When you think of jazz and the blues, hip hop is not the immediate genre of music that comes to mind. But, these musical forms lay the foundation for popular hip hop music today. The blues and jazz are considered black musical forms, brought to America during the period of slavery. The music caught attention from all races, and other genres of popular music were born. Hip-Hop artists often mention jazz and blues singers as being their idols for their careers. The singers they idolize were brought into this country initially as black bodies to work for white people. This fact directly relates with the production and distribution of hip-hop music.
“Black musical forms have been ‘the juice’ that has driven American musical expressions, and whites have gotten rich off it” (Kelley). Hip-Hop music is under direct control of whites, and is also purchased by mostly white adolescents. You may argue that black artists have their own recording companies and produce their own material. The truth is, black artists are controlled by white recording companies. For example, Dr. Dre and Knight created Death Row Records. But, this recording company would be inexistent if it were not for Interscope. Interscope was founded by Jimmy Lovine and Ted Fields. They control the distribution of Hip-Hop music and many other forms. While, black-owned production companies do make millions of dollars each year, they do not control the key component of the “music-making nexus.” This key component is distribution. Death Row records responds to the demands of the major labels for a marketable product. In turn, these major labels (ie: Interscope) respond to the demands of the audience. In the case of popular hip-hop music, this audience is young and white, accounting for 66% of listeners of popular hip-hop.
Norman Kelley explains the reasoning behind this situation. He says, “the war for control of black music was won years ago by corporate America, aided by black leadership that has never understood the cultural and economic significance of its own culture.” If black leaders had realized their music, jazz & the blues, spawned a $12 million music industry in the US, the hip-hop scene may be completely different. Instead, the music is controlled by white recording companies.
Kelley discusses the idea of neocolonialism while making this argument. Neocolonialism refers to products “produced in a raw periphery, sent to the imperial motherland, finished into commodities, and sold in metropolitan centers or colonies.” This stunts the economic growth of the raw periphery because here there is a lack of ability to engage in manufacturing products for its own need and export. I’ll explain. Hip-hop music is typically produced in inner cities (the raw periphery), the music is finished in a recording studio, turned into commodities through the major record labels, and sold to the suburbs. The inner city where the music was initially produced does not reap the benefits of their production.
These ideas of the production and consumption of hip-hop music relate directly to the critical theory of Political Economy. Scholar, Bourdieu, claims, “Consumption is predisposed consciously and deliberately or not, to fulfill a social function of legitimizing social difference.” He is not interested in what the differences are, rather how these differences are used by the dominant class as a means of social production.
Corporate America is the dominant class, and they dominate the production of hip-hop music, even though without the black musical roots of jazz and blues, there would not be a $12 million industry to distribute.
Norman, K. (2002). The Political Economy of Black Music. Canada: Akashic Books.
Tags: Bourdieu, neocolonialism, political economy