Rapping the Shoah: (Counter-)Narratives and Judaism in German Hip-Hop

Abstract

The Berlin-based rapper Ben Salomo has been disseminating hip-hop tracks that engage with collective memories and family memories of the Holocaust and World War II since 2016. He has also published an autobiography that addresses the subject. These memories are interwoven with various historical, political, and religious discourses with references to the ancient world, Jewish liturgy, and contemporary processes of othering. Focusing on the track “Identität,” which was released in 2016, this article examines how memory narratives are negotiated differently in the track, in the autobiography, and in an interview conducted in 2019. Using a combination of music analysis, narrative analysis, and ethnography, the author elaborates how the track, in comparison to the autobiography and the interview, enables the negotiation of memory-related counter-narratives that not only abandon a victim-centered view but also question and criticize aspects of contemporary institutionalized memory culture. The inquiry shows how hip-hop serves as a medium for combining different musical elements and bringing a future-oriented yet reflective post-Holocaust perspective into a musical memory practice.

Introduction

The Berlin-based rap artist Ben Salomo combines discursive negotiations of “being Jewish” with statements against racism, discrimination, and right-wing populism in his songs. In this process, he draws on memories connected to National Socialism and the Holocaust and interweaves them with other historiographic and political representations. The track “Identität” (Identity),[1] which was released on his 2016 album Es gibt nur einen (There is only one), makes this particularly clear. Salomo uses aspects of Jewish history and liturgy and connects them to autobiographical, family, and wider collective memories. The track was uploaded to YouTube with an accompanying music video and currently has about 193,000 views.[2] In this article, I will use Salomo’s work as a focus for broader musical considerations to investigate how negotiations and interweavings of memory, history, and politics are built upon the relationship of narratives and counter-narratives.

I will begin with a brief historical overview of research on hip-hop that addresses aspects of Judaism, being or identifying as Jewish, and intersectional marginalization. In the second part, I will describe my approach to the topic of narratives and counter-narratives on a theoretical and methodological level. I will then dedicate the third part to briefly exemplifying usages of different narrative formations in Jewish history. Since Salomo predominantly draws on narratives from the post-Holocaust period, I focus on elaborating narratives from this same context. Finally, I will analyze narratives and counter-narratives in different sources and elaborate on them as manifestations of narratives that existed beforehand, but are now embedded and discursively re-negotiated in the musical framework of a hip-hop track.

Theorizing and Methodizing (Counter-) Narratives

Three media form the basis of this particular investigation: the hip-hop track “Identität” by Ben Salomo; his autobiography, which was published in 2019; and a semi-structured interview I conducted with him in 2019. In these media, questions of narrative representation, especially those of individuals, topics and histories, are central. I will address these through the lens of narratives and counter-narratives. In a comparative analysis of autobiographies of German gangster rappers, Martin Seeliger references Stuart Hall, who describes an identity as something “always based upon a narrative, a kind of representation”[15] (emphasis mine). For this article, the understanding of narrative is of particular relevance. Seeliger points out that these are self-representations that refer to “different social affiliations as central points of reference.”[16] In order to make the concept of narrative productive for this work, I build on guiding questions posed by the historian Ute Daniel in her Kompendium Kulturgeschichte.[17] Daniel’s approach is primarily designed for the study of narratives in academic historiography but can nevertheless be profitably applied to the analysis of narratives within the context of my subject matter here. Drawing on Daniel, I will take into account the “historical-philosophical lines,”[18] that is to say, the “grand narratives” of the respective sources under consideration.[19] In a second step, I examine which representations of time are present: for example, do narratives of National Socialism (which figure prominently in Salomo’s oeuvre) always portray the period as a single, or isolated historical event, or are other “times” also depicted and integrated into the narrative, e.g., earlier catastrophes or political patterns of thought? Furthermore, I investigate which individuals or collectives are privileged or marginalized by the narratives, for example, by particular emphases or omissions. In the course of this contextualization of power relations, it is also relevant to consider what is also left unsaid,[20] what is “overlooked as insignificant and cut off from the collective narratives sustaining identity,”[21] or what Astrid Erll calls the “other basic operation of memory: forgetting.”[22] Possibly the most essential point is the analysis of how the narratives are in fact constructed, i.e., which stylistic devices, such as metaphors and comparisons, are employed.[23]

