The Networked Self: Hip Hop Musicking and Muslim Identities in Neoliberal Morocco
The Networked Self: Hip Hop Musicking and Muslim Identities in Neoliberal Morocco By Kendra Renée Salois A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Music in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Jocelyne Guilbault, Chair Professor Benjamin Brinner Professor Charles Hirschkind Fall 2013 The Networked Self: Hip Hop Musicking and Muslim Identities in Neoliberal Morocco Copyright 2013 by Kendra Renée Salois Abstract The Networked Self: Hip Hop Musicking and Muslim Identities in Neoliberal Morocco by Kendra Renée Salois Doctor of Philosophy in Music University of California, Berkeley Jocelyne Guilbault, Chair This dissertation explores the emergence of a postcolonial neoliberal subjectivity amongst urban Moroccan Muslim youth through an ethnography of Moroccan hip hop practitioners’ aesthetic preferences, performance practice, disciplinary strategies, and socio-musical networks. The hip hop arts, including emceeing, deejaying, b-boying or b-girling (dancing), and graffiti, were first introduced to Morocco in the early 1990s through existing networks of migrants to and from Francophone Europe. Today hip hop music-making flourishes in the nation’s major cities and in smaller enclaves throughout the country. Under the late King Hassan II and his son, King Mohamed VI, the Moroccan state has adopted neoliberalizing policies and forms of governance since the early 1980s with far-reaching social and economic consequences. In this context, I ask how hip hop practitioners’ musical work enables and expresses new modes of citizenship and belonging while neoliberalization renders older forms of political participation less effective. To do this, I first situate Moroccan hip hop in relation to local musico-poetic traditions, already informed by previous generations’ encounters with processes of globalization, and translocally circulating hip hop aesthetics.
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