Counter-Hegemonic Music Movements and the Impacts on Political Consciousness

Leo Deng

6/5/21

PRO601: Abbot Independent Scholars Program: Political Music – Capstone Paper

Introduction: Political Consciousness and the Force of Musical Beauty

The 1950s and 1960s had Rock ‘n’ Roll, the late 70s and 80s Punk, and the 90s and beyond Hip-Hop/Rap. These labels were not just names for the vibe or musicality of each respective genre; each one of these movements had some sort of political impact through different methods of counterculture and authenticity. No matter how much they contrast, similarities prevail when analyzing the movements through lenses of subculture, social, and cultural theory. Themes of community, safe haven, and expression and empowerment are at the crux of the analysis—the idea that society’s oppression of identity or values leads to the creation of culture and community for the genuine expression of identity, communities, and values. I will contextualize the history of each movement in America and make sense of the reasons for such motives of counterculture in each movement. Such analysis will be based heavily on works such as Barry Shank’s The Political Force of Musical Beauty, Kevin Mattson’s Did Punk Matter?, Imani Perry’s Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop, George Lipsitz’s Dangerous Crossroads, and some help from other pieces, as well. In this essay, I will unpack all three movements (genres) in the mentioned lenses to show how they both explicitly and implicitly impacted listeners’ political consciousnesses through counter-hegemonic cultures and ideas, ending with a personal reflection and application of my claim to my life experience.

So, how do all these movements affect listeners' political consciousnesses? And what is political consciousness? All three movements’ effects are tied to their particular historical circumstances as outlined before, albeit, with overlap. The political consciousness that is affected is the individual’s (the person who is interacting with music through creating, listening, sharing, etc.) understanding and awareness of their political power and autonomy in the context they are in. Rock resisted boredom and insecurity of the postmodern sensibility, Punk resisted the capitalist system’s dominant control on society, and Hip-Hop was the perfect language for negotiating post-colonial issues and with/against white supremacy. Three distinct “opponents” and three distinct motives. The youth of Rock felt a crisis, finding themselves in deep alienation of society at the time; a sheer lack of connection to the public sphere, to something bigger than them like a social movement, something more meaningful. Punk’s DIY nature of creating new music, community, and culture gave them a sense of agency that was lost in a world of corporate capitalist determinism. Rap gave a voice to marginalized BIPOC and thus, a space for the expression of repressed people and communities. An overarching theme fusing all these movements together in relation to how they have affected political consciousness is giving power to people with not a lot of power. The main effect on political consciousness is that people who were once oppressed in some way gained a sense of power, a conception of having rights, or the capability to create justice in some way.

Barry Shank’s book, The Political Force of Musical Beauty, provided two key methods to think about how music affects political consciousness. One way is taken from Shank’s discussion of philosopher Jacques Rancière’s concept of the sensible.

Rancière defines the problem of the relationship between art and politics as “Art is not, in the first instance, political because of the messages and sentiments it conveys concerning the state of the world. Neither is it political because of the manner in which it might choose to represent society’s structures, or social groups, their conflicts or identities. It is political because of the very distance it takes with respect to these functions, because of the type of space and time that it institutes, and the manner in which it frames this time and peoples this space.” Art is political because of its capacity to redistribute the sensible, to shift the senses of time and space that organize the legitimated and recognizable ways of knowing and being in the world.

Another way of theorizing the relationship between art and political consciousness is taken from the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy.

Here’s a quote from Nancy: “To be listening is always to be on the edge of meaning, or in an edgy meaning of extremity, and as if the sound were precisely nothing else than this edge, this fringe, this margin—at least the sound that is musically listened to, that is gathered and scrutinized for itself, not, however as an acoustic phenomenon (or not merely as one) but as a resonant meaning, a meaning whose sense is supposed to be found in resonance, and only in resonance.” That being on the edge of meaning is the experience of beautiful music. In Nancy’s view, this alertness to sens is an apperception of possibility beyond the immediately given social. The experience of musical beauty is a felt momentary crystallization of those possibilities. The key point is that this experience is always socially and politically determined, and it also makes possible the redistribution of those determinations.

