GLOBALISATION OF HIP-HOP: FROM THE BRONX TO INDIA A SECONDARY REVIEW OF CULTURAL DIFFUSION, GLOCALISATION, AND SOUND PRODUCTION PRACTICES IN TRANSNATIONAL RAP MUSIC

Hip-hop music emerged in the early 1970s when this musical form found its origin among the Afro-Americans and Puerto Ricans in the South Bronx of New York City, and today, it is regarded as one of the most widely spread popular music cultures in the world (Rose, 1994; Chang, 2005). This paper seeks to examine the diffusion of hip-hop music culture from its origin in the Bronx to India through a narrative literature review with systematic searches following PRISMA 2020 guidelines (Page et al., 2021). We make use of research conducted in peer-reviewed literature in ethnomusicology, sociolinguistics, cultural studies, marketing, and sound production, especially literature on hip-hop sampling and beat-making practices, to examine the mechanisms that underlie the globalisation of hip-hop music culture – media flows, diaspora migration, cultural diplomacy, and digital distribution technology. Based on the framework provided by Appadurais (1996) theory of global flows of culture and Robertson’s (1995) notion of glocalisation, the review places the genre of Indian hip-hop, especially the "gully rap" phenomenon in the city of Mumbai, featuring artists such as DIVINE and Naezy, as an example of deliberate local adaptation, and not of passive cultural imitation. The results show that the globalisation of Indian hip-hop was determined by three interrelated processes - technological democratisation of music production, indigenisation in terms of language and culture of poetic expression, and mainstreaming due to the impact of the movies, notably Zoya Akhtars 2019 film Gully Boy.