hokkaido to Harare, Hip Hop is the new sound of a disaffected global youth culture."[32] Though on the global scale there is a heavy influence from US culture, different cultures worldwide have transformed hip hop with their own traditions and beliefs. “Global Hip Hop succeeds best when it showcases...cultures that reside outside the main arteries of the African Diaspora.”[32] Not all countries have embraced hip hop, where, “as can be expected in countries with strong local culture, the interloping wildstyle of hip hop is not always welcomed.”[33]
As hip hop becomes globally-available, it is not a one-sided process that eradicates local cultures. Instead, global hip hop styles are often synthesized with local styles. Hartwig Vens argues that hip hop can also be viewed as a global learning experience. [34] Hip hop from countries outside the United States is often labeled "world music" for the American consumer. Author Jeff Chang argues that "the essence of hip hop is the cipher, born in the Bronx, where competition and community feed each other."[17]
Hip hop has impacted many different countries culturally and socially in positive ways. "Thousands of organizers from Cape Town to Paris use hip hop in their communities to address environmental justice, policing and prisons, media justice, and education."[17] Also, "young people in places as disparate as Chile, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Norway use hip hop to push their generation's views into the local conversation."[17]
While hip hop music has been criticized as a music which creates a divide between western music and music from the rest of the world, a musical "cross pollination" has taken place, which strengthens the power of hip hop to influence different communities.[17] Hip hop's impact as a "world music" is also due to its translatability among different cultures in the world. Hip hop's messages allow the under-privileged and the mistreated to be heard.[34] These cultural translations cross borders.[17] While the music may be from a foreign country, the message is something that many people can relate to- something not "foreign" at all.[35]
Even when hip hop is transplanted to other countries, it often retains its "vital progressive agenda that challenges the status quo."[17] Global hip hop is the meeting ground for progressive local activism, as many organizers use hip hop in their communities to address environmental injustice, policing and prisons, media justice, and education. In Gothenburg, Sweden, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) incorporate graffiti and dance to engage disaffected immigrant and working class youths. And indigenous young people in places as disparate as Chile, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Norway use hip hop to push their generation's views into local conversation.[17] Hip hop is a subculture, which is said to have begun with the work of DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, and Afrika Bambaattaa. The four main aspects, or "elements", of hip hop culture are MCing (rapping), DJing, urban inspired art/tagging (graffiti), and b-boying (or breakdancing).
DJing
DJ Hypnotize and Baby Cee, two Disc jockeys
Turntablism refers to the extended boundaries and techniques of normal DJing innovated by hip hop. The first hip hop DJ was Kool DJ Herc, who created hip hop through the isolation of "breaks" (the parts of albums that focused solely on the beat). In addition to developing Herc's techniques, DJs Grandmaster Flash, Grand Wizard Theodore, and Grandmaster Caz made further innovations with the introduction of scratching.
Traditionally, a DJ will use two turntables simultaneously. These are connected to a DJ mixer, an amplifier, speakers, and various other pieces of electronic music equipment. The DJ will then perform various tricks between the two albums currently in rotation using the above listed methods. The result is a unique sound created by the seemingly combined sound of two separate songs into one song. A DJ should not be confused with a producer of a music track (though there is considerable overlap between the two roles).
In the early years of hip hop, the DJs were the stars, but their limelight has been taken by MCs since 1978, thanks largely to Melle Mel of Grandmaster Flash's crew, the Furious Five. However, a number of DJs have gained stardom nonetheless in recent years. Famous DJs include Grandmaster Flash, Mr. Magic, DJ Jazzy Jeff, DJ Scratch from EPMD, DJ Premier from Gang Starr, DJ Scott La Rock from Boogie Down Productions, DJ Pete Rock of Pete Rock & CL Smooth, DJ Muggs from Cypress Hill, Jam Master Jay from Run-DMC, Eric B., DJ Screw, Funkmaster Flex, Tony Touch, DJ Clue, DJ Q-Bert. The underground movement of turntablism has also emerged to focus on the skills of the DJ.
[edit] Rapping
Rapper Busta Rhymes performs in Las Vegas for a BET party.
Rapping, also known as Emceeing, MCing, Rhyme spitting[citation needed], Spitting[citation needed], or just Rhyming,[citation needed] is the rhythmic delivery of rhymes, one of the central elements of hip hop music and culture. Although the word rap has sometimes been claimed to be a backronym of the phrase "Rhythmic American Poetry", "Rhythm and Poetry", "Rhythmically Applied Poetry", "Rhythmically Associated Poetry", or "Rapid and Precise", use of the word to describe quick and slangy speech or repartee long predates the musical form.[36] Rapping can be delivered over a beat or without accompaniment.
[edit] Graffiti
An aerosol paint can, common tool for modern graffiti
In America around the late 1960s, graffiti was used as a form of expression by political activists, and also by gangs such as the Savage Skulls, La Familia, and Savage Nomads to mark territory. Towards the end of the 1960s, the signatures—tags—of Philadelphia graffiti writers Top Cat,[37] Cool Earl and Cornbread started to appear.[38] Around 1970-71, the centre of graffiti innovation moved to New York City where writers following in the wake of TAKI 183 and Tracy 168 would add their street number to their nickname, "bomb" a train with their work, and let the subway take it—and their fame, if it was impressive, or simply pervasive, enough—"all city". Bubble lettering held sway initially among writers from the Bronx, though the elaborate Brooklyn style Tracy 168 dubbed "wildstyle" would come to define the art.[37][39] The early trendsetters were joined in the 70s by artists like Dondi, Futura 2000, Daze, Blade, Lee, Zephyr, Rammellzee, Crash, Kel, NOC 167 and Lady Pink.[37]
The relationship between graffiti and hip hop culture arises both from early graffiti artists practicing other aspects of hip hop, and its being practiced in areas where other elements of hip hop were evolving as art forms. Graffiti is recognized as a visual expression of rap music, just as breakdancing is viewed as a physical expression. The book Subway Art (New York: Henry Holt & Co, 1984) and the TV program Style Wars (first shown on the PBS channel in 1984) were among the first ways the mainstream public were introduced to hip hop graffiti.
[edit] Bboying(Breakdance)
Breakdance, an early form of hip hop dance, often involve battles, showing off skills without any physical contact with the adversaries.
Breakdance is a dynamic style of dance which developed as part of the hip hop culture. Breaking began to take form in the South Bronx alongside the other elements of hip hop. The "B" in B-boy stands for break, as in break-boy or break-girl. The term "B-boy" originated from the dancers at DJ Kool Herc's parties, who saved their best dance moves for the break section of the song, getting in front of the audience to dance in a distinctive, frenetic style. According to the documentary film The Freshest Kids, a history of the b-boy; DJ Kool Herc describes the b in b-boy as short for breaking which at the time was slang for "going off" also one of the original names for the dance. However, early on the dance was known as the "boiong" (the sound a spring makes). Breaking was briefly documented for release to a world wide audience for the first time in Style Wars, and was later given a little more focus in the fictional film Beat Street.
BBoying is one of the major elements of hip hop culture, commonly associated with, but distinct from, "popping", "locking", "hitting", "ticking", "boogaloo", and other funk styles that evolved independently during the late 1960s in California. It was common during the 1980s to see a group of people with a radio on a playground, basketball court, or sidewalk performing a bboy show for a large audience.[citation needed]
[edit] Beatboxing
Beatboxing, popularized by Doug E. Fresh, is the vocal percussion of hip hop culture. It is primarily concerned with the art of creating beats, rhythms, and melodies using the human mouth. The term beatboxing is derived from the mimicry of the first generation of drum machines, then known as beatboxes. As it is a way of creating hip-hop music, it can be categorized under the production element of hip-hop, though it does sometimes include a type of rapping intersected with the human-created beat.
The art form enjoyed a strong presence in the '80s with artists like the Darren "Buffy, the Human Beat Box" Robinson of the Fat Boys and Biz Markie showing their beatboxing skills. Beatboxing declined in popularity along with break dancing in the late '80s, and almost slipped even deeper than the underground. Beatboxing has been enjoying a resurgence since the late '90s, marked by the release of "Make the Music 2000." by Rahzel of The Roots (known for even singing while beatboxing).
As it grew and developed into a multi-billion dollar industry, the scope of hip hop culture grew beyond the boundaries of its traditional four elements.[citation needed] KRS-ONE, a rapper from the golden age of hip hop, names nine elements of hip hop culture: the traditional four and beatboxing, plus hip hop fashion, hip hop slang, street knowledge, and street entrepreneurship. He also suggests that hip hop is a cultural movement and that the word itself had to reflect this.[citation needed] He spells it Hiphop (one word, capital "h") and this is reflected in his Temple of Hiphop.
Product placement
Foodstuffs emblazoned with Hip hop images
Critics such as Businessweek's David Kiley argue that the discussion of many products within hip hop music and culture may actually be the result of undisclosed product placement deals.[43] Such critics allege that shilling or product placement takes place in commercial rap music, and that lyrical references to products are actually paid endorsements.[43] In 2005, a proposed plan by McDonalds, which would have paid rappers to advertise McDonalds food in their music, was leaked to the press.[43] After Russell Simmons made a deal with Courvoisier to promote the brand among hip hop fans, Busta Rhymes recorded the song "Pass The Courvoisier".[43] Simmons insists that no money changed hands in the deal.[43]
The symbiotic relationship has also stretched to include car manufacturers, clothing designers and sneaker companies, and many other companies have used the hip-hop community to make their name or to give the credibility. One such beneficiary was Jacob the Jeweler, a diamond merchant from New York, Jacob Arabo's clientèle included Sean Combs, Lil Kim and Nas. He created jewelry pieces from precious metals that were heavily loaded with diamond and gemstones. As his name was mentioned in the song lyrics of his hip hop customers, his profile quickly rose. Arabo expanded his brand to include gem-encrusted watches that retail for hundreds of thousands of dollars, gaining so much attention that Cartier filed a trademark-infringement lawsuit against him for putting diamonds on the faces of their watches and reselling them without permission.[44] Arabo's profile increased steadily until his June, 2006 arrest by the FBI on money laundering charges.[45]
While some brands welcome the support of the hip-hop community, one brand that did not was Cristal champagne maker Louis Roederer. A 2006 article from The Economist magazine featured remarks from managing director Frederic Rouzaud about whether the brand's identification with rap stars could affect their company negatively. His answer was dismissive in tone: "That's a good question, but what can we do? We can't forbid people from buying it. I'm sure Dom Pérignon or Krug would be delighted to have their business." In retaliation, many hip hop icons such as Jay-Z and Sean Combs who previous included references to "Cris", ceased all mentions and purchases of the champagne.
