Presenter Week of October 27th

Chelsea Woodcock

"Resistance under the Black Light: Exploring the Use of Music in Two Exotic Dance Clubs"

By R. Danielle Egan

This article discussed how dancers at the exotic dance clubs "Flame" and "Glitters" used music as a way to oppose the owners or management at the clubs. The author conducted her research over a period of four years, as an observer and a participant. The two clubs had their differences in how they operated; an example being that "Glitters" features all nude stage acts and in addition to on stage performances "Flame" also features lap dances and a Champagne Room. However, the clientele at both clubs were predominately white males and their dancers were predominately white. The author mentions that the results from this research will not be a true representation of all exotic dance clubs but her goal is rather to shed some light on these two ethnographic scenes. Music selection was chosen and played by the dancers at "Glitters" but management had to approve the music selected. On the other hand, dancers at "Flame" had to pay a deejay fee during each shift to play their music and were told by owners that they could only play music that was on the top-forties list. Dancers at both clubs showed resistance to this attempt to control their song list by two main themes. The first was "the costumer is always right". Dancers would get help from regulars by having them request a particular song when they danced. Dancers used emotional sentiment like romance or helplessness to get the regulars to have attachment to the songs they wanted to dance to. The other tactic used was to play it anyways. The dancers would play the songs they wanted and pay the fines the owners or management would charge them. Eventually, the owners/management relented and took away the penalties for playing rap, or hardcore types of music.

"California Love" Tupac

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWbXQQG9B6c

"Political Rap: The music of Oppositional Resistance"

By:Catherine Beighey and N. Prabha Unnithan

This article discusses the research conducted to evaluate political rap lyrics of the genre, when it first became popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and their correlation to oppositional resistance. The researchers used previous research to identify themes they would look for during their research. These themes were black family as a racial community, lost economic opportunities, educational bias, health care inequality, criminal justice discrimination, police brutality, mass media misrepresentations, and racial genocide conspiracy. The method used was to study lyrics qualitatively and then analyze quantitatively the frequency of the themes to determine the overall extent of oppositional resistance. They selected 6 representative artists of political rap: Ice- T, NWA, Paris, PE, Ice Cube, & KRS-one. All the songs on the albums these artists produced from 1988-1992 were selected and coded. 9 songs were purely instrumental and were thrown out of the research; resulting in an overall sample size of 306 songs. They were given a code for each of the themes presence in the lyrics 0=none, 1=implied, 2= clear and 3= extreme. The results showed that 68% (209 songs) had some notion of opposition or resistance. The most common theme was Black Family as a Racial Community with 45% (138 songs) frequency. Other themes did emerge but were not coded for as they didn't have relevancy to the research purpose. A secondary theme that did emerge was "gangsterism" and the notion of having to strike first.

Ice Cube's "Alive On Arrival"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m04b0rRKT6o