One specific form of narrative is that of the counter-narrative. The prefix “counter” generally refers to the fact that these are narratives cut across established narratives that are the most prominent in collective memory or in so-called historical canons. They challenge and renegotiate discourses of power, knowledge, and truth. Drawing on Miranda Crowdus’s research on Jewish rappers in South Tel Aviv, I will discuss counter-narratives in the context of collective “narratives of dispossession”[24] and “replacement ideologies.”[25]

Ann Rigney argues that “the lack of a pre-given connection between events and the way we later talk about them means that certain ‘models of remembrance’... have evolved that are applied to multiple situations.”[26] For example, to make the opaque chaos of war understandable and tolerable, selected narratives and models of remembrance are employed. Rigney characterizes these models as a “changing repertoire of narrative structures.”[27] If we assume that, as Rigney puts it, collective narratives are produced in politically charged spaces regulating what is important and sayable, we can conclude that these repertoires may also depend on the kind of medium in which they are negotiated. A hip-hop track, for example, might be politically charged differently than an autobiography, resulting in different ways of addressing a similar topic (e.g., the Holocaust). For Rigney,[28] this understanding of narratives can be compared to that of a monument, but one that is not limited in terms of its own localization. As a kind of “portable monument,” narratives are thus generally politically charged and can be re-articulated (albeit transformed) in various other media.[29]

In order to illustrate how narratives and counter-narratives are constructed and employed in these media, I will first provide a historical overview of the various narratives connected to Judaism and the Holocaust. I will touch on several examples that show that the narratives presented here are not new, per se, but are instead re-negotiated in a broader context of hip-hop: the interview, the autobiography, and the track.

Historicizing Narratives

Different and sometimes seemingly contradictory narratives and perspectives are all a part of Jewish historiography. Some of these narratives existed in parallel and were taken up in a wide variety of media and discourses. At this point, this article does not claim to provide a holistic or chronological overview of narratives of Jewish history. Rather, it presents a selection of narratives that play a role in the media examined in this article. The narratives negotiated in the autobiography, the interview, and the hip-hop track display parallels to particular narratives of Jewish and Israeli history, especially concerning the post-Holocaust period. These consist of victim- and family-centered narratives of suffering on the one hand, and heroic narratives on the other. These types of narratives are contextualized historically in this section for further analysis.

Variations of victim- and family-centered narratives can be found in media representations in Israel, especially after the Eichmann trial. This 1961 trial, in which SS leader Adolf Eichmann was sentenced to be executed in Israel, received a great deal of media attention. In the wake of that event, victims of the Holocaust were also given a media platform for the first time. These “private stories of suffering” by families played a major role.[30] As Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider explain, “The stories that witnesses told during the trial were not about heroism and resistance, but survivors spoke about weakness, death, and vulnerability.”[31] Levy and Sznaider refer to these as being increasingly talked about in families following the trial. The mediatization of the Eichmann trial can thus be seen as one of the first events to give family stories of suffering a representational space in the media and in family conversations.

The role of the television series Holocaust, which was first aired in 1978, should not be underestimated as an example of how this victim-centered narrative was outlined. In contrast to the Eichmann trial, the focus of discourse was no longer on the perpetrators, “but on the fictional story of a family of victims.”[32] The series was widely discussed in both Germany and the US and was watched by about 100 million viewers in the US alone.[33] As early as 1987, Robert Wuthnow analyzed viewer reactions to the series and noted viewers’ attempts at orientation in the incomprehensible chaos and horror of the Holocaust. By combining fictional and non-fictional elements, the producer Marvin Chomsky translated the incomprehensible into a “language” that was more familiar to a larger part of the population.[34] Part of that language comprised a range of narrative constructions the series drew on: “The Weiss family was conceptualized in such a way that virtually every American could effortlessly identify with it.”[35] With its mixture of the fictional and the non-fictional, the series formed a basis for narrative constructions that can be also found in films such as The Pianist and Schindler’s List. Narrative aspects that have been criticized by many as a trivialization of the Holocaust,[36] but which simultaneously make it possible to identify with the victims, play a core role here as well.

