Hip-Hop within and without the Academy

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Hip-Hop Within and Without the Academy explores why hip-hop has become such a meaningful musical genre for so many musicians, artists, and fans around the world. Through multiple interviews with hip-hop emcees, DJs, and turntablists, the authors explore how these artists learn and what this music means in their everyday lives. This research reveals how hip-hop is used by many marginalized peoples around the world to help express their ideas and opinions, and even to teach the younger generation about their culture and tradition. In addition, this book dives into how hip-hop is currently being studied in higher education and academia. In the process, the authors reveal the difficulties inherent in bringing this kind of music into institutional contexts and acknowledge the conflicts that are present between hip-hop artists and academics who study the culture. Building on the notion of bringing hip-hop into educational settings, the book discusses how hip-hop is currently being used in public school settings, and how educators can include and embrace hip-hops educational potential more fully while maintaining hip-hops authenticity and appealing to young people. Ultimately, this book reveals how hip-hops universal appeal can be harnessed to help make general and music education more meaningful for contemporary youth.

Reviews

Snell and Sderman, 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 peoplewhether First Nations youth in the US and Canada or communities in Britain, Norway, and Swedenwho 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 abstractand marked by specialized jargonthe book offers significant theoretical insights. Intrepid readers will find this study valuable and worth the effort. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. * CHOICE *
The section on the academization of hip-hop what the books title describes as hip-hop within the academy was promising as it is an area that is rarely well covered compared to the more common emphasis on the convergences of youth, politics and hip-hop. . . .Snell and Sderman are appropriately attuned to the ways in which public education is increasingly inflected by the demands and agendas of the neoliberal state. * Popular Music *
Music educators will not be the only ones who benefit from this rounded, wide-ranging and yet focused study on the background, uses, meanings, and educational potential of hip-hop. This very readable account has the rare gift of being both entertaining and scholarly. It gives much food for thought as well as practical advice for teachers, and it represents a much-needed addition to the literature on both hip-hop and music education. -- Lucy Green, Professor of Music Education, UCL Institute of Education, London UK
Snell and Sdermans book is a welcome and timely text that draws attention to hip-hop beyond its most visible, commodified forms in popular culture and that challenges the bases of assumptions made surrounding hip-hop scholarship. The authors approach their subject matter with humility, and in doing so, provide a thought-provoking and valuable collection of essays that will surely appeal to scholars in a range of fields, including popular music studies, ethnomusicology, applied ethnomusicology, music education, and music teacher education. -- Gareth Dylan Smith, Institute of Contemporary Music Performance
A block party of a bookSnell and Sderman mix and remix educational orthodoxies into a whole new sound. -- Randall Everett Allsup, Teachers College Columbia University

Author Bio

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