Chapter 8 examines the instruments of the violin family in the cultural imagination, addressing why they captivated so many people, what associations became attached to both the instrument and the person who handled it, and the underlying social currents those associations suggest. Two main topics are treated: the veneration around the instruments of Stradivari and others from the Cremonese School and the concomitant idealization of old artisanal craftsmanship; and how contemporary writers and illustrators sought to understand the instruments’ allure for players, especially women. The discussion assesses the idealization of old instruments in the context of industrialized violin making and broader social anxieties about the modernizing world. Building on scholarship about the gendering and sexualization of stringed instruments, the chapter also considers depictions of people’s responses to them through the lens of sensory and sensual perception, arguing that the prevalence of such material reflects attempts to make sense of the violin family’s powerful hold on British society.

The remarkable take-up of the violin and the coalescence of a culture of learning and playing stringed instruments in the classical tradition, 1870–1930, had structural and democratizing effects on how British musical life developed. Expanding numbers of competent players increased the size and depth of the music profession and contributed to the growth of opportunities for audiences to hear live music, often well beyond the concert hall. The interrelated expansion of teacher numbers generated new generations of learners who would treat music as a leisure pursuit and whose critical mass prompted the foundation of many amateur symphony orchestras and often sustained amateur choral performances nationwide. Alongside came a significant revolution in string playing’s social demography. Whereas in 1870 string playing was the occupation or pastime of men, by the early twentieth century women had broken firmly into these arenas and were obtaining work in many (though not all) areas of the music profession. Cross-class, multigenerational learning contributed to the sea change, especially in the wave of working-class adults and children who found affordable group string instruction at local educational institutes or in elementary schools.

Commercially run grade examinations and competitive music festivals, which tested learners’ attainment, were central to the consolidation of violin culture across Britain. Chapter 3 analyzes the string exams operated by three institutions, each of which targeted different socioeconomic groups. Bringing the College of Violinists – the first exam board to offer elementary string exams and the only one to guarantee string players would be assessed by specialists– into dialog with the more often discussed ABRSM and Society of Arts, the discussion evaluates exam requirements, candidate numbers, and success rates. At root, exams were tools for motivating students and supporting and shaping learning. Regional competition festivals offered additional opportunities for more advanced pupils’ performance to be assessed (in a public hall, as opposed to a private exam room) and, along with the exam boards, they contributed to the informal standardization of core repertoire. The chapter also surveys instructional materials, some of which were responses to the exam culture, and weighs students’ experiences of learning.

This chapter offers an overview of the various spaces which have led to the racialisation of rap music in France using tools available to cultural sociology. It relies on several extensive case studies conducted in the past ten years on French rap music, its production, its consumption, and its media treatment. With the help of the “production of culture perspective”, the chapter describes how the music industry seized the opportunity to exploit a commercial niche that would later become a racialised professional segment central in its business. Focusing on the consumption of music, we then contest the representation of rap audiences as exclusively or initially male, non-White and working-class based, and demonstrate how these audiences have been socially diversified from the outset. These empirical findings are not contradictory with the capacity of rap to serve as a formative medium for racial self-understandings in contemporary France. Finally, the sociology of cultural legitimacy offers a framework to examine the political, legal, and mediatic racialisation processes which have incited moral panic relating to rap and rappers, such as lawsuits or attempts to censor their work.

This chapter centres Paul Gilroy’s warning at the dawn of hip-hop studies against a scholarly trend wherein “the phenomenology of musical forms is dismissed in favour of analysing lyrics, the video images that supplement them and the technology of Hip hop production.” This chapter is thus a methodological overview examining how leading journalists and scholars have approached the tricky job of writing about hip-hop’s musical sound. Drawing examples from the history of writing about rap music, it offers tips on how to develop our sound writing toolkits and challenges us to improve our understanding of the relationship between the sonic and the social. Because “music” remains such a conservative frame in the university, this chapter approaches the topic with a broadly decolonial, practical, and sound-centred approach. Such an approach opens us up to the important sonically minded contributions of arts practitioners, journalists, and scholars outside of music departments, while focusing in on the recent methods of scholars in the increasingly interdisciplinary fields of musicology, ethnomusicology, music theory, popular music studies, and sound studies. The chapter is a resource to help hip-hop scholars enrich their thinking (and feeling) about sound and make their research and writing more musical.

