Week 2

Week 2 of NYU Summer Class Brain Dance: Pop/Rock Music and Literature. The weekly theme was pop music and social engagement: subversion, realism, escapism and protest music. We read Dick Hebdige's Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979), and learned about teddy boys, beats, hipsters, rude boys, mods, rockers and punks. Theoretical concepts: two notions of "culture," hegemony, ideology, signified/signifier, hybridity, bricolage and defamiliarization.

 We watched clips of Quadrophenia (1979) for instances of youth subjectivity formed through oppositional gang subcultures. Alan Parker's film The Commitments (1991), based on Roddy Doyle's eponymous novel, allowed us to consider the roles of music in relation to working class life: American soul music and proletarian Irish society, and feelings of kinship between oppressed communities; in this case the Dubliners of Barrytown relating, not without a knowing irony ("I'm black and I'm proud"), to the struggle of African-Americans.

 We heard student presentations on Wanda Jackson, Northern Soul, experimental tendences in pop music, and Rolling Stone magazine. On Wednesday we considered the idea of hip-hop as poetry, and were treated to the mad skills of Blake Brandes: scholar and MC, who offered a workshop in beatboxing and freestyling. Follow Blake's work and download his music here: http://www.djdecryption.com/

Recommendations concerning hip-hop's cutting edge from students included Lil B, Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All and Das Racist.