Govind, Arathi. “An Undniable Presence”:Racial Justice Work Aong South Asian American Musicians, 2019. An Undeniable Presence: Racial Justice Among South Asian America Muicians.
In this dissertation, Govind discusses how second-generation South Asian American artists influence advocacy, social justice, and activism in their lives and music practices. Three artists (Malhotra, Jain, and Iyer) live in New York City, while the fourth artist (Marya) lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. These places vary in environments and genes of music. Govind talks about other studies (Sunaian Maria’s Desis in the House, Nitasha Sharma’s Hip Hop Desis, and a survey of South American music by Nair and Balaji’s Desi Rap), that are based hip hop scenes. In contrast, hers is based more on politics. The artist uses their platforms to outwardly or subliminally help express their political and social stances on social justice advocacy.
Cloonan, Martin and Garofalo, Reebee “Policing Pop” Policing Pop. There is a lot of censorship in music. Some of it is deliberate and carried out purposely by the artist’s agents, but sometimes it is not. Regulation and control may be certain forms of policing, but not censorship. Despite radios and certain places outright refusing to play certain songs, musicians can and will continue to write and perform thing regardless.
Williams, James “In Music”. How musicians, specifically African-American musicians, use their music to resist the discourses that have codified black music practice. How black musicians’ contributions have been misrepresented in society. How black jazz music has been appropriated and discredited historically in jazz.
Holt, Kevin, “Get Crunk!” Get Crunk! Crunk a hip hop subgenre.
Moor, Kourtney “Mixtape chronicles An ethnographic investigation into hip-hop and African-American culture concerning systemic racism and oppression.” Mixtape chronicles. Hip-hop has been criticized a lot by racist white and anti-black critics who misunderstand hip-hop. Hip-hop is a communication method where certain injustices are brought to light, yet there is not as much light brought on the systemic racism and oppression that hip-hop talks about. Hip-hop is an avocation method that helps fight systemic racism and oppression. It also shares narratives that encourage social justice and is a powerful culture that empowers and promotes black advancement and self-actualization.
Dnnis, Andrea “The Music of Mass Incarceration” The Music of Mass Incarceration. While mass incarceration was happening, rap music was beginning to become a lot more popular. Rap has played a vital role in documenting mass incarceration.
Rosnthal, Rob, and Flacks, “Richard Playing for Change: Music and Musicians in the Service of Social Movements” Playing for change. This book talks about what musicians have done in protest and activism.
Gioel, Rocco “From Slavery to Mass Incarceration: African American Literature and Hip Hop as Testimonies of Oppression” From Slavery to Mass Incarceratio. It talks about contemporary issues in history and society, focusing on the African-American community’s written production within the United States justice system.
Salmons, Patrick “Hip Hop Voices in the era of Mass Incarceration: An examination of Kendrick Lamar and The Black Lives Matter Movement.” Hip Hop Voices in the era of Mass Incarceratio. This talks about the problem of Mass Incarceration and race and how Kendrick Lamar’s music and the Black Lives Matter Movement impact it.
Redmond, Shana Song “Uncaged: Prison Temporality and Black Pop Culture Escape” Song Uncaged. The song produced by Marcus Garvey “Keep Cool,” was used as a method of escape and political possibility through musical composition.
Clay, Andrana “The Hip-Hop Generation Fights Back” Hip Hop Generation Fights Back. Youth activism addressing the inequalities in urban youth of color. Strategies that they used to frame the social justice agendas and organize local communities. Using hip-hop, spoken word, and experiences to rally local communities.
Kumanyika, Chenjerai “We Demand justice. We just getting started: the constitutive rhetoric of 1Hood Media’s hip-hop activism” We demand justice. Focus on 1Hood Media and how its appeal has constituted collective and individual subjects’ participation in social justice campaigns. The texts focus on victims of injustice and how the villains in this story are institutional forces, police forces, and corrupt Wall Street banks and focus on music, lyrical, and visual features 1Hood has produced.
