[2008.06.28] 莱克星顿专栏：hip-hop 政治学

Lexington
莱克星顿

The politics of hip-hop
“嘻哈”政治

Jun 26th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Can rap change the world?
饶舌能否改变世界？

“WRITING about music is like dancing about architecture,” intoned Elvis Costello, a pop star. So a columnist approaches the subject of hip-hop (which includes rap) with caution. One cannot hope to capture its sound or fury on the page. Instead, Lexington will ask what it signifies. Is it “pavement poetry [that] vibrates with commitment to speaking for the voiceless,” as Michael Eric Dyson, a professor at Georgetown University, believes? Is it “an enormously influential agent for social change which must be responsibly and proactively utilised to fight the war on poverty and injustice,” as the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network (HSAN), a pressure group, contends? Or is it mostly “angry, profane and women-hating…music that plays on the worst stereotypes of black people,” as Bill Cosby harrumphs?
流行歌星艾维斯·科斯特洛曾缓缓道出，”写乐评犹如对着建筑而舞蹈。”①是故，当一个专栏作家企图触摸嘻哈文化（包括说唱）这个主题时，他尤须谨慎行事。他不能期待单靠一支笔就能将它的声效和暴躁恰如其分地演绎出来。因而，”莱克星顿”将会另辟蹊径，去追问它究竟意味着什么。它是否如乔治敦大学教授迈克尔·埃里克·戴森所以为的那样，乃”飘摇不定的路面诗歌，许下为底层民众代言起行的承诺”？抑或又如压力集团”嘻哈峰会行动网”（HSAN）所声称的，此乃”推动社会变革的深具影响的一个动因，这种变革势必吹响冲锋的号角，积极而稳妥地致力于反贫穷反社会不公的斗争”？再不然，莫非它通常就成了比尔·科斯比②嗤之以鼻的下流玩意—“这种愤愤然、亵渎而又夹杂着对女性憎恨之情的靡靡之音利用了黑人中最烂的那套陈词滥调”？

None of the above, argues John McWhorter, in a new book called “All About the Beat: Why Hip-Hop Can’t Save Black America”. Mr McWhorter, a fellow of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think-tank, is a hip-hop fan. He likens the group OutKast to Stravinsky. He admits that some hip-hop lyrics display an ungentlemanly attitude towards women, but he doubts that listening to violent lyrics causes people to behave more violently. If it did, there would be more opera fans stabbing their ex-lovers outside bullfights.
在新书《节奏天下：”嘻哈”为何难以拯救黑色美国》中，约翰·麦克沃特认为上述答案皆非。麦克沃特先生是曼哈顿学会（政治上趋于保守的智库）的会员，而且，还是一名”嘻哈”迷。他将OutKast组合比作斯特拉文斯基③。他承认一些说唱歌词对女性不恭，但是那种认为”暴力美学的歌词必将容易导致听众产生暴力行为”的观点则让他难以苟同。倘若果真如此，那些歌剧发烧友在欣赏斗牛表演之余岂不是要前赴后继，乱刀捅死他们昔日的情人④？

Mr McWhorter also thinks people take hip-hop far too seriously. Those who disapprove of it vastly overestimate its capacity to corrupt. And those who expect it to foster a political revolution that will dramatically improve the lot of black Americans are going to be disappointed.
他也认为人们太把”嘻哈”当回事了。那些极为反感它的人高估了”嘻哈”的腐蚀性。而那些指望它能孵育一场政治革命的人正幻想这种革命能够戏剧性地改善美国黑人的生活状况。这批人终将失望和沮丧。

The most popular rappers are brilliant entertainers. They have also done a lot to make people aware of the difficulties facing poor urban blacks. But their political views are neither particularly acute nor central to their work. Consider the hot album of the moment: “Tha Carter III” by Lil Wayne. Its central message is that if you are a rap star, you will get laid. The song “Lollipop”, for example, celebrates a young lady who treats Lil Wayne as she might a lollipop.
最流行的说唱歌手是那些才华横溢的艺人。为了让外界意识到城市贫困黑人所面临的种种困难，他们已经做得够多。但是，这批说唱天王的政治眼光既不特别敏锐，又非他们娱乐事业所关注的重心。看看此刻小韦恩大卖的那张专辑《卡特3》罢。它的中心思想是，如果你是一名说唱明星，就会有姑娘主动来上你的床。譬如专辑中的单曲《棒棒糖》里，一位年轻辣妹服服帖帖伺候着歌手的”棒棒糖”，小韦恩对其”口技”赞赏有加。

