Assembling Aarhus West

Glocal rap, genre and heterogeneity

Authors

  • Mads Krogh University of Aarhus Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.30377

Keywords:

genre theory, hip-hop studies, globalization, assemblage, heterogeneity

Abstract

Aarhus West rap music constitutes a dominant trend within Danish hip-hop. Throughout the 2000s, a number of rappers with a common background in a specific area in the western part of Aarhus rose to national fame, setting sales records while bringing issues of ethnic and socio-geographical marginalization into the Danish popular music and cultural mainstream. In this article, I present Aarhus West as a case study to discuss (sub)generic developments within hip hop as a global phenomenon. While considering current developments in popular music genre theory, I argue that predominant notions of “glocalized” rap as ‘resistance vernaculars’ or ‘global noise’ (cf. Hawkins et al. 2004, Mitchell 2001) risk maintaining overly homogenous understandings of genre. In particular, I appeal to the Deleuzian concept of assemblage to highlight heterogeneity – and more specifically continuous de- and re-territorialization within a heterogeneous milieu of rap music, hip hop culture, social, ethnic and geographical conditions, media, political and commercial interests – as a key issue in understanding musico-generic development, persistence and strength.

Author Biography

  • Mads Krogh, University of Aarhus

    Mads Krogh is Associate Professor at the School of Communication and Culture—Musicology, University of Aarhus. He specializes in issues of genre, mediation and practice in relation to popular music culture and with a particular focus on hip-hop and rap music in Denmark and Scandinavia.

     

References

Alim, H. Samy. 2009. ‘Straight Outta Compton, Straight aus München: Global Linguistic Flows, Identities, and the Politics of Language in a Global Hip Hop Nation’. In Global Linguistic Flows: Hip Hop Cultures, Youth Identities, and the Politics of Language, ed. H. Samy Alim, Awad Ibrahim and Alistair Pennycook, 1–24. London: Routledge.

Anderson, Ben, and Colin McFarlane. 2011. ‘Assemblage and Geography’. Area 43/2: 124–27.

Androutsopoulos, Jannis, and Arno Scholz. 2003. ‘Spaghetti Funk: Appropriations of Hip-hop Culture and Rap Music in Europe’. Popular Music and Society 26/4: 463–79. https://doi.org/10.1080/0300776032000144922

Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. London: Duke University Press.

Born, Georgina. 2005. ‘On Musical Mediation: Ontology, Technology and Creativity’. Twentieth-century Music 2/1: 7–36. https://doi.org/10.1017/S147857220500023X

—2011. ‘Music and the Materialization of Identities’. Journal of Material Culture 16/4: 376–88. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359183511424196

—2012. ‘Music and the Social’. In The Cultural Study of Music, 2nd edn, ed. Martin Clayton, Trevor Herbert and Richard Middleton, 261–74. London: Routledge.

Brackett, David. 2016. Categorizing Sound: Genre and Twentieth-century Popular Music. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.

Brunstad, Endre, Unn Røyneland and Toril Opsahl. 2010. ‘Hip Hop, Ethnicity and Linguistic Practice in Rural and Urban’. In The Languages of Global Hip-hop, ed. Marina Terkourafi, 223–55. London: Continuum.

Chang, Jeff. 2005. Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation. London: Ebury Press.

Clarke, Sandra, and Philip Hiscock. 2009. ‘Hip-hop in a Post-insular Community: Hybridity, Local Language, and Authenticity in an Online Newfoundland Rap Group’. Journal of English Linguistics 37/3: 241–61. https://doi.org/10.1177/0075424209340313

Connor, Ben. 2003. ‘Good Buddha & Tzu: “Middle-class Wiggers from the Underside”’. Youth Studies Australia 22/2: 48–54.

DeLanda, Manuel. 2006. A New Philosophy of Society. London: Continuum.

Deleuze, Gilles. 1988. Foucault. London: Athlone.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: University of Minesota Press.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Claire Parnet. 1987. Dialogues. London: Athlone.

Drott, Eric. 2013. ‘The End(s) of Genre’. Journal of Music Theory 57/1: 1–45. https://doi.org/10.1215/00222909-2017097

Fabbri, Franco. 1981. ‘A Theory of Musical Genre: Two Applications’. In Popular Music Perspectives, ed. David Horn and Philip Tagg, 32–52. Goteborg and Exeter: International Association for the Study of Popular Music.

