Hip Hop’s Amnesia by Reiland Rabaka (2012)

Considering the many aspects of hip hop music, Reiland Rabaka’s approach to the social, musical and most of all the political past of the style(s) is quite an enterprise. Even more so, if we consider the combination of the many factors that finally led to the very popular form of African-American music, which is currently called hip hop (also for reasons of a more successful marketing), but which for decades had a history of permanent change and refinement and was called blues, rhythm and blues, soul, funk and some other names at different times in its evolution.
What Rabaka most convincingly succeeds at then is the survey of the many forefathers of hip hop, a remix in a way; this expression carries most of his arguments in the study, by the way.
However, the politics as well as the language, the fashion and the social attitude changed according to the shifting names and styles of the most-recent African American musical contribution.

Luckily, the author, Professor at the University of Colorado, has also a certain reputation as editor, musician and spoken-word artist. He has published nine other books, is very much at home with subjects as the musics of African origin, feminism, politics and Civil Rights. Within the last three years alone he has submitted a trilogy of hip hop’s history, including the current title. One of his main claims here, nonetheless, is the presentation of the neglected history of hip hop before the music even became amplified.

Furthermore, in the current literature on the subject, he finds little evidence for the serious research of his colleagues; they seem to take the 1940s as the earliest date in the development; and that is definitely unsatisfactory.

It is with this information, that the title of the book “Hip Hop’s Amnesia” finds explanation. Apparently, many aspects in its history have simply been forgotten or cannot be remembered by the protagonists or even the researchers anymore. So the present study covers subjects as the Black Muslim Movement, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Women’s Club, swing and bebop among other way stations.
All this is part of the remix Rabaka tries to explain by isolating the many different input channels, so to speak.

Review by Dr. A. Ebert

Hip Hop’s Amnesia. From Blues and the Black Women’s Club Movement to Rap and the Hip Hop Movement by Reiland Rabaka, Lexington Books, 2012, 440 p.