Cultural Remix: Polish Hip-Hop and the Sampling of Heritage by Alena
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Cultural Remix: Polish Hip-Hop and the Sampling of Heritage by Alena Gray Aniskiewicz A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Slavic Languages and Literatures) in the University of Michigan 2019 Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Benjamin Paloff, Chair Associate Professor Herbert J. Eagle Professor Charles Hiroshi Garrett Visiting Assistant Professor Jodi C. Greig, University of Wisconsin-Madison Alena Gray Aniskiewicz [email protected] ORCID iD: 0000-0002-1922-291X © Alena Gray Aniskiewicz 2019 To my parents, for everything. (Except hip-hop. For that, thank you, DH.) ii Acknowledgements To Herb Eagle, whose comments and support over the years have been invaluable. To Jodi Greig, whose reputation preceded her, but didn’t do her justice as a friend or scholar. To Charles Hiroshi Garrett, who was my introduction to musicology fourteen years ago and has been a generous reader and advisor ever since. And to Benjamin Paloff, who gave me the space to figure out what I wanted and then was there to help me figure out how to get it. I couldn’t have asked for a better committee. To my peers, who became friends along the way. To my friends, who indulged all the Poland talk. To Culture.pl, who gave me a community in Warsaw and kept Poland fun. To the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, the Copernicus Program in Polish Studies, the Rackham Graduate School, and the Sweetland Writing Center, whose generous funding made this dissertation possible. I’m thankful to have had you all in my corner. To my family, who love me. Thanks for always being there. To Mary, Blanche, and Stella. You didn’t get a chance to read this, but I hope you’d be proud. iii Table of Contents Dedication .......................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... iii List of Figures .....................................................................................................................v List of Appendices ........................................................................................................... vi Abstract ............................................................................................................................ vii Introduction: If Mickiewicz were Alive Today .................................................................1 Chapter One: You Can Do That in Polish?! Performing Genre and National Authenticity ........................................................24 Chapter Two: Authenticity and Magic Sampling Archives and Legends ............................................................................71 Chapter Three: “Biting” the Bard Negotiating Authorship, Identity, and Originality ..............................................131 Chapter Four: Playing Authentic Masłowska’s Critique of Genre and National Conventions ................................182 Conclusion: Mickiewicz is Alive Today .........................................................................220 Appendices .....................................................................................................................225 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................246 iv List of Figures Figure 1.1. Peja at Queensbridge South Houses on Instagram (2008) ................................44 Figure 1.2. Peja’s record collection on Instagram (2015) ....................................................51 Figure 1.3. Peja remembers the Wielkopolska Uprising on Instagram (2016) ....................60 Figure 2.1. LU.C. Zrozumieć Polskę cover art (2009) .........................................................79 Figure 2.2. Marek Żuławski, “First to Fight,” WWII Poster (1939) ...................................81 Figure 3.1. Grigoriy Myasoyedov, “Pushkin and his Friends Listen to Mickiewicz in The Salon of Princess Zinaida Volkonskaya” (1907) ...........................................133 Figure 3.2. Kabaret OT.TO’s “Hammer Dance” (1994) ......................................................154 Figure 4.1. Mister D. Społeczeństwo jest miemiłe cover art (2014) .....................................195 Figure 4.2. Street scene from the music video for Mister D.’s “Chleb” (2014) ..................201 Figure 4.3. Collaged setting from the music video for Mister D.’s “Chleb” (2014) ...........203 Figure 4.4. Fantasy vs. reality from the music video for Mister D’s “Chleb” (2014) .........204 Figure 4.5. “Rainbow” burns as Polish flag waves on Independence Day (2014) ..............211 Figure 4.6. Michał Piróg dances in the video for Mister D.’s “Tęcza” (2014) ....................215 Figure 5.1. Mazury Hip-Hop Festival (2017) ......................................................................220 Figure 5.2. Giżycko Protest (2017) ......................................................................................222 v List of Appendices Appendix 1. Lyrics to Peja/Slums Attack, “Prawdziwe czy nie” ..................................225 Appendix 2. Lyrics to Peja/Slums Attack, “Poznańczyk” .............................................229 Appendix 3. Lyrics to Kabaret OT.TO, “Rap Tadeusz” ................................................232 Appendix 4. Lyrics to Trzeci Wymiar, “Reduta Ordona” .............................................235 Appendix 5. Lyrics to Peja, “Wielka Improwizacja” .....................................................239 Appendix 6. Lyrics to Mister D., “Chleb” .....................................................................242 Appendix 7. Lyrics to Mister D., “Tęcza” .....................................................................244 vi Abstract Asked about the nineteenth-century Romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz, the Polish rapper Doniu suggested, “If Mickiewicz was alive today, he’d be a good rhymer.” This dissertation examines the history, literary reception, and musical discourse that have positioned the legacy of Romanticism as a model for contemporary hip-hop musicians. It argues that Polish hip-hop’s appeals to the nation’s Romantic heritage serve as a means of negotiating and performing belonging both within the global genre and contemporary Polish culture. The conventions of hip- hop—rooted in sampling, intertextuality, decontextualizing the familiar, and privileging poetic prowess—create a music that is both a performance of reception and a lens through which to engage the nation’s cultural traditions. The national understanding of Polish Romanticism has always been the product of reading and negotiating meaning, and the performances analyzed in this study contribute to a rich tradition of interpretation. Though they speak to the past, these hip-hop artists are not confined by it. Rather, they “sample” history and tradition in a way that echoes the work done by Mickiewicz and his peers. Blending history and art, they cultivate a Polishness that preserves Romantic patriotic ideals of sacrifice and poetic service, while framing them within a global conversation of hip-hop artists speaking to and for marginalized communities. This dissertation begins by considering how conventions of national and genre authenticity become mutually reinforcing as Polish hip-hop communities cultivate an artistic lineage that reaches back to the poets of the nineteenth century. Employing the career of vii Peja/Slums Attack as a case study, Chapter One argues that the group’s evolution from privileging appeals to American rappers to fashioning themselves as a contemporary incarnation of Poland’s Romantic poet-patriots exemplifies a localization of the genre that adapts rap conventions of speaking for oppressed communities to position Poland itself as the marginalized subject. The second chapter shifts focus to sampling as a formal and historical appeal to the past, exemplified in the rapper L.U.C.’s 2009 album 39/89 Zrozumieć Polskę (39/89 To Understand Poland). Composed of sampled archival audio against a live orchestra, the album illuminates the ways sampling represents the blending of document and narrative in the creation of memory—a dynamic the chapter argues infuses not just culture, but also political discussions of history. Chapter Three turns to rappers who perform texts written by Adam Mickiewicz, a choice analyzed as challenging Romantic and hip-hop ideas of authorship and originality, while also demonstrating how reading (via performance) might be understood as a marker of creative credibility. The final chapter examines Dorota Masłowska’s musical and literary play with the idea of authenticity and its tropes. Performing ironic appropriations of both hip-hop and Polish national conventions, Masłowska draws on the traditions preserved in the works of the other artists considered and in so doing, challenges them while also evincing their lasting power. In their diverse engagement with tradition, the artists considered highlight not only the persistence of Polish Romantic thought, but also the power of artists to “remix” the Romantic legacy to speak to the present. viii Introduction If Mickiewicz were Alive Today …Merging with eternity, that face flickers with memories, roams through a series of faces, ever paler, more condensed, until out of the heaping up of those faces there settles on it at last, and hardens into its final mask, the countenance of Poland—forever.1 In 2002,