Page:Global Noise and Global Englishes.pdf/1



2003

Cultural Studies Review 9(2) 192-200

http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/csr.v9i2.3572

Author Affiliation

Professor of Language in Education

University of Technology Sydney

Publisher

UTS ePress

University of Technology Sydney

Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA, alluding to Tricia Rose’s US rap-music book, Black Noise, aims to do much more than merely extend the reach of the study of rap and hiphop beyond the USA, as its subtitle might suggest. While acknowledging the importance of the work of both Rose and Potter, this collection’s editor, Tony Mitchell contests their respective views that rap and hip-hop are essentially expressions of African-American culture, and that all forms of rap and hip-hop derive from these origins. He argues that these forms have become ‘a vehicle for global youth affiliations and a tool for reworking local identity all over the world’. (1–2)

Indeed, the argument goes one step further, suggesting that more exciting developments can be found in different contexts around the world:

"For a sense of innovation, surprise, and musical substance in hop-hop culture and rap music, it is becoming increasingly necessary to look outside the USA to countries such as France, England, Germany, Italy, and Japan, where strong local currents of hip-hop indigenization have taken place. (3)"

While, at one level, local development of rap and hip-hop can still be seen in terms of appropriation of African-American cultural forms—and there is still a tradition of imitation—at another, the local context in which the form evolves may engage a quite different range of cultural, musical and linguistic forms, mobilising a politics that may include anti-globalisationand anti-Americanism. Rh