Identiteitskonfigurasies in wit Afrikaanse rap-musiek met spesifieke verwysing na Die Antwoord, Jack Parow en Bittereinder

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study investigates identity configurations in white Afrikaans rap music, by focusing on rap artists Die Antwoord, Jack Parow and Bittereinder. Rap is a constituent element of hip-hop, a cultural form that developed during the 1970's among the socio-politically and economically marginalised youth of New York's South Bronx, and harbours a connection to black oral cultural traditions stretching back hundreds of years. Since the establishment of hip-hop, rap continued evolving and expanding its reach globally. It has been localized beyond North America as a mechanism – among many others – utilised in the continuous processes of cultural formation and identity configuration. Hip-hop is thus a glocal art form; global in reach but where it is adapted at a local level, it morphs to meet local realities and assumes a distinctive local character. Since its inception, hip-hop has aroused a steadily growing interest among academics. Whereas erstwhile examinations explored it as an African-American cultural form, studies have since the turn of the century increasingly focused on the variety of hip-hop's local permutations, across continents and languages. This shift in focus entails a closer interest in the ways in which hip-hop functions in the continuation of local oral practices, processes of cultural formation and identity configuration.Popular music provides a space wherein South African youth actively and continuously reconfigure identity and interrogate associated issues surrounding it. This dissertation contributes to not only the discourse on local popular music and identity, but also to the discourse on the varied glocal permutations of hip-hop, by focusing on the development and the nature of white Afrikaans rap music. This follows local whiteness studies post-1994 democratisation which zeroes in on whiteness, centralised and normalised by the legacy of colonialism and the apartheid regime, to critically appraise its meaning and challenge its centrality. In doing this, and by exploring white artists utilising a historically black cultural form in various ways, the notion of essential or fixed identities are contested.To identify the symbolic capital of rap music, as well as to recognise its nature and characteristics, this study investigates the development of hip-hop culture whilst acknowledging the oral traditions preceding and influencing it. Earlier permutations of South African hip-hop during the 1980s and 1990s are examined. This is followed by the case studies, exploring Die Antwoord, Jack Parow and Bittereinder. Considering the uniqueness of the South African context, an interdisciplinary qualitative analysis is necessary to make sense of the ways in which local white rappers are actively negotiating identity, through an originally black cultural form. In conclusion, I argue that hip-hop is deployed in ongoing local processes of creolisation of language and music by (the very) means of language and music themselves.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University