On the last track Lil Wayne does get serious. He laments that “one in every nine black Americans are locked up” and that “the money that we spend on sending a motherfucker to jail…would be less to send his or her young ass to college.” Troy Nkrumah, the chairman of the National Hip-Hop Political Convention, thinks it wonderful that Lil Wayne is speaking truth to power. But if Lil Wayne is to be taken seriously, it needs to be pointed out that his “one in nine” figure is inaccurate-it is true only of black men aged 20-34, not black Americans in general. And his analysis is simplistic: the government’s spending priorities are not the sole determinant of whether you break rocks or read books.
当歌曲临近尾声时，小韦恩的确变得严肃起来。唱腔哀怨，”九个黑鬼八个蔫，还有一个牢中监”，”破钱砸向此杂碎，多是铺就铁窗路……身后那头小蠢驴，捉襟见肘求学路”……国家嘻哈政治大会主席特洛伊·恩克鲁玛表示，小韦恩在权力面前”说”出了真相，难能可贵。不过，假如要严肃认真对待小韦恩，那很有必要指出他所谓”九分之一”的数字是不准确的—惟有界定在20到34岁这个年龄段的黑人（并非总群体），它才算对。再者，他的分析亦过分简单，政府开支的轻重缓急并非决定你是砸石头还是啃书本的惟一变量。

Earnest hip-hop fans often argue that “commercial” rappers such as Lil Wayne are beside the point. Hip-hop’s revolutionary potential is best expressed by “conscious” rappers who focus on important issues rather than babes, bling and booze. The Roots, a group from Philadelphia, are often cited as an example. Their message? “If I can’t work to make it, I’ll rob and take it. Either that or me and my children are starving and naked.”
那些郑重其事的嘻哈粉丝或许并不服气。他们会说小韦恩这样的”商业化”明星难当大任，可以忽略不计。”觉悟”都在那些能锁定重要议题而非”什么心肝儿珠光宝气的装饰品以及豪饮烂醉”的说唱艺人身上呢。后者才是嘻哈文化之革命性潜能的最佳代言人。来自费城的乐团”根”（The Roots）就时常被当成这样的楷模。可他们的姿态又如何呢？”工作倘无意，抢夺更卖力。一箪食哈一件衣，非我非儿非虾米。”

But crime and starvation are hardly the only options. Even without a high-school diploma, a black man can probably find a job if he looks. And some manual jobs, such as plumber or cable technician, pay quite well. “It may well be that you can’t write much of a rap about training someone to fix heaters or air conditioners,” sighs Mr McWhorter.
但犯罪和饥饿几乎不是惟一的选择。即便没有高中文凭，一个黑人只要有求职意愿，他仍可能找到工作，并且水管工和电缆维修员这类体力活，薪酬还挺不错。麦克沃特难免一阵叹息，”你会将某人参加热水器或空调维修培训班这样的衰事写进歌词里吗？”

Conscious rappers are often well-meaning. Dead Prez, a duo from Florida, sometimes toss apples into the audience to encourage healthy eating. But when it comes to more contentious political issues, hip-hop offers no plausible solutions; only impotent and sometimes self-destructive rage. In “Lost in tha System” by Da Lench Mob, for example, the vocalist says, of a judge: “He added on another year cos I dissed him. Now here I go gettin’ lost in the system.” The disrespect in question was a suggestion that the judge perform fellatio on him.
觉悟良好的说唱歌手常常用心良苦。来自佛罗里达的二重唱组合”尸统”（Dead Prez）偶尔还会扔苹果给自己的乐迷以鼓励他们崇尚健康饮食。但是，一旦触及到那些容易惹来争议的政治问题时，”嘻哈”却无法提供可信的解决办法，仅仅是于事无补的望洋兴叹，甚至时而还会裹挟着自暴自弃式的狂怒。比如Da Lench Mob的单曲《迷失在体制中》，主唱开始揶揄法官：”因俺作践他，多判一年刑。此时此地中，迷失体制里。”其备受争议的冒犯之举是建议法官给他”吹箫”。

