TeachngAssist/TomorrowsFaculty
Race in Popular Music
This course explores how American popular music of the last sixty years sounds the racial identity of its performers and consumers. For the last century, the American popular music industry has promoted and marketed certain musical styles to specific racial demographics, a business practice that has profoundly influenced the sound of popular music.
Hip Hop History
(Offered as BLST 134 [US] and MUSI 126) This course examines the cultural origins of hip hop and how this small, Bronx-based subculture expanded into one of the most influential styles of music in the world. The course will begin by analyzing the cultural conditions out of which hip hop arose in the mid-1970s; from there it will turn to examining how hip hop music, over the last thirty-five years, has sounded the identity of its creators as they have grappled with six major questions: What musical elements are crucial components of hip hop’s sound?