A WORLD OF GANGS
Friday, September 5th, 2008
Today, I present you a book recommendation. This book is also about music – gangsta rap in particular – but mostly it´s a pretty amazing book about the history and culture of gangs around the world. I picked it up because it has a foreword by Mike Davis, which already can be considered a quality approval (check also Davis´ books “The Birth Of The 3rd World” and “World Of Slums” amongst others). But most of all I bought it to get a better understanding of the social and economic reasons why gangs have institutionalized in urban areas around the world – and to realise the role of some of their cultural by-products, be it gangsta rap, baile funk or kwaito. So next time you say to your mates “I gotta cop me some of those ghetto beats from Man Rec” you can be a bit a more precise after reading “A World Of Gangs”: The music on Man Recordings (except for the fidget stuff, hehe) is in many aspects an intrinsic spin off of both globalisation and gang culture.
John M.Hagedorn “A World Of Gangs”, University Of Minnesota Press, 2008
The book´s author also runs a homepage worth checking out: http://www.gangresearch.net/
