Why do suburban white kids like gangsta rap?

A followup post to White People And Hip-Hop

First, a little on my background. I’m not from the suburbs, I’m from New York City. My experience growing up was an odd blend of the city and the suburbs. I lived in a posh little corner of an otherwise pretty tough neighborhood. I attended a very fancy school, but traveled there by public bus and/or subway through other tough neighborhoods. My social circle included very suburban white kids and very urban nonwhite kids. As a younger kid, I loved hip-hop. As a teenager, I succumbed to rockism, probably due to social pressure from our racist society, and pretended not to like hip-hop anymore. As an adult, I’m more centered and confident, and have resumed loving it. So I think I have some pretty good insight into why white kids in the suburbs like hip-hop, especially of the gangsta variety. It boils down to the fact that the suburbs are lame, and hip-hop is cool.

Hip-hop is cool in general. So why is gangsta rap cooler than Will Smith or Drake? The big thing is that gangsta rap tends to be musically stronger and more creative. It has grittier beats, denser and more ambitious rhymes, more pointed political and social commentary, and darker humor. It’s also dramatically more offensive, but that’s part of the allure. If you’re a teenager wanting to annoy your parents, there’s no better method than to blast the Wu-Tang Clan, especially if your dad is a mountain climber who plays the electric guitar. I myself have been known to climb mountains and play the electric guitar, and the fact that GZA is directing his ire specifically at me makes listening to the Wu a complex experience. But listen I do, because why would I want to deprive myself of the music?

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How to promote flow in music students

Continuing my research into the use of games in music education, I found this:

Custodero, L. (2002). Seeking challenge, finding skill: Flow experience in music education. Arts Education and Policy Review, 103(3), 3–9.

The best music education happens in states of flow, as described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: the feeling of energized focus brought on by total absorption in an activity. Flow is more or less synonymous with happiness. So how do you bring about a state of flow? The key is to balance challenge and ability. Too much challenge for your abilities, and you’re anxious. Too little challenge and you’re bored. In between lies the delightful state of flow.

Flow

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The Nirvana effect

I’m currently working on a book chapter about the use of video games in music education. While doing my research, I came across a paper by Kylie Peppler, Michael Downton, Eric Lindsay, and Kenneth Hay, “The Nirvana Effect: Tapping Video Games to Mediate Music Learning and Interest.” It’s a study of the effectiveness of Rock Band in teaching traditional music skills. The most interesting part of the paper comes in its enthusiastic endorsement of Rock Band’s notation system.

Rock Band 3 notation

The authors think that Rock Band and games like it do indeed have significant educational value, that there’s a “Nirvana effect” analogous to the so-called Mozart effect:

We argue that rhythmic videogames like Rock Band bear a good deal of resemblance to the ‘real thing’ and may even be more well-suited for encouraging novices to practice difficult passages, as well as learn musical material that is challenging to comprehend using more traditional means of instruction.

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Computer improvisation

Can the computer be an improvisation partner? Can it generate musical ideas of its own in real time that aren’t the product of random number generators or nonsensical Markov chains?

In Joel Chadabe‘s “Settings For Spirituals,” he uses pitch-tracking to perform various effects on a recording of a singer: pitch shifting, chorus, reverb. The result is effectively an avant-garde remix. It isn’t exactly my speed, but I like the spirit of the piece – remixing existing recordings is a central pillar of current interactive electronic music. I’m less taken with Chadabe’s 1978 “Solo” for Synclavier controlled by theremin. The idea of dynamically controlling a computer’s compositions is an intriguing one, and I like the science-fictional visual effect of using two giant theremin antennae to control note durations, and to fade instrumental sounds in and out. Chadabe set the Solo system up to intentionally produce unpredictable results, giving the feeling of an improvisational partner. He describes “Solo” as being “like a conversation with a clever friend.” Who wouldn’t want such an experience?

Joel Chadabe performs "Solo"

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The definition of music

There is no single universally agreed-upon definition of music. We know it when we hear it, but what you might hear as music, I might hear as noise. Who’s right? We both are.

The entire high modernist movement of the twentieth century was devoted to finding out just far you can push the limits of the conventional definition of music. John Cage considered all of his work to be music. A normal person would likely consider just about none of it to be music. I consider it some of it to be music, mostly extremely annoying music, and some of it to be clever or not-so-clever conceptual art. There isn’t an ultimate authority we can appeal to who will rule on whose opinion is the “right” one (though my NYU professors would disagree with me there.)

John Cage, noisemaker

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Rockism

As a kid, I liked everything: rock, hip-hop, classical, jazz, pop, dance, country, whatever. In my teenage years, however, I succumbed to the pressures of a racist society and turned into a devout rockist. I dutifully renounced pop, disco, techno, even hip-hop, anything that was “inauthentic.” I swallowed the rockist dogma that grants legitimacy to Delta blues and classic Motown but not contemporary R&B; to bluegrass but not commercial country; to acoustic jazz but not fusion. I felt earnestly moved by the rockist national anthem:

It took me until my twenties to shake this atavistic silliness and re-embrace the whole universe of Afrocentric music not made by white guys with guitars. Wherever I go, however, I continue to encounter resistance to such musical practices as sampling, synths, rapping, dancing and fun. This resistance is epidemic among my friends, fellow musicians and students, and the music world at large. Consider this post my contribution to the fight against rockism.

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Where I’m at

Update: I now have a functioning prototype of my thesis app. If you’d like to try it, get in touch.

Hi internet friends. Just wanted to give a quick summary of what’s going on with me at the moment, if you’re interested.

The most important thing going on with me is, of course, my son Milo. He’s starting to eat solid food now, grabbing and holding onto things, and generally lighting up the universe with his radiant adorableness.

Waiting to board the plane

The other big thing is that I’m graduating from NYU’s Music Technology program this December. I’m done with everything except for my thesis and a little light mopping up.

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Friends don’t let friends clap on one and three

Here’s my final project for NYU’s Psychology of Music class, enjoy. Feel free to download this presentation or the full paper.

The radial drum machine: background and inspiration

Update: I now have a functioning prototype of my app. If you’d like to try it, get in touch.

My NYU masters thesis is a drum programming tutorial system for beginner musicians. It uses a novel circular interface for displaying the drum patterns. This presentation explains the project’s goals, motivations and scholarly background.

If you prefer, see it on Slideshare.

The evolutionary origin of laughter

In his book Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation, David Huron does some fascinating speculation about the evolutionary origin of laughter. Continue reading “The evolutionary origin of laughter”