[News] Hip-Hop and the Corporate Function of Colonization
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Thu May 10 17:50:58 EDT 2007
http://www.greeninstitute.net/subpages/ball_hh_pt2.asp
Hip-Hop and the Corporate Function of Colonization
Jared A. Ball, Ph.D.
Green Institute Communications Fellow
Having
<http://www.greeninstitute.net/subpages/ball_hh_pt1.asp>elsewhere
looked at the function of mass media as primary
mechanisms of the maintenance of colony, recent
events have again emerged requiring further
investigation into the function of corporate
control over the cultural expression of colonized
populations. Though not specific to hip-hop the
example as explored through that most popular of
cultural expressions may help to make more clear
the imperative of organization and political
struggle in 2007. Within the last few weeks
alone we have seen recent decisions and trends
evolve demonstrating the intent and need among
those in power to further ensure that mass media
will perform its primary (only?) function of
manipulating popular consciousness for the
purpose of manipulating behavior of the audience
(victims). These developments can only be
understood in the context of a continuing process
of subjugation in which media play a primary role in suppressing dissent.
Most recently examples of this include the
successful lobbying (legal bribery) of congress
by Time Warner to
<http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/24/1446244>increase
postal rates for magazines making new or small
magazines unable to start or compete for national
distribution. There are the continuing efforts
of
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117826380984292046-search.html?KEYWORDS=EMI+Warner&COLLECTION=wsjie/6month>EMI
to sell itself off to either Warner Music Group
or the newest media trend of a private equity
firm. And then there was the
<http://www.loc.gov/crb/>Copyright Royalty Board
issuing its new policy of charging commercial and
non-commercial terrestrial and internet
broadcasters per-song royalty fees which have
been estimated to mean that
<http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/18/1548251&mode=thread&tid=25>85%
of internet broadcasters will fold unable to
afford the cost of operation. This decision, it
must be noted, also affects my own beloved
Washington, DC Pacifica Radio affiliate WPFW
whose song royalties fees, based on this
decision, will no longer be covered by the
right-wing-led Corporation for Public
Broadcasting meaning further economic hardship for the network.
To this must be added the recent exposure of
Interscope Records
<http://www.industryears.com/press.php?subaction=showfull&id=1177077899&archive=&start_from=&ucat=&>lyrics
committee, who have determined that the recently
released album from Young Buck would not include
a track called
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59FN6qz9b30>Fuck
tha Police due to its violent content. These
examples form a segment of what is the need of
those in power to maintain intellectual
boundaries established for their own
protection. This elite uses the structure of
corporate governance to maintain this control in
relative anonymity where CEOs and commercial
spokespeople become mere illusions masking their
position as modern-day colonial
administrators. At times called the
petit-bourgeoisie, or even the Black bourgeoisie,
they are simply that group which, as
administrators, administer to society that which
limits or confounds ranges of thought so as to
keep people from stepping intellectually or
literally beyond acceptable parameters. In
this case these administrators become the
intellectual equivalent of the guard at the gate
telling you beyond this line you may not cross,
that is, not without serious repercussion.
Continued references to
<http://www.amazon.com/Toward-African-Revolution-Fanon-Frantz/dp/0802130909/ref=pd_bbs_sr_4/002-5368815-3065628?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1178655530&sr=8-4>Frantz
Fanon, too often made with no equal reference or
focus on what prompted his brilliant analyses,
ignore the fundamental colonizing process still
underway. This corporate-led lockdown of mass
media and popular culture is part of a long
historical process to maintain order over
populations whose ability to produce and
popularize a revolutionary culture and,
therefore, conscious behavior would mean the end
of established power. This threat, one that is
and should be feared, is mitigated by a corporate
structure designed, as Fanon explained, to not
destroy the culture of the colonized but to
instead allow certain forms to be carefully
selected for promotion and popularity. This
popularity then encourages perceptions of the
colonized that support their colonization and, in
fact, encourage a behavior among the colonized
which produces self-inflicted wounds that while
in reality result from externally-based
oppression are justified via perception. Here,
again, is how a Viacom-owned radio station would
broadcast Don Imus while also broadcasting the
very hip-hop later blamed for his remarks on BET,
MTV, and here in Washington, DC on WPGC 95.5 FM,
the citys leading Black-targeted radio
station. We play what the people want and
produce is their claim. Yet when DC-area
artists, such as Head-Roc, DJ EuRok, Pookanu,
Asheru to name too few, produce high quality
hip-hop critical of our colonial status, police
brutality, impoverished schools, etc. or even
make music that is just fun-loving and
brilliantly worded they are
suppressed. Censorship is political not
linguistic. Its not the fuck in Young Bucks
Fuck da Police that was censored.
The sociology of a corporation
demonstrates its function. Boards of directors
with interlocks that extend the influence of this
tiny collective, themselves selected by
controlling holders of stock, elect Chief
Executive Officers (CEOs) who as employees of
those stockholders work at the bidding of their
further removed and mostly anonymous (certainly
to us) bosses. What those bosses want is well
beyond money, which itself exists only to
manage/manipulate the behavior of the majority
who have none, they want security and
safety. Both require a popular consciousness or
manufactured opinion which supports this by
preventing even the idea of the righteous even
if forceful redistribution of wealth and
service. This is why songs saying fuck the
police must be censored, attacked, omitted or
demonized even if, as is the case with Young
Buck, a video may picture Huey Newton but is
actually more about an individual self-defense of
selling dope than a collective self-defense in
the furtherance of revolutionary intercommunalism or Black nationalism.
Corporate lockdown of popular media
is a political necessity and scientific
inevitability requiring further description of
this process, along with suggested avenues of
resistance, which will be the focus of subsequent
columns. Our approach to the study of and
response to media must be akin to that of Huey P.
Newton who said he studied law to become a better burglar.
Jared A. Ball, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of
communication studies at Morgan State
University. He is editor-at- large of the
Journal of Hip-Hop and Global Culture from
<http://wblinc.org/>Words, Beats and Life and
hosts Jazz & Justice Mondays 1-3p EST on DC's
<http://wpfw.org/>WPFW 89.3 FM Pacifica Radio.
Ball is also the founder and creator of FreeMix
Radio: The Original Mixtape Radio Show, a hip-hop
mixtape committed to the practice of underground
emancipatory journalism. Ball is also a board
member of the International Association for
Hip-Hop Education and a Communications Fellow
with the <http://www.greeninstitute.net/>Green
Institute. He is currently working on his first
book Hip-Hop as Mass Media: The Mixtape and
Emancipatory Journalism and can be found online
at <http://voxunion.com/>voxunion.com.
Freedom Archives
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