Forum: Religion, Renovation, Rap & Hip Hop

Hill, Joseph, Jouili, Jeanette S, Salois, Kendra, Woods, Wind Dell and Edelman, Joshua ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8298-4845 (2019) Forum: Religion, Renovation, Rap & Hip Hop. Performance, Religion and Spirituality, 2 (1). pp. 57-85. ISSN 2637-4366

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Abstract

Performance, Religion and Spirituality’s second forum turns our focus to the ways in which rap and hip hop—as well as the hybrid musical and performance forms which draw on them— have, in recent decades, become important means of asserting, performing, and negotiating religious identity and practice. These forms have spread far beyond their origin in the African American community, and now are forces within the religious and cultural life of nations around the world. They represent both inroads of a globally recognized brand with commercial power and a critical assertion of local and ndividual identities. As well as simply being a great deal of fun, they can serve as a challenge to social structures, including those grounded in religion, and can offer up a form of personal and ironic form of critique that other forms cannot. For this forum, we have brought together four scholars of global hip hop to discuss the critical, political and aesthetic potential the form holds for contemporary religious life worldwide. I asked each scholar to begin with a short position statement on their own research and the relevance of hip hop for religion in the context of their particular research field (Senegal, Morocco, the UK, and the US). The five of us then read each other’s contributions and met (via videoconferencing) to discuss and debate what we had read. The resulting conversation, lightly edited for clarity, is included here. All PRS forums are intended as an invitation for further dialogue, and here the subject matter makes that invitation all the more urgent. The editors welcome letters to the editor in response to this forum. Letters can be sent to j.edelman@mmu.ac.uk.