Prison, Hip Hop, and Islam

SpearIt, Saint Louis University School of Law, has published Spreading the Faith: Music and Culture, in Muslims in U.S. Prisons (Nawal Ammar, ed.; Lynne Rienner Publications) (forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

This chapter argues that prison and hip hop culture are major factors in the popularity and growth of Islam in the United States. The connections among Islam, prisons, and hip hop culture are profound, and all three share a deeply intertwined history; the more one studies Islam in the U.S., the student will be led to the powerful sanctuaries of prisons and hip hop culture, where Islam’s presence is pronounced. This work combines textual analysis of musical cultural productions and scholarly research on prison culture to show hip hop and prison culture as two primary sites of religious conversion. In these cultural spheres, Islam has found a steady stream of new recruits which contribute to Islam as the fastest growing religion in the United States.

The full text is not currently available from SSRN.

Play That Funky Music, Your Honor

New York's Committee on Judicial Ethics says that Acting Supreme Court Judge Matthew D'Emic can play with his band after hours if potential parties aren't likely to appear before him, so Judge D'Emic, and other judges are free to rock to house, saying, ""The judge who wishes to pursue part-time employment as a solo musician may do so only occasionally, for a fee, for family, friends, neighbors and others who are unlikely to appear in the judge's court."

As it turns out, ethics committees in other states have examined this problem as well, coming to essentially the same conclusion. So the only worry Judge D'Emic has now is whether to rename his band. He seems have rejected current suggestions: (Rock-n-Robes, L.L. Cool Judge and The Electric Chairs). What about "Conflict of Interest"? ("No Conflict of Interest" just sounds too long). "Sidebar"? "Inadmissible"? "Judicial Conference"?

Performer of the Narcocorrido Murdered

Mexican singer Sergio Vega, known as El Shaka, was assassinated last Saturday. Mr. Vega was known for his performances of the songs known as "narcocorridos" or drug ballads. Notes the Urban Dictionary, "Literally translated it [narcocorrido] means "drug ballad", though not all narcocorridos are about drugs. Corridos have long described the poor and destitute, bandits and other criminals, as well as illegal immigrants to the United States, but the focus is on drug smugglers. Narcocorridos often refer to particular people, events, and specific dates that tell a story."

For more about narcocorridos, see among other titles Elijah Wald's book Narcocorrido: A Journey Into the World of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas, Sam Quinones' True Tales From Another Mexico (University of New Mexico Press, 2001), Mark Cameron Edberg, El Narcotraficante: Narcocorridos and the Construction of a Cultural Persona on the US-Mexican Border (University of Texas Press, 2004), Tracy Arwari, The Narcocorrido: A Musical Subculture In Translation (Georgetown University Press, 2003), Rubén Tinajero Medina and María del Rosario Hernández Iznaga, El narcocorrido: tradición o mercado? (Universidad Autonóma de Chihuahua, 2004) and John McDowell, Poetry and Violence: The Ballad Tradition of Mexico's Costa Chica (University of Illinois, 2000).

Singing About Species

Charles Darwin has his own minstrel. The Scientist's Victoria Stern writes about Philadelphia entertainer Brett Keyser, who sings about Mr. Darwin's accomplishments, both on the street and in a one-man show called "Darwinii: The Comeuppance of Man." Read more here (subscription; free).

Meanwhile, former child star and current creation science activist Kirk Cameron is engaged in a new project: handing out copies of The Origin of Species on college campuses, but he and his colleagues don't exactly want university students to come to Darwin. These copies of Mr. Darwin's seminal work have a new introduction that seeks to show why it's flawed. According to recent media reports,

The 50 page introduction that Cameron helped pen includes passages that link Darwins work with Nazi eugenics and overall mysogyny.

"You can see where [Hitler] clearly takes Darwin's ideas to some of their logical conclusions and compares certain races of people to lower evolutionary life forms," Cameron told People. "If you take Darwin's theory and extend it to its logical end, it can be used to justify all number of very horrendous things.

But Mr. Cameron may not be getting through. Said one student, "I don't think they are accomplishing what they set out to do. All these people are getting a free 'Origin of Species.' If they read the book they'll see through (the introduction)...". Read more here in a Christian Science Monitor article.

And the Beat Goes On

The latest craze: "auto-tuning" the news, courtesy of Antares Audio Technologies. Here's a clip from CNN. The creators include social commentary in their tune-ups, creating clips one can then deconstruct. Included here is part of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Here are more auto-tune clips from the web. Here's info from NOVA on the technology.

Musicians debate the use of auto tune, which corrects pitch, for various reasons. Here is an article from MTV on Jay-Z's song "Death of Auto Tune."