[edit] Media
Hip-hop culture is intrinsically related to television; there have been a number of television shows devoted to or about hip-hop. Early in its history, television channels local to New York City spread the existence of hip hop. Public television in the area broadcast Style Wars, signifying the lack of commercial or economic interest in the genre. BET was for a period the only television channel likely to play much hip hop, but in recent years the mainstream channels VH1 and MTV have added a significant amount of hip hop to their play list. With the emergence of the Internet a number of online sites have also begun to offer Hip Hop related video content.
Hip hop films have been related since hip-hop's conception and have become even more related in the 21st century. During the early 1990s, African-Americans experienced a film renassiance, sparked by the popularity of hood films, in-depth looks at urban life, focusing on violence, family, friends and hip-hop. There have also been a number of hip hop films, movies which focused on hip-hop as a subject.
Hip hop magazines have a large place in hip hop culture, including Hip Hop Connection, XXL, Scratch, The Source and Vibe. Many individual cities have produced their own local hip hop newsletters, while hip hop magazines with national distribution are found in a few other countries. The 21st century also ushered in the rise of online media, and hip hop fan sites now offer comprehensive hip hop coverage on a daily basis.
Hip hop has spawned dozens of sub-genres which incorporate a style of production or rapping which dominates their music. Though it began a stereotypically African American music, it has since spread to all people of the world. Like jazz, hip-hop is one of the few musical genres seen as thoroughly, entirely American. With its popularization all over the world, however, it is now an international, rather than American, genre of music. Here, it is important to note the varying social influences that affect hip-hop's message in different nations. Frequently a musical response to political and/or social injustices, the face of hip-hop varies greatly from nation to nation.
Hip-hop influences people in many different ways, such as the vocabulary people use (Slang words), the way people dress, and the way they carry themselves, at times people are influenced so much that they will do a lot of things their favorite rappers are doing, sort of idolizing them, there are cases where fans get tattoos that their favorite rappers have. Hip-Hop has now expanded and gone on a global scale, millions of rap albums are sold in foreign countries, some are not English speaking countries, yet people go out of their way and purchase these albums even thought they don’t understand the message the song carries, and manage to memorize the lyrics and sing along not knowing what they are saying. In foreign countries Hip-Hop has influenced natives to pursue rap careers and do what is being done in the United States such as following the trends, in their country. This is a product of globalization and it explains how popular culture can be interwoven with the everyday life of individuals that follow it, and how it can affect them in many ways.
For example, in South Africa the largest form of hip hop is called Kwaito, a reflection of a post-apartheid South Africa. Kwaito has similarly become more than a music genre, it has evolved into a lifestyle, encompassing all aspects of life including language and fashion. [46]The music of Kwaito is both politically and party driven. The politically fuelled music gives a voice to oppressed people that have no other way to voice their concerns and find music to be very accessible, not only to themselves but also to the audiences they are trying to reach. On the other hand the club driven music can also be seen as political in the sense that the artists couldn't care less about the post apartheid life they live and are more concerned about having a good time and not how their access to this life came about. Kwaito is a music that came from a once hated and oppressed people, but it is now sweeping the nation. The main consumers of Kwaito are adolescents and half of the South African population is under 21. Some of the large Kwaito artists have sold over 100,000 albums, and in an industry where 25,000 albums sold is considered a gold record, those are impressive numbers. [47]In the end Kwaito gives aspirations to the oppressed people of a post apartheid South Africa, where they now have a control over a very influence source of media, music.[48]
In Jamaica the sounds of hip hop are derived from American and Jamaican influences. Jamaican hip hop is defined both through dancehall and Reggae music. Jamaican Kool Herc brought the sound systems, technology, and techniques of Reggae music to New York during the 1970s. Jamaican hip hop artists often rap in both Brooklyn and Jamaican accents. Jamaican hip hop subject matter is often influenced by outside and internal forces. Outside forces such as the bling-bling era of today's modern hip hop and internal influences coming from the use of anti colonialism and marijuana or "Ganja" references which Rastafarians believe bring them closer to God.[49][50][51]
Author Wayne Marshall argues that "Hip hop, as with any number of African-American cultural forms before it, offers a range of compelling and contradictory significations to Jamaican artist and audiences. From "modern blackness" to foreign mind", transnational cosmopolitanism to militant pan-Africanism, radical remixology to outright mimicry, hip-hop in Jamaica embodies the myriad ways that Jamaicans embrace, reject, and incorporate foreign yet familiar forms." [52]
In the developing world hip hop has made a considerable impact in the social context. Despite the lack of resources, hip hop has made considerable inroads. [53] Because funds are limited, hip hop artists are forced to use very basic tools, and even graffiti, an important aspect of the hip hop culture, is constrained because it is not available to the average person. However, the vibrant culture is what fuels the spread of hip hop in developing nations and the general political instability that comes along with a developing nation. Many hip hop artists that make it out of the developing world come to places like the United States in search of an identity and place that fits them specifically.
Having its roots from reggae, disco, funk, hip hop has since exponentially expanded into a widely accepted form of representation world wide. It expansion includes events like Afrika Bambaataa releasing "Planet Rock" in 1982 which tried to establish a more global harmony in hip hop. In the 1990s MC Solaar became an international hit that was not from America, the first of his kind. From the 80s onward, television became the major source of widespread outsourcing of hip hop to the global world. From YO! MTV Raps, a television show that was shown in many countries to Public enemies world tour, Hip Hop spread further to Latin America and became highly mainstream. Ranging from countries like France, Spain, England, the US and many many other countries world wide, voices want to be heard, and hip hop allows them to do so. As such, hip hop has been cut mixed and changed to the areas that adapt to it. [54] [55]
Early hip hop has often been credited with helping to reduce inner-city gang violence by replacing physical violence with hip hop battles of dance and artwork. However, with the emergence of commercial and crime-related rap during the early 1990s, an emphasis on violence was incorporated, with many rappers boasting about drugs, weapons, misogyny, and violence. While hip hop music now appeals to a broader demographic, media critics argue that socially and politically conscious hip hop has long been disregarded by mainstream America in favor of its media-baiting sibling, gangsta rap.[56]
Many artists are now considered to be alternative/underground hip hop when they attempt to reflect what they believe to be the original elements of the culture. Artists/groups such as Talib Kweli, Mos Def, Dilated Peoples, dead prez, Blackalicious, and Jurassic 5 may emphasize messages of verbal skill, unity, or activism instead of messages of violence, material wealth, and misogyny.
Authenticity is often a serious debate within hip hop culture. Dating back to its origins in the 1970s in the Bronx, hip hop revolved around a culture of protest and freedom of expression in the wake of oppression. As hip hop has become less of an underground culture, it is subject to debate whether or not the spirit of hip hop is embodied in protest, or whether it can evolve to exist in a marketable integrated version. In "Authenticity Within Hip-Hop and Other Cultures Threatened with Assimilation," Commentator Kembrew McLeod argues that hip hop culture is actually threatened with assimilation by a larger, mainstream culture.[57] In accordance with McLeod's position, Greg Tate an editor of the Village Voice also voices that hip hop is slowly losing its edge due to the genre's involvement in the mainstream, hyper-capitalist world. Believing that hip hop should be utilized as a voice for social justice, Tate points out that in the marketable version of hip hop, there isn't a role for this evolved genre in context of the original theme hip hop originated from (freedom from oppression). The problem with Black progressive political organizing isn't that hip hop, but that the No. 1 issue on the table needs to be poverty, and nobody knows how to make poverty sexy. [58] Tate discusses how the dynamic of progressive Black politics cannot apply to the genre of hip hop in the current state today due to the genre's heavy involvement in the market. In his article he discusses Hip Hop's 30th birthday and it's evolution has been a devolution due to its capitalistic endeavors. Both Tate and McLeod argue that hip hop has lost its authenticity due to its losing sight of the revolutionary theme and humble "folksy" beginnings the music originated from. "This is the first time artists from around the world will be performing in an international context. The ones that are coming are considered to be the key members of the contemporary underground hip-hop movement." This is how the music landscape has broadened around the world over the last ten years. The maturation of Hip Hop has gotten older with the genres age, but the initial reasoning of why Hip Hop has started will always be intact. Expression and oppression will always be at the root of any Hip Hop movement.
Though born in the United States, the reach of hip hop is global. Youth culture and opinion is meted out in both Israeli hip hop and Palestinian hip hop, while France, Germany, the U.K., Africa and the Caribbean have long-established hip hop followings. According to the U.S. Department of State, hip hop is "now the center of a mega music and fashion industry around the world", that crosses social barriers and cuts across racial lines.[22] National Geographic recognizes hip hop as "the world's favorite youth culture" in which "just about every country on the planet seems to have developed its own local rap scene."
When hip hop music began to emerge, it was based around DJs who created rhythmic beats by looping breaks (smalls portions of songs emphasizing a percussive pattern) on two turntables. This was later accompanied by "rapping" (a rhythmic style of chanting). An original form of dancing, and particular styles of dress, arose among followers of this new music. These elements experienced considerable refinement and development over the course of the history of the culture.