Rock ‘n’ Roll: Grossberg, Postwar Liberalism, and Youth Alienation

With the force of musical beauty in hand, we can apply the philosophical concept of redistributing the sensible on the youth Movement of Rock n Roll. Rock came into existence because of youth alienation during a postwar America that created problems of postmodernity that lingered over the youth of that era. In We Gotta Get Out of This Place, Lawrence Grossberg contextualizes the rises of rock and youth culture within the postwar era of economic prosperity and optimism. The Marshall Plan of 1948 that aided Western Europe in both countries America was allies with and conquered was controversial, but it showed the unchallenged economic leadership of the US.[1] Additionally, America’s goals were all consumerist, which is well illustrated by Henry Ford’s desire for workers to also be consumers to create a cycle that generated more profit.[2] This is an important fact as it led to the compatible interests of capital, labor, and underclasses that created “American liberalness” and “the end of ideology.”[3] Liberalism was the versatile solution to the deeply emotional difference between democratic capitalism and the external threat of communism as well as a creation of a novel American brand of conservatism.[4] Basically, liberalism hid a lot of the problems with the dogma of quietism as a guise of 50s prosperity that was a bargain that labor and capitalism struck with the government. This Liberal Consensus was so effective because it was a historic realignment between labor, capitalists, and government that secured the best period of economic growth and broad prosperity in US history.

What the youth were experiencing amidst this social circumstance of prosperity was an alienation from society. It feels contradicting to feel this way in society’s state of optimistic liberalism; however, it was precisely that optimism that repressed social and cultural differences to promise a utopian future. Perhaps this repression gave the youth a sense of apocalyptic history linked to terror and boredom. The liberal consensus guaranteed that they would become ultimate clones of their parents’ world that they rejected. Inside this contradiction, youth could not conceive of their own sense of individualism and thus, they became alienated from their current society. “Consequently, the public images and ideals which might have enabled youth to make its lives congruent with the rest of the world's seemed to fail. Society seemed unable to provide any narratives or meanings which could allow youth to understand, or even imagine, a significant place for themselves in history. Instead, there were few stable values and truths which could give meaning to youths’ lives and define the future as a worthy goal.”[5] The contradiction between alienation and liberal optimism that they lived marked the deep, affective difference that separated them from their parents and the world around them. With youth seeking a haven for authentic expression, rock’s particular forms of aural, visual, and behavioral excess created a perfect space to articulate the historical condition of postwar youth. By making youth belong somewhere, rock spoke to both the identity and the difference of its audience and allowed youth a way to reimagine the sensible.[6]

The contextualization I have just presented foreshadowed the problems that arose in the transition between the modern and postmodern eras that impacted Rock so much. The culmination of the historical context I made led to the stereotypical “nuclear family” in America where the private life of the family was of utmost importance. “The investment in the family, defined as the site of and reason for consumer spending, was seen to be part of a larger commitment necessary if the U.S. was to realize its destiny, its dream of peace and prosperity (for all?), not to mention protecting itself from “godless communism.’”[7] Upholding such values along with America being the hegemon of the world in both war economy and manufacturing created the pretext to the postmodern sensibility that was to come. As this illusory prosperity fell in the collapse of the dominant postwar Keynesianism (higher taxation but the rich still reap the benefits of Capitalism, job security, and high wages) and Reaganism (killing of unions, which increased debt and job insecurity), the imminent menace of sheer boredom and the new lack of job security engulfed the youth of the 70s. This was the postmodern sensibility that I mentioned—a constant anxiety that led to the expression of Rebellion in Rock ‘n’ Roll. It was a rebellion against the suburban lifestyle, detaching from their parents dull, redundant lives, and desiring a more rowdy, passionate lifestyle (as one could see with the wilder artists of the time being more revered). Rebellion is response and culture is always responding to something; again, the anti-suburban sentiment created a generational space—a space to create a new, unique identity.[8] The contextualization of the history that impacted Rock’s creation is important in its trickle-down effects on the rest of contemporary music; the individualism and subsequently, the authenticity that youth searched for became a foundational building-block of both Punk and Rap.

