Doin’ damage in my native language: The use of “resistance vernaculars” in hip hop in France, Italy, and Aotearoa/New Zealand

Abstract

This chapter examines the use of indigenous languages other than English in rap music in Zimbabwe, Switzerland, France, Italy, and Aotearoa/New Zealand as more appropriate examples of resistance vernaculars. These examples of resistance vernaculars re-territorialize not only major Anglophone rules of intelligibility but also those of other standard languages such as French and Italian. The variety of ethnic origins among French rappers, from the French Caribbean to the Arab populations of North Africa to other parts of Europe, is notable. The chapter argues that rhizomic, diasporic flows of rap music outside the United States correspond to the formation of syncretic glocal subcultures, in Roland Robertson's sense of the term, involving local indigenizations of the global musical idiom of rap. Dcleuze's notion of the rhizome is aptly applicable to hip hop culture and rap music, which has rapidly become globalized and transplanted into different cultures throughout the world.