Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung der Würde des Doktors der Philosophie in der Fakultät Kulturwissenschaften der Technischen Universität Dortmund vorgelegt von Terence David Kumpf (MatrikulationsNr. 169952) Dortmund 2018 Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Walter Grünzweig, TU Dortmund University (DE) Senior Lecturer, Justin A. Williams, Bristol University (UK) Towards A New Transaesthetics: Rap Music in Germany and the United States Terence Kumpf Ph.D. Dissertation RuhrCenter of American Studies TU Dortmund University FK 15 Kulturwissenschaften Terence Kumpf Terence Kumpf Kaiserstrasse 18 108 County Line Road 26122 Oldenburg Alden, New York 14004 Deutschland United States +49 (0) 163 392 0677 +1 716 937 9690 [email protected] [email protected] Table of Contents Introduction 1 Towards A New Transaesthetics Chapter 1 12 Transculturation and Hip-Hop in the Transcultural Zone Chapter 2 61 Roots, Rhymes, and Realities: The Origins of Bilingual Rap in Germany and the United States Chapter 3 95 Hip-Hop Spiritualties: Liberation in the Reggae/Rap of Gentleman and Transcendence in MC Yogi’s Hip-Hop Hinduism Chapter 4 134 (You Gotta) Fight For Their Right (to Migrate): Hip-Hop, Immigration, and Activism Chapter 5 176 Hip-Hop’s Queer/Trans Feminismus: Sookee and Mykki Blanco Chapter 6 218 “Digging Their Own Crates”: Dan Wolf’s Stateless: A Hip-Hop Vaudeville and the Hip-Hop Antifascism of Bejarano & Microphone Mafia Conclusions 258 The New Transaesthetics and Its Implications Acknowledgments & Shout Outs 269 Bibliography Plagiatserklärung/Statement on Plagiarism Introduction Introduction: Towards A New Transaesthetics This dissertation is a comparative study of bi- and multilingual rap music in Germany and the United States, a form of popular music I understand as transcultural art. Where transcultural means “involving, encompassing, or extending across two or more cultures,”1 any artwork that is composed in two, three, or more languages deserves to be understood in this manner. A relatively new word, transcultural stems from transculturacion, a term Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz devised to identify a series of dynamic, interrelated, and sometimes conflicting processes that lead to social and cultural change. If and when such transformations take place, it is reasonable to presume that some evidence should remain. Therefore, the bulk of this study consists of ferreting out instances of transculturation evident in music and lyrics. To facilitate this, I have gathered a selection of audio recordings and lyric transcripts, including English translations. Analyzing these, I will uncover transcultural ‘effects,’ which I refer to as ‘traces’ or ‘residues.’ In most cases, these traces or residues appear as blends: blended languages and blended musical forms. Where Homi K. Bhabha (1994) and other scholars refer to such forms as ‘hybrids,’ in my view this term, while useful, has its limit. Borrowed from animal husbandry and the genetic manipulation of plants, the term is problematic because hybrids are often sterile. In other words, they are often, though not always, incapable of reproducing.2 To be sure, no humanmade cultural material can reproduce itself without human agents, but once hip-hop artists started producing music in two or more languages, evermore intricate forms began to appear. Furthermore, to assert that bi- and multilingual rap music constitutes mere ‘hybrids’ suggests that someone other than artists are responsible. Indeed, this is true: artists work with producers, engineers, and technicians, but artists are by and large responsible for the final versions of their work. The implications of this distinction are two-fold: on the one hand, hip-hop artists and the creative people they work with are transcultural agents; on the other, bi- and multilingual rap songs are transcultural expressions that result from collaboration. Most importantly, however, the music highlighted in this study relates to and involves more than one culture. In that sense, these songs speak from, to, and across many cultures at once.3 In my view, this is the hallmark—indeed, it is the power—of transcultural art. While I explicitly formulate more nuanced questions near the end of this introduction, I am mainly interested in what these works can tell us about Germany and the United States. Fernando Ortiz developed the concept of transculturation by focusing on the use, cultivation, and eventual global export of sugar and tobacco from Cuba. Detailing tobacco use across the Americas prior to, during, and after the colonial era, Ortiz traced it to Europe and Africa to suggest that its use and eventual local cultivation had transformed numerous societies. He also drew attention to Cuba’s sugar industry, which relied on indigenous, African, European, and central Asian labor, to suggest that ‘Big Sugar’ was the 1 “Transcultural,” Merriam-Webster, accessed June 3, 2018, merriam-webster.com/dictionary/transcultural. 2 Liz Veloz, “Why Are Plant Hybrids Sterile?,” Sciencing, Apr 24, 2017, accessed Aug 20, 2018, sciencing.com/plant- hybrids-sterile-5619428.html. 3 “Transcultural,” New Oxford American Dictionary, version 2.2.1 (178), 2013. 