Is hip-hop avant-garde?

It seems like hip-hop's use of texture is what endears it to the avant-garde, but I wonder what aspect of the hip-hop template makes it more flexible and open to textural variation. Is it that it's not burdened by history like pop and rock (only going back 25 years or so)?

Avant garde is so passe. ;-)

Hint: look at the hip-hop The Wire actually review. ;)

Aside from the one token Jay-Z record a month that is. Basically it's a marketing thing - the Wire's target audience includes presumably a lot of people who have seen themselves growing out of rock and into other musics, so for rock to be covered it must be 'avant' whereas any hip-hop will qualify.

It's also, to a degree, a sonics-first approach. Could something with a traditional melody and structure but "challenging" or off-kilter lyrics be considered avant-garde? (Scott 4 comes to mind, maybe.)

I'd say hip-hop is influenced by a helluva lot of history, though I don't know if it's been 'burdened.' Influx of drug markets in the early 80's vs. urban musical revisionism/electro/tagging/graffiti/finding a 'voice' ... police brutality a la Rodney King (no hero, admittedly) and the L.A. riots a la Dr. Dre's "The Day the Niggaz Took Over" ... and the following split between a sense of 'underground/independent' hip-hop and the gangsta mainstream that started creating its own industry-wide history ... to me, the influence of all of those elements is evident in today's relatively 'safe' radio urban hip-hop, sort of a combination of rap and r&b ..

I agree with the tokenism regarding Jay-Z (I'm not a regular reader but I've never seen as much mention of, for example, either Ludacris or Outkast, both of whom seem to be more on the cutting edge between populism and the avant-garde), but disagree that the Wire's method of selection is completely contrived. Hip-hop in its initial late- 70s/early 80s form WAS a major move in a post-modernist direction: using (the best) bits of others' music (usually in the form of loops, but not always, as with the amazing 'Planet Rock'), in what many traditionalists surely saw as an 'anti-musical' travesty, to fashion something completely new. To me, that leap of ingenuity equals the studio-as-instrument innovations of Jamaican dub in the '70s: both of these were to prove breakthroughs which laid the foundations for much of the current musical climate, changing not only the sound of music but the accepted principles of its very creation. If that isn't avant- garde, then I don't know what is. Public Enemy's sound and speech collages on 'Fear of a Black Planet' being perhaps the best example of all.

Could something with a traditional melody and structure but "challenging" or off-kilter lyrics be considered avant-garde?

Well this is largely the approach the Wire writers do take to hip-hop (not the melody bit but the coverage is often rhyme-first).

dare, what the hell.

If be "avant-garde" you mean people with intense eyes drinking coffee in a huge loft studio and debating angrily over an 18' blobby iron pylon laying lengthwise that's been covered in tiny microphones, maybe it SHOULD be, like, for the hell of it. But it does pretty well without it.

you've obviously never been to d&d.

I think it is, in so much as it has no obligation to melody or trad. structure. (meaning you can have a great hip hop track without a great melody or trad. structure- not that hip hop doesn't have melody, which it does, or that it a lot of it isn't structured traditionally, because so much is VERSECHORUSVERSE, obviously *deepbreath*)

There are definitely no rules about how you can flow, though. And that's what "avant-garde" is, literally, isn't it, "without boundaries"?

my problem with the wire is they won't let me write abt hearsay: avant garde is WHAT I PROVE IT IS blah blah

in the 90s hiphop was avant garde to ppl who considered *themselves* avant garde, ie they tried to do it and were obviously rubbish

i've read several articles heralding hip-hop as a new breed of dadaism. there was a review of 'the wash' over at the onion av club that detailed this comparison.

The wire's angle on hip-hop is (I think) that since it's become not only a record shifter but a global 'culture', it has sold its soul to the man but, of course there are people who still care therefore underground is formed (similar to SY, rock in late 80s).

I don't buy enough from it to really know whether this hip- hop 'underground' is any good or not.

But I can say that for 'avant'-rock. It isn't as avant as I'd like (jacki-O motherfucker track on Mixing it sucked, set fire to flames (track on cover CD) sucks, so does tortoise/O'rouke/Chicago- underground duo). for every ten bands- only one is any good.

The Set Fire to Flames track is ultimate suck. I like the No-Neck Blues Band though.

If they're covering it because it's a global culture, that means the 'Wire' has sold its soul to the Man! But who cares, so have I. Anyway, by my standards, nothing can possibly be avant-garde that's in 4/4 all the time. I'm going to keep flogging this 'punk is more rhythmically advanced than dance/R&B' thing until somebody else believes it.

"Is there something about hip-hop that makes it inherently more “experimental” than other kinds of pop music?"

I do think hip-hop is generally more concerned with the "next" sound than most music. I don't think there's ever been a crew that made it big out of mimicking old styles, a la The Strokes (people like Jurassic 5 are strictly for the white college kids). That's one reason why so few rappers have sustained long careers. Someone new is always coming up (although it has been over 20 years, and ol' man hip- hop is slowing down a bit).

Since avant-garde literally means something that's culturally or stylistically advanced (word originally derives from Napoleon's innovative use of cavalry troops, I believe), you could therefore say that yeah, hip-hop is avant-garde. Hip-hop could care less; as far as Lil' Kim is concerned, you say it "avant-gardey."

As far as the aesthetic similarities with early C20 surrealism/dada/etc go, sure, but it always seems somewhat contradictory that the avant-garde has a set style... And as far as shit you can't dance to goes, something that reaches billions of people is far more subversive than any hairshirt-wearing anti- pleasure experimentalism...