The relationship between graffiti and hip hop culture arises from the appearance of new and increasingly elaborate and pervasive forms of the practice in areas where other elements of hip hop were evolving as art forms, with a heavy overlap between those who wrote and those who practiced other elements of the culture. Beatboxing is a mainly percussive vocal form in which various technical effects of hip hop DJs are imitated.
The word "hip" was used as African American Vernacular English (AAVE) as early as 1904. The colloquial language meant "informed" or "current," and was likely derived from the earlier form hep. The term "hip hop" also followed logically the previous African-American music culture of "Bebop".
Keith "Cowboy" Wiggins, a rapper with Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five has been credited with the coining of the term hip hop in 1978 while teasing a friend who had just joined the US Army, by scat singing the words "hip/hop/hip/hop" in a way that mimicked the rhythmic cadence of marching soldiers. Cowboy later worked the "hip hop" cadence into a part of his stage performance. [4] The group frequently performed with disco artists who would refer to this new type of MC / DJ produced music by calling them "those hip-hoppers". The name was originally meant as a sign of disrespect, but soon came to identify this new music and culture. Other artists quickly copied the Furious Five and began using the term in their music; for example the opening of the song "Rapper's Delight" by The Sugarhill Gang in addition the verse found on Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's own "Superrappin'", both released in 1979. Lovebug Starski and DJ Hollywood then began using the term when referring to this new disco rap music. Hip hop pioneer and South Bronx community leader Afrika Bambaataa also credits Lovebug Starski, a Bronx DJ who put out a single called "The Positive Life" in 1981, as the first to use the term "Hip Hop," as it relates to the culture. Bambaataa, a former Black Spades gang member also did much to further popularize the term.
Jamaican born DJ Clive "DJ Kool Herc" Campbell is credited as originating hip hop music, in the Bronx, New York, after moving to New York at the age of thirteen. Herc created the blueprint for hip hop music and culture by building upon the Jamaican tradition of toasting, or boasting impromptu poetry and sayings over music, which he witnessed as a youth in Jamaica. [7]
Herc and other DJs would tap into the power lines to connect their equipment and perform, at venues such as public basketball courts and the historic building "where hip hop was born," 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, Bronx, New York.[8]
On August 11, 1973, DJ Kool Herc was a Dee Jay and Emcee at a party in the recreation room of 1520 Sedgewick Avenue in the Bronx adjacent to the Cross-Bronx Expressway.[9] It was not the actual "Birthplace of Hip Hop" -- the genre developed slowly in several places in the 1970s -- it was verified to be the place where one of the pivotal and formative events occurred.[9] Specifically, DJ Kool Herc:
“ extended an instrumental beat (breaking or scratching) to let people dance longer (break dancing) and began MC’ing (rapping) during the extended breakdancing. ... [This] helped lay the foundation for a cultural revolution. ”
Their equipment was composed of huge stacks of speakers, turntables, and one or more microphones.[10] In late 1979, Debbie Harry of Blondie took Chic co-founder and lead guitarist Nile Rodgers to such an event, as the main backing track used was the break from Chic's "Good Times".[11]
Herc was also the developer of break-beat deejaying, where the breaks of funk songs—the part most suited to dance, usually percussion-based—were isolated and repeated for the purpose of all-night dance parties. This breakbeat DJing, using hard funk, rock, and records with Latin percussion, formed the basis of hip hop music. Campbell's announcements and exhortations to dancers would lead to the syncopated, rhymed spoken accompaniment we now know as rapping. He dubbed his dancers break-boys and break-girls, or simply b-boys and b-girls. According to Herc, "breaking" was also street slang for "getting excited" and "acting energetically".[12] Herc's terms b-boy, b-girl and breaking became part of the lexicon of hip hop culture, before that culture itself had developed a name.
Later DJs such as Grand Wizard Theodore, Grandmaster Flash and Jazzy Jay refined and developed the use of breakbeats, including cutting and scratching.[13] The approach used by Herc was soon widely copied, and by the late 1970s DJs were releasing 12" records where they would rap to the beat. Popular tunes included Kurtis Blow's "The Breaks", and The Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight."[11]
Emceeing is the rhythmic spoken delivery of rhymes and wordplay, delivered over a beat or without accompaniment. Rapping is derived from the griots (folk poets) of West Africa, and Jamaican-style toasting. Rap developed both inside and outside of hip hop culture, and began with the street parties thrown in the Bronx neighborhood of New York in the 1970s by Kool Herc and others. It originated as MCs would talk over the music to promote their DJ, promote other dance parties, take light-hearted jabs at other lyricists, or talk about problems in their areas and issues facing the community as a whole.
Melle Mel, a rapper/lyricist with The Furious Five, is often credited with being the first rap lyricist to call himself an "MC".[14]
Hip hop as a culture was further defined in 1983, when Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force released a track called "Planet Rock." Instead of simply rapping over disco beats, Bambaataa created an innovative electronic sound, taking advantage of the rapidly improving drum machine and synthesizer technology. The appearance of music videos changed entertainment: they often glorified urban neighborhoods.[15]. The music video for "Planet Rock" showcased the subculture of hip hop musicians, graffiti artists and breakdancers. Many hip hop-related films were released between 1983 and 1985, among them Wild Style, Beat Street, Krush Groove, Breakin, and the documentary Style Wars.
These films expanded the appeal of hip hop beyond the boundaries of New York. By 1985, youth worldwide were laying down scrap linoleum or cardboard, setting down portable "boombox" stereos and spinning on their backs in Adidas tracksuits and sneakers to music by Run DMC, LL Cool J, the Fat Boys, Herbie Hancock, EPMD, Soulsonic Force, Jazzy Jay, Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, and Stetsasonic, just to name a few. The hip hop artwork and "slang" of US urban communities quickly found its way to Europe and Asia, as the culture's global appeal took root.
The 1980s also saw many artists make social statements through hip hop. In 1982, Melle Mel and Duke Bootee recorded "The Message" (officially credited to Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five), a song that foreshadowed the socially conscious statements of Run-DMC's "It's like That" and Public Enemy's "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos."[16]
During the 1980s, hip hop also embraced the creation of rhythm by using the human body, via the vocal percussion technique of beatboxing. Early pioneers such as Doug E. Fresh, Biz Markie, and Buffy from the Fat Boys made beats, rhythm, and musical sounds using their mouth, lips, tongue, voice, and other body parts. "Human Beatbox" artists would also sing or imitate turntablism scratching or other instrument sounds.
Early hip hop has often been credited with helping to reduce inner-city gang violence by replacing physical violence with dance and artwork battles. In the early 1970s, Kool DJ Herc began organizing dance parties in his home in the Bronx. The parties became so popular they were moved to outdoor venues to accommodate more people. City teenagers, after years of gang violence, were looking for new ways to express themselves. [17] These outdoor parties, hosted in parks, became a means of expression and an outlet for teenagers, where “Instead of getting into trouble on the streets, teens now had a place to expend their pent-up energy.” [17]
Tony Tone, a member of the pioneering rap group the Cold Crush Brothers, noted that “Hip-hop saved a lot of lives.”[17] Hip hop culture became an outlet and a way of dealing with the hardships of life as minorities within America, and an outlet to deal with violence and gang culture. MC Kid Lucky mentions that “people used to break-dance against each other instead of fighting.”[18] Inspired by Kool DJ Herc, once-gang leader of the Black Spades, Afrika Bambaataa created a street organization called Universal Zulu Nation, centered around hip hop, as a means to draw teenagers out of gang life and violence.[17]
Contrary to popular belief, the hip hop movement was not centered around violence, drugs, and weapons in the early days. Many people used hip hop in positive ways. The lyrical content of many early rap groups concentrated on social issues, as seen in seminal track "The Message (song)" by Grandmaster Flash. "Young black Americans coming out of the civil rights movement have used hip hop culture in the 1980s and 1990s to show the limitations of the movement."[19]. Hip hop gave young African Americans a voice to let their issues be noticed. It also gave young blacks a chance for financial gain by "reducing the rest of the world to consumers of its social concerns."[19]
This shows that hip hop's social impacts on the country have not been all negative. It has positively affected many youth and encouraged them to voice their opinions on world and personal issues. "Like rock-and-roll, hip hop is vigorously opposed by conservatives because it romanticises violence, law-breaking, and gangs".[19] Both hip hop and rock-and-roll were musical movements used by teens in order to express how they felt about certain issues. "Last night at the Waldorf-Astoria, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, who proved that hip hop was more than party music with their 1982 hit “The Message,” became the first hip hop group to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame" [20] Now hip hop and rock-and-roll are used together in many ways including rewriting songs where a rapper or rock band play with the other.
With the emergence of commercial and crime-related rap during the early 1990s, however, an emphasis on violence was incorporated, with many rappers boasting about drugs, weapons, misogyny, and violence. While hip hop music now appeals to a broader demographic, media critics argue that socially and politically conscious hip hop has long been disregarded by mainstream America in favor of gangsta rap.[21]
Though created in the United States by African Americans and Latinos, hip hop culture and music is now global in scope. Youth culture and opinion is meted out in both Israeli hip hop and Palestinian hip hop, while France, Germany, the U.K., Brazil, Japan, Africa, Australia and the Caribbean have long-established hip hop followings. According to the U.S. Department of State, hip hop is "now the center of a mega music and fashion industry around the world," that crosses social barriers and cuts across racial lines.[22] National Geographic recognizes hip hop as "the world's favorite youth culture" in which "just about every country on the planet seems to have developed its own local rap scene."[23] Through its international travels, hip hop is now considered a “global musical epidemic,”[24] and has diverged from its ethnic roots by way of globalization and localization.
Although some non-American rappers may still relate with young black Americans, hip hop now transcends its original culture, and is appealing because it is “custom-made to combat the anomie that preys on adolescents wherever nobody knows their name.”[25] Hip hop is attractive in its ability to give a voice to disenfranchised youth in any country, and as music with a message it is a form available to all societies worldwide.