Punk: Subculture, Anti Capitalism, and Subculture’s Inevitable Fate of Capitalist Determinism

In Kevin Mattson’s Did Punk Matter?: Analyzing Youth Subculture During the 1980s, he helps contextualize the motivations of the rebellious movement that began in the 70s. Since the birth of “anti-art” and “political theatre” commonly known from the Modernist art movement Dadaism, other movements have been labeled similarly or even with the word Dada, as well; one of them is Punk. In a similar vein, Punk was rooted in the teenage nihilism of the time as they observed what they thought wrong about their world. An important intra-musical problem was with the bloated, jammy rock being created at the time, so they embraced simple, no-skill rock in reaction. For Rock it was the boring suburban family, for Punk it was the Capitalist system’s hegemonic power over their parents and the injustices such a system caused. Punk had a DIY (Do-It-Yourself) theme of creation that allowed for the least skilled members to have the ability to play and thus, create music. The revealing of how simple it was to make something sound good unsurprisingly correlated with the willingness for youth to genuinely express themselves. Without the pressure of high expectations of perfect execution and with the motivation of quotes such as “This is a Chord, This is Another, This is a Third: NOW FORM A BAND” existing, youth created a subculture that fostered authenticity.[9] “These young people wanted to forge their own identities and cultural products, instead of relying upon corporations to do it for them.”[10] Popular music artists that dominated radio stations were seen as divas, record company monopolies left the scene with few independent companies existing, and MTV and magazines commodified music. The youth that created this subculture basically saw the corporate world drain individuality out of art right in front of them, and they did not stand for it. Mattson argues for the impressively high levels of self-awareness that the Punk youth achieved, noting the fact of how powerful a corporate empire they attempted to resist as a reason.[11]

To illustrate Punk’s impact on political consciousness, I will present Mattson’s analysis on Punk as a site of cultural production outside dominant corporate institutions. As mentioned before, a defining trait of Punk was its DIY nature that allowed anybody to create art that could be taken seriously. However, the DIY theme reaches a much broader array of created products than just music, and that physical production is what Mattson praises so much about Punk. Punk was a scene defined by kids creating music, running shows, finding creative venues for concerts, selling merchandise, and advertising on their own. These were real-world products that came into fruition because Punk gave youth that hope and autonomy to do so. What made these products even more impressive was that it was all done using alternative networks, of course (since it was against/did not have the help of mainstream resources); the means of both spreading the word and traveling for tours proved difficult, and that sacrifice and hardship proved true passion in the subculture (it was not uncommon to be living off $40 a night living in a van). Additionally, magazines like Maximum RocknRoll taught readers how to duplicate tapes, which through kids merely experimenting, they created independent record labels. Lastly, a key component of Punk production were zines (short for fanzines), which were filled with crudely typed articles of show reviews, stories about politics, and sometimes even personal life notes about the editor. Zines kept youth from all over the country connected in a way nobody else understood.[12] Additionally, they pursued anything from raising funds for progressive non-profit organizations to meet at high schools for political discussions. The youth subculture that was Punk became a novel, robust culture and community that had its own foundational ideals, its own politics, and its own policing around issues of authenticity. All this real-world production was what Mattson praised about Punk—it was what made Punk matter. Accordingly, Mattson argued that this is what scholars should focus on about subculture, critiquing most subculture theorists for focusing too much on the style of Punk. However, he inevitably comes back to talking about style as the subculture was short-lived as it was captured by corporate business elites.