Gosa, Travis and Nielson, Erik “The Hip-Hop & Obama Reader” The Hip Hop & Obama Reader. An analysis of how hip hop and politics in the age of Obama recognize how the cultural industry investments have stopped us from telling stories. Using gender and the way hip hop scenes repeat, revise, and resist corporatize misogynistic messages. Not romanticizing the way the younger generation engages with politics and how they fight for justice. Considering how technology has contradicted in creating a global hip-hop community, how it helped create a new venus for democratic participation but distorted participatory culture and confused racially marked consumption for resistance.
Alridge, Derrick “From Civil Rights to Hip Hop: Toward a Nexus of Ideas” From Civil Rights to Hi Hop. How Hip Hop has given a voice of a new generation that would expand the ideas and ideologies of the civil rights generation.
Spnce, LK “Stare in the Darkness: The limits of hip-hop and Black politics” Stare in the Darkness. What are the politics embedded in rap and hip-hop’s production, circulation, and consumption?
Heil ronner, Oded “Music and Protest; The Case of the 1960s and its Long Shadow” Music and Protest. The protests and the presence of popular music have played in them.
Beughey, Caheie and Unniha, N. Prabha “Political Rap: The Music of Oppositional Resistance” Political Rap. The expression of oppositional resistance and related themes in a representative selection of political rap music lyrics.
Kaltmeier, Olaf and Raussert, Wilfriend “Sonic Politics: Music and Social Movements in the Americas” Sonic Politics. Different songs throughout time and what they represented. How celebrities have used music to bring awareness.
Walker, Ian “A Theory of Music as Political Resistance” A Theory of Music as Political Resista ce. The theory of the relationship between music and politics such as of resistant music as a function of government action, social climate, and large-scale events.
Rodnizky, Jroe “The sixties between the microgrooves: Using folk and protest music to understand American History, 1963-1973” The sixties between microgrooves. How music was directly tied to social change and how it has become embedded within Americans.
Damodaran, Sumangala “Protest and Music” Protest and Music. The relationship between music and politics, specifically music and protest in social science in a systematic manner.
Pddie, Ian “The Resisting Muse: Popular Music and Social Protest” The Resisting Muse. Music is a particular social relationship and location, a product of culture, class gender. Music emerges in social and political engagement. Instead of assuming the fundamental cultural and political importance of music and social protest, see the relationship between them is a complex dialect. Popular music at times defines itself through opposition and criticism says it is associated with the axiomatic truism that gets generalized often. How does popular music fit with social, historical, and political formations?
Friedman, Jonathan “The Routledge History of Social Protest in Popular Music” The Routledge History of Social Protest in Popular Music. Historical beginnings, different protest songs, and what they were for. Contemporary social protest in rock music. International protests.
Eyran, Rob and Jamison, Andrew “Music and Social Movements: Mobilizing Traditions in the Twentieth Century” Music and Social Movements. Cultural traditions are mobilized and reformulated in social movements. Mobilization is what social movements are and what they signify for social and cultural change. Considering the culturally transforming aspects of social movements primarily in relation to music.
Seger, Anthony “Music of Struggle and Protest in the 20th Century” Music of Struggle and Protest in the20th Century. 20th-century protest music and discusses the political and musical impact on certain musician-activists. The tradition of using songs to express political ideas during the first four decades then declined due to political repression in the fifth decade and then flourished again during the 1960s-1980s.
Rydll, Katie and Bienvenu, Ally “The Power of Protest Music: Exploring the Role of Songs in Social Change” The Power of Protest Music. The role of music in protest is specifically related to movements within the Black community. We identified that exploring songs can provide an accessible lens through which students can learn about protests and the issues they address. Accumulating our findings in this article, we provide an overview of music as a form of protest to illustrate the longevity of this unique tradition.
Schribr, Brad “Music is Power: Popular Songs, Social Justice, and the Will to Change.” Popular Songs. Famous artists and their songs, what they represent, and their genre.
Smith, Gareth, The Routledge Re earch Comanion to Popular Music Education The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Mu ic. Music is more than a mirror of society; and it is also a force of change—an internationally and culturally diverse range of popular music teaching and learning practices where children are empowered.
Rashid, Kamau “Start the Revolutio ”: Hi Hop Music and Social Justice Education Start the Revolution. Hip-hop represents a potent resource in the conceptualization of social justice pedagogy in urban communities. It conceptualized a hip-hop pedagogy that answers the challenge of African-centered education where hip-hop is expressive of the legacy of social critique and activism in African communities.