This introductory chapter begins with a provocation from Busta Rhymes at the 2023 BET Awards, where he advocates for the multi–locational precedents of hip-hop music, most notably its Jamaican forebears. Accordingly, and following this, it sets out this book’s core agenda and goals. Firstly, through calling for a a deepening of our gaze on rap, as a performed verbal art, specifically. Secondly, a widening of our gaze to acknowledge the truly global significance of this art form. It also addresses the dangers of lionising ‘foundational’ figures and moments in popular histories rap, and advocates for a critical engagement with global rap and the myriad cultures produced through this art-form. The introduction closes by detailing the book’s four key sections – “Historical and Cultural Perspectives”, “Approaches to Rap”, “Applications of Rap”, and “Contexts for Rap”. In both its theoretical and empirical endeavours, the Cambridge Companion to Global Rap enters into communion with artists, their work, and their lives. Rap’s status as a global force therefore demands appreciation of myriad cultural contexts, approaches to performance, and means by which this art form is sustained.

This chapter argues that rap has been undervalued by English studies. It conducts a close analysis of the work of Roots Manuva to develop a nuanced account of how his rap songs engage with contemporary human experience, and to demonstrate how literary critics might respond to them. It draws on the work of Jaques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben to examine the literary singularity of Roots Manuva’s third album Awfully Deep. Rodney Smith can be seen to play with with forms of temporality, the tension and difference between sound and sense, and understandings of the self in a digitally mediated world. The chapter proposes that by drawing on the concept of the semiotic-performative alongside that of the semantic and semiotic-poetic, students of English literature might be better able to engage with the significance of Smith’s oeuvre.

This chapter contributes an Australian perspective to a growing body of scholarship that explores “applied” hip-hop programs. It begins by introducing international studies that examine how and why hip-hop is used for applied aims, including concerns that hip-hop culture may be trivialised or exploited in institutional settings. The focus then shifts to Australia, where hip-hop workshops have been running since the 1980s. This background informs a literature review that outlines how hip-hop is drawn on in diverse settings from schools to youth centres with an emphasis on hip-hop music (rhyme writing / music production). The review suggests that applied programs are important creative outlets that achieve diverse educational and wellbeing outcomes. However, a recurrent theme is the need for further research. The chapter concludes by linking the literature review with a case study: a pilot project that evaluated hip-hop workshops for First Nations young people in Adelaide. This project found that mentors who run applied programs view hip-hop as a vital tool for self-expression and emotional healing. Together, the literature review and case study demonstrate the potential power of hip-hop but also the need for more evaluations of applied hip-hop programs especially in settings outside of North America, like Australia.

This chapter discusses the variegated dynamics of English-language rap in the complex, stratified, and multilingual sociolinguistic environment of India. The first section provides a brief overview of the historical and sociocultural positioning of English in India. The following section lays out a genealogy of English rap in India, discussing its evolution over the past three decades. The third and final section, which forms the analytical crux of the chapter, uses examples from lyrics and an interview to contextually analyze how the choice to rap in English reproduces as well as contests the intersections between sociolinguistic dynamics, politics of regionalism and marketability, caste identities, and racialization. The chapter concludes with a discussion on how English rap in India is simultaneously rife with possibilities for artists while also transcending the oversimplifications associated with English usage in India.

This chapter invites readers to consider how an engagement with hip-hop music and culture can contribute to a better understanding of mental health, psychiatry, psychology, public health, and neuroscience. It provides an introduction to hip-hop therapy, highlighting the use of rap by psychologists and counsellors to promote mental well-being. The chapter goes on to examine the work that the Hip-Hop Psych initiative has undertaken in advancing the role of hip-hop in primary care. With hip-hop’s pre-eminence as a global musical force, greater attention to how mental health is represented in hip-hop can provide healthcare professionals with tools to aid discussions with patients about potential trends related to hip-hop icons, such as contagion effects of suicide, self-harm, and self-medication. Hip-hop offers a platform for artists and those who embrace the culture to address their emotional experiences through rap. By exploring lyrical content, the chapter uncovers how performers express their mental health challenges and fashion resilience within challenging circumstances. It argues that attention to this material could also help identify language disturbances associated with mental health conditions, and indicates the potential gains from the use of technology and neuroscientific research to support hip-hop music interventions.