Punk subculture’s existence came to an inevitable halt because of subculture limits combined with what I call corporate capitalist determinism, which was the commodification of Punk into style and thus, its death. First, I will set the scene of the relationship between youth and the political climate of the Reagan era. This era was marked by a dominant conservatism built on a quirky coalition of free market libertarians and culturally conservative fundamentalist Christians. Reagan's deregulation and supply-side economics demonized the government, giving unfettered corporations the dominant position of political power and legitimacy. His role was more than just a political leader, rather he tried building a new cultural era for America of self-confidence after the Vietnam War, Watergate scandal, and Iranian hostage snag. “This intersection made it easy for dissident youth rebelling against the corporate influence on music to see in the political culture of Reaganism a clear-cut enemy—a politician and political movement seemingly in cahoots with the world of large corporations and popular corporate culture in general.”[13] This was the relationship that defined the Punk subculture period as youth had an apparent enemy in corporate America to rebel against, but what comes after the short period showed the sheer dominance of corporate capitalism and the limits of subculture itself. One limit was the political protest of Punk quickly became more theatrical, and sometimes even therapeutic, feat instead of one of direct action. This new generation of protest preferred street theatre like “die-ins” and “fall-outs” where they performed mock mass death with fake blood and baby-powder symbolizing gunpowder as they fall. A phenomenon of privatizing politics into lifestyle politics (boycotts, lifestyle changes like vegetarianism, etc.) prevailed as it was a domain where someone could possess full control of their actions, and it was better suited for the spontaneous nature of these protests. Another limit is an inevitable one with something like Punk, which is the dilution of subculture through its rise in popularity. Punk was undoubtedly cool to youth, so eventually the subculture would grow as new fans latch on for different reasons. They might like a certain aspect about Punk (the style, the rowdiness, just being a part of something, etc.), but it did not mean they had to understand the roots of anti-capitalist rebellion to be a fan or identify with Punk. Thus, the dilution of a clear mission (that was already vague in the first place) would only become lost in the chaos of popularity. Finally, the last dagger that marked Punk’s death as a legitimate politicized subculture was the commodification of its style by the hegemonic power that was corporate capitalism. As the limits of subculture mentioned chipped away at Punk’s existence, its distinguishing elements made it a vulnerable target for commodification. Their crazy haircuts like mohawks, buzz cuts, hair dye, and their clothes and musical style all eventually became elements that enamored certain Punks more than others.[14] Punk became fashion. “More and more young people saw destructive behavior within music scenes, including drunkenness, macho violence, and, less destructively but no less annoying, superficial fashionism and the commodification of youth rebellion itself.”[15] Some more self-aware Punks saw other Punks' obsession with self-demarcation as an inherent limitation, marking the “suicide” of Punk. Corporate capitalism eventually whittled down youth rebellion to flannels and nose rings of grunge bands and heavily marketed to the next generation of youth. One last limit of the Punk subculture worked in tandem with this capitalist determinism—its lack of intellectual commitment. Previous nihilistically motivated subcultures like Dada and Surrealism had more longevity because they were committed to critical ideas. However, this was actually at the fault of Rock n’ Roll as after the 1950s, rebellion was associated with the loud sounds of music, blurring the line between radicalism and subculture.[16] Almost a decade after all that Mattson was talking about, a mixed-race Punk band Bad Brains emerged that stood for unity and positive mental attitude (PMA). They were revolutionary as they had some of the first black representation and rebelled against Punk's conventions of nihilism and style that were fully commodified by then. In their song I Against I, they discuss their experiences of marginality in the US and going on after the chorus to showcase the realities of the communities they were in. The attribute that made Bad Brains legitimately progressive is their explicit intent to educate the youth about such experiences. Writer Aaron Gilbreath argues that Bad Brains epitomized Punk the most as black people were the original counterculture, albeit forced, by living in a country rooted in white supremacy, which leads us to Hip Hop.[17]

