The Streamyard Cyphers: Online Place-Making Within an Indian Hip Hop Community (original) (raw)
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Global Hip Hop Studies, 2020
This article argues for an attention to the DIY digital studio as a key site where aspiring hip hop MCs in the contemporary moment negotiate between their desire for individual success and their commitments to various forms of local belonging, not least which includes staying true to a hip hop ethos of collectivity. We follow Sonal, a b-boy and MC we worked with in a studio that we set up in Delhi, India in 2013 to work with aspiring MCs in the city’s scene. We trace his subsequent rise to fame in India to argue for an attention to the DIY studio as the material and metaphoric realization of the digital infrastructures of global capitalism. The studio manifests economic and social opportunities for young men like Sonal in Delhi, and, we suspect, for young people across the world who now have access to social media and inexpensive production hardware and software. Yet, in creating opportunities for individual economic and social uplift, the studio poses a threat to the ideal of a hip hop community that undergirds its possibility even as it opens up opportunities to enunciate commitments to other forms of belonging.
The Blazon Call of Hip Hop:Lyrical Storms in Kerala's Musical Cultures
Journal of Creative Communications , 2013
Hip hop and Rap has been available to various musical cultures all over the world inspiring the imagination of youth and politicizing them along the process. The release of a series of YouTube videos in India particularly in Kerala represents distinct response to the Rap music culture. In distinct yet interlocked ways these videos signal a changing musical culture in Kerala, one that is enabled by new networks and a rapidly changing techno social soundscape and its accompanying listening practices and music culture. This article is an attempt to map and analyze these practices through the video texts of some of these hip hop videos, websites and interviews with the artists and key actors. It analyzes the post globalization musical cultures in Kerala, mapping its techno-social and aesthetic practices and how they bear upon listening practices. It also maps the meaning of rap and hip hop in the Indian sub continent and its relationship to power and hegemony in the musical soundscape of Kerala. The article tries to theorize the emergence of a rap music video culture in Kerala and the Internet publics through the debates on public sphere and how they are caught up with questions of historical memory and identity.
Soundcloud, Samplers and Sonic Experimentation- Community in Hip-Hop’s Online Underground
Although much has been written regarding Internet theory, there is still work to be done exploring the nature of lived experience online to assess the validity of such theoretical discussion. This ethnographic research explores the relationship between online and offline experience, the process of online community creation, and tensions between self-promotion and community endeavour, focusing on a group of Hip-Hop musicians on the website Soundcloud. Being disembodied from those day-to-day activities that have long created community cohesion and powered the process of enculturation means that online community formation differs from its offline counterpart. Websites such as Soundcloud provide an important locus for musicians to create knowledge-exchange networks, collaborate on musical ventures, and by the sharing of compositions involve themselves in collective musical exploration. However, a key question is whether such connections lead to the creation of social bonds. This research sought to evaluate the extent of communal processes on Soundcloud through ethnographic research and extended discussions with twenty users, aiming to discover whether their actions are driven commercially by the desire for promotion or by shared, communal goals. The findings reveal a surprising depth of community and local identity online, with users regular meeting offline to compose and organizing concerts to create live performance opportunities. Musicians are also coming together to create independent labels to help promote their music as collectives, and developing music deeply rooted in local sounds. This combination of high levels of online communication, and an ongoing process of organization and performance offline initiates a move from connections to the formation of social bonds and the building of offline friendships and communities based around Soundcloud as an online hub. While previous digital ethnomusicology has focused on online experience, this preliminary research illustrates the importance of an integrative approach that considers both the online and the offline worlds.
2022
This book presents the narratives and voices of young, mostly male practitioners of hip hop culture in Delhi, India. The author suggests that practitioners understand hip hop as both a thing that can be appropriated and authenticated, made real, in the local and global context and as a way that enables them to transform their lives and futures in the rapidly globalising urban environments of Delhi. The dancers, artists, musicians and cultural theorists that feature in this book construct a multitude of voices in their narratives to formulate their 'own' transcultural voices within global hip hop. Through a combination of linguistic ethnography, sociolinguistics and discourse studies, the book addresses issues including gender and sexuality, identity construction and global culture.
Twenty First Century Women in India -Articulation of Everyday Protest through Hip Hop
Postcolonial Feminisms, 2022
Indian Rap Music is unique, different from American Rap. As of yet, very little research has been done on this phenomenon of an increasing number of young urban Indians finding and creating their identity through Rap. What is of particular anthropological interest is that marginalised voices that were never heard before, or were afraid of being heard, are now giving technologically informed expression to a new set of contemporary ideas in an innovative urban folk form, challenging established mores and conventions, cliques and vested interests. These include artists from working class backgrounds, those who have not received the privilege of higher education or have to struggle to receive it as well as those whose entry into the fields of art and culture has traditionally been restricted. The focus of this article will be on women Rap artists in India. Indian women have had to constantly negotiate deeply entrenched patriarchal structures in the field of culture and more so in the field of Rap, which is associated with free flowing, blunt and hard-hitting lyrics, putting these women out of the comfort zone of societal expectations.