Nielsen, Erik “‘Here come the cops’: Policing the resistance in rap music” ‘Here come the cops’. Argues that traditional scholarly formulations of rap-as-resistance need rethinking and that we must account for the aggressive strategies of social control that have been integral in shaping and often circumscribing the kinds of defiance that rap em race.
Moore, Marcus “How Black Musical Artists Revolutionized the Sound of Protest in 2016.” How Black Musical Artists Revolutionized the Sound of Protest in 2016. How Black artists like Rihanna, Beyonce, and Frank Ocean used their creativity to respond to the world.
Adela Vymazalova, “Elvis Presley and His Significant Impact on American Culture” Elvis Presley and His Significant Impact on American Culture. This thesis paper talks about Elvis’s impact on the songs he wrote, his persona, and his actions that contributed to both racial and social revolution.
Beyonce, “Formation” Formation. This music video/lyrics released by Beyonce has themes such as imagery and lyrics that challenge policing and surveillance.
Gambino, Childish “This Is America” This Is America. The music video/lyrics by Childish Gambino talk about gun violence, racism, and mass incarceration.
Staples, Vince, “Hands Up” Hands Up. The music video/lyrics by Vince Staples address police brutality, criminalization of black youth, militarization of law enforcement, and racial disparities in policing.
Rage Against the Machine, “Killing in the Name” Killing in the Name. Music video/lyrics by Rage Against the Machine with lyrics about police violence and institutional racism, denouncing the use of force by the law and encouraging resistance against systemic oppression.
N.W.A, “F Tha Police” F Tha Police. Music video/lyrics confronting police brutality, racial profiling, police oppression, speech, and censorship.
Nas ft West Kanye, “Cops Shot the Kid” Cops Shot the Kid. Music video/lyrics by Nas and Kanye West addressing police brutality and the trauma from the law as well as the criminalization of Black youth and other marginalized communities.
Prz, Dead “Police State” Police State. The music video/lyrics by Dead Prez talk about how society is impacted by heavy surveillance and control from the government and police. Some of the lyrics talk about racial profiling, civil liberties, and the war on drugs.
South, Down “Ghosts of the Mississippi” Ghosts of the Mississippi. This lyric video talks about racial oppression, violence, police brutality, and lynching in the South.
Lowkey, featuring Khalil Mai “Soundtrack to the Struggle.” Soundtrack to the Struggle. This music video by Lowkey featuring Mai Khalil, British rappers, addresses social and political issues, such as imperialism, state surveillance, and resistance against oppression.
Holiday, Bille “Strange Fruit” Strange Fruit. This music video talks about racial violence and is a protest song against systemic racism and injustice.
Walker, Kara “Kara Walker” Kara Walker. Kara Walker uses an art medium, specifically silhouette cutouts that portray American slave narratives, the literature of the antebellum South, and minstrel shows. She tries to bring and spread awareness of the sexist and racist stereotypes that also deal with violence, desire, and issues of identity, and narrative representation.
Undoing Racism The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. This installation combines art and community engagement to confront systemic racism and oppression. It includes workshops, art displays, and participatory events aimed at educating communities about the history and impact of policing and incarceration, fostering dialogue about alternatives to these systems. These installations are spread across various cities in the U.S and done by a lot of different activists and artists.
Scott, Dread “Dread Scott” Dread Scott & Artist & Activist Dread Scott Aims to Propel History Forward. This artist has created a number of different works in different media such as installations, performances, videos, photography, printmaking and painting. Some of them are in museum galleries and some were on street corners.
About The NHM: artist statement from Not An Alternative. This collective projects addresses issues such as climate change, systemic racism, and police violence.
Athanasopoulos, Charles “Iconography in The Age of Black Lives Matter” Iconography in The Age of Black Lives Matter.
Bruguera, Tania “Tatlin’s Whisper #6” Tatlin’s Whisper #6 (Havana versio ). In this performance art in Havana, participants were allowed to speak freely about about political oppression and surveillance, challenging the speech restrictions in Cuba.
