Rap Music As Cultural Artform Essay Research

Rap Music As Cultural Artform Essay, Research Paper

Rap is the most important popular music to emerge in America since the 1980’s to the 1990’s. Yet rap is more than music or entertainment. The words rhythmically recited, chanted, or sung over music by the likes of Public Enemy, Queen Latifah, Arrested Development, and many more represent a sense of identity and belonging for young people in America and throughout the world. Rap is the voice of a population that has been ignored by mainstream leaders and institutions, until now. Within the past couple of years rap has began to emerge into the pulse, thoughts, values, and experiences of youth worldwide. Even though rap has become more popular today, than ever there are still many people who are unaware of the history and roots behind of the music we celebrate and love so much.

Rap was around long before it was actually called rap. Rap started out as an oral form of storytelling and the telling of ones history by the social commentator, also known as a Griot. The griot was a historian, storyteller, comedian, reporter, mediator, social commentator, and sometimes performer of religious ceremonies and rites of passage. Griots had to possess musical abilities. Griots often accompanied themselves on a harplike instrument called a kora. Griots were used as a way to tell of and remember the history and heritage of African Americans after the Atlantic slave trade, which took place from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century.

In addition to the griot tradition, rap is rooted in the pain of African American experience, which began with slavery. As Europeans conquered, settled, and stole Americas, they required cheap labor to help build up their colonies and exploit natural resources for trade. Europeans initially turned to the Native American’s to build up their colonies, but the natives could not survive under the harsh and cruel working and living conditions. Many of them became ill because of diseases such as smallpox.

Slavery existed in African societies long before the seventeenth century, but it was very different from the kind of bondage that characterized the North Atlantic slave trade. Slaves were taken in conquests or as repayment for debts or wrong doings. The slaves were fully integrated into their new villages and tribes and granted many rights and privileges.

The North Atlantic slave trade was the largest and most traumatic forced movement of human beings in history. During more than 150 years of operation, at least 10 million Africans were captured and shipped to the Americas on a hellish trans-Atlantic journey that became known as the Middle Passage. The Middle Passage lasted from two months to a year, depending on the African port of departure and the conditions on the open sea.

One of the biggest myths about slavery is that slave dealers and owners destroyed the spirit of their African captives. From the start of captivity in Africa, white slave dealers initiated strict program of control and domination over their captives. It began with speech. Before Africans descended into the holds of slave ships, they were separated from other members of their families and tribes. They were mixed with people from different regions and split up from those who spoke the same language.

Once the Africans reached the United States the pattern of separation and silence was continued. The Africans were forbidden from speaking in their native tongues. They were also stripped of their real names and forced to assume names given to them by their masters. This was meant to strip slaves of their self-esteem by destroying culture, history, and individuality.

However, all was not lost. After being denied of their original cultures slaves created a new culture. This culture embraced and captured their African past and accommodated their new status as captives. Along with this new culture came a new oral tradition, one that would give rise to rap.

The African-American oral tradition developed first and foremost with the slaves’ adaptation of their masters’ religion, Christianity. The services of the slaves were reminiscent of religious ceremonies in Africa. They were lively, uplifting affairs complete with music, chanting, and spiritual possessions. The high point of the service was the preacher’s sermon, of call, and the congregation’s response. Ministers expected the congregation to interrupt their sermons with applause and affirmations.

Centuries later and under different circumstances, rap and hip-hop continue the tradition of a call and response that began in slave churches. The griot, the slave preacher, and the storyteller all displayed a skillful use of language. The inherent African love of the spoken word, and the new way of life that America forced upon enslaved blacks set the stage for the black cultural explosion of the twentieth century and the explosion of hip-hop.

After the freeing of slaves in 1863 a period known as the Reconstruction Era began; which lasted from 1866 to 1877. Up until 1917, the livelihood of most blacks remained in the South. During that year the United States entered World War I. Many of the industrialized male workers of the North entered the armed forces; newly emerging industries needed factory workers. Word of available jobs in the North reached the South. About 2 million blacks migrated from the South. Into urban a