Troubling the distinction between art and everyday life: An ethnographic case study on the socio-material complexities of musical hip hop practice

As a practice hip hop problematizes the distinction between art and everyday life. This article details a specific studio session in Amsterdam with a key interlocutor, which is part of my ethnographic research in the Netherlands on the societal impact of musical hip hop practices. Building on the work of Stuart Hall, Kyra D. Gaunt and Christopher Small, I show how the material, social and musical elements of this studio session are interconnected. I foreground the dynamic process of how meaning is produced intersubjectively through hip hop practice. The focus on practice helps to bring into view two dynamics: (1) how these practices structure activity over time and how that is relevant within musical interaction, and (2) how agency can be contextualized within a given (socio-)material structure, and how practitioners use hip hop to deal with, make sense of, and affect their daily lives. To highlight the material aspects of the studio session, I reflect on the influence of the vinyl record that was sampled, and the MPC5000 that was used in the production, to discuss: (1) their limitations and affordances, (2) their affective dimension in relation to the practitioners and (3) how it brings into view the history of the subject’s interconnected musical practices. Reflecting on the social dimension of our songwriting, I argue that our interaction needs to be studied beyond the discursive realm alone, by highlighting the intersubjective and corporeal nature of this creative process.