Hip-Hop/Rap: Anti White Supremacy, Repressed Values & Identity, and Post-Colonial Language

Last of the three movements, the Hip-Hop/Rap movement peaking in prominence in the 90s and continuing to the present day created a different culture of resistance motivated by a shared experience of racial marginalization and thus, a black cultural form and site of resistance to white supremacy. Because of such a motive, Hip-Hop is the most political genre out of the three because it is inherently political. Imani Perry helps push this argument in Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop, saying that rap embodied several elements including its “keeping it real” spirit, its constant navigation of creating and expressing different stances, and the long-lasting fight against white supremacy. Furthermore, these ideas create a much bigger conception of what the political even means in relation to music. Perhaps “the political” has transcended what we call politics and is now an artistic expression under the oppression of rappers’ values.[18] Also, an aesthetic aspect of Rap that shows an apparent political root is the most distinct identifier of the genre compared to all other music: the vocal delivery and lyricism. The revolutionary, poetic nature of Rap had a realism about it that was filled with metaphors and metonyms of existence that trouble listeners from a range of political, social, and intellectual perspectives. However, the same genre produced narratives of destruction in which the artist raps about killing people, refers to women as whores, and celebrates excessive alcohol and drug use. An important note is that the morally and politically troubling makes the music more abrasive as the reverse may also be true, perhaps embracing excellent moral values makes for boring music. Regardless of thematic elements in the music, Perry argues that bad music will be bad. There is no inherent correlation between good music and respectability or good music and good politics.[19]

There has never been a mandate on the artist to be politically uplifting; the tension created for the listener between ideology and art only further unveils unique social problems. The tension is not only a manifestation of Hip-Hop, but the ideology present in art is what responds to the complicated race politics in America. Literary figure Charles Johnson helps us understand that response to race better because what he says about black literature parallels phenomena in Hip Hop, as well. He argues that black literature largely aligns with faintly Hegelian variations on the phenomenon of the black body as “stained.” When one is seen by the white Other, there are two options: (A) to accept that one is being seen from the outside and use one’s invisible interior to deceive and win at survival or (B) seizing the situation by empowering or reversing the negative meanings imposed on the black body (e.g., applauding one’s athletic ability, amorous ability, street wisdom, etc.). The two periods of Hip-Hop that remind Imani about this dichotomy of responses to white supremacy are the “cultural nationalist” and “gangsta” periods of Rap. The former were the East Coast Afrocentrists showcasing their natural hair and medallions that portrayed black beauty and excellence, while the latter were the West Coast gangstas that mimicked a stereotype that indulged in a hyper-capitalist braggadociousness, thus becoming the survivalist hero.[20] Both methods of response are equally justifiable and have different places in counterculture that share the same goal of negotiation with white supremacy. However, beyond Rap methods, a similar commodification of style from Punk happens in Rap in an arguably more problematic way. The earlier mentioned disturbing images that Rap commonly indulges in (murder, female objectification, and drugs) is possibly, and I believe, a part of the appeal of the genre. Imani states, “For a mainstream audience, rap may indulge voyeuristic fantasies of black sociopathy and otherness, while for an oppressed community, these images might engage fantasies of masculine power in people who feel powerless.”[21] Nevertheless, there were and are many groups and individuals in Hip-Hop that created spaces to redistribute the sensible in clear, positive political ways. For example, Afrika Bambaataa’s Zulu Nation of the South Bronx was a group that explicitly encouraged the end of drug abuse in their community. One of their revolutionary songs - “Planet Rock” - sold more than a million copies on twelve-inch vinyl when it was released. Bambaataa and Zulu Nation utilized their knowledge from consuming music to become master producers. George Lipsitz says, “They used the conduits of popular culture to bring the expressive forms of their isolated and largely abandoned neighborhoods to an international audience.” The name Zulu references the film Zulu directed by Cy Endfield in 1964 Britain about Zulus being predatory savages opposing the “civilizing mission” of the British Empire. Bambaataa saw them in another way; Zulus were heroic warriors resisting oppression, which he uses as example in “Planet Rock” bringing Zulu from Britain to the Bronx to instead hail the utopian potential of Black music to transform the world in “a land of master jam.” They were illustrated by outer galaxy outfits, flamboyant hair, and quirky philosophies. At the end of it all, Zulu Nation held weekly meetings and thus, it was a home for some and a source of discipline for others. They held open forums to develop ways of eradicating drugs and violence in the New York Community.