Even in the face of growing global popularity, or perhaps because of it, hip hop has come under fire for being too commercial, too commodified. Artist Nas said it himself in his 2006 album Hip Hop is Dead. While this of course stirs up controversy, a documentary called The Commodification of Hip Hop directed by Brooke Daniel interviews students at Satellite Academy in New York City. One girl talks about the epidemic of crime that she sees in urban black and Latino communities, relating it directly to the hip hop industry saying “When they can’t afford these kind of things, these things that celebrities have like jewelry and clothes and all that, they’ll go and sell drugs, some people will steal it…”[26] Many students see this as a negative side effect of the hip hop industry, and indeed, hip hop has been criticized all over the world for spreading crime, violence, and American ideals of consumerism although much of the hip-hop dancing community still chooses to refer back to more "oldschool" types of hip-hop music that does not preach violence and drugs.
In an article for Village Voice, Greg Tate argues that the commercialization of hip hop is a negative and pervasive phenomenon, writing that "what we call hiphop is now inseparable from what we call the hiphop industry, in which the nouveau riche and the super-rich employers get richer".[19] Ironically, this commercialization coincides with a decline in rap sales and pressure from critics of the genre [27]. However, in his book In Search Of Africa, Manthia Diawara explains that hip hop is really a voice of people who are down and out in modern society. He argues that the “worldwide spread of hip-hop as a market revolution” is actually global "expression of poor people’s desire for the good life,” and that this struggle aligns with “the nationalist struggle for citizenship and belonging, but also reveals the need to go beyond such struggles and celebrate the redemption of the black individual through tradition.” [28]
This connection to "tradition" however, is something that may be lacking according to one Satellite Academy staff member who says that in all of the focus on materialism, the hip hop community is “not leaving anything for the next generation, we’re not building.”[29]
As the hip hop genre turns 30, a deeper analysis of the music’s impact is taking place. It has been viewed as a cultural sensation which changed the music industry around the world, but some believe commercialization and mass production have given it a darker side. Tate has described its recent manifestations as a marriage of “New World African ingenuity and that trick of the devil known as global-hypercapitalism”[30], arguing it has joined the “mainstream that had once excluded its originators.” [30] While hip hop's values may have changed over time, the music continues to offer its followers and originators a shared identity which is instantly recognizable and much imitated around the world.
From its early spread to Europe and Japan to an almost worldwide acceptance through Asia and South American countries such as Brazil, the musical influence has been global. Hip hop sounds and styles differ from region to region, but there is also a lot of crossbreeding. In each separate hip hop scene there is also constant struggle between “old school” hip hop and more localized, newer sounds.[31] Regardless of where it is found, the music often targets local disaffected youth.[32]
Hip hop has given people a voice to express themselves, from the "Bronx to Beirut, Kazakhstan to Cali, Hokkaido to Harare, Hip Hop is the new sound of a disaffected global youth culture."[32] Though on the global scale there is a heavy influence from US culture, different cultures worldwide have transformed hip hop with their own traditions and beliefs. “Global Hip Hop succeeds best when it showcases...cultures that reside outside the main arteries of the African Diaspora.”[32] Not all countries have embraced hip hop, where, “as can be expected in countries with strong local culture, the interloping wildstyle of hip hop is not always welcomed.”[33]
As hip hop becomes globally-available, it is not a one-sided process that eradicates local cultures. Instead, global hip hop styles are often synthesized with local styles. Hartwig Vens argues that hip hop can also be viewed as a global learning experience. [34] Hip hop from countries outside the United States is often labeled "world music" for the American consumer. Author Jeff Chang argues that "the essence of hip hop is the cipher, born in the Bronx, where competition and community feed each other."[17]
Hip hop has impacted many different countries culturally and socially in positive ways. "Thousands of organizers from Cape Town to Paris use hip hop in their communities to address environmental justice, policing and prisons, media justice, and education."[17] Also, "young people in places as disparate as Chile, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Norway use hip hop to push their generation's views into the local conversation."[17]
While hip hop music has been criticized as a music which creates a divide between western music and music from the rest of the world, a musical "cross pollination" has taken place, which strengthens the power of hip hop to influence different communities.[17] Hip hop's impact as a "world music" is also due to its translatability among different cultures in the world. Hip hop's messages allow the under-privileged and the mistreated to be heard.[34] These cultural translations cross borders.[17] While the music may be from a foreign country, the message is something that many people can relate to- something not "foreign" at all.[35]
Even when hip hop is transplanted to other countries, it often retains its "vital progressive agenda that challenges the status quo."[17] Global hip hop is the meeting ground for progressive local activism, as many organizers use hip hop in their communities to address environmental injustice, policing and prisons, media justice, and education. In Gothenburg, Sweden, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) incorporate graffiti and dance to engage disaffected immigrant and working class youths. And indigenous young people in places as disparate as Chile, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Norway use hip hop to push their generation's views into local conversation.[17] Hip hop is a subculture, which is said to have begun with the work of DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, and Afrika Bambaattaa. The four main aspects, or "elements", of hip hop culture are MCing (rapping), DJing, urban inspired art/tagging (graffiti), and b-boying (or breakdancing).
DJing
DJ Hypnotize and Baby Cee, two Disc jockeys
Turntablism refers to the extended boundaries and techniques of normal DJing innovated by hip hop. The first hip hop DJ was Kool DJ Herc, who created hip hop through the isolation of "breaks" (the parts of albums that focused solely on the beat). In addition to developing Herc's techniques, DJs Grandmaster Flash, Grand Wizard Theodore, and Grandmaster Caz made further innovations with the introduction of scratching.
Traditionally, a DJ will use two turntables simultaneously. These are connected to a DJ mixer, an amplifier, speakers, and various other pieces of electronic music equipment. The DJ will then perform various tricks between the two albums currently in rotation using the above listed methods. The result is a unique sound created by the seemingly combined sound of two separate songs into one song. A DJ should not be confused with a producer of a music track (though there is considerable overlap between the two roles).
In the early years of hip hop, the DJs were the stars, but their limelight has been taken by MCs since 1978, thanks largely to Melle Mel of Grandmaster Flash's crew, the Furious Five. However, a number of DJs have gained stardom nonetheless in recent years. Famous DJs include Grandmaster Flash, Mr. Magic, DJ Jazzy Jeff, DJ Scratch from EPMD, DJ Premier from Gang Starr, DJ Scott La Rock from Boogie Down Productions, DJ Pete Rock of Pete Rock & CL Smooth, DJ Muggs from Cypress Hill, Jam Master Jay from Run-DMC, Eric B., DJ Screw, Funkmaster Flex, Tony Touch, DJ Clue, DJ Q-Bert. The underground movement of turntablism has also emerged to focus on the skills of the DJ.
[edit] Rapping
Rapper Busta Rhymes performs in Las Vegas for a BET party.
Rapping, also known as Emceeing, MCing, Rhyme spitting[citation needed], Spitting[citation needed], or just Rhyming,[citation needed] is the rhythmic delivery of rhymes, one of the central elements of hip hop music and culture. Although the word rap has sometimes been claimed to be a backronym of the phrase "Rhythmic American Poetry", "Rhythm and Poetry", "Rhythmically Applied Poetry", "Rhythmically Associated Poetry", or "Rapid and Precise", use of the word to describe quick and slangy speech or repartee long predates the musical form.[36] Rapping can be delivered over a beat or without accompaniment.
[edit] Graffiti
An aerosol paint can, common tool for modern graffiti
In America around the late 1960s, graffiti was used as a form of expression by political activists, and also by gangs such as the Savage Skulls, La Familia, and Savage Nomads to mark territory. Towards the end of the 1960s, the signatures—tags—of Philadelphia graffiti writers Top Cat,[37] Cool Earl and Cornbread started to appear.[38] Around 1970-71, the centre of graffiti innovation moved to New York City where writers following in the wake of TAKI 183 and Tracy 168 would add their street number to their nickname, "bomb" a train with their work, and let the subway take it—and their fame, if it was impressive, or simply pervasive, enough—"all city". Bubble lettering held sway initially among writers from the Bronx, though the elaborate Brooklyn style Tracy 168 dubbed "wildstyle" would come to define the art.[37][39] The early trendsetters were joined in the 70s by artists like Dondi, Futura 2000, Daze, Blade, Lee, Zephyr, Rammellzee, Crash, Kel, NOC 167 and Lady Pink.[37]
The relationship between graffiti and hip hop culture arises both from early graffiti artists practicing other aspects of hip hop, and its being practiced in areas where other elements of hip hop were evolving as art forms. Graffiti is recognized as a visual expression of rap music, just as breakdancing is viewed as a physical expression. The book Subway Art (New York: Henry Holt & Co, 1984) and the TV program Style Wars (first shown on the PBS channel in 1984) were among the first ways the mainstream public were introduced to hip hop graffiti.
[edit] Bboying(Breakdance)
Breakdance, an early form of hip hop dance, often involve battles, showing off skills without any physical contact with the adversaries.
Breakdance is a dynamic style of dance which developed as part of the hip hop culture. Breaking began to take form in the South Bronx alongside the other elements of hip hop. The "B" in B-boy stands for break, as in break-boy or break-girl. The term "B-boy" originated from the dancers at DJ Kool Herc's parties, who saved their best dance moves for the break section of the song, getting in front of the audience to dance in a distinctive, frenetic style. According to the documentary film The Freshest Kids, a history of the b-boy; DJ Kool Herc describes the b in b-boy as short for breaking which at the time was slang for "going off" also one of the original names for the dance. However, early on the dance was known as the "boiong" (the sound a spring makes). Breaking was briefly documented for release to a world wide audience for the first time in Style Wars, and was later given a little more focus in the fictional film Beat Street.
