Breaking Atoms II: Analysis as Artistic Practice
Day and time: Friday (March 20) · 11:15–12:45
Location: Auditorium
Format: Talk
Practical Analysis / Analytical Practice
Presented by: Kjell Andreas Oddekalv
Nobody’s as analytical about the tiniest building blocks of a hip-hop track as the people making it. Deejays, emcees, producers and beatmakers will obsessively tinker with details that most listeners might never pick up on. That’s just part of the practice. Musical analysis is musical practice (so Kofi Agawu writes), analysis of hip-hop is a hip-hop performance, and hip-hop practitioners are hip-hop analysts. The democratization of music production and music publication is well documented and theorized, but “analysis” still smells of ivory tower academy exceptionalism. A little bit of demystification is called for.
When Griff Rollefson takes “a look at musical approaches to hip-hop [which] must necessarily think critically about situating rap music within the state of the academic field that we call ‘music’” he identifies the “leading edge approaches of (…) arts practice research.” What can that look like? This paper presents examples of musical analysis revolving around tools and applications of hip-hop practitioners, like notebooks/smart phone note apps and Digital Audio Workstations.
Reading the Rapper's Body: A Multimodal Analysis of Embodied Musical Identity in Czech Rap
Presented by: Jakub Fischer
This paper examines the overlooked embodied-affective aspects of musical identity within the context of the Czech rap scene. It focuses on how rappers' musical identity is embodied and presented during live performances and how it is co-constructed in dynamic interaction with the audience through specific gestures, facial expressions, stage movement, and reactions to audience engagement. To understand the meanings negotiated during these performances, video recordings of present and past concerts are analyzed using multimodal analysis (Jewitt et al., 2025), an approach that systematically examines how meaning is created through the interplay of various communicative modes like image, gesture, and speech. The personal perspective on embodied expression and communication is further explored through in-depth interviews with the rappers. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how the non-verbal and performative aspects of musical identities are variable across time, intentions, and in relation to genre norms.
Breinsuiker: n' Woord-Smoortjie of anticolonial language practice through Afrikaaps rap from South Africa
Presented by: Jody Metcalfe & Quintin “Jitsvinger” Goliath
Drawing inspiration from a staple in every ‘coloured’ household across the Cape, Faldielah Williams’ The Cape Malay Cook Book, this article follows the recipe that created Breinsuiker, a lyrical and musical offering by Cape Town wordarchitect/argitektbek Jitsvinger. Just like the smoortjie, a Cape Malay dish of sauteed onions and tomatoes as a base, where other ingredients are added to create complex flavours that dance on your tongue, the creation of Breinsuiker is a mix of multi-layered ingredients through step-by-step methods. Breinsuiker or “brain sugar” refers to being sexually attracted to someone’s intelligence and appreciating the essence of their being. Breinsuiker, performed in Afrikaaps, is a romantic song, juxtaposed to the colonial and apartheid narratives that have framed Afrikaaps as being synonymous with gham/ghetto. This paper, a collaboration between a researcher and practitioner/artist takes an anticolonial approach to academic writing through centering the artist and indigenous knowledges. Through unpacking the contextual environment and the creative process that was smoored together to make Breinsuiker, this paper shows not only the ingredients of the critical imaginings of the Breinsuiker project, but also its rootedness in the methods behind restorative and anticolonial narratives/work, that is present in Hip Hop culture in South Africa.
