2025/12/20 by Annukka Saaristo · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · #Music History and Culture #Diverse Musicological Studies #Crafts, Textile, and Design
paper · pdf · doi:10.30666/elore.160816
openalex publication_date 2025/12/20 · openalex created_date 2025/12/21 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
This article examines the relationship between place and heritagisation in rap artists’ narratives in interviews conducted between 2022 and 2024. The research material consists of interviews with artists from Espoo as well as the kickoff event for the Olari Rap course organised by Rytmimusiikkiopisto Tauko in October 2024. I examine rap as a transgenerational and transnational phenomenon, where local traditions such as narrative conventions and themes influence music production and engagement with Hip Hop culture. This active cultural remembrance and the transmission of crystallised knowledge and experience can be referred to as the heritagisation of place-based knowledge, experience, and traditions of expression. My research questions are: what kinds of heritage are present in the artists’ when they talk about their Hip Hop communities? What kinds of heritage do artists pass on and what kinds of heritagisation process do they and other actors produce about the local Hip Hop community? What do these things tell us about Espoo and the demand for authenticity in this city, which is intrinsic to Hip Hop culture? Place acts as a symbolic locus of culture, through which tradition is shaped, re-evaluated, and critically examined. The discourse of authenticity, both historical and artistic, which has been widely studied in Hip Hop culture studies, can also be examined through two different lenses: cultural heritage and legacy. Legacy serves as a means of producing individual authenticity, as it allows artists to highlight their own roles in relation to Hip Hop culture as a whole. The cultural heritage of Hip Hop, on the other hand, is constructed on a community's experience of place and the practices, patterns, and values associated with that place. These heritages are partly intertwined, as individual experiences are linked with the communities and events from which the cultural heritage is formed.