Recent Research Projects                                                                                                    Postmodern Folk Music: A Hip Hop Perspective.

Postmodern Folk: A Hip Hop Perspective

Several commentators have called hip hop or rap music the first “postmodern music”.  Such arguments have been primarily based on hip hop’s abundant use of sampling and its freedom from restriction from modernistic notions of musical form and structure.  This paper argues that when viewed through spatial lenses, hip hop can also be effectively understood as perhaps the last folk music.  Important folk-like characteristics of hip hop, especially the so-called “old school” variety, are its rootedness in oral traditions, its shared ownership, its apparent misconceptions about its own market value, its patterns of diffusion, and its use of homemade instruments.  The early history of hip hop, the patterns of its production, distribution and consumption are discussed and compared to histories of more widely accepted forms of folk music.  A rethinking of the parameters of what constitutes folk music and popular music is forwarded. 

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