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The Arab Diaspora and Collaborative Hip-Hop: Globalized and Localized Identity Formation
Abstract
In recent years, the forces of globalization have transformed artists’ approaches to self-expression and artistic production on the material and theoretical levels. The musical genre of hip-hop, with its own global culture that invites worldwide participation, especially reflects these globalizing trends. Scholars pay much attention to hip-hop artists in the Arab world, but the literature thus far has either focused on hip-hop as a homogenizing global culture or as a political tool toward national liberation, particularly with respect to endogenous Palestinian hip-hop. However, researchers have largely ignored the ways in which artists produce and perform their work to these dual audiences simultaneously, and hip-hop artists in the Arab diaspora provide a perfect example of this dual performance. This paper argues that the collaborative work of hip-hop artists in the Arab diaspora shows the new directions of identity production in a swiftly transforming international order. The artists’ songs build cooperative networks for the creation and dissemination of art, transferring power to the multitude and democratizing production. Their lyrics and performances also globalize markedly indigenous symbols, introducing them to an international awareness. Since diasporic artists occupy a liminal artistic space, their art provides new inroads to understanding identity formation in the context of still-accelerating globalization that is defined by renegotiated relationships with the self, the nation, and the global community. The artists’ collaborations, like the genre in which they take place, engender a space for ideological exchange and identity formation that crosses borders and transcends ethnolinguistic divisions, permeating both the global and the local. These collaborations dually illustrate this process of identity production: the artists, whose identities lie in both national and international spheres, navigate a new identity calculus through hip-hop, a genre with a global culture yet distinctly local roots and practitioners. Through close reading of song lyrics as well as consideration of clothing, promotional materials, instrumentation, and public activism, the paper provides a holistic picture of the artists and their diasporic connections, especially focusing on how hip-hop uniquely facilitates their collaboration. It considers the cases of Arab diasporic artists like Shadia Mansour, Omar Offendum, and The Narcycist, as well as of their collaborations with other non-Arab artists. The paper sheds light on how their collaborative art represents new egalitarian and transnational directions for artistic expression and the formation of identity in a rapidly-evolving world, rooted in hip-hop’s globally-relevant culture and the artists’ experiences as children of globalization.
Discipline
Media Arts
Geographic Area
Arab States
Iraq
Palestine
Syria
Sub Area
None