Frith, Simon. 1996. Performing Rites. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

George, Nelson. 2004. ‘Hip-hop’s Founding Fathers Speak the Truth’. In That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, ed. Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal, 45–55. New York: Routledge.

Hardt, Michael. 1993. Gilles Deleuze: An Apprenticeship in Philosophy. London: University of Minnesota Press.

Hesmondhalgh, David. 2005. ‘Subcultures, Scenes or Tribes? None of the Above’. Journal of Youth Studies 8/1: 21–40. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676260500063652

Holt, Fabian. 2007. Genre in Popular Music. London: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226350400.001.0001

Kassabian, Anahid. 2013. Ubiquitous Listening: Affect, Attention, and Distributed Subjectivity. London: University of California Press.

Knudsen, Jan Sverre. 2010. ‘“Playing with words as if it was a rap game”: Hip-hop Street Language in Oslo’. In Multilingual Urbana Scandinvia—New Linguistic Practices, ed. Bente A. Svendsen and Pia Quist, 156–69. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Krogh, Mads. 2016. ‘Aarhus V som hip-hop-brand—heterogene forbindelser af musik, genre og miljø’. In Populærmusikkultur—i Danmark siden 2000, ed. Mads Krogh and Henrik Marstal, 95–126. Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag.

Latour, Bruno. 1996. ‘On Actor-Network Theory: A Few Clarifications’. Soziale Welt 47/4: 369–81.

—2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Law, John. 2004. After Method: Mess in Social Science Research. New York: Routledge.

Lund, Johnny. 2006. ‘Static & Nat ill—“Teamwork” (Album)’. Copenhagen Rapspot, http://rapspot.dk/2006/01/12/static-nat-ill-teamwork-album/ (accessed 19 February 2016).

Martin, Peter J. 2006. Music and the Sociological Gaze: Art Worlds and Cultural Production. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Mitchell, Tony, ed. 2001. Global Noise: Rap and Hip Hop outside the USA. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. https://doi.org/10.7228/manchester/9780719072161.001.0001

Mitchell, Tony. 2004. ‘Doin’ Damage in my Native Language: The Use of “Resistance Vernacular” in Hip Hop in Europe and Aotearoa/New Zealand’. In Music, Space and Place: Popular Music and Cultural Identity, ed. Sheila Whiteley, Andy Bennett and Stan Hawkins, 108–123. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Morgan, Marcyliena, and Dionne Bennett. 2011. ‘Hip-Hop and the Global Imprint of a Black Cultural Form’. Daedalus 140/2: 176–96. https://doi.org/10.1162/DAED_a_00086

Neale, Stephen. 1980. Genre. London: British Film Institute.

Negus, Keith. 1999. Music Genres and Corporate Cultures. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203169469

Nitzsche, Sina A. 2013. ‘Hip-hop in Europe as a Transnational Phenomenon: An Introduction’. In Hip-hop in Europe: Cultural Identities and Transnational Flows, ed. Sina A. Nitzsche and Walter Grünzweig, 3–34. Zürich: LIT Verlag.

Omoniyi, Tope, Suzanne Scheld and Duro Oni. 2009. ‘Negotiating Youth Identity in a Transnational Context in Nigeria’. Social Dynamics 35/1: 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/02533950802684678

Potter, Russell A. 1995. Spectacular Vernaculars: Hip-hop and the Politics of Postmodernism. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Regev, Motti. 1994. ‘Producing Artistic Value: The Case of Rock Music’. Sociological Quarterly 35/1: 85–102. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-8525.1994.tb00400.x

Robertson, Roland. 1995. ‘Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity’. In Global Modernities, ed. Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash and Roland Robertson, 25–44. London: Sage Publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446250563.n2

Toop, David. 2000. Rap Attack #3. London: Serpent’s Tail.

Toynbee, Jason. 2000. Making Popular Music. London: Arnold.

Walser, Robert. 1993. Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. Middletown, CT: University Press of New England.

Published

2017-12-21

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Krogh, M. (2017). Assembling Aarhus West: Glocal rap, genre and heterogeneity. Popular Music History, 10(3), 280-296. https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.30377