Week 2: Lesson 1: Listening, and What is Hip Hop?
➔ Hip Hop is popular music. It was based on, and derives from many of the structures and
conventions of pop, whether it be jazz, R&B, Rock, Funk, or disco.
➔ Pitch: the fundamental unit of musical sound, also called a single “note”.
➔ Timbre: tone color, the acoustic properties that give each instrument/voice its unique
sound.
➔ Rhythm: the timing of attacks (notes) in a composition. The measurement of musical
events in time.
➔ Beat or Pulse: the fundamental unit of time in a composition. It consists of a point of
attack (downbeat) and a point of release (upbeat).
➔ Tempo: the rate of beats per minutes (bpm).
➔ Accent: emphasis placed on a specific note or pulse.
➔ Metre: the pattern of recurring cycles of beats/pulses. The grouping of beats into
multiples of 2s or 3s. Those groups are called bars or measures.
◆ a.) duple: multiples of 2 (march-feel)
◆ b.) triple: multiples of 3 (waltz-feel)
➔ Groove: the interplay between 2 or more rhythms.
➔ The “beat” in hip hop is also the instrumental track composed for someone else to sing
or tap to.
➔ Melody: single pitches sounded in succession.
➔ Phrase: a melodic/lyrical line that represents a complete thought. In popular music, the
length of a phrase is generally two-to-four bars in length; about the average time an
untrained singer is able to deliver a melody without having to take a breath.
➔ Contour: the shape of a motive/phrase
◆ 1.) ascending
◆ 2.) descending
◆ 3.) pendular
◆ 4.) iterative
➔ Ornamentation: decorative devices used to add flourishes to a melody or harmony
➔ Singing styles: are
◆ a.) meliomatic; two or more notes sung to one syllable
◆ b.) syllabic; one note/syllable
➔ Harmony: the result produced when two or more pitches are heard simultaneously.
➔ Chord: a harmony where three or more notes are sounded simultaneously.
➔ Chord/Harmony Progression: a succession of two or more chords.
➔ Texture: the “fabric” of a composition/section of music.
➔ Call and Response: an anectedant/consequent relationship between distinct phrases
and/or rhythms.
➔ Riff: a repeated pattern designed to generate rhythmic momentum.
➔ Hook: a memorable musical phrase or riff.
➔ Layering: multiple different parts performed simultaneously often systematic/additive.
, ➔ Lick: short musical phrases, usually recognizable by members of the culture.
➔ Lyrics: words of a song.
➔ Dialect: certain vocabulary that speaks to the identity of a given culture or subculture.
➔ Form: the succession of repeated and/or varied musical patterns.
◆ 1.) strophic form (A/A): sequence of verses with the same melody.
◆ 2.) Da Capo (AB/BA): sequence of verses (A Sections) with one contrasting
section (B Section) called the bridges.
◆ 3.) Verse/Chorus: sequence of verses with repeated contrasting sections called a
chorus.
◆ 4.) Verse/Chorus/Bridge: the insertion of contrasting material (bridge) in a
verse/chorus form- the bridge is usually placed in the last half of a piece.
➔ B (or “break”) boys and b-girls: the first generation of hip hop; dancers (breakers), graffiti
artists, local kids, from the neighborhood; sometimes used synonymously with
“breakers”.
➔ Breakdancing: industry term that came into use when West Coast funk dance styles
blurred into the New York dance traditions and became popularized in theatrical film and
music video productions, in the mid-80’s
◆ DJ was seen as promoter and salesman
➔ Diaspora: the breaking up/scattering of people who had to settle for from their ancestral
homeland.
➔ Hip Hop Chronology:
◆ Proto-hip hip and old school (1950s-1970s)
◆ Commercial rap music (1979-mid 1990s)
◆ Hardcore and the mainstreamed (mid 1990s-2000s)
◆ Mainstreamed and still and black music genre (2010s)
Chapter 1: What is Hip Hop? What is Rap?
1. Hip Hop is the product of inner city African American, Caribbean, and Latino
communities that were plagued by poverty, community decat, and the proliferation of
drugs and gang violence in the 1960s and early 1970s.
2. Hip Hop includes four related art forms that are the product of a unifying ideology;
a. DJ’ing
b. MC’ing
c. Breaking (b-boying)
d. Graffiti
3. Rap is the musical product born of the urban-particularly south bronx subcultures, DJ’ing
and MC’ing performances, but especially the commercial product that gave priority to the
rapper. Rap music has, at times, been called hip hop by the industry and fans alike, who
make little distinction before the culture and the recordable product.