BBoying is one of the major elements of hip hop culture, commonly associated with, but distinct from, "popping", "locking", "hitting", "ticking", "boogaloo", and other funk styles that evolved independently during the late 1960s in California. It was common during the 1980s to see a group of people with a radio on a playground, basketball court, or sidewalk performing a bboy show for a large audience.[citation needed]
[edit] Beatboxing
Beatboxing, popularized by Doug E. Fresh, is the vocal percussion of hip hop culture. It is primarily concerned with the art of creating beats, rhythms, and melodies using the human mouth. The term beatboxing is derived from the mimicry of the first generation of drum machines, then known as beatboxes. As it is a way of creating hip-hop music, it can be categorized under the production element of hip-hop, though it does sometimes include a type of rapping intersected with the human-created beat.
The art form enjoyed a strong presence in the '80s with artists like the Darren "Buffy, the Human Beat Box" Robinson of the Fat Boys and Biz Markie showing their beatboxing skills. Beatboxing declined in popularity along with break dancing in the late '80s, and almost slipped even deeper than the underground. Beatboxing has been enjoying a resurgence since the late '90s, marked by the release of "Make the Music 2000." by Rahzel of The Roots (known for even singing while beatboxing).
As it grew and developed into a multi-billion dollar industry, the scope of hip hop culture grew beyond the boundaries of its traditional four elements.[citation needed] KRS-ONE, a rapper from the golden age of hip hop, names nine elements of hip hop culture: the traditional four and beatboxing, plus hip hop fashion, hip hop slang, street knowledge, and street entrepreneurship. He also suggests that hip hop is a cultural movement and that the word itself had to reflect this.[citation needed] He spells it Hiphop (one word, capital "h") and this is reflected in his Temple of Hiphop.
Product placement
Foodstuffs emblazoned with Hip hop images
Critics such as Businessweek's David Kiley argue that the discussion of many products within hip hop music and culture may actually be the result of undisclosed product placement deals.[43] Such critics allege that shilling or product placement takes place in commercial rap music, and that lyrical references to products are actually paid endorsements.[43] In 2005, a proposed plan by McDonalds, which would have paid rappers to advertise McDonalds food in their music, was leaked to the press.[43] After Russell Simmons made a deal with Courvoisier to promote the brand among hip hop fans, Busta Rhymes recorded the song "Pass The Courvoisier".[43] Simmons insists that no money changed hands in the deal.[43]
The symbiotic relationship has also stretched to include car manufacturers, clothing designers and sneaker companies, and many other companies have used the hip-hop community to make their name or to give the credibility. One such beneficiary was Jacob the Jeweler, a diamond merchant from New York, Jacob Arabo's clientèle included Sean Combs, Lil Kim and Nas. He created jewelry pieces from precious metals that were heavily loaded with diamond and gemstones. As his name was mentioned in the song lyrics of his hip hop customers, his profile quickly rose. Arabo expanded his brand to include gem-encrusted watches that retail for hundreds of thousands of dollars, gaining so much attention that Cartier filed a trademark-infringement lawsuit against him for putting diamonds on the faces of their watches and reselling them without permission.[44] Arabo's profile increased steadily until his June, 2006 arrest by the FBI on money laundering charges.[45]
While some brands welcome the support of the hip-hop community, one brand that did not was Cristal champagne maker Louis Roederer. A 2006 article from The Economist magazine featured remarks from managing director Frederic Rouzaud about whether the brand's identification with rap stars could affect their company negatively. His answer was dismissive in tone: "That's a good question, but what can we do? We can't forbid people from buying it. I'm sure Dom Pérignon or Krug would be delighted to have their business." In retaliation, many hip hop icons such as Jay-Z and Sean Combs who previous included references to "Cris", ceased all mentions and purchases of the champagne.
[edit] Media
Hip-hop culture is intrinsically related to television; there have been a number of television shows devoted to or about hip-hop. Early in its history, television channels local to New York City spread the existence of hip hop. Public television in the area broadcast Style Wars, signifying the lack of commercial or economic interest in the genre. BET was for a period the only television channel likely to play much hip hop, but in recent years the mainstream channels VH1 and MTV have added a significant amount of hip hop to their play list. With the emergence of the Internet a number of online sites have also begun to offer Hip Hop related video content.
Hip hop films have been related since hip-hop's conception and have become even more related in the 21st century. During the early 1990s, African-Americans experienced a film renassiance, sparked by the popularity of hood films, in-depth looks at urban life, focusing on violence, family, friends and hip-hop. There have also been a number of hip hop films, movies which focused on hip-hop as a subject.
Hip hop magazines have a large place in hip hop culture, including Hip Hop Connection, XXL, Scratch, The Source and Vibe. Many individual cities have produced their own local hip hop newsletters, while hip hop magazines with national distribution are found in a few other countries. The 21st century also ushered in the rise of online media, and hip hop fan sites now offer comprehensive hip hop coverage on a daily basis.
Hip hop has spawned dozens of sub-genres which incorporate a style of production or rapping which dominates their music. Though it began a stereotypically African American music, it has since spread to all people of the world. Like jazz, hip-hop is one of the few musical genres seen as thoroughly, entirely American. With its popularization all over the world, however, it is now an international, rather than American, genre of music. Here, it is important to note the varying social influences that affect hip-hop's message in different nations. Frequently a musical response to political and/or social injustices, the face of hip-hop varies greatly from nation to nation.
Hip-hop influences people in many different ways, such as the vocabulary people use (Slang words), the way people dress, and the way they carry themselves, at times people are influenced so much that they will do a lot of things their favorite rappers are doing, sort of idolizing them, there are cases where fans get tattoos that their favorite rappers have. Hip-Hop has now expanded and gone on a global scale, millions of rap albums are sold in foreign countries, some are not English speaking countries, yet people go out of their way and purchase these albums even thought they don’t understand the message the song carries, and manage to memorize the lyrics and sing along not knowing what they are saying. In foreign countries Hip-Hop has influenced natives to pursue rap careers and do what is being done in the United States such as following the trends, in their country. This is a product of globalization and it explains how popular culture can be interwoven with the everyday life of individuals that follow it, and how it can affect them in many ways.
For example, in South Africa the largest form of hip hop is called Kwaito, a reflection of a post-apartheid South Africa. Kwaito has similarly become more than a music genre, it has evolved into a lifestyle, encompassing all aspects of life including language and fashion. [46]The music of Kwaito is both politically and party driven. The politically fuelled music gives a voice to oppressed people that have no other way to voice their concerns and find music to be very accessible, not only to themselves but also to the audiences they are trying to reach. On the other hand the club driven music can also be seen as political in the sense that the artists couldn't care less about the post apartheid life they live and are more concerned about having a good time and not how their access to this life came about. Kwaito is a music that came from a once hated and oppressed people, but it is now sweeping the nation. The main consumers of Kwaito are adolescents and half of the South African population is under 21. Some of the large Kwaito artists have sold over 100,000 albums, and in an industry where 25,000 albums sold is considered a gold record, those are impressive numbers. [47]In the end Kwaito gives aspirations to the oppressed people of a post apartheid South Africa, where they now have a control over a very influence source of media, music.[48]
In Jamaica the sounds of hip hop are derived from American and Jamaican influences. Jamaican hip hop is defined both through dancehall and Reggae music. Jamaican Kool Herc brought the sound systems, technology, and techniques of Reggae music to New York during the 1970s. Jamaican hip hop artists often rap in both Brooklyn and Jamaican accents. Jamaican hip hop subject matter is often influenced by outside and internal forces. Outside forces such as the bling-bling era of today's modern hip hop and internal influences coming from the use of anti colonialism and marijuana or "Ganja" references which Rastafarians believe bring them closer to God.[49][50][51]
Author Wayne Marshall argues that "Hip hop, as with any number of African-American cultural forms before it, offers a range of compelling and contradictory significations to Jamaican artist and audiences. From "modern blackness" to foreign mind", transnational cosmopolitanism to militant pan-Africanism, radical remixology to outright mimicry, hip-hop in Jamaica embodies the myriad ways that Jamaicans embrace, reject, and incorporate foreign yet familiar forms." [52]
In the developing world hip hop has made a considerable impact in the social context. Despite the lack of resources, hip hop has made considerable inroads. [53] Because funds are limited, hip hop artists are forced to use very basic tools, and even graffiti, an important aspect of the hip hop culture, is constrained because it is not available to the average person. However, the vibrant culture is what fuels the spread of hip hop in developing nations and the general political instability that comes along with a developing nation. Many hip hop artists that make it out of the developing world come to places like the United States in search of an identity and place that fits them specifically.
Having its roots from reggae, disco, funk, hip hop has since exponentially expanded into a widely accepted form of representation world wide. It expansion includes events like Afrika Bambaataa releasing "Planet Rock" in 1982 which tried to establish a more global harmony in hip hop. In the 1990s MC Solaar became an international hit that was not from America, the first of his kind. From the 80s onward, television became the major source of widespread outsourcing of hip hop to the global world. From YO! MTV Raps, a television show that was shown in many countries to Public enemies world tour, Hip Hop spread further to Latin America and became highly mainstream. Ranging from countries like France, Spain, England, the US and many many other countries world wide, voices want to be heard, and hip hop allows them to do so. As such, hip hop has been cut mixed and changed to the areas that adapt to it. [54] [55]
Early hip hop has often been credited with helping to reduce inner-city gang violence by replacing physical violence with hip hop battles of dance and artwork. However, with the emergence of commercial and crime-related rap during the early 1990s, an emphasis on violence was incorporated, with many rappers boasting about drugs, weapons, misogyny, and violence. While hip hop music now appeals to a broader demographic, media critics argue that socially and politically conscious hip hop has long been disregarded by mainstream America in favor of its media-baiting sibling, gangsta rap.[56]
Many artists are now considered to be alternative/underground hip hop when they attempt to reflect what they believe to be the original elements of the culture. Artists/groups such as Talib Kweli, Mos Def, Dilated Peoples, dead prez, Blackalicious, and Jurassic 5 may emphasize messages of verbal skill, unity, or activism instead of messages of violence, material wealth, and misogyny.