Salomo’s work also reflects the influence of narratives discussed in this paragraph. These narratives, linked to an early collectivization of Judaism, can be found for example in the Jewish Orthodox journal “Treue Zionswächter: Organ zur Wahrung der Interessen des Orthodoxen Judenthums” (Loyal guardians of Zion: Organization for the protection of the interests of orthodox Jewry). Here, a wide variety of historical constructions of “Judaism” was connected to a unified idea of a “people” and a “nation,” as Philipp Lenhard points out in his work on Jewish historical narratives. Lenhard presents the narratives of that journal as an example of Orthodox Jews’ resistance against modernization efforts in the mid-nineteenth century. Founded in 1845, the journal was a medium for aggregating traditionalists’ arguments against the evolving changes toward a more open-minded Judaism. As a striking feature, Lenhard notes the authors’ urge to construct Judaism as a unity consisting of a religion and an ethnicity: “Unmistakably, the ethnic definition of Judaism was mixed with the religious definition, in accordance with the pre-modern understanding of the rabbis.” ^[37] As he further states, “Judaism [as represented in the analyzed journal] should not only be recognized as an unchanging religion of revelation but also, faith and law, ancestry and cultus should not be separated from each other.”[38] As will be shown in the course of this article, this particular idea of Judaism consisting of a wide variety of elements affects Salomo’s work as well. In the context of the establishment of the State of Israel, heroic narratives have continued to play an essential role in the post-Holocaust period. In their studies on the cosmopolitan memory of the Holocaust, Levy and Sznaider show that the narrative of passive victims had no place in the construction of a positive and “strong” image of the State of Israel. The authors state that “One, therefore, memorialized above all those victims who had resisted the Nazis.”[39] Thus, annihilation and heroism were negotiated simultaneously and institutionalized by the state, resulting in narratives of martyrdom.

However, these conflicting memories and narrative formations are not only related to historical aspects. The tension between victim and heroic narratives is renegotiated on various levels in sources connected to Ben Salomo. In the following sections, I will therefore outline different narrative formations in the interview, Salomo’s autobiography, and the track “Identität.” Starting with an analysis of victim narratives, I show that these types of narratives are predominant in my interview with Salomo and in his autobiography.

“Some were deported to Auschwitz, others to Ravensbrück.” Victim Narratives from Family Memory to Collective Memory

In 2019, I interviewed Ben Salomo to better understand his perspective on negotiations of memory culture, which are of central relevance to some of his hip-hop tracks. In the interview, it turned out to be important for him to contextualize his relationship with his family, his family’s relationship to the Holocaust, and its consequences for today’s negotiations of Jewishness by non-Jewish people:

For Salomo, the high degree of interconnection between the Holocaust, Jewishness and family memory appears to be of major importance: in this context, a personal or more private conception of family is contrasted with a more collective constitution. Drawing on the understanding of narratives outlined in section 2 and 3, I will “unravel” these individual components and demonstrate how they are intertwined, as they form subcategories of the narrative of victimhood.

“Even Auschwitz could not kill my people”: Counter-Narratives in the Hip-Hop Track “Identität”

The elaboration of the meanings of his stage names in their historical contexts form the central plot of the track. Jonathan is his given name,[58] whereas Salomo and Aryeh are the names of his father and grandfather. “Ben” in front of each name indicates the male ancestor, in the sense of “son of.” In the song’s intro, his Hebrew stage name is rapped for the first time when he is called up to the Torah, highlighting an understanding of identity closely connected to Judaism. These meanings are also linked to memories of the Holocaust, which, together with other historical references, are shaped into different narratives.

To keep a clear structure and avoid redundancies, I will start with a schematic representation of the lyrics and only refer to the line numbers in the analysis. The lyrics of the chorus following each verse can be found at the beginning of this section.

Musical Manifestations of the Counter-Narratives

Since the narratives are embedded in a musical context, I will now analyze how musical parameters contribute to the narrative constructions and thus to the memory discourse. For this purpose, I will first present the basic musical structure of the track and then identify how the rhyming and rhythm schemes of the rap support the narratives. Furthermore, I will analyze how other musical aspects, such as the arrangement and a set of musical motifs, contribute to the narratives.

