Jazz, Hip Hop Etc.

[Kevin D. Haggerty]

First time post here.

I have been following this discussion about Hip Hop for a while now and
have been intrigued with attempts to dismiss it for being unrefined, etc.,
or being inherently (naturally?) inferior to jazz and other forms of music.


This has lead me to wonder how relevant it might be to introduce some
Bourdieu at this point? While not a clear inheritor of the FS mantle, his
work seems to bear some relevance to the squabbles that have been taking
place on the list. Perhaps we should be talking about a "musical field" in
the way that Bourdieu talks about "artistic" and other fields. Then all of
these  fine-grained attempts to delimit what we should accept as "good" and
"bad" music can be seen as power struggles across class lines to define
what is to count as naturally "good" and "bad" music. I believe others may
have said similar things, but I was wondering what (if anything) might be
gained by introducing Bourdieu's work?

Any thoughts?

Kevin D. Haggerty
University of British Columbia