The Many Meanings of Elvis

Sharon Cowan has published The Elvis We Deserve: The Social Regulation of Sex/Gender and Sexuality Through Cultural Representations of 'the King' as a Working Paper. Here is the abstract.

This paper analyses the way in which the image, masculinity and sexual identity of Elvis Presley have been recently culturally deployed by particular social groups. It explores the way in which the image of Elvis is used by lesbian drag king performers who try to queer the cultural stereotypes which form the basis of the social regulation of gender roles; and the use of Elvis's image by the U.K. fathers' rights campaign group 'Fathers 4 Justice' as a sign of unthreatening familiarity to support traditional heteronormative ideas of masculinity and gender roles. These cultural re-appropriations of Elvis raises questions for contemporary understandings of sex/gender and sexuality; as the motto of the San Francisco based Elvis impersonator 'Extreme Elvis' suggests, "Every generation gets the Elvis it deserves".

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Hip Hop, Criminal Law, and Legal Critique

Nick J. Sciullo has published "Conversations with the Law: Irony, Hyperbole and Identity Politics or Sake Pase? Wyclef Jean, Shottas, and Haitian Jack - A Hip-Hop Creole Fusion of Rhetorical Resistance to the Law," in volume 34 of Oklahoma City University Law Review (2009). Here is the abstract.

This article sets out to prove why the law must be investigated in an interdisciplinary fashion which invites an intersection between law, popular culture, and identity politics. First, this article describes how Wyclef Jean, a hip-hop artist, is an active voice of legal criticism and why his criticism is important to a larger discussion of the law. Second, this paper develops a conception of Creole/Haitian legal studies and its importance as an analytical lens through which to perceive the law and legal institutions. Third, this piece formulates a rhetorical criticism of the law through the rhetorical terrain of Wyclef's hip-hop music and cultural aesthetic to critique criminal law and legal institutions. The fusion of hip-hop, Haitian/Creole cultural identity, and rhetorical criticism, opens a new area for legal analysis and understanding. This article concludes by suggesting that rhetorical criticism, hip-hop, and other rhetorical acts (among them irony and hyperbole) provide new terrain from which to understand the law, and further, that the Haitian/Creole cultural identity is an important and underrepresented facet of legal culture, which further compliments current critical race theory.

Download the article from SSRN here.

Lyrics and Law

Camille Nelson, Saint Louis University School of Law, has published "Lyrical Assault: Dancehall Versus the Cultural Imperialism of the North-West," at 17 Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal 231 (2008). Here is the abstract.

This article examines Jamaican Dancehall music's implications and international perceptions and explores a possible legal remedy for what has been dubbed "Murder Music." The impact of Jamaican Dancehall, the equivalent of American Hip-Hop, its lyrics and history upon Jamaica and the North-West are put into context and interrogated through the lens of cultural studies. Homophobic lyrics have triggered international boycotts and bans of this music and its artists. Despite the fact that Dancehall lyrics are perceived as violent, anti gay, anti-women, and very masculinist, international condemnation is based exclusively upon the homophobic lyrics. This article analyzes the implications of this ban and situates the international response within a masculinist colonial context. Specifics issues discussed include whether the colonization of Jamaica and the codification of its "Offenses against the Person Act" play a role in the propagation of homophobic lyrics, and why it is that Jamaica was criticized as one of the "most homophobic places on earth," given the anti-same sex marriage backlash in the United States and the fact of extreme instances of homophobia in many countries. While this article condemns homophobic lyrics and suggests the discontinuation of their use, it situates Jamaican homophobia as a vestige of colonial prerogatives and urges the abandonment of homophobia as the right thing to do and as a post-colonial move towards true independence.

Download the article from SSRN here.

Law and Lyrics

Alex B. Long, University of Tennessee College of Law, has published "[Insert Song Lyrics Here]: The Uses and Misuses of Popular Music Lyrics In Legal Writing," in volume 64 of the Washington and Lee Law Review (2007).

Legal writers frequently utilize the lyrics of popular music artists to help advance a particular theme or argument in legal writing. And if the music we listen to says something about us as individuals, then the music we, the legal profession as a whole, write about may something about who we are as a profession. A study of citations to popular artists in law journals reveals that, not surprisingly, Bob Dylan is the most popular artist in legal scholarship. The list of names of the other artists rounding out the Top Ten essentially reads like a Who's Who of baby boomer favorites. Often, attorneys use the lyrics of popular music in fairly predictable ways in their writing, sometimes with adverse impact on the persuasiveness of the argument they are advancing. However, if one digs deeper, one can find numerous instances in which legal writers incorporate the lyrics of popular music into their writing in more creative ways.

Download the article from SSRN here.