Research Description

The Effects of Black Music in Popular Culture

Through research, I have begun analyzing the effects of black music on popular culture. With the purpose of my research being to find an answer to the tolerance of black music by whites, I have analyzed the transfer of music and culture (lifestyle) from a sub-culture to a dominant culture and its popularity within the dominant culture. Specifically speaking, Hip-Hop-being a term embracing black American cultural life, has emerged as one of the leading modes of the 20th-21st centuries. Hip-Hop is defined through rap music, graffiti art, and acrobatic break dancing.

Rap music, of which I base my research, is known for its misogynistic, sexually explicit, violent, racist, and homophobic lyrics and are neutralized through ritualization the promotion of certain acts pertain to rap. Are the ingredients of rap corrupting white youth, are white youth stealing culture to gain culture, are the “violent” lyrics of rap music contributing to violence within, the white commun! ity, and are blacks as a unit giving away their definition? These are questions I continue to seek answers for through my usage of literary references and research.

Hip-Hop and its elements have emerged as an important part of America’s black youth and culture. Hip-Hop comes from a line of black music where its people have invented and promoted styles that would benefit the race-creating awareness of self and acknowledgement of culture. The historical context of blacks in America “ain’t been no crystal stair” as poet Langston Hughes once put it. With blacks being taken from their homeland, they were deprived of self-respect, culture, and awareness. With their arrival in America, they experienced further injustice and oppression. Thus, voicing their cries, blacks were reminded of their gift of song: of singing Spirituals, later incorporating instruments through Jazz, then dance through Rock and Roll, even progressing to a modernized Funk. Hip-Hop emerged as the continuation of black music and the constant reminder of our culture as being sustained.