In the chapter “Diasporic Noise: History, Hip Hop, and the Post-Colonial Politics of Sound” of George Lipsitz’s Dangerous Crossroads, he contextualizes a post-colonial culture and makes arguments that show Hip-Hop’s impact on political consciousness. The post-colonial culture began after WWII’s following years of struggle against colonialism, engaging intellectuals throughout Africa, Asia, and South America with national self-determination and anti-colonialist internationalism. Such sentiments contained an irrepressible optimism about the inevitability of liberation and the potential achievements of post-colonial nationalism.[22] Thus, the post-colonial era was an era of addressing emerging problems; it was an era of displacement and migration, of multi-culturalism and multi-lingualism. The era exposed the impossibility of any national identity incorporating into a totality of the diverse elements that compose a nation.[23] Transitioning into post-colonial art, Shank and Mattson already outlined commodification and the limits of art in a capitalist society. Lipsitz furthers into how Grossberg’s Postmodern sensibility gave reason for the mainstream (white) to commodify art so incessantly. The mainstream’s usual “search for novelty, boredom with familiar paradigms, and traditional European and American practices of fascination with (but not respect for) the ‘exotic’” culminates in the recent “emergence” of post-colonial art in Western consciousness.[24] “The contemporary crisis of social theory comes largely from the inability of either the nation state or the free market to adequately address the grim realities of the emerging global economy and culture.”[25] Post-colonial culture comes into being in the context of such a stalemate between two discredited theories. Examples of diasporic communities in this culture include populations that never had “old social movements” as questions of identity and community always annulled hope for making claims on the state through coalitions. The precise distance from the state power and their experiences with forced cultural exclusion are rooted in what we now call “new social movements.” “Oppositional practices among diasporic populations emerge from painful experiences of labor migration, cultural imperialism, and political subordination.”[26] Yet, individuals and artists from these communities are distinguished because of their ability to work through these systems and thus, subvert or invert the very hegemonic instruments uses to create the new global economy—consumer goods, technology, and images.

A Reflection From an Asian American

Growing up as an Asian male in a predominantly affluent, white suburb of Long Island, NY, I had to go through much exploration and questioning of my identity, opinions, and philosophies. Constantly being bombarded by impositions of model minority characteristics at school and coming back to the cultural conflict between the East and the West in my immigrant household was the mere circumstance I was in. Amidst that circumstance, I had to find my own identity in my youth and teenage years like everybody else does. As I mentioned at the beginning of this presentation, I became fond of basketball culture and subsequently sneakers and streetwear, too. What brought all those together was undoubtedly Hip-Hop. The aesthetic impact of music gradually increased on me from being just a background mood setting for my other interests into a primary source of indulgence. Through the intersection of Music and fashion between Kanye, Pharell, and NIGO of Japan, my historical inquiry between Black and Asian culture became a critical element to my reflection. I learned from west coast content creators (since they were more in sync with black culture than east coasters in my opinion) like the Fung Bros and David So who explicitly discuss and create videos about the interaction between Black and Asian cultures. At school I was expected to be the smartest and was constantly trying to fit in, which meant washing away Asian roots I was embarrassed of. But when I came home those roots were heavily integrated in the filial piety and hyper-workaholic mentality forced on me by my immigrant family. However, in this unique intersection of Black and Asian cultures, I found a community where I felt like I could express myself authentically and exercise my autonomy. With my background, I was able to combat or at least be self-aware during an era where black culture is pop culture and thus, cultural appropriation and other fetishization/commodification is at its highest. I had to even realize my original community of Asian dudes playing basketball and listening to rap was part of such appropriation as they took what they liked about black culture but could not defend it when it mattered (which I really got to see in the most recent events of BLM protests and riots during the pandemic). All that was my shift in political consciousness that all connects back to Hip-Hop in some kind of way.