Authenticity is often a serious debate within hip hop culture. Dating back to its origins in the 1970s in the Bronx, hip hop revolved around a culture of protest and freedom of expression in the wake of oppression. As hip hop has become less of an underground culture, it is subject to debate whether or not the spirit of hip hop is embodied in protest, or whether it can evolve to exist in a marketable integrated version. In "Authenticity Within Hip-Hop and Other Cultures Threatened with Assimilation," Commentator Kembrew McLeod argues that hip hop culture is actually threatened with assimilation by a larger, mainstream culture.[57] In accordance with McLeod's position, Greg Tate an editor of the Village Voice also voices that hip hop is slowly losing its edge due to the genre's involvement in the mainstream, hyper-capitalist world. Believing that hip hop should be utilized as a voice for social justice, Tate points out that in the marketable version of hip hop, there isn't a role for this evolved genre in context of the original theme hip hop originated from (freedom from oppression). The problem with Black progressive political organizing isn't that hip hop, but that the No. 1 issue on the table needs to be poverty, and nobody knows how to make poverty sexy. [58] Tate discusses how the dynamic of progressive Black politics cannot apply to the genre of hip hop in the current state today due to the genre's heavy involvement in the market. In his article he discusses Hip Hop's 30th birthday and it's evolution has been a devolution due to its capitalistic endeavors. Both Tate and McLeod argue that hip hop has lost its authenticity due to its losing sight of the revolutionary theme and humble "folksy" beginnings the music originated from. "This is the first time artists from around the world will be performing in an international context. The ones that are coming are considered to be the key members of the contemporary underground hip-hop movement." This is how the music landscape has broadened around the world over the last ten years. The maturation of Hip Hop has gotten older with the genres age, but the initial reasoning of why Hip Hop has started will always be intact. Expression and oppression will always be at the root of any Hip Hop movement.
Though born in the United States, the reach of hip hop is global. Youth culture and opinion is meted out in both Israeli hip hop and Palestinian hip hop, while France, Germany, the U.K., Africa and the Caribbean have long-established hip hop followings. According to the U.S. Department of State, hip hop is "now the center of a mega music and fashion industry around the world", that crosses social barriers and cuts across racial lines.[22] National Geographic recognizes hip hop as "the world's favorite youth culture" in which "just about every country on the planet seems to have developed its own local rap scene."
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. [1] In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology.[2] Examples of electromechanical sound producing devices include the telharmonium, Hammond organ, and the electric guitar. Purely electronic sound production can be achieved using devices such as the Theremin, sound synthesizer, and computer.[3]
Electronic music was once associated almost exclusively with Western art music but from the late 1960s on the availability of affordable music technology meant that music produced using electronic means became increasingly common in the popular domain.[4] Today electronic music includes many varieties and ranges from experimental art music to popular forms such as electronic dance music.
The ability to record sounds is often connected to the production of electronic music, but not absolutely necessary for it. The earliest known sound recording device was the phonautograph, patented in 1857 by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. It could record sounds visually, but was not meant to play them back.[5]
In 1878, Thomas A. Edison patented the phonograph, which used cylinders similar to Scott's device. Although cylinders continued in use for some time, Emile Berliner developed the disc phonograph in 1887.[6]
A significant invention, which was later to have a profound effect on electronic music, was Lee DeForest's triode audion. This was the first thermionic valve, or vacuum tube, invented in 1906, which led to the generation and amplification of electrical signals, radio broadcasting, and electronic computation, amongst other things.
Before electronic music, there was a growing desire for composers to use emerging technologies for musical purposes. Several instruments were created that employed electromechanical designs and they paved the way for the later emergence of electronic instruments. An electromechanical instrument called the Telharmonium (sometimes Teleharmonium or Dynamophone) was developed by Thaddeus Cahill in the years 1898-1912. However, simple inconvenience hindered the adoption of the Telharmonium, due to its immense size. The first electronic instrument is often viewed to be the Theremin, invented by Professor Leon Theremin circa 1919–1920.[7] Another early electronic instrument was the Ondes Martenot, which was most famously used in the Turangalîla-Symphonie by Olivier Messiaen as well as other works by him. It was also used by other, primarily French, composers such as Andre Jolivet.
This decade brought a wealth of early electronic instruments. Along with the Theremin, there is the presentation of the Ondes Martenot[13], which was designed to reproduce the microtonal sounds found in Hindu music,[citation needed] and the Trautonium. Maurice Martenot invented the Ondes Martenot in 1928, and soon demonstrated it in Paris.
Another development, which aroused the interest of many composers, occurred in 1919–1920. In Leningrad, Leon Theremin (actually Lev Termen) built and demonstrated his Etherophone, which was later renamed the Theremin. This led to the first compositions for electronic instruments, as opposed to noisemakers and re-purposed machines. In 1929, Joseph Schillinger composed First Airphonic Suite for Theremin and Orchestra, premièred with the Cleveland Orchestra with Leon Theremin as soloist.
In 1924, Ottorino Respighi composed The Pines of Rome, which calls for the use of a phonograph recording of nightingales. However, at the time of composition, phonograph players were acoustical, not electric, and this is actually more along the lines of using a sound effect, and therefore cannot be considered an electroacoustic element in the composition.
The following year, Antheil first composed for mechanical devices, electrical noisemakers, motors and amplifiers in his unfinished opera, Mr. Bloom, as a response to the "art of noises" of Luigi Russolo, Marinetti and the other Futurists.[citation needed] And just one year later in 1926, was the première of Antheil's Ballet Mécanique, using car horns, airplane propellers, saws, and anvils (but no electronics).
Recording of sounds made a leap in 1927, when American inventor J. A. O'Neill developed a recording device that used magnetically coated ribbon. However, this was a commercial failure. Two years later, Laurens Hammond established his company for the manufacture of electronic instruments. He went on to produce the Hammond organ, which was based on the principles of the Telharmonium, along with other developments including early reverberation units.[14][citation needed]
The method of photo-optic sound recording used in cinematography made it possible to obtain a visible image of a sound wave, as well as to realize the opposite goal—synthesizing a sound from an artificially drawn sound wave. The research work by the Russian optical engineer Evgeny Murzin[citation needed] taken from 1937 to 1957[citation needed] made it possible to create a photoelectric synthesizer—a musical instrument that combined three processes: creation, recording, and playback of music. Murzin named his invention in honour of the composer Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (“ANS”).
Karlheinz Stockhausen worked briefly in Schaeffer's studio in 1952, and afterward for many years at the WDR Cologne's Studio for Electronic Music.
In Cologne, what would become the most famous electronic music studio in the world was officially opened at the radio studios of the NWDR in 1953, though it had been in the planning stages as early as 1950 and early compositions were made and broadcast in 1951.[17] The brain child of Werner Meyer-Eppler, Robert Beyer, and Herbert Eimert (who became its first director), the studio was soon joined by Karlheinz Stockhausen and Gottfried Michael Koenig. In his 1949 thesis Elektronische Klangerzeugung: Elektronische Musik und Synthetische Sprache, Meyer-Eppler conceived the idea to synthesize music entirely from electronically produced signals; in this way, elektronische Musik was sharply differentiated from French musique concrète, which used sounds recorded from acoustical sources.[18]
With Stockhausen and Mauricio Kagel in residence, it became a year-round hive of charismatic avante-gardism [sic]" [19] on two occasions combining electronically generated sounds with relatively conventional orchestras—in Mixtur (1964) and Hymnen, dritte Region mit Orchester (1967).[20] Stockhausen stated that his listeners had told him his electronic music gave them an experience of "outer space," sensations of flying, or being in a "fantastic dream world"[21] More recently, Stockhausen turned to producing electronic music in his own studio in Kürten, his last work in the genre being Cosmic Pulses (2007).
Also in the U.S., in the same year, significant developments were happening in New York City. Columbia University purchased its first tape recorder—a professional Ampex machine—for the purpose of recording concerts.
Vladimir Ussachevsky, who was on the music faculty of Columbia University, was placed in charge of the device, and almost immediately began experimenting with it.
Herbert Russcol writes: "Soon he was intrigued with the new sonorities he could achieve by recording musical instruments and then superimposing them on one another."[25]
Ussachevsky said later: "I suddenly realized that the tape recorder could be treated as an instrument of sound transformation."[25][citation needed]
On Thursday, May 8, 1952, Ussachevsky presented several demonstrations of tape music/effects that he created at his Composers Forum, in the McMillin Theatre at Columbia University. These included Transposition, Reverberation, Experiment, Composition, and Underwater Valse. In an interview, he stated: "I presented a few examples of my discovery in a public concert in New York together with other compositions I had written for conventional instruments."[25] Otto Luening, who had attended this concert, remarked: "The equipment at his disposal consisted of an Ampex tape recorder . . . and a simple box-like device designed by the brilliant young engineer, Peter Mauzey, to create feedback, a form of mechanical reverberation. Other equipment was borrowed or purchased with personal funds."[26]
Just three months later, in August 1952, Ussachevsky traveled to Bennington, Vermont at Luening's invitation to present his experiments. There, the two collaborated on various pieces. Luening described the event: "Equipped with earphones and a flute, I began developing my first tape-recorder composition. Both of us were fluent improvisors and the medium fired our imaginations."[26] They played some early pieces informally at a party, where "a number of composers almost solemnly congratulated us saying, 'This is it' ('it' meaning the music of the future)."[26]
Word quickly reached New York City. Oliver Daniel telephoned and invited the pair to "produce a group of short compositions for the October concert sponsored by the American Composers Alliance and Broadcast Music, Inc., under the direction of Leopold Stokowski at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. After some hesitation, we agreed. . . . Henry Cowell placed his home and studio in Woodstock, New York, at our disposal. With the borrowed equipment in the back of Ussachevsky's car, we left Bennington for Woodstock and stayed two weeks. . . . In late September, 1952, the travelling laboratory reached Ussachevsky's living room in New York, where we eventually completed the compositions."[26]
Two months later, on October 28, Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening presented the first Tape Music concert in the United States. The concert included Luening's Fantasy in Space (1952)—"an impressionistic virtuoso piece"[26] using manipulated recordings of flute—and Low Speed (1952), an "exotic composition that took the flute far below its natural range."[26] Both pieces were created at the home of Henry Cowell in Woodstock, NY. After several concerts caused a sensation in New York City, Ussachevsky and Luening were invited onto a live broadcast of NBC's Today Show to do an interview demonstration—the first televised electroacoustic performance. Luening described the event: "I improvised some [flute] sequences for the tape recorder. Ussachevsky then and there put them through electronic transformations."[27]
1954 saw the advent of what would now be considered authentic electric plus acoustic compositions—acoustic instrumentation augmented/accompanied by recordings of manipulated and/or electronically generated sound. Three major works were premiered that year: Varèse's Déserts, for chamber ensemble and tape sounds, and two works by Luening and Ussachevsky: Rhapsodic Variations for the Louisville Symphony and A Poem in Cycles and Bells, both for orchestra and tape. Because he had been working at Schaeffer's studio, the tape part for Varèse's work contains much more concrete sounds than electronic. "A group made up of wind instruments, percussion and piano alternates with mutated sounds of factory noises and ship sirens and motors, coming from two loudspeakers."[28]
Déserts was premiered in Paris in the first stereo broadcast on French Radio. At the German premiere in Hamburg, which was conducted by Bruno Maderna, the tape controls were operated by Karlheinz Stockhausen.[28] The title Déserts, suggested to Varèse not only, "all physical deserts (of sand, sea, snow, of outer space, of empty streets), but also the deserts in the mind of man; not only those stripped aspects of nature that suggest bareness, aloofness, timelessness, but also that remote inner space no telescope can reach, where man is alone, a world of mystery and essential loneliness.