The track has a constant tempo of about 90 bpm, and the basic instrumentation includes drums, bass and keyboard. The track opens with an intro and closes with an outro in which the musical arrangement is reduced: bass, drums and keyboard are not audible here, so that some of the frequently recurring melodic motifs—which I will analyze in more detail in the next section—are particularly prominent in these parts. Furthermore, the track consists of three verses and a chorus, which is repeated identically between the verses. The verses consist of a 12-bar form, whereas the chorus has 8 bars.[77] Variations are created by differences in the overall playing intensity between verse and chorus and by omitting instruments (such as the keyboard) in the verse. Acoustic stops contribute to variations: Stops are variations in the track characterized by omitting certain instruments, groups of instruments, or even the arrangement as a whole, while the rap continues. These interruptions in the musical arrangement mean that the listener’s attention is focused on the rap.

The track is characterized by live-sounding “physical” instruments, such as a drum-kit, bass guitar, keyboard, various string instruments and piano. The drum and bass sounds especially contribute to this impression, since—if they were not recorded live—they probably consist of live samples. The chord scheme is based upon a circular chord pattern, I-VI, in C minor. However, this progression is only slightly hinted at by keyboard sounds, since the bass consists of a rhythmic pedal tone on the root C with only rare variations, which keeps repeating continuously throughout the track.

I analyze the musical elements of the song as they relate to the rap and its narratives following Oliver Kautny’s flow analysis. His method of analysis focuses on the relationship between the “metrics of voice and accompanying patterns.”[78] On the “horizontal axis . . . different forms of rhythmic grouping”[79] and “the role of tonally shaped, rhymed speech”[80] form the concept of flow. These aspects of the flow contribute significantly to the counter-narratives. Rhythmic variation in the lines is, among other aspects, created by the sporadic rising of vocal pitches on individual syllables. According to the concept of flow, rhyme groupings of words form rap lines; this causes some words to fall on heavy beats and others on unstressed beats. It is noticeable that the words that emphasize aspects that are prevalent for the counter-narratives are often those placed on heavy beats; they are also pitched higher. As shown below with an example from the third verse, the flow emphasizes words such as “Auschwitz,” “death ovens,” and “survive” through melodic accentuation and rhythmic placement on the beat. Furthermore, the lines’ rhymes are also layered on words that are central to the counter-narrative: Löwen (lions), König (king), Kommandeure (commanders), Hungersnöte (famines), mein Volk nicht töten (not kill my people).[81] By emphasizing these words and phrases, the musical parameters of flow and rhyme contribute to the way memory discourses are negotiated in the track.

The voice itself displays little or no post-processing and is positioned centrally and relatively close to the listener in terms of the recording’s panorama. In my opinion, emphasis was put on conveying an “authentic” image of the voice. This is done by enhancing particular details such as Salomo’s breaths, possibly made more audible by compression during post-production. In the chorus, Ben Salomo’s voice is doubled in a slightly lower pitch and positioned further to the left in the panorama. This gives the voice the character of backing vocals, which increases the lyrics’ emphasis in the chorus.

But it is not only the musical element of the rap that contributes to the counter-narratives and thus negotiates a particular form of memory discourse. The stops, in which the musical arrangement pauses completely or partially for a short period of time, fall precisely on the phrases that are relevant to the counter-narratives. These stops (the underlined lyrics) give specific parts of the lyrics a particularly prominent position and emphasize the readings of the counter-narratives presented above.

Stops at these points foreground religious references as connecting the counter-narratives, as well as the post-Holocaust narrative and the empowering narrative. As a further example, stops in the third verse at the line “even Auschwitz could not kill my people” bring the unifying narrative to the fore. Many other examples in the verses enhance the counter-narratives in similar ways. Thus, musical parameters—in this case, the stops—contribute to the memory discourse.

Much of the scoring of the track is based on three recurring motifs. One regular motif is played by a picked string instrument, either a harp, a qānūn, or an oud.[83] The two other characteristic motifs are played by a piano and strings. The harp motif is the most prominent, containing a C minor arpeggio with an added 9th, which stands out for its rhythm and sound aesthetics. Rhythmically, it is similar to the figure of a clave,[84] one feature of which is the rhythmic accentuation of off-beats. The motif stands out especially in the intro, where the supporting musical framework of drums and bass is missing. The loosely rhythmical piano fills in the spaces between the harp motif in the form of a musical conversation. Another, yet less frequently occurring motif or sample consists of a string section that features several dissonances, quarter notes and glissandi. While the harp and piano motifs sound relatively consistent, the string motif is especially prominent in the chorus.

