The Message- Critical Reflection

Robin Sylvan’s chapter “The Message” is about the spirituality that can be found within hip hop culture (Sylvan 2002). It forms a section of Sylvan’s book “Traces of the Spirit: The Religious Dimensions of Popular Music” which looks at the spiritual and religious sides of various genres of music.

The chapter is split into two halves, with the first a very dense look at the history of rap music, hip hop culture and its influences. The second half is a look at the religious components taken from interviews Sylvan has conducted with practitioners and fans of hip hop in the Bay Area of Southern California.

The interviews shed light on little known aspects of hip hop culture, most notably the sense of community and transcendence it creates (Sylvan 2002, 210). The reason why hip hop has become so successful is illuminated as interviewees discuss their own experiences and the positive effect hip hop has had on their lives (Sylvan 2002, 212). However, Sylvan admits that this can depend on the areas where the practitioners come from, as hip hop is different from city to city (2002, 202). Sylvan does discuss the differences between East Coast and West Coast rap but doesn’t go into much detail. A message of the love and peace in hip hop’s messages and community results from the interviews but interviews with those involved with hip hop in other areas may have resulted in a different view of the culture, and would be an interesting follow-up to this chapter.

Work Cited:

Sylvan, R. “The Message.” In Traces of the Spirit: The Religious Dimensions of Popular Music, 182-213. New York and London: New York University Press, 2002.