Beatlab: How a Hip-Hop Digital Space Became an Outlet for Political Dialogue
2019
This paper explores the implications of a project called “Beatlab,” a digital music studio that was created at Chestnut Hill College as a gathering place to craft music (beats) and write personal reflections (rhymes). I document how Beatlab emerged as a safe space for expression and self-exploration and in turn, became a hub for conversation around complex political issues for the College and beyond.
“Our Lives are Lived in Freestyle”: Social and Dynamic Productions of Breaking and Hip Hop Culture
2018
Based on fieldwork with breakers living in New York, Osaka, and Perth, as well from prior experiences within my field of study, this thesis builds on a growing body of scholarship which examines the productions, expressions and consumptions of hip hop culture. This study looks at how breakers-hip hop dance practitioners-work to produce, sustain and transform hip hop culture in ways that are local and unique. It is not, however, my intention to set out a definitive list of good or bad, authentic or unauthentic, notions of hip hop, or to suggest that there is one true or correct way in which to participate and identify as a member of. What is emphasised are the ways in which breakers, through their embodied dance practices, negotiate, express, understand and conceptualise hip hop. The title of this thesis, "Our Lives are Lived in Freestyle", is a line from a spoken word poem, by a breaker from Texas named Marlon. In breaking, to "freestyle" means to improvise in the moment; to use the tools one has at their disposal to perform and create. Hence, this term "freestyle" is an apt metaphor for this thesis as it illustrates the dynamic and improvisational modalities by which hip hop is reflexively constituted, pushed and pulled in a variety of different directions, by a diverse and ever-changing aggregate of different peoples from around the world. Throughout the chapters of this thesis I demonstrate how hip hop is a globalising and diverse social field, governed not by any institutions, offices or titles, but rather by individual hip hop persons, within and across different local settings. This study contributes to contemporary anthropological writings on culture, process, agency and social action. Additionally, this research also contributes to a growing body of hip hop scholarship, which consider hip hop and its many practices as a living, transformative, global phenomenon.
Rap's collective consciousness : the significance and dynamics of cypher in hip hop culture
2013
Cypher contributes significantly to the 'underground' hip hop scene in New York, as well as further afield; its rich musical and cultural roots can be traced directly from African oral traditions and cultural practices, and it reflects the epitome of hip hop culture by the way it advocates the principles of communication, knowledge and truth whilst enabling empowerment and fulfilment of its participants in a multi-faceted social dynamic. Cypher is unique in terms of its practice, as it requires little to no monetary or material input to take part, and is accessible to people from all backgrounds, but particularly to those from marginalised communities. It is an important musicological phenomenon which, seemingly unconsciously, contributes significantly towards the survival of hip hop; with so much discussion about the 'death' of hip hop, it is refreshing to have the assurance that certain practices within hip hop culture, such as cypher, are very much thriving and playing a large role in the survival, if not the existence, of hip hop culture as a whole. While there have been significant studies in hip hop culture in the fields of sociology and English studies, there remain relatively few published texts that have been written from a musicological standpoint. This thesis contributes to hip hop scholarship in a pioneering sense, especially since cypher is a form of rap which in itself is rarely investigated. In terms of the theoretical contributions that are made in this study, it is fair to say that cypher has a strong musicological and social role in its practice as well as holding great prominence in African-American culture; it forms an intrinsic part of everyday life for many of its participants. Using a combination of scholarly research and fieldwork methodology, using the latter to be able to account for experiencing cypher first-hand, means that this thesis presents academic research whilst remaining true to the essence of hip hop by keepin' it real. With an emphasis on authenticity running throughout hip hop culture, the ability to reflect a genuine understanding of the role and dynamics of cypher has been of paramount importance in order to achieve credibility in the academic field as well as in the hip hop community. This thesis fully supports the notion that cypher has a highly significant role in hip hop culture, and, furthermore, that cypher reflects a team spirit that for some provides a form of cultural compensation and an alternative education; cypher also gives a voice to marginalised individuals and communities. This research marks cypher on the musicological map.
Virtual hood: Exploring the hip-hop culture experience in a British online community
2010
In this fast-paced, globalized world, certain online sites represent a hybrid personalpublic sphere-where like-minded people commune regardless of physical distance, time difference, or lack of synchronicity. Sites that feature chat rooms and forums can offer a deeprooted sense of community and facilitate the forging of relationships and cultivation of ideologies. This dissertation investigates whether this trend is relevant to web sites concerning hiphop. This genre is arguably one of the most pervasive and influential global cultural forms, yet it is markedly different from most other forms of globalized culture because it emerged within and is still embedded in a distinct subculture. The notion that the Internet could become a bastion for hip-hop fans is quite paradoxical: hip hop is a cultural form so deeply rooted in the sense of place and so invested in its relationship to spatiality that it could potentially pose a particular challenge to the notion of virtual communities. This research examines the virtual hip-hop experience in the UK in order to assess whether this music and the culture that surrounds it have been adopted in their original American form or whether they have been adapted to make them more relevant to their new locale. In particular, the study probes how the ideology, values, behaviors and attitudes that bestride American hip-hop are represented, consumed, and reproduced on the mediated world of web sites. iv This dissertation is dedicated to my parents, Silvio Cherjovsky and Graciela Cherjovsky, who raised me to be curious about the world and value knowledge and education. Without their unconditional and constant understanding, encouragement, support, and love, this process would have been simply impossible. v