The role of Rap/Hip Hop music in the meaning and maintenance of identity in South African youth.

摘要

Although music has seemingly always formed an integral part of human culture,udtechnological advances in contemporary society have increased both its accessibilityudand portability, allowing for unprecedented production and consumption of a mediumudthat allows individuals to enact and display various social identities during day-to-dayudlife. Furthermore, recent research has demonstrated that youth consume more musicudthat any other age group. Thus music may be considered as a primary culturaludinfluence in the lives of youth. While the bulk of the research conducted inudunderstanding the form and function of this influence has been located in theuddisciplines of sociology and musicology, Psychologists in Europe and America haveudbecome increasingly interested in understanding the role of music in constructing andudmaintaining identity during this critical period of development. As a contribution toudthis field of application outside of these contexts and located within a qualitativeudframework, this study explored the role of Rap/Hip Hop music, as one of the mostudpopular global and local genres of music, in the meaning and maintenance of identityudin a cohort of South African youth. The resultant thematic framework illustrated theudcomplex tensions negotiated by youth through assuming Hip Hop culture membershipudin South Africa. Importantly, the study showed that the nature of Hip Hop culture; itsudemphasis on self-expression, individuation and critical social awareness dovetailsudwith many of the traditional psychological developmental theories of youth identity.udHip Hop consumption also implied appropriating identity markers from a wide rangeudof social influences, posing challenges to the application of traditional social identityudtheory in accounting for in and out groupings. This was most pronounced in the wayudthat ‘remixing’, as a governing musical principle in Hip Hop seems to resonate as keyudmode of identity and identification amongst its South African consumers. Thus, itudseems fitting that South African youth currently in the midst of cultural, economic andudpolitical transitions would embrace an eclectic rather than rigidly bounded genre ofudmusic with such enthusiasm. In some ways then Hip Hop in South Africa, appears toudprovide youth with the means to remix past and present, old and new, global andudlocal, self and other.