Lyrical code-switching in Malayalam Hip Hop songs

Abstract The Malayalam Hip Hop genre of music has experienced an extraordinary surge in popularity in the past decade; a shift in the musical culture in India, particularly Kerala. Malayalam Hip Hop brings forth a heteroglossia in terms of the use of language(s), dialects and the identities indexed. As common in bilingual and multilingual Hip Hop contexts, extensive code-switching techniques are employed in Malayalam rap. In addition to Malayalam-English code-switching, the songs use and intersperse Malayalam dialects, including marginalized ones. The paper analyses select popular Malayalam Hip Hop songs, exploring the extent of language choice, code-switching and its linguistic, discursive, poetic, and sociopolitical functions. The use of English signals participation in a global genre, and the dialects localize the genre, negotiate identities, and reclaim certain values, artistic styles, and memory. While the multidialectal counter-public localizes the genre linguistically, rap in standard Malayalam addresses contextually relevant socio-political themes and this is an alternate strategy of localization.