| Global Noise: |
||
Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA. Edited by Tony Mitchell. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2001. Pp. 336, list of contributors, index. $60.00 cloth, $19.95 paper. Acknowledging that hip-hop can at once represent a musical genre, a culture, a community, a commodity, or even a nation, Tony Mitchell and the other contributors to Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA explore hip-hop as a multi-faceted global youth movement and its deep connection to the construction of local identities. Each chapter takes as its starting point the U.S. as ground zero for hip-hop, showing how this "originary" hip-hop is adopted and adapted within various national milieus. While all the authors argue that hip-hop is "a marker for the vernacular expression and construction of identity" (32), they are careful to highlight that these identities must be understood within a broader set of subjective negotiations. As Jacqueline Urla points out in her chapter on Basque hip-hop, "[people] find in hip-hop a language, a set of resources, and knowledge with which to articulate similar but not identical struggles and concerns" (173). Throughout the book, the authors tease out these "similar but not identical struggles" in their analyses of differing processes of hip-hop indigenization. The book is roughly divided into three geographical sections: Europe (Ch. 1-8), Asia (Ch. 9 and 10), and Commonwealth countries (Ch. 11-13). The first two chapters explore hip-hop in France and locate it within the realm of postcolonial discourse. In Chapter 1, André Prévos gives an overview of French hip-hop and discusses how it has been taken up by ethnic minorities. Taking Prévos' discussion further, Ted Swedenburg in Chapter 2 elaborates on how hip-hop is used to "construct cultural-political spaces for [immigrants] as ethnicized 'Muslims' in Europe" (57). In the French context, Swedenburg argues "Islamic hip-hop" is a significant pop culture manifestation of Islam in Europe, which contributes to an understanding rather than a stereotyping of Muslims. In Chapter 3, David Hesmondhalgh and Caspar Melville explore how "urban breakbeat culture" in Britain is shaped by black Britishness as well as club and sound system cultures. Mark Pennay in Chapter 4 discusses how the German hip-hop scene was revitalized in 1993 after the country's reunification. In Chapter 5, Claire Levy describes the poor mimesis of U.S. hip-hop in Bulgaria in the 1990s. Next, Mir Wermuth explores the tension between authenticity (especially in terms of language) and how young Dutch people experience hip-hop as either fans or artists. Jacqueline Urla in Chapter 7 shows how Basque cultural politics and the creation of a political imaginary play out in the rap of Negu Gorriak. In Chapter 8, Tony Mitchell discusses how Italian hip-hop incorporates both the rhetoric of political militancy as well as manifestations of regionalism. Moving east to Asia, in Chapter 9 Ian Condry gives a history of Japanese hip-hop, from breakdancing in the streets to the Tokyo club scene. In the brief chapter that follows, Sarah Morelli describes how hip-hop morphs into a pop pastiche in the music of Korea's Seo Taiji. According to Ian Maxwell in Chapter 11, Australian hip-hop does not hinge on black culture nor is it a product of the "inner hood." Maxwell demonstrates that hip-hop Down Under represents, contests, and inverts (in the Foucauldian sense) through the channels of mass media. In Chapter 12, Mitchell assesses Maori hip-hop in popular music of New Zealand, as well as its role in the development of a "Maori and Pacific Islander vernacular culture" (284). In the final chapter, Roger Chamberland discusses the tentative development of hip-hop in Canada, which was born in the shadow of U.S. hip-hop and grew among more the outspoken rap artists from France and Quebec. Stephanie Sylvester |
