Title: How Else Can I Say It I Don't Speak No Other Languages?: Hip-hop in Dialogue with Rural America

Author: Molly Geidel

Primary advisor: Rachel Rubin

Secondary advisor: Judith Smith

Graduation date: June 3, 2005

Abstract:

In the wake of the 2004 elections, the division between rural and urban America seems more pronounced and consequential to the fate of the world than at any time in recent memory. At the same time, hip-hop is now the defining music of American youth, in rural as well as the rest of America. With all this in mind, the question of what hip-hop is doing for, and to, its largely white rural audience becomes significant. This paper explores some of the theoretical and concrete intersections between hip-hop and rural places and identities, with attention to dominant cultural representations of country and inner-city space as well as musical responses to those representations. After an analysis of the literature on white engagement and a brief historical overview of the spectacular performance of racial and place-based identity, I examine hip-hop's response to fearful, racially coded media constructions of the inner city as well as the horror genre's continual production of menacing rural stereotypes.
The last three sections use text analysis and ethnography to examine concrete instances of rural engagement with hip-hop. Works discussed include horror film Deliverance (1972), Bubba Sparxxx's album, also named Deliverance (2003), musical collaborations by Virginia MC Danja Mowf and Appalachian traditional musician Dirk Powell, the music of Kentucky hip-hoppers Kuntry Killaz with MC Delivery. I also conduct and analyze interviews with the coordinators of the Holler to the Hood project, a community arts project working for intercultural understanding and economic self-determination in central Appalachia, and Vermont rappers Rhythm Ruckus. My major conclusion is that hip-hop's emphasis on reimagining degraded neighborhoods provides a useful potential framework through which rural young people can reimagine degraded country space.

Who might be interested in reading this work?

Anyone interested in popular music, particularly as it relates to racial and class politics. Or anyone particularly interested in hip-hop, white engagement with hip-hop, rural identity formation, or horror movies about deranged hillbillies.