Fans love rappers partly because they strike such a confrontational pose. Dead Prez sometimes burn dollar bills to protest the evils of capitalism, and their lyrics accuse teachers of teaching “white man lies”. Mr McWhorter summarises the message of hip-hop as: “Things will keep sucking until there is a revolution where the white man finally understands and does a complete 180-degree turn.” This was true half a century ago in the segregated South. But today, it is nonsense.
乐迷热爱这些饶舌艺人一定程度上是因为他们所采取的那种战斗姿态。”尸统”乐团就喜欢偶尔烧烧美钞来表达它对资本主义诸多弊端的抗议。歌词的矛头也指向那些传播”白人谎言”的教书先生。针对”嘻哈”的政治姿态，麦克沃特总结如下：”直到整个社会都掀起一场革命，全盘接受它的白人自身也实现了彻底180度的大转变，惟其如此，这种黑白世界的对峙才可能有所缓和。”倘若反观50年前盛行种族隔离的美国南方，麦氏的判断放在当时的确非常正确；但今天，它已不合时宜，纯属无稽之谈。

The limits of protest
抗议的限度

Some people argue that hip-hop is politically consequential because activists can use the music and the culture that surrounds it to communicate with young people who might otherwise shun politics. There is something to this. For example, in 2004 the superstar P. Diddy fronted a fairly successful voter-registration campaign called “Vote or Die”. And HSAN once co-sponsored a rally to protest about a proposed $300m cut to the New York City school budget. The cut never happened. HSAN trumpets this as a great victory. But it is hardly evidence that hip-hop can change the world. That $300m is a tiny slice of what New York spends on its schools, and lack of money is far from the main obstacle to improving them.
有人认为”嘻哈”具有重大的政治意义，因为社会活动家可挟其音乐及文化”外衣”以联络沟通当下那些可能患上政治冷漠症的年轻人。这的确有些道理。譬如，超级明星P.Diddy在2004年就领导了一场名曰”不投票，毋宁死”的特别成功的选民注册运动。此外，”嘻哈峰会行动网”（HSAN）也曾与人联合主办过一次政治集会，旨在抗议对纽约市学校削减3亿美元的预算提案。而预算削减从未发生。HSAN便吹嘘已取得重大胜利。但这很难被看做是”嘻哈”能够改变世界的证据。那3亿美元仅是纽约教育总支出中的九牛一毛。而且，入不敷出的财政困难远远不是改善黑人教育水平的主要障碍。

Civil-rights activists in the 1960s were inspired by protest songs, but the songs did not drive the movement. Political change requires hard and often tedious work, as the thousands of weary volunteers working for Barack Obama can attest. Incidentally, one might think that Mr Obama’s spectacular rise undermines the argument that a black man can never get a fair shake in America. But Mr Nkrumah shrugs that even if Mr Obama is elected president, he will be powerless to implement progressive policies because the corporate power structure will not let him.
上世纪60年代的民权活动家从抗议歌曲中得到启发，但这些战歌并未推动社会运动的蓬勃开展。政治变革要求艰苦卓绝甚至时常是单调乏味的基础工作，一如奥巴马麾下数千名疲惫不堪的志愿者所证明的那样。顺便提一句，有人或许会认为奥巴马那令人叹为观止的一枝独秀已打破黑人在美国无法获得公正对待的历史魔咒。但恩克鲁玛则对此耸耸肩—即使奥巴马当选美国总统，他仍无力贯彻开明激进的政策，因为整个共同体的权力结构不会允许他这样做。

译注：

①”Writing about music is like dancing about architecture – it’s a really stupid thing to want to do.”
–Elvis Costello, in an interview by Timothy White entitled “A Man out of Time Beats the Clock.” Musician magazine No. 60 (October 1983), p. 52.
原文引用艾维斯原话的前半截，而隐去后半句，大概是因为它比较出名。或许已无需饶舌。艾维斯的意思可能是反感当时的评论家对音乐的挑剔和业余。音乐原本用来聆听，如今乐评泛滥，指手画脚，音乐人自然容易不满。而专栏的意思无非是先承认A picture is worth a thousand words，尔后再继续为他对HIP-HOP（注意他没有直接说RAP）的演绎寻求辩护和正名。

②美国黑人喜剧演员、电视制作人和社会活动家。其对嘻哈措辞强烈的批评亦可见对某种亚文化的评价超越了种族。黑人世界也并非铁板一块。

③前者是来自亚特兰大的双人说唱组。第46届格莱美音乐奖得主，美国南方粗口说唱乐团中的佼佼者；后者全名为伊戈尔·斯特拉文斯基（1882~1971），享有世界声誉的俄裔美藉作曲家。主要代表作为早期三部舞剧音乐《火鸟》、《彼得鲁什卡》、《春之祭》。

④是否在影射歌剧《卡门》？译者是高雅艺术门外汉，揣测而已。

译者：alex147   http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=12343&extra=page%3D1
译文对比阅读：http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=12331&extra=page%3D1