Presenter Elizabeth Soto

Presenter Elizabeth Soto

 

The first article I read for the week is titled Understanding Music in Movements: The White Power Music Scene by Robert Futrell. In this article what they are exploring is the white power music scene in terms of dimensions, local, translocal, and virtual. In these dimensions they are looking at how all these dimensions bring what the people of the music scene consider an emotional experience. They did note in the article that people in the WPM (white power movement) aren't always involved in the music scene part of it but the people that are say it helps them feel more committed to the movement. Things in these music movements that help them get there point across is the lyrics in the music and the rituals that take place. Why lyrics is important is because it gives the listener a description in words of what they are trying to speak to the world, rituals allows the participants to experience those words in a more meaningful way. As heard before in other descriptions of "music movements" the lyrics and rituals aren't the only important aspect to it, the sense of community it gives to its individuals is equally as important. They also not 3 different dimensions of participation in these music scene, the first they discuss is local. Local is kind of what it sounds like, they create activities in a specific geographical area. Next is translocal, are basically a big group of local scenes that are drawn together, they believe that face-to-face interaction is also the most important in supporting their movement. So examples of this would be like a music festival. The virtual scene is also what it sounds like, where they connect about their movement through internet cited, so like chat rooms. They have noted that all these dimensions can be happening at once, or all together, though they wanted to analyze each of them separately. Then in the article they went onto describe the WPM in general which is apparently a few networks intertwined, "groups such as the KKK, Christian Identity sects, neo-Nazis, and Aryan skinheads". It is known for these groups to differ on some ideas but there main idea is the same, that white individual should remain as supreme power.  These individuals also disapprove interracial sex, marriage, and offspring. The most commonly seen forms of music in WPM is country, western, rock, and heavy metal. There have been other forms of music forming but those previously listed are most the most commonly followed. Lyrics heard in this music is of course chartered around their primary belief but they also talk about anit-immigration, white victimization, race loyalty, and a "global brotherhood". Their findings concluded that white power rock is the most listened to in this movement. After interviewing activists they learned that their involvement in WPM is purely, or majority, based on emotion and meaning. In the interviews they describe it as "feelings of freedom, pride, pleasure, gratification, connectedness, revelation, identification, power, and legitimacy about the movement".

 

The next article I read was titled The Words Have Changed but the Ideology Remains the Same: Misogynistic Lyrics in Rap Music by Terri Adams. So the main aspect of this article is they wanted to explore the importance of the use of misogynistic in rap music, and how African American women have been characterized in history, and the connection between the two. The author discusses when rap was formed and that in about the late 1980s it started transforming and that's when misogyny started manifesting. They explain what misogyny is, the hatred of women, "or reducing them to objects of men's ownership, use, or abuse". A quote that stunned me a bit because I kind of believe it to be true in a lot of cases is this: "Misogyny in gangster rap is the promotion, glamorization, support, humorization, justification, or normalization of oppressive ideas about women." The author also came up with about 6 things that are usually found in rap that is misogynistic. What they found was derogatory phrases of women in terms of sex, phrases that include violence towards women (again usually in terms of sex), seeing women as trouble for men, seeing women as "users" of men, viewing women as being beneath men, and viewing women as "usable" and "discard-able" things. Adams then notes that this trend seen in rap is not seen by all rappers of course but by a majority of them and by actors playing these rappers in movies can be somewhat promoting as well. Examples of artist doing this was Jay-Z with his "Money, Cash, Hoes", and Kurupt's "We Can Freak it". The author then tryst to trace back how this idea of misogyny even occurred, and in doing that they looked back at the treatment of African American women in history. A good point is made in the article that "misogynistic rap has roots of development of the capitalist patriarchal system based on the principles of White supremacy, elitism, racism, and sexism". It can be seen throughout a large amount of history that women of color, poor women, and all colored women in general, have been viewed in this obscene way. The author points out that black women are targeted more becuae of their race and gender and that this most likely dates back to when African Americans were slaves so they kind of got the worst of both worlds. Their gender and race made them the most common target for "racialized hatred and sexism". He goes on to give examples of history when this happened but he does give enough evidence to conclude that the slavery of black women have contributed to a lot of the misogynistic rap found now a days.