This chapter explores the history of sound system and emcee culture. Originating in Jamaica, during the 1950s, the sound system has spawned numerous multi-billion dollar generating genres, including electronic dance music and hip-hop. The chapter outlines the contribution that figures such as Clement Dodd, Duke Reid, and Prince Buster made to the emergence of dancehall culture and the innovations of Count Machuki and U-Roy to the development of emceeing. It goes on to examine the role that sound system culture played in the birth of hip-hop, and the movement of artists from Jamaica, the United States and the UK, across the Atlantic, which has produced an outernational sound. The chapter reveals the ongoing significance of dubplates to garage music, clashing in grime, and riddims throughout the history of hip-hop culture. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the influence of the sound system on popular music culture across the globe.

Music award shows play a key role in shaping the direction of popular music, by reflecting current trends and predicting future movements within a music scene. In Tanzania, the rise of music awards in the early 2000s paralleled the growth of rap, R&B, and the locally created genre bongo flava. This chapter explores how award shows contributed to the popularity of these genres, providing artists a means to both celebrate their musical achievement and attain a sense of legitimacy. Award shows also became spaces to contest political and social norms in the country. During the early 2000s, for instance, artists in these genres used their music to counter state censorship and to openly critique politicians and government policies. Conversely, the government attempted to influence artistic expression through state-sponsored music awards shows that often promoted winners who aligned with specific values viewed as more favorable to state ideologies. Thus, music awards in Tanzania became a platform that not only celebrated artistic achievement but also actively attempted to influence the relationship between artists and political authority.

This chapter provides a historical grounding and introduction to rap – the lyrical element of hip-hop – as the genre with which we identify it today. It details the origins and the multicultural nature of the deep history that rap carries in its words and rhythms, blending cultural influences and practices across the continents, stretching as far back as the seventeenth century. For such a contemporary and relevant form of music, rap has deep and widespread roots, both musical and lyrical. The chapter therefore tackles some of the complex questions that arise regarding the genre’s changing, and often contested, musical and political identity, as well as its potential to represent the plethora of different communities that claim it as their own. Is rap a vessel for otherwise unheard voices? Does it represent all that came together to make it what it is today, or have these identities shifted over time and space? The chapter concludes with a case study of French rap as an example of dialogue between rap, politics, and cultural representation.

From rap’s dense lyrical content to its speech-like vocal delivery, it seems apparent that few genres of music or cultural movements place a greater focus on language than hip-hop. As such, it should come as no surprise that hip-hop music and hip-hop culture have been the subject of a range of linguistics-oriented research. This chapter presents an overview of linguistic approaches to hip-hop, exploring sociolinguistic research on African-American English in the context of hip-hop, discourse analytical approaches to rap lyrics, and linguistic approaches to hip-hop musicology. Though the chapter’s literature review of linguistic research into hip-hop should not be considered exhaustive, it will serve as a starting point for those interested in diving deeper into the field of hip-hop linguistics. Following its literature review, the chapter shifts its attention to one of hip-hop’s most prolific artists – Tupac “2Pac” Shakur. It examines from several hip-hop linguistics perspectives how 2Pac’s lyrical content, speech, and style of rapping evolved throughout his career. The results of the case study indicate that 2Pac manipulated his speech accent and rap flow over time to express his newfound identity as West Coast hip-hop’s leading figure during the East Coast–West Coast hip-hop feud of the 1990s.

What is Chinese hip-hop? How is its authenticity negotiated and contested in China? Instead of seeing Chinese hip-hop as a given cultural form that follows a singular trajectory, this chapter conceptualizes it as a precarious cultural formation suspended by competing claims to authenticity and overdetermined by divergent forces, such as the hip-hop communities, the state, and commercial forces. The broadcast of The Rap of China in 2017 was a decisive moment in the massification of hip-hop in China, in which the subcultural genre was domesticated, commercialized, and re-infused with hegemonic ideology. Focusing on the televisual remediation of hip-hop in China, this chapter illuminates how battles for authenticity have been fought out among different actors or groups, how tensions between the ethos and the techne of hip-hop unfold, and how censorship and propaganda imperatives delimit the contours of the genre’s representation to the mass audience. It problematizes the line between “the underground” and the mainstream, while foregrounding the process in which different horizons of hip-hip negotiate with one another, co-shaping what is visible, audible, and commendable. The issues discussed in this chapter will likely remain central to the development and dilemma of Chinese hip–hop in the years to come.