Of course, I have many extraneous havens of music like noise rock band Daughters on the right that gave me a space of a post-punk style of artistic expression, but I still come back to the Hip-Hop artists because of their bigger impacts on me. Artists like Playboi Carti in many ways helped me understand abstract expressionism better than Daughters as he is more cutting-edge in his experimentative delivery/sound because Hip-Hop is still evolving. Tyler, the Creator is an ironic yet fitting character that gives a more effective and personal support to LGBTQ+ members. Lastly, seeing Rich Brian’s evolution from a commodity to a renowned Asian artist in America gave hope to me as an Asian youth of breaking my boundaries that were heavily imposed by a white society (also, he notably progressed in his outlook on black culture too that parallels mine as he was ignorant growing up in Indonesia as he learned to rap from the internet). Whatever the musical form, it influenced me and billions of others. Whatever it is: identity, community, autonomy, resistance, rebellion, meaning making… This is what makes music matter.

Works Cited

Dilday, Jessica. “IASPM-US Interview Series: The Political Force of Musical Beauty by Barry Shank.” International Association For The Study of Popular Music — US Branch, September 8, 2014. https://iaspm-us.net/iaspm-us-interview-series-the-political-force-of-musical-beauty-by-barry-shank/.

Gilbreath, Aaron. “Unity and Resistance: The Message of Bad Brains.” Medium, June 20, 2020. https://aarongilbreath.medium.com/unity-and-resistance-the-message-of-bad-brains-bec653612f9a.

Grossberg, Lawrence. We Gotta Get Out of This Place. New York: Routledge, 1992.

Lipsitz, George. Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism and the Poetics of Place. London: Verso, 1997.

Mattson, Kevin. “Did Punk Matter?: Analyzing the Practices of a Youth Subculture During the 1980s.” American Studies 42, no. 1 (March 1, 2001): 69–97.

Perry, Imani. Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop. Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2004.

Shank, Barry. The Political Force of Musical Beauty. Durham ; London: Duke University Press Books, 2014.

Watkins, S. Craig. Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture, and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement. Boston (Mass.): Beacon Press, 2006.

[1] Lawrence Grossberg, We Gotta Get Out of This Place, 138 (New York: Routledge, 1992). [2] Grossberg, 139. [3] Grossberg, 140. [4] Grossberg, 140-143. [5] Grossberg, 203. [6] Grossberg, 204-206. [7] Grossberg, 142-143. [8] Grossberg, 137-143. [9] Mattson, Kevin. “Did Punk Matter?: Analyzing the Practices of a Youth Subculture During the 1980s.” American Studies 42, no. 1 (March 1, 2001): 69–97, 73. [10] Mattson, 73. [11] Mattson, 74. [12] Mattson, 75. [13] Mattson. [14] Mattson, 80-88. [15] Mattson, 87. [16] Mattson, 87-90. [17] Gilbreath, Aaron. “Unity and Resistance: The Message of Bad Brains.” Medium, June 20, 2020. https://aarongilbreath.medium.com/unity-and-resistance-the-message-of-bad-brains-bec653612f9a. [18] Perry, Imani. Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop. Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2004. [19] Perry, 40-41. [20] Perry, 41. [21] Perry, 42. [22] Lipsitz, George. Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism and the Poetics of Place. London: Verso, 1997, 28. [23] Lipsitz, 29. [24] Lipsitz, 30. [25] Lipsitz, 32. [26] Lipsitz, 34.