Hip Hop as a Revolution

Hip Hop from African culture "blends music and life into an integrated totality , uniting performers, dancers, and listeners in collaborative endeavor." What the great jazz drummer Max Roach says in the article was memorable for me: "The thing that frightened people about hip hop was that they heard rhythm - rhythm for rhythm's sake.Hip Hop lives in the world of sound - not the world of music - and that's why it's so revolutionary . What we as black people have always done is show that the world of sound is bigger than white people think. There are many areas that fall outside the narrow Western definition of music and hip hop is one of them" (510).

Hip Hop belonging in the world of sound has broadened the music world and now it has become an essential genre of pop-music. It might be revolutionary not only because Hip Hop represented a different, unique culture but also it expresses the performer's mind and the singer's opinion on the society and its politics.

I wonder how revolutionary it was when it came to my country. It broadened up the Japanese world of music and the uniqueness and innovativeness caught the many Japanese young. Some singers brought Rap to the field and surprised people by the way they say words with rhythm. And the Hip Hop culture produced a new style of fashion, called Ｂ kei fashion (B stands for Breaking Dance and Bronx). When it came to Japan it had a different meaning from that Hip Hop had when it was brought up by African Americans in the U. S. But it also greatly contributed to today's J-pop music.