UC San Diego

In this study, I explore the ways music is perceived and manifested by ensembles who meld the influences and pedagogical approaches within the overlapping ecosystems of Historically Black College and University (HBCU) show-style ensembles and Hip-Hop. Although the use of Hip-Hop in secondary, tertiary, and ancillary summer band programs is highly debated in the Black bandworld, the links between styles, not just as repertoire, but as an underlying ethos, is part of the natural existence of neighborhoods that act as an extension of the HBCU campus, whose people designate custom-written band arrangements as a genre of Black music. Research addressing American marching ensembles is usually confined to music educators who deny the impact of Hip-Hop or lack the wherewithal to recognize where these cultural intersections lie and when they take place. Conversely, the marching arts in general have not been contextualized as a larger part of African-American popular music making by scholars, even though the integration of Black commercial music into band culture is part and parcel of how Southern Blackness is defined to aficionados in the region. As part of my inquiry, I historicize and frame the practice of cranking, sometimes characterized as overblowing, as Black interventionist musicking, and interrogate the rationale behind Black identity itself being negotiated within this community between bands who partake and those who don’t. I investigate the aggression embodied by ensembles engaging in head-to-head battle, which impacts the dual mission of band programs entertaining audiences and educating students. The culture and collaborative nature of arranging in the bandworld is acknowledged, but I examine the learning processes of these writers, as well as aspects of composing new material in their work. By presenting evidence obtained via musicological archival procedures, textual analysis of arrangements, and ethnographic interviews and observations, then merging it with autoethnographic reflections by means of the author’s positionality as a practitioner in Hip-Hop and the marching arts, I add to the field of Hip-Hop, African-American, and popular music studies though diagnosing markers in culture and sound that live at the nexus of Black music.