RHYTHMS OF RESISTANCE: ON RHETORIC AND REGGAE MUSIC (JAMAICA, RASTAFARI)

In: Dissertation Abstracts International

Open Access

Abstract

Statements claiming that music represents a medium of potential political and cultural influence range from the Socratic dialogues in Plato's Republic to the recent ban and subsequent destruction of all Western musical instruments in Libya. Yet, in rhetorical studies, little progress has been made in the development of critical models for the analysis of music. Previous studies fail to examine adequately the nonlinguistic elements of music and tend to work largely from a message-effect model of communication. In contrast, I use an audience-centered, interpretive, ethnographic approach to the analysis of music, thereby observing the uses to which audiences put popular music forms. The study also employs a semiotic vocabulary, thereby allowing me to examine nonlinguistic signs in popular music. ; The critical concepts developed in this study are employed in an examination of reggae music and its role in the major subculture of Jamaica, Rastafari. Chapter II provides an historical contextualization of reggae music which offers a rhetorical definition of the genre based on audience expectations, uses, and interpretive schema. In Chapter III, an analysis of reggae music performed live identifies three significant codic elements in reggae music and then examines their typical structural interrelationship, offering a reconstruction of audience reading positions. In Chapter IV, the complexity of audience interpretations is addressed via analysis of reggae music as it is broadcast over Jamaican radio. ; In conclusion, I argue that audiences use music in different ways according to the situations in which it is presented and received. Furthermore, reggae music structures codic elements in much the same way linguistic messages are formed. Rhetorically, the composite message of reggae music makes claims on attitudes and behaviors which are characterized as appeals to resist the dominant ideology of Jamaica. The audience-centered and interpretive approach is better able to illuminate the rhetorical functions of popular music than are traditional methods of rhetorical criticism. ; Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 46-10, Section: A, page: 2856. ; Thesis (Ph.D.)--The University of Iowa, 1985.