Purists and Peripherals

Purists and Peripherals examines audience engagement with two cultural forms, hip-hop and grime. The book initially addresses the continued academic validity of the term subculture in light of recent moves to realign cultural studies to an understanding of youth cultural engagement as fragmented and increasingly transient. Through a combination of academic analysis and engagement in the field, it is argued that different aspects of subcultural theory, from seemingly competing paradigms, can help explore and understand the varied behaviours, attitudes and values of young people engaged with this music. Emphasising activity on a continuum, the purist and the peripheral model developed in this book allows a more nuanced appreciation of subcultural affiliation to develop. For years, rap music and more recently grime, have been demonised by some elements of the mainstream media and the messages inherent in texts, along with the responses of audiences, has been largely viewed as problematic. Research in the field of hip-hop studies has traditionally tended to favour academic dissection over the opinions of those actively engaged in the music and associated cultural forms. This book seeks to address these imbalances through an engagement with the opinions and values of members of five research groups in the South East of England. The research is based on ethnography and focus group interviews addressing areas relating to audience interpretation of hip-hop and grime music. Through an exploration of issues such as representation of gender, ethnicity and the cultural use of the term 'authenticity', Purists and Peripherals seeks to examine these variant musical forms whilst privileging the voices of those who live and breathe this music.