Hip-Hop within and without the Academy

Karen Snell has taught both graduate and undergraduate level music education courses at Boston University and the Eastman School of Music. John Söderman is associate professor of music education at Malmö University.

Snell and Söderman, both of whom teach music education, explore how hip-hop music has come to be used 'by many artists throughout the world to articulate their unique sense of marginality.' The music has become the chosen mode of expression for young people—whether First Nations youth in the US and Canada or communities in Britain, Norway, and Sweden—who have experienced a sense of exclusion or disenfranchisement. Populations around the world borrow from hip-hop and blend it with their own traditions. In addition to discussing this, the authors explore efforts to add courses on hip-hop to college curricula and to music education coursework in secondary schools. And they examine the tension between scholars who write about and critique hip-hop and practitioners who create the music: Who is qualified to 'speak' for or about hip-hop? Whose voice is 'authentic'? Though it is dense, technical, and abstract—and marked by specialized jargon—the book offers significant theoretical insights. Intrepid readers will find this study valuable and worth the effort. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers.

• AcknowledgmentsPart 1 Ethnographic Hip-Hop Studies1. Introduction2. Young Hip-Hop Musicians Talk About Their Learning and Creative Strategies 3. Towards a Swedish Professional Hip-Hop Identity4. The Musical Personhood of Three Canadian Turntablists: Implications for TransformativeCollaborative Practice in Music Education5. First Nations Hip-Hop Artists’ Identity and VoicePart 2 Academization of Hip-Hop6. Introduction to Part 27. The Formation of a Scientific Field: Hip-Hop Academicus8. What is at Stake? How Hip-Hop is Legitimized and Discussed within University 9. Turntablism: A Vehicle for Connecting Community and School Music Making and LearningPart 3 Educational and Artistic Implications of Hip-Hop10. Introduction to Part 311. Jean Grae and Toni Blackman: An Educational andAesthetical Conversation with two Female Emcees12. Folkbildning through Hip-Hop: A Presentation of two Rappers and one Swedish Hip-Hop Organization 13. How Critical Pedagogy and Democratic Theory can Inform Teaching Music, and Especially, TeachingHip-Hop14. The Informal Learning Practices of Hip-Hop Musicians15. Outroduction: Implications for Music and Music EducationGlossary of TermsBibliographyIndexAbout the Authors