It's what happens within that 4/4 that makes it interesting: a focus on individual drum sounds, syncopation, odd Timbalandesque rhythm spurts, etc.--i.e. the things a traditional formalist approach (which involves things like categorizing pieces in terms of their time signatures) ignores. It's far too simple to say that something in 4/4 is less rhythmically advanced or avant-garde than something in 13/16. It's something I can imagine a stodgy old music professor saying--someone who hasn't actually heard any popular music since 1967.

Ben is spot-on in that hip-hop is still enmeshed in a race of sorts, whereas Radiohead is the only non-negligibly-sized rock band even tangentially involved with making any sort of new now sound. (Haven't thought too heavily about the second part of that sentence, but a few minutes turned up nothing.) So, there's an awful lot of narrative squished into a couple months of hip-hop activity, while rock's most novel (and not altogether bad) attribute is its lack of any such concern.

'Individual drum sounds' are bought and paid for, and why can't people dance to stuff that isn't 4/4? They do it in Cuba all the time.

4/4 = 32/32 at least, tho but

avant garde is the new Poison. who wants to be that??

hip hop avant garde? hip hop avant garde a clue more like. fucking bullshit bong bong bong yo look at me i got a big dick and will shoot u if u disagre. no black peple listen to hip hopp only whitey loking to get their kix.

XStatic is reaching some sort of narrative peak surely. These get more entertaining as they go along.

Dave Q - interesting point on complexity of rhythms, surely rise of EMO has demonstrated that weird time signatures aren't that revolutionary or even necessarily desirable?

Even with house's absolute repetitiveness, I prefer to see it as an intentional restriction of the sonic palette with similar (if unspoken) intentions as a lot of minimalist music - by keeping certain areas of the music stable and unchanging, the producers force the listener to focus their attention on other aspects of the music. Certainly I've heard a lot of house that was rhythmically more interesting or innovative than a lot of more explicitly complex or "difficult" rhythmic material. A similar process in hip hop reaches a culmination of sorts with Wu-Tang, I guess, although I think its application is more limited methinks. Perhaps a better example is Dancehall - and there's a good example of music which, while clearly 4/4, is so distinct and twisty rhythmically that the time signature becomes largely moot.

Who should XStatic have a throw down with?

We would not be having a debate about whether hip-hop was avant-garde if it sold 100,000 records a year worldwide. It would be beyond dispute. It has been fabulously innovative in terms of making voice a rhythm instrument, use of samples, reinventing the sound and rhythmic patterns of pop/rock drumming (just about all of which previously has a bass drum on 1 and 3 snare on 2 and 4 pattern with some minor variations, apart from "fills"), reintroducing jazz swing feel to pop music after a 25 year absence, exploring the extent to which dissonant, appparently non-musical or "found" sounds can be made to sound musical given (usually) an ostinato bass-line and a specific rhythmic context etc etc.

The real question is, can you be avant garde and popular? If yes hip- hop is avant, if no, it's not.

Aha! Here I come aping Kodwo Eshun! Black american culture = built from nothing, subject to vageries of political economic shift and circumstance -- african componant was wiped out over third passage and first generation, there are no deep cultural roots, and thus there is a constant incorpartive hunger, seeking egypt, latin america, africa, shaolin from asia, anywhere but here and as such the thirst for the new which is really the old. As distinct from avant-garde which is the search for the new which really is the new.

what gets called avant garde inevitably isn't & is only that through the distinctions & definitions of those who seek to foist their exclusive & obscurant snobbist ideals onto others. "ahead of its time" - not literally possible unless you are stephen hawking on acid.

But Bob what is your point?

maybe i'm just trying to say that the way for instance the wire calls the often rather ordinary rock music it covers "avant" (eg. will oldham , papa m, can etc.) is just down to snobbery and some exclusive conception of "cool". whereas it covers hip hop as just plain hip hop cos boyoboy that's exotic enough isn't it? introverted whiteboy magazine as you could pigeonhole it albeit a sweeping generalization.

Actually Bob The Wire has a definite elimination policy when it comes to hip hop; any non-indie stuff gets in does so I imagine on the insistence of the individual writer.

"Avant" in avant-rock as used by The Wire refers to a historically traceable approach to making rock music (which Can obv. fit into) that has been traditionly associated with an avant-garde wing even if now that association is no longer apparent. Yeah it's annoying, but it's a problem that any genre not blessed with an ultimately meaningless term (eg. hip hop) eventually faces (it goes without saying that the "rock" in avant-rock is equally inappropriate).

"Avant" in avant-rock as used by The Wire refers to snobbery and anal retentive behaviours ;-)

bob

To be pedantic, "avant-garde" does not mean "ahead of its time" so the contradiction in terms you identify isn't there. But I'm in sypathy with your definition of "avant" in Wire's "avant-rock". With respect to my earlier question, "can you be avant garde and popular" I prefer the answer "no". Innovative+popular usually = good. Whereas avant-garde, by being predicated on the mistaken belief that if intelligent is good, cerebral must be better, usually = bad.

problem being i absolutely adore uncommunicative autistic vainglorious experiments in self absorption whether they beez yer hep harp ore ye arvarnt garde ruckenrowl, innit?

Bring this back b/c maybe it's related to the thread on the superiority of mainstream hip-hop over mainstream rock.