1 Introduction major force that drove Cuba’s transformation. Even though sugar and tobacco are agricultural commodities, there is good reason to apply Ortiz’s model to rap music. Like sugar and tobacco, rap music is a globally traded product. Indeed, it has been one of the leading cultural exports of the United States since the 1980s, and Germany has been one of its primary receiving countries—first as entertainment, but soon after through the creation of original music. In both counties, hip-hop culture has been a part of, and even responsible for, profound social and cultural changes. Rap is the most recent manifestation of Afro-diasporic music. Specifically, it is an extension of Jamaican soundsystem culture: spinners (DJs) who play music and DJs (emcees) who toast (or rap) on the mic. Thus, anchoring my study in Ortiz’s theory, which emerged from the Caribbean, is sensible for three reasons. First, even though hip-hop originated in The Bronx, two of its founding figures, DJ Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash, were born in Jamaica and Barbados, respectively, and other prominent early figures have connections to Puerto Rico.4 Second, the Caribbean has been a crucial point of social and culture interchange and exchange, and it is through such interactions that transculturation takes place. Lastly, I root this study in the Caribbean out of respect for the untold numbers of black Africans who had to endure the middle passage to be enslaved for the realization of European and Euro-American dreams of enrichment. Where Ortiz maintained that tobacco and sugar had a profound effect on Europe,5 and tobacco was eventually adopted and adapted by many cultures, hip-hop has been taken up and modified in many places, and similar economic circumstances, social relations, and interactions underpin its rise in the United States and Germany, as elsewhere. Rap music is predicated on the breakbeat, i.e. recorded percussive passages that deejays and producers sample, recombine, and loop. Although he does not explicitly argue that rap constitutes transcultural music, musicologist Justin A. Williams writes that “the openness of the funk break allows producers to sample and borrow from myriad types of music and other sounds” which, in turn, “allows producers to utilize strikingly disparate material.”6 He maintains that the use of breakbeats “seems to yield limitless possibilities for the varieties of musical borrowing in hip-hop and other sample-based musics.”7 The resulting compositions, he argues, “not only draw attention to hip-hop’s internalized discourse but often […] to various traditions outside of hip-hop.”8 As will become evident in each chapter, deejays and producers blend elements of music and sound from various traditions, heritages, and sources. As such, these compositions deserve to be understood as examples of transcultural music because they speak from, to, and resonate within and across multiple cultures simultaneously. The global appeal and spread of rap music underscores this point. With regard to the use of two or more languages in song lyrics, code-switching, i.e. “the practice of alternating between two or more languages or varieties of languages,”9 figures prominently in this study, 4 Jeff Chang, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (New York: St. Marks Press, 2005), 67 and 112. 5 Ortiz theorized that tobacco, sugar, chocolate, and tea—all of which contain alkaloids (stimulants)—may have prolonged the Renaissance in Europe. See Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar, trans. Harriet de Onís (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 207. 6 Justin A. Williams, Rhymin’ and Stealin’: Musical Borrowing in Hip-Hop (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2013), 2. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid., 12. 9 “Code-switching,” New Oxford American Dictionary, version 2.2.1 (178), 2013. 2 Introduction and sociolinguist Jannis Androutsopoulos’s work on the symbolic use of language in rap music in Germany has been insightful. He identifies two primary concepts: stanza-internal code-switching and stanza-external code-switching. Where the former refers to “the use of two or more languages by the same speaker within the same turn/utterance,”10 the latter is organized around a “one speaker/one stanza/one language principle” where “songs [are] delivered by two or more rappers, with each rapper delivering a stanza in their preferred language.”11 In the first instance, rappers borrow, adapt, and sometimes fuse languages into heretofore nonexistent forms. In the second instance, languages are isolated and typically do not blend. Nevertheless, a linguistic landscape emerges that speaks from, to, and across two or more cultural spaces, and listeners are required to navigate some rather challenging linguistic terrain. Taken together, the aesthetics of music and the aesthetics of language, especially if we understand them as a unified aural soundscape, present audiences with a unique, and challenging, opportunity— especially in contrast to monolingual songs.