These were fertile years for electronic music—not just for academia, but for independent artists as synthesizer technology became more accessible. By this time, a strong community of composers and musicians working with new sounds and instruments was established and growing. 1960 witnessed the composition of Luening's Gargoyles for violin and tape as well as the premiere of Stockhausen's Kontakte for electronic sounds, piano, and percussion. This piece existed in two versions—one for 4-channel tape, and the other for tape with human performers. "In Kontakte, Stockhausen abandoned traditional musical form based on linear development and dramatic climax. This new approach, which he termed 'moment form,' resembles the 'cinematic splice' techniques in early twentieth century film."[34]
The first of these synthesizers to appear was the Buchla. Appearing in 1963, it was the product of an effort spearheaded by musique concrète composer Morton Subotnick. In 1962, working with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, Subotnick and business partner Ramon Sender hired electrical engineer Don Buchla to build a "black box" for composition.[citation needed]
The theremin had been in use since the 1920s but it attained a degree of popular recognition through its use in science-fiction film soundtrack music in the 1950s (e.g., Bernard Herrmann's classic score for The Day the Earth Stood Still). During the 1960s the theremin made occasional appearances in popular music, most notably on The Beach Boys 1966 "Good Vibrations".
In the UK in this period, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (established in 1958) emerged one of the most productive and widely known electronic music studios in the world, thanks in large measure to their work on the BBC science-fiction series Doctor Who. One of the most influential British electronic artists in this period was Workshop staffer Delia Derbyshire, who added a keen musical ear to her great technical prowess; she is famous for her landmark 1963 electronic realisation of the iconic Doctor Who theme, composed by Ron Grainer, arguably the most widely known piece of electronic music in the world. Derbyshire and her colleagues -- including Dick Mills, Brian Hodgson (creator of the TARDIS sound effect), David Cain, John Baker, Paddy Kingsland and Peter Howell -- collectively created a large and very varied body of work that includes station ID stings, program jingles, soundtracks, atmospheres and sound effects for BBC TV and radio stations and programs.
Milton Babbitt composed his first electronic work using the synthesizer—his Composition for Synthesizer—which he created using the RCA synthesizer at CPEMC.
For Babbitt, the RCA synthesizer was a dream come true for three reasons. First, the ability to pinpoint and control every musical element precisely. Second, the time needed to realize his elaborate serial structures were brought within practical reach. Third, the question was no longer "What are the limits of the human performer?" but rather "What are the limits of human hearing?[35]
The collaborations also occurred across oceans and continents. In 1961, Ussachevsky invited Varèse to the Columbia-Princeton Studio (CPEMC). Upon arrival, Varese embarked upon a revision of Déserts. He was assisted by Mario Davidovsky and Bülent Arel.[36]
The intense activity occurring at CPEMC and elsewhere inspired the establishment of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in 1963 by Morton Subotnick, with additional members Pauline Oliveros, Ramon Sender, Terry Riley, and Anthony Martin. The center soon incorporated a voltage-controlled synthesizer based around automated sequencing by Don Buchla, and used in album-length Subotnick pieces such as Silver Apples of the Moon (1967) and The Wild Bull (1968).
Later, the Center moved to Mills College, directed by Pauline Oliveros, where it is today known as the Center for Contemporary Music.[37][38]
Back across the Atlantic, in Czechoslovakia, 1964, the First Seminar of Electronic Music was held at the Radio Broadcast Station in Plzen. Four government-sanctioned electroacoustic music studios were later established in the 1960s under the auspices of extant radio and television stations.
New instruments continued to develop. One of the most significant breakthroughs came in 1964, when Robert Moog introduced the Moog synthesizer, the first integrated modular voltage controlled analog synthesiser system. Moog Music later introduced a smaller synthesizer with a built-in keyboard and hardwired signal path called The Minimoog, which was introduced to many composers and universities and beacme widely used by popular musicians.
A well-known example of the use of Moog's full-sized Moog Modular synthesizer is the Switched-On Bach album by Wendy Carlos, which triggered a craze for synthesiser music. This decade saw construction of more than 50 electronic music studios in the USA, mostly in universities.[citation needed]
Pietro Grossi was an italian pioneer of computer composition and tape music, who first experimented with electronic techniques in the early sixties. Grossi was a cellist and composer, born in Venice in 1917. He founded the S 2F M (Studio de Fonologia Musicale di Firenze) in 1963 in order to experiment with electronic sound and composition.
Electronic music was once associated almost exclusively with Western art music but from the late 1960s on the availability of affordable music technology meant that music produced using electronic means became increasingly common in the popular domain.[4] Today electronic music includes many varieties and ranges from experimental art music to popular forms such as electronic dance music.
The ability to record sounds is often connected to the production of electronic music, but not absolutely necessary for it. The earliest known sound recording device was the phonautograph, patented in 1857 by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. It could record sounds visually, but was not meant to play them back.[5]
In 1878, Thomas A. Edison patented the phonograph, which used cylinders similar to Scott's device. Although cylinders continued in use for some time, Emile Berliner developed the disc phonograph in 1887.[6]
A significant invention, which was later to have a profound effect on electronic music, was Lee DeForest's triode audion. This was the first thermionic valve, or vacuum tube, invented in 1906, which led to the generation and amplification of electrical signals, radio broadcasting, and electronic computation, amongst other things.
Before electronic music, there was a growing desire for composers to use emerging technologies for musical purposes. Several instruments were created that employed electromechanical designs and they paved the way for the later emergence of electronic instruments. An electromechanical instrument called the Telharmonium (sometimes Teleharmonium or Dynamophone) was developed by Thaddeus Cahill in the years 1898-1912. However, simple inconvenience hindered the adoption of the Telharmonium, due to its immense size. The first electronic instrument is often viewed to be the Theremin, invented by Professor Leon Theremin circa 1919–1920.[7] Another early electronic instrument was the Ondes Martenot, which was most famously used in the Turangalîla-Symphonie by Olivier Messiaen as well as other works by him. It was also used by other, primarily French, composers such as Andre Jolivet.
This decade brought a wealth of early electronic instruments. Along with the Theremin, there is the presentation of the Ondes Martenot[13], which was designed to reproduce the microtonal sounds found in Hindu music,[citation needed] and the Trautonium. Maurice Martenot invented the Ondes Martenot in 1928, and soon demonstrated it in Paris.
Another development, which aroused the interest of many composers, occurred in 1919–1920. In Leningrad, Leon Theremin (actually Lev Termen) built and demonstrated his Etherophone, which was later renamed the Theremin. This led to the first compositions for electronic instruments, as opposed to noisemakers and re-purposed machines. In 1929, Joseph Schillinger composed First Airphonic Suite for Theremin and Orchestra, premièred with the Cleveland Orchestra with Leon Theremin as soloist.
In 1924, Ottorino Respighi composed The Pines of Rome, which calls for the use of a phonograph recording of nightingales. However, at the time of composition, phonograph players were acoustical, not electric, and this is actually more along the lines of using a sound effect, and therefore cannot be considered an electroacoustic element in the composition.
The following year, Antheil first composed for mechanical devices, electrical noisemakers, motors and amplifiers in his unfinished opera, Mr. Bloom, as a response to the "art of noises" of Luigi Russolo, Marinetti and the other Futurists.[citation needed] And just one year later in 1926, was the première of Antheil's Ballet Mécanique, using car horns, airplane propellers, saws, and anvils (but no electronics).
Recording of sounds made a leap in 1927, when American inventor J. A. O'Neill developed a recording device that used magnetically coated ribbon. However, this was a commercial failure. Two years later, Laurens Hammond established his company for the manufacture of electronic instruments. He went on to produce the Hammond organ, which was based on the principles of the Telharmonium, along with other developments including early reverberation units.[14][citation needed]
The method of photo-optic sound recording used in cinematography made it possible to obtain a visible image of a sound wave, as well as to realize the opposite goal—synthesizing a sound from an artificially drawn sound wave. The research work by the Russian optical engineer Evgeny Murzin[citation needed] taken from 1937 to 1957[citation needed] made it possible to create a photoelectric synthesizer—a musical instrument that combined three processes: creation, recording, and playback of music. Murzin named his invention in honour of the composer Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (“ANS”).
