Hip-Hop Culture, Globalization, and Black Lives Matter Protests
No one can argue that Wynton Marsalis is one of the music geniuses in the 21st century. He is an essential model for lots of musicians worldwide as an extraordinarily talented musician. Marsalis was the first jazz musician to win the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1997 with Blood on the Fields, a vocal and orchestral rumination on slavery. His comments on any music and the notes should be respected. However, one might argue that his critics of hip-hop music and black culture are very short-sided, incomplete, and unfortunately wrong. First of all, Marsalis considered hip-hop lyrics or video clips violent, sexual, and shallow. However, as Becky Blanchard from Stanford University argues, political and media groups have been quick to blame rap for a seeming trend in youth violence. However, though critics are quick to point out some rappers' violent lyrics, they are missing the point of rap’s message. Like other forms of music, Rap cannot be understood unless it is studied without the frame of its historical and social context. To talk about hip-hop culture, we should first understand the spirit of our time.
To talk about hip-hop music and popular black culture, one must first argue capitalism, globalization, their impact on black culture and globalization. Marsalis mentions that “several (NOT ALL) hip hop musicians have gone on record saying that the marketplace and the industry encourage them to make their material more commercial by adding violent and profanity-laced materialistic and over-the-top stereotypical images and concepts to their work.” One may agree with Christopher John Farley about hip-hop’s commodification. As he puts it, “Corporate America’s infatuation with rap has increased as the genre’s political content has withered. Ice Cube’s early songs attacked white racism; Ice-T sang a song about a cop killer; Public Enemy challenged listeners to “fight the power.” But many newer acts are focused almost entirely on pathologies within the black community. They rap about shooting other blacks, but rarely about challenging governmental authority or encouraging social activism.” However, choosing money over the protest music, protest rap was also a political expression. Those were the guys…