Burden, Chris “Shoot” Dangerous Art: The Weapons of Performance Artist Chri Burde. In these different controversial performances Chris Burden deal with theme of violence, vulnerability. In one of the performances Burden has someone shoot him he says “I had an intuitive sense that being shot is as American as apple pie. We see people being shot on TV, we read about it in the newspaper. Everybody has wondered what it’s like. So I did it.”
Weymar, Diana “The 6th of April” “The Stitch Artist Helping Combat Media Fatiigue. Using embroidery Weymar collaborated with the EHRP using hand-embroidered quotes from articles, poems and other writings talking about economic and racial justice.
Helguera, Pablo “The School of Panamerican Unrest” Pablo Helguera The School of Panamerican Unrest. This is a traveling school that deals with themes of cultural identity, surveillance, and the politics of representation. Done through discussions, performances, screenings and civic events.
Rankine, Claudia “The White Card” The White Card. The White Card discusses race, societal structures, and race. It is performed in a domestic setting such as the dinner party the play opens with.
Banksy “Dismaland” Welcome to Dismaland: A First Look at Banksy’s New Art Exhibition Housed Inside a Dystopian Theme Park. Throughout the park there are different installations that deal with surveillance, societal faults, and how bleak modern life really is.
Weymar, Diana “The Tiny Pricks Project” The Tiny Pricks Project. Stitching Donald Trumps words into fabric forever memorializing his presidency and the movement against it. Different individuals are also collaborating with this project who have been affected by political surveillance and oppression and using their experiences to create something to respond to the impacts of unfair surveillance and political oppression.
Conrad, Kate, et al. “An Examination of How Rap and R&B Music Videos Influence African American Self Identity.” Conference Papers — National Communication Association, Nov. 2007, p. 1. EBSCOhost. -Music Studies.
Craig, Clay, et al. “Name Dropping and Product Mentions: Branding in Popular Music Lyrics.” Journal of Promotion Management, vol. 23, no. 2, Mar. 2017, pp. 258–76. EBSCOhost. – Music Studies.
Dyson, Michael E. Race Rules: Navigating the Color Line: Chapter 4: We Never Were What We Used to Be: Black Youth, Pop Culture, and the Politics of Nostalgia. Addison-Wesley, 1996. Alexander Street. – Cultural Critique/ Music Studies.
Davis, Angela Y. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday: MAMA’S GOT THE BLUES: RIVALS, GIRLFRIENDS, AND ADVISORS. Vintage Books, 1998. Alexander Street. Music Studies/ Cultural Critique.
Edgar, AmandaNell. “R&B Rhetoric and Victim-Blaming Discourses: Exploring the Popular Press’s Revision of Rihanna’s Contextual Agency.” Women’s Studies in Communication, vol. 37, no. 2, May 2014, pp. 138–58. EBSCOhost. – Music Studies/ Cultural Critique.
George, Nelson. The Death of Rhythm and Blues: Chapter 4: Black Beauty, Black Confusion (1965-70). Pantheon Books, 1988. Alexander Street. -Music Studies/ Pop Culture.
George, Nelson. The Death of Rhythm and Blues: Chapter 7: Assimilation Triumphs, Retronuevo Rises (1980-87). Pantheon Books, 1988. Alexander Street. – Black Radical Tradition.
Gordon, Nickesia S. “Discourses of Consumption: The Rhetorical Construction of the Black Female Body as Food in Hip Hop and R&B Music.” Howard Journal of Communications, vol. 31, no. 5, Oct. 2020, pp. 429–48. EBSCOhost. – Music Studies.
Neal, Larry. The Black Arts Movement. New York University. Tisch School of the Arts. Alexander Street. – Music Studies/ Black Radical Tradition.
Watkins, Craig S. Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement: Part One: Pop Culture and the Struggle for Hip Hop, Chapter Three: Fear of a White Planet. Beacon Press, 2005. Alexander Street. – Music Studies/ Cultural Critique.
Black Art Movement Quote. “Unless the Black artist establishes a “Black aesthetic” he will have no future at all. To accept the white aesthetic is to accept and validate a society that will not allow him to live. The Black artist must create new forms and new values, sing new songs (or purify old ones); and along with other Black authorities, he must create a new history, new symbols, myths and legends (and purify old ones by fire)”.