Street Scriptures
Between God and Hip-Hop
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Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226819167
Number of Pages: 256
Published: 16/05/2022
Width: 15.2 cm
Height: 22.9 cm
This book explores an important aspect of hip-hop that is rarely considered: its deep entanglement with spiritual life.
The world of hip-hop is saturated with religion, but rarely is that element given serious consideration. In Street Scriptures, Alejandro Nava focuses our attention on this aspect of the music and culture in a fresh way, combining his profound love of hip-hop, his passion for racial and social justice, and his deep theological knowledge. Street Scriptures offers a refreshingly earnest and beautifully written journey through hip-hop's deep entanglement with the sacred.
Nava analyzes the religious heartbeat in hip-hop, looking at crosscurrents of the sacred and profane in rap, reggaeton, and Latinx hip-hop today. Ranging from Nas, Kendrick Lamar, Chance the Rapper, Lauryn Hill, and Cardi B to St. Augustine and William James, Nava examines the ethical-political, mystical-prophetic, and theological qualities in hip-hop, probing the pure sonic and aesthetic signatures of music, while also diving deep into the voices that invoke the spirit of protest. The result is nothing short of a new liberation theology for our time, what Nava calls a "street theology."
"Nava introduces an intervention into the excesses and shortcomings of two of the major theological movements of the 20th century: Latin American liberation theology and Hans Urs von Balthasar's theology of beauty, the via pulchritudinis. He notes how liberation theology underdetermined beauty as a suspicious distraction from social justice, while the theology of beauty, in liturgy and beyond, overdetermined beauty through a fixed cultural lens. . . . This erudition and range make the book's most compelling case for itself." * America Magazine * "Nava explores the connections between religion and hip-hop, revealing the overlooked theological roots of the genre and its potential to change the world." * US Catholic Magazine, "What We're Reading" * "Using examples from current hip-hop artists, as well as popular artists from the past, Nava passionately describes the blending of religion, politics, culture, and aesthetics in hip-hop music." * Reading Religion * "With this majestic study, Nava reclaims 'the streets' as a living, breathing text, through which black and brown youth transmute everyday terror into spiritual beauty and hurl truth on the doorsteps of power. By placing academic theology and urban hip-hop culture side by side, Nava's work has the potential to usher both into a more liberating future." -- Onaje X. O. Woodbine, author of 'Black Gods of the Asphalt: Religion, Hip-Hop, and Street Basketball' "Nava's writing pulses with passion-electric, vivid, joyful, and oh so readable. By immersing the reader in the music, Nava offers the most compelling lens available on exactly how hip-hop created a moral aesthetic that moves people to change the world. Street Scriptures is social criticism of the highest order." -- Jonathon Kahn, author of 'Divine Discontent: The Religious Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois' "In this compelling work, Nava reads the radically subversive 'street scriptures' of hip-hop as a distinctive form of urban liberation theology. This elegantly argued book by a scholar and activist is an important contribution to the study of urban religion and of 'religion' itself in one of its most powerful and challenging contemporary instantiations." -- Robert Orsi, author of 'History and Presence'