The aforementioned motifs represent the central musical characteristics and thus shape the specific way memory discourses—and among these counter- and victim narratives—are negotiated in the track. The motifs’ functionality can be described with what Susanne Binas-Preisendörfer refers to as “emotionally charged sound objects,”[85] but instead of specifically referring to historical facts, they evoke a sense of historicity. Ben Salomo describes the motifs as being “just the way it sounded in the region at that time.”[86] While it remains unclear what exactly he means by that, the statement suggests that the sense of historicity might play a bigger role here than “actual” sound—or music history. However, by contextualizing the music with topoi from the lyrics, like the counter-narratives, but also from other external points of reference, interesting parallels can be found. For example, if we compare Salomo’s track to the movie The Pianist (2002), similarities can be found on various levels: firstly, both media discuss memories of the Holocaust from an intra-Jewish perspective including family memories of persecution, murder, and deportation. Related to this, both authors—Salomo as lyricist and Roman Polański as the film producer and director—share family memories of the Holocaust, since several of Polański’s relatives were also deported. Secondly, both media are intertwined with (auto)biographies. The track’s connection to Salomo’s autobiography is mentioned above and the film includes aspects of Polański’s own biography as well as Władysław Szpilman’s autobiography as a Jewish-Polish pianist.[87] Most importantly, however, both media share music as a “transcending, universal language”[88] which will be discussed in more detail below.

If we compare Salomo’s piano motif from the hip-hop track to the piano motif of the soundtrack of The Pianist, which features the Nocturne in C# minor by Frédéric Chopin, similarities can be found regarding tonal resources, instrumentation, tempo, interval structures, rhythms, and micro-timing:

Figure 1: “Identität” measures 1–4. My transcription.

Figure 2: “Identität,” recurring piano motif. My transcription.

Figure 3: Frédéric Chopin, Nocturne C# minor, measures 5–12.

If we compare the two themes, several aspects stand out: first, the melodic lines of the long half notes, or dotted half notes, are very congruent. While Figures 1 and 2 are in C minor and Figure 3 is in C# minor, the long notes carrying the melody have the same functions in the harmonic context. In “Identität,” the melody progresses from the fifth of the underlying C minor chord down via the fourth (or 11) and to the second (or 9). The Nocturne, which features in the soundtrack to the film The Pianist, shows a very similar progression. Comparing the long notes of the recurring piano sample from “Identität” with bars 5 and 6 from the Nocturne, it becomes clear that the melodic progression is almost identical. But as Claudia Bullerjahn points out regarding the film music of The Pianist, the music sounds “not specifically Jewish, but is rather a music that uses the Western conventions of conveying suffering.”[89] Since various representations of suffering and sorrow have been accompanied by slowly and freely played piano passages in minor keys in different media, this motif from “Identität” may be associated with such narratives of grief in a similar way. Accordingly, the music does not only contribute to the negotiation of counter-narratives of the lyrics. Rather, the musical motifs seem to be able to provide intermedial parallels, for example to film and in this connection also to victim narratives, that play an important role in various media throughout (Jewish) history.

Following Bohlmann, the harp motif may be interpreted as an allusion to Jewish liturgical contexts: “In Genesis 4 we are to assume that the “harp” and “flute,” “played” as they are by the generations that succeed Yuval, are musical instruments. . . . there is an almost infinite variety of both harps and flutes . . .”[90] If interpreted in this way, there is a possibility that this motif supports the religious reference aspect as connecting the various counter-narratives and thus contributes to the memory discourse on a musical level. Since it is not entirely clear whether the motif is actually played by a harp, and not an oud or a qānūn, a connection to Mizrahi music (see below) may be relevant here as well.

The second part of the string motif, which is played for the first time when Salomo raps his name in the intro (0:30), consists of the tones C, Db, Eb, F, G, Eb, F, D, and Eb. The tonal center of the piece is C minor and the track’s basic scale is C aeolian. The pitch Db in this motif, however, signals more of a Phrygian scale, characterized by this particular semitone between the first and second tone (C and Db). The very use of both the Aeolian and Phrygian scales in the track creates a tonal tension that makes this motif stand out. In addition, this Db from the motif is pitched slightly too low, creating a particular dissonance. Furthermore, the tonal steps from F to G, Eb to F, and D to Eb are played using glissandi, and the target notes are partially pitched slightly off-key. This creates a contrