What does it mean to say rap music causes riots?
It's been a busy couple of months and I have plenty of thoughts on experimental electronic music stocked up waiting to be written out, but I couldn't resist looking briefly at how music has been brought into analysis (such as it is) of the riots in London & elsewhere. (I'll begin though, with a disclaimer: I am no expert on the music that's been discussed. Neither, though, are most of the people who've been talking about this, so I think I'm at least one-up on them with my honesty.) The historian David Starkey is now the most infamous of those who've brought music into the discussion, due to his analysis of the influence of 'black culture' upon rioters & looters. About five minutes in to the Newsnight segment where Starkey claimed the white working-class had adopted aspects of Jamaican-influenced gangster culture (and no, I won't refer to it as 'gangsta' culture as others have, as if doing so demonstrates you are 'down...