Talking 'bout your mama : the dozens, snaps, and the deep roots of rap

The Resource Talking 'bout your mama : the dozens, snaps, and the deep roots of rap
Label
Talking 'bout your mama : the dozens, snaps, and the deep roots of rap
Title remainder
the dozens, snaps, and the deep roots of rap
Statement of responsibility
Elijah Wald
Title variation
Talking about your mama
Creator
Author
Subject
Genre
Language
eng
Summary
"At its simplest, the dozens is a comic concatenation of "yo' mama" jokes. At its most complex, it is a form of social interaction that reaches back to African ceremonial rituals. Whether considered vernacular poetry, verbal dueling, a test of street cool, or just a mess of dirty insults, the dozens has been a basic building block of African-American culture. A game which could inspire raucous laughter or escalate to violence, it provided a wellspring of rhymes, attitude, and raw humor that has influenced pop musicians from Jelly Roll Morton to Ice Cube. Wald explores the depth of the dozens' roots, looking at mother-insulting and verbal combat from Greenland to the sources of the Niger, and shows its breadth of influence in the seminal writings of Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston; the comedy of Richard Pryor and George Carlin; the dark humor of the blues; the hip slang and competitive jamming of jazz; and most recently in the improvisatory battling of rap. A forbidden language beneath the surface of American popular culture, the dozens links children's clapping rhymes to low-down juke joints and the most modern street verse to the earliest African American folklore."--Publisher's website
Member of
Cataloging source
YDXCP
Dewey number
398.7089/96073
Illustrations
illustrations
Index
index present
LC call number
PN6231.N5
LC item number
W35 2014
Literary form
non fiction
Nature of contents
bibliography

Context

Context of Talking 'bout your mama : the dozens, snaps, and the deep roots of rap

Work of

Structured data from the Bibframe namespace is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License by Waubonsee Community College. Additional terms may apply to data associated with third party namespaces.
Processing Feedback ...