,Week 3: Lesson 2: Predecessors and Early Hip Hop:
➔ South Bronx “ideal breeding ground for hip hop and rap”
➔ extra musical context
1. Graffiti was originally in Philedelphia and brought to NYC
2. Dance traditions came from Brooklyn. Soultrain created sense of racial segregation.
Funk:
a. Important link to reggae in the 70s, affirmation of Blackness
b. Based on “interlocking” rhythms
c. Soul train
d. Jungle Boogie by Kool & The Gang
3. DJ’ing came from other boroughs in NYC (Brooklyn, Queens)
a. Slip-cueing
After war, changes were made to Bronx:
1. Slum-clearance projects displaced poor families, from upper west side to south bronx.
Families ended up seeking shelter with friends/family, living in substandard-size housing
in Southern Bronx.
2. The Cross Bronx Expressway, opened in 1955, completed in 1963, cut through the heart
of Bronx. In 1960 there were 350,781 blacks/hispanics living in the Bronx, 266,988 living
in South Bronx.
➔ Loss of housing/jobs inspired growth in gangs.
➔ Gangs escalated in late 60s, 1968 rise in youth gangs dominating/terrorizing south
Bronx for 6 years.
➔ Drugs fueled growth of gangs, members played key role in sale-distribution of them
➔ Savage Seven: gang of 7 members, 12-15, wrecked havoc surrounding the Bronxdale
community center. Renamed to Black Spades, took on street names, outfits and
personas.
➔ Rival gangs from other projects started to emerge.
➔ Disenfranchised African American youth
➔ Deprived of social privilege
➔ Underserved populations
➔ Three R’s: reputation, respect, and retaliation:
◆ Reputation: ctricial concern to individual gang members to gang must prove itself
to be tough, powerful, and numerous.
◆ Respect: is sought not only for individuals but for one’s gang, family, and territory.
All gangs and members want/need respect.
◆ Retaliation: or revenge, is not just warranted, but expected.
➔ Gangs generally have a leader or group of them who issue orders and benefit from
gangs activities.
➔ Afrika Bambaataa was recognized as one of the foremost leaders of changing gang
culture to social crews.
➔ Connections to the African diaspora:
◆ Hip hop: zulu nation
, ◆ Reggae (late 1960s)-rastafarianism
◆ Decolonization of African (1950s-70s)
◆ Jazz and Africa: Nation of Islam
◆ Paul Roberson (1930s)
➔ Socially Conscious Rap: attention to social issues among disenfranchised African
American communities, poverty, systemic access to opportunity, violence, and
indiscriminate police brutality.
Week 4: Hip Hop Culture and the ‘4 Pillars’:
Graffiti:
➔ Graffiti tagging was adapted from the street gangs to become a means of both asserting
self-identity and spreading the hip hop message across the city.
➔ Graffiti: inscription/drawing made on a public surface; a way to pass on unconventional
views, mark turf, or make artful expression. Among hip-hop, it has 2 dominant forms:
◆ Tagging: scrawl of someone’s name/nickname
◆ Writing: sophisticated outlaw art form that follows a highly stylized lettering
aesthetic, dramatic use of color, and large public surfaces.
➔ Graffiti art forced New Yorkers to acknowledge the disenfranchised/marginalized
inner-city black, latino, and white growth.
➔ 1950: street gangs began using graffiti for self-promotion, group identity, and marking
territorial boundaries.
➔ Late 1960s: gangs used graffiti for purposes of intimidation.
➔ Of the 4 elements of hip-hop, graffiti has had the most diverse participants.
➔ Tag: graffiti writers personalized signature/logo
➔ Graffiti gave early writers a community to belong to besides gangs.
➔ Bomb: to write on or cover as many subway lines as possible.
➔ Wild Style: complicated, multicolored, interlocking letters, connectors, and other
ornamentation developed by hip hop graffiti, writers of the late 1970s/mid 80s considered
the most difficult style of graffiti writing to master.
➔ Importance of style
◆ Bombing
◆ “T to B”
◆ “E to E”
➔ Size: experience of grandeur.
➔ Compare with Avant garde art
➔ Graffiti activity peaked in 1976, marking a 2nd wave.
➔ Hip Hop is popular music. It was based on, and derives from many of the structures and
conventions of pop, whether it be jazz, R&B, Rock, Funk, or disco.
➔ Pitch: the fundamental unit of musical sound, also called a single “note”.
➔ Timbre: tone color, the acoustic properties that give each instrument/voice its unique
sound.
➔ Rhythm: the timing of attacks (notes) in a composition. The measurement of musical
events in time.
➔ Beat or Pulse: the fundamental unit of time in a composition. It consists of a point of
attack (downbeat) and a point of release (upbeat).
➔ Tempo: the rate of beats per minutes (bpm).
➔ Accent: emphasis placed on a specific note or pulse.
➔ Metre: the pattern of recurring cycles of beats/pulses. The grouping of beats into
multiples of 2s or 3s. Those groups are called bars or measures.
◆ a.) duple: multiples of 2 (march-feel)
◆ b.) triple: multiples of 3 (waltz-feel)
➔ Groove: the interplay between 2 or more rhythms.
➔ The “beat” in hip hop is also the instrumental track composed for someone else to sing
or tap to.
➔ Melody: single pitches sounded in succession.
➔ Phrase: a melodic/lyrical line that represents a complete thought. In popular music, the
length of a phrase is generally two-to-four bars in length; about the average time an
untrained singer is able to deliver a melody without having to take a breath.
➔ Contour: the shape of a motive/phrase
◆ 1.) ascending
◆ 2.) descending
◆ 3.) pendular
◆ 4.) iterative
➔ Ornamentation: decorative devices used to add flourishes to a melody or harmony
➔ Singing styles: are
◆ a.) meliomatic; two or more notes sung to one syllable
◆ b.) syllabic; one note/syllable
➔ Harmony: the result produced when two or more pitches are heard simultaneously.
➔ Chord: a harmony where three or more notes are sounded simultaneously.
➔ Chord/Harmony Progression: a succession of two or more chords.
➔ Texture: the “fabric” of a composition/section of music.
➔ Call and Response: an anectedant/consequent relationship between distinct phrases
and/or rhythms.
➔ Riff: a repeated pattern designed to generate rhythmic momentum.
➔ Hook: a memorable musical phrase or riff.
➔ Layering: multiple different parts performed simultaneously often systematic/additive.
, ➔ Lick: short musical phrases, usually recognizable by members of the culture.
➔ Lyrics: words of a song.
➔ Dialect: certain vocabulary that speaks to the identity of a given culture or subculture.
➔ Form: the succession of repeated and/or varied musical patterns.
◆ 1.) strophic form (A/A): sequence of verses with the same melody.
◆ 2.) Da Capo (AB/BA): sequence of verses (A Sections) with one contrasting
section (B Section) called the bridges.
◆ 3.) Verse/Chorus: sequence of verses with repeated contrasting sections called a
chorus.
◆ 4.) Verse/Chorus/Bridge: the insertion of contrasting material (bridge) in a
verse/chorus form- the bridge is usually placed in the last half of a piece.
➔ B (or “break”) boys and b-girls: the first generation of hip hop; dancers (breakers), graffiti
artists, local kids, from the neighborhood; sometimes used synonymously with
“breakers”.
➔ Breakdancing: industry term that came into use when West Coast funk dance styles
blurred into the New York dance traditions and became popularized in theatrical film and
music video productions, in the mid-80’s
◆ DJ was seen as promoter and salesman
➔ Diaspora: the breaking up/scattering of people who had to settle for from their ancestral
homeland.
➔ Hip Hop Chronology:
◆ Proto-hip hip and old school (1950s-1970s)
◆ Commercial rap music (1979-mid 1990s)
◆ Hardcore and the mainstreamed (mid 1990s-2000s)
◆ Mainstreamed and still and black music genre (2010s)
Chapter 1: What is Hip Hop? What is Rap?
1. Hip Hop is the product of inner city African American, Caribbean, and Latino
communities that were plagued by poverty, community decat, and the proliferation of
drugs and gang violence in the 1960s and early 1970s.
2. Hip Hop includes four related art forms that are the product of a unifying ideology;
a. DJ’ing
b. MC’ing
c. Breaking (b-boying)
d. Graffiti
3. Rap is the musical product born of the urban-particularly south bronx subcultures, DJ’ing
and MC’ing performances, but especially the commercial product that gave priority to the
rapper. Rap music has, at times, been called hip hop by the industry and fans alike, who
make little distinction before the culture and the recordable product.
,Week 3: Lesson 2: Predecessors and Early Hip Hop:
➔ South Bronx “ideal breeding ground for hip hop and rap”
➔ extra musical context
1. Graffiti was originally in Philedelphia and brought to NYC
2. Dance traditions came from Brooklyn. Soultrain created sense of racial segregation.
Funk:
a. Important link to reggae in the 70s, affirmation of Blackness
b. Based on “interlocking” rhythms
c. Soul train
d. Jungle Boogie by Kool & The Gang
3. DJ’ing came from other boroughs in NYC (Brooklyn, Queens)
a. Slip-cueing
After war, changes were made to Bronx:
1. Slum-clearance projects displaced poor families, from upper west side to south bronx.
Families ended up seeking shelter with friends/family, living in substandard-size housing
in Southern Bronx.
2. The Cross Bronx Expressway, opened in 1955, completed in 1963, cut through the heart
of Bronx. In 1960 there were 350,781 blacks/hispanics living in the Bronx, 266,988 living
in South Bronx.
➔ Loss of housing/jobs inspired growth in gangs.
➔ Gangs escalated in late 60s, 1968 rise in youth gangs dominating/terrorizing south
Bronx for 6 years.
➔ Drugs fueled growth of gangs, members played key role in sale-distribution of them
➔ Savage Seven: gang of 7 members, 12-15, wrecked havoc surrounding the Bronxdale
community center. Renamed to Black Spades, took on street names, outfits and
personas.
➔ Rival gangs from other projects started to emerge.
➔ Disenfranchised African American youth
➔ Deprived of social privilege
➔ Underserved populations
➔ Three R’s: reputation, respect, and retaliation:
◆ Reputation: ctricial concern to individual gang members to gang must prove itself
to be tough, powerful, and numerous.
◆ Respect: is sought not only for individuals but for one’s gang, family, and territory.
All gangs and members want/need respect.
◆ Retaliation: or revenge, is not just warranted, but expected.
➔ Gangs generally have a leader or group of them who issue orders and benefit from
gangs activities.
➔ Afrika Bambaataa was recognized as one of the foremost leaders of changing gang
culture to social crews.
➔ Connections to the African diaspora:
◆ Hip hop: zulu nation
, ◆ Reggae (late 1960s)-rastafarianism
◆ Decolonization of African (1950s-70s)
◆ Jazz and Africa: Nation of Islam
◆ Paul Roberson (1930s)
➔ Socially Conscious Rap: attention to social issues among disenfranchised African
American communities, poverty, systemic access to opportunity, violence, and
indiscriminate police brutality.
Week 4: Hip Hop Culture and the ‘4 Pillars’:
Graffiti:
➔ Graffiti tagging was adapted from the street gangs to become a means of both asserting
self-identity and spreading the hip hop message across the city.
➔ Graffiti: inscription/drawing made on a public surface; a way to pass on unconventional
views, mark turf, or make artful expression. Among hip-hop, it has 2 dominant forms:
◆ Tagging: scrawl of someone’s name/nickname
◆ Writing: sophisticated outlaw art form that follows a highly stylized lettering
aesthetic, dramatic use of color, and large public surfaces.
➔ Graffiti art forced New Yorkers to acknowledge the disenfranchised/marginalized
inner-city black, latino, and white growth.
➔ 1950: street gangs began using graffiti for self-promotion, group identity, and marking
territorial boundaries.
➔ Late 1960s: gangs used graffiti for purposes of intimidation.
➔ Of the 4 elements of hip-hop, graffiti has had the most diverse participants.
➔ Tag: graffiti writers personalized signature/logo
➔ Graffiti gave early writers a community to belong to besides gangs.
➔ Bomb: to write on or cover as many subway lines as possible.
➔ Wild Style: complicated, multicolored, interlocking letters, connectors, and other
ornamentation developed by hip hop graffiti, writers of the late 1970s/mid 80s considered
the most difficult style of graffiti writing to master.
➔ Importance of style
◆ Bombing
◆ “T to B”
◆ “E to E”
➔ Size: experience of grandeur.
➔ Compare with Avant garde art
➔ Graffiti activity peaked in 1976, marking a 2nd wave.