Karlheinz Stockhausen worked briefly in Schaeffer's studio in 1952, and afterward for many years at the WDR Cologne's Studio for Electronic Music.
In Cologne, what would become the most famous electronic music studio in the world was officially opened at the radio studios of the NWDR in 1953, though it had been in the planning stages as early as 1950 and early compositions were made and broadcast in 1951.[17] The brain child of Werner Meyer-Eppler, Robert Beyer, and Herbert Eimert (who became its first director), the studio was soon joined by Karlheinz Stockhausen and Gottfried Michael Koenig. In his 1949 thesis Elektronische Klangerzeugung: Elektronische Musik und Synthetische Sprache, Meyer-Eppler conceived the idea to synthesize music entirely from electronically produced signals; in this way, elektronische Musik was sharply differentiated from French musique concrète, which used sounds recorded from acoustical sources.[18]
With Stockhausen and Mauricio Kagel in residence, it became a year-round hive of charismatic avante-gardism [sic]" [19] on two occasions combining electronically generated sounds with relatively conventional orchestras—in Mixtur (1964) and Hymnen, dritte Region mit Orchester (1967).[20] Stockhausen stated that his listeners had told him his electronic music gave them an experience of "outer space," sensations of flying, or being in a "fantastic dream world"[21] More recently, Stockhausen turned to producing electronic music in his own studio in Kürten, his last work in the genre being Cosmic Pulses (2007).
Also in the U.S., in the same year, significant developments were happening in New York City. Columbia University purchased its first tape recorder—a professional Ampex machine—for the purpose of recording concerts.
Vladimir Ussachevsky, who was on the music faculty of Columbia University, was placed in charge of the device, and almost immediately began experimenting with it.
Herbert Russcol writes: "Soon he was intrigued with the new sonorities he could achieve by recording musical instruments and then superimposing them on one another."[25]
Ussachevsky said later: "I suddenly realized that the tape recorder could be treated as an instrument of sound transformation."[25][citation needed]
On Thursday, May 8, 1952, Ussachevsky presented several demonstrations of tape music/effects that he created at his Composers Forum, in the McMillin Theatre at Columbia University. These included Transposition, Reverberation, Experiment, Composition, and Underwater Valse. In an interview, he stated: "I presented a few examples of my discovery in a public concert in New York together with other compositions I had written for conventional instruments."[25] Otto Luening, who had attended this concert, remarked: "The equipment at his disposal consisted of an Ampex tape recorder . . . and a simple box-like device designed by the brilliant young engineer, Peter Mauzey, to create feedback, a form of mechanical reverberation. Other equipment was borrowed or purchased with personal funds."[26]
Just three months later, in August 1952, Ussachevsky traveled to Bennington, Vermont at Luening's invitation to present his experiments. There, the two collaborated on various pieces. Luening described the event: "Equipped with earphones and a flute, I began developing my first tape-recorder composition. Both of us were fluent improvisors and the medium fired our imaginations."[26] They played some early pieces informally at a party, where "a number of composers almost solemnly congratulated us saying, 'This is it' ('it' meaning the music of the future)."[26]
Word quickly reached New York City. Oliver Daniel telephoned and invited the pair to "produce a group of short compositions for the October concert sponsored by the American Composers Alliance and Broadcast Music, Inc., under the direction of Leopold Stokowski at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. After some hesitation, we agreed. . . . Henry Cowell placed his home and studio in Woodstock, New York, at our disposal. With the borrowed equipment in the back of Ussachevsky's car, we left Bennington for Woodstock and stayed two weeks. . . . In late September, 1952, the travelling laboratory reached Ussachevsky's living room in New York, where we eventually completed the compositions."[26]
Two months later, on October 28, Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening presented the first Tape Music concert in the United States. The concert included Luening's Fantasy in Space (1952)—"an impressionistic virtuoso piece"[26] using manipulated recordings of flute—and Low Speed (1952), an "exotic composition that took the flute far below its natural range."[26] Both pieces were created at the home of Henry Cowell in Woodstock, NY. After several concerts caused a sensation in New York City, Ussachevsky and Luening were invited onto a live broadcast of NBC's Today Show to do an interview demonstration—the first televised electroacoustic performance. Luening described the event: "I improvised some [flute] sequences for the tape recorder. Ussachevsky then and there put them through electronic transformations."[27]
1954 saw the advent of what would now be considered authentic electric plus acoustic compositions—acoustic instrumentation augmented/accompanied by recordings of manipulated and/or electronically generated sound. Three major works were premiered that year: Varèse's Déserts, for chamber ensemble and tape sounds, and two works by Luening and Ussachevsky: Rhapsodic Variations for the Louisville Symphony and A Poem in Cycles and Bells, both for orchestra and tape. Because he had been working at Schaeffer's studio, the tape part for Varèse's work contains much more concrete sounds than electronic. "A group made up of wind instruments, percussion and piano alternates with mutated sounds of factory noises and ship sirens and motors, coming from two loudspeakers."[28]
Déserts was premiered in Paris in the first stereo broadcast on French Radio. At the German premiere in Hamburg, which was conducted by Bruno Maderna, the tape controls were operated by Karlheinz Stockhausen.[28] The title Déserts, suggested to Varèse not only, "all physical deserts (of sand, sea, snow, of outer space, of empty streets), but also the deserts in the mind of man; not only those stripped aspects of nature that suggest bareness, aloofness, timelessness, but also that remote inner space no telescope can reach, where man is alone, a world of mystery and essential loneliness.
These were fertile years for electronic music—not just for academia, but for independent artists as synthesizer technology became more accessible. By this time, a strong community of composers and musicians working with new sounds and instruments was established and growing. 1960 witnessed the composition of Luening's Gargoyles for violin and tape as well as the premiere of Stockhausen's Kontakte for electronic sounds, piano, and percussion. This piece existed in two versions—one for 4-channel tape, and the other for tape with human performers. "In Kontakte, Stockhausen abandoned traditional musical form based on linear development and dramatic climax. This new approach, which he termed 'moment form,' resembles the 'cinematic splice' techniques in early twentieth century film."[34]
The first of these synthesizers to appear was the Buchla. Appearing in 1963, it was the product of an effort spearheaded by musique concrète composer Morton Subotnick. In 1962, working with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, Subotnick and business partner Ramon Sender hired electrical engineer Don Buchla to build a "black box" for composition.[citation needed]
The theremin had been in use since the 1920s but it attained a degree of popular recognition through its use in science-fiction film soundtrack music in the 1950s (e.g., Bernard Herrmann's classic score for The Day the Earth Stood Still). During the 1960s the theremin made occasional appearances in popular music, most notably on The Beach Boys 1966 "Good Vibrations".
In the UK in this period, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (established in 1958) emerged one of the most productive and widely known electronic music studios in the world, thanks in large measure to their work on the BBC science-fiction series Doctor Who. One of the most influential British electronic artists in this period was Workshop staffer Delia Derbyshire, who added a keen musical ear to her great technical prowess; she is famous for her landmark 1963 electronic realisation of the iconic Doctor Who theme, composed by Ron Grainer, arguably the most widely known piece of electronic music in the world. Derbyshire and her colleagues -- including Dick Mills, Brian Hodgson (creator of the TARDIS sound effect), David Cain, John Baker, Paddy Kingsland and Peter Howell -- collectively created a large and very varied body of work that includes station ID stings, program jingles, soundtracks, atmospheres and sound effects for BBC TV and radio stations and programs.
Milton Babbitt composed his first electronic work using the synthesizer—his Composition for Synthesizer—which he created using the RCA synthesizer at CPEMC.
For Babbitt, the RCA synthesizer was a dream come true for three reasons. First, the ability to pinpoint and control every musical element precisely. Second, the time needed to realize his elaborate serial structures were brought within practical reach. Third, the question was no longer "What are the limits of the human performer?" but rather "What are the limits of human hearing?[35]
The collaborations also occurred across oceans and continents. In 1961, Ussachevsky invited Varèse to the Columbia-Princeton Studio (CPEMC). Upon arrival, Varese embarked upon a revision of Déserts. He was assisted by Mario Davidovsky and Bülent Arel.[36]
The intense activity occurring at CPEMC and elsewhere inspired the establishment of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in 1963 by Morton Subotnick, with additional members Pauline Oliveros, Ramon Sender, Terry Riley, and Anthony Martin. The center soon incorporated a voltage-controlled synthesizer based around automated sequencing by Don Buchla, and used in album-length Subotnick pieces such as Silver Apples of the Moon (1967) and The Wild Bull (1968).
Later, the Center moved to Mills College, directed by Pauline Oliveros, where it is today known as the Center for Contemporary Music.[37][38]
Back across the Atlantic, in Czechoslovakia, 1964, the First Seminar of Electronic Music was held at the Radio Broadcast Station in Plzen. Four government-sanctioned electroacoustic music studios were later established in the 1960s under the auspices of extant radio and television stations.
New instruments continued to develop. One of the most significant breakthroughs came in 1964, when Robert Moog introduced the Moog synthesizer, the first integrated modular voltage controlled analog synthesiser system. Moog Music later introduced a smaller synthesizer with a built-in keyboard and hardwired signal path called The Minimoog, which was introduced to many composers and universities and beacme widely used by popular musicians.
A well-known example of the use of Moog's full-sized Moog Modular synthesizer is the Switched-On Bach album by Wendy Carlos, which triggered a craze for synthesiser music. This decade saw construction of more than 50 electronic music studios in the USA, mostly in universities.[citation needed]
Pietro Grossi was an italian pioneer of computer composition and tape music, who first experimented with electronic techniques in the early sixties. Grossi was a cellist and composer, born in Venice in 1917. He founded the S 2F M (Studio de Fonologia Musicale di Firenze) in 1963 in order to experiment with electronic sound and composition.
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