Hip hop Samples Jazz: Dynamics of Cultural Memory and Musical Tradition in the African American 1990s

Perchard, Tom. 2011. Hip hop Samples Jazz: Dynamics of Cultural Memory and Musical Tradition in the African American 1990s. American Music, 29(3), pp. 277-307. ISSN 0734-4392 [Article]

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Abstract or Description

Academic work on hip hop published in the mid-1990s by Tricia Rose, William Eric Perkins, Kyra D. Gaunt and others tended to consider sampling as a historically significant practice, one through which producers memorialized and continued the traditions of earlier African American musical styles. More recently this view has been challenged: in his Making Beats (2004) Joseph Schloss contends that musical pragmatics have always been more important to producers than such cultural-historical projects. This article seeks to explore these issues by way of an examination of hip hop in the early-1990s, and specifically the uses that many groups – most notably Gang Starr and A Tribe Called Quest – began to utilize jazz samples around that time. Making extensive reference to contemporary interview material not previously examined in the scholarly literature, this article aims to establish the ways that, between the traditionary/pragmatic binarism, hip hop artists variously, and often simultaneously, described and enacted both continuations of and wariness towards an African American musical heritage.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1353/amm.2011.0025

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Music
Research Office > REF2014

Dates:

DateEvent
2011Published

Item ID:

5533

Date Deposited:

14 Jan 2013 11:04

Last Modified:

30 Jun 2017 10:00

Peer Reviewed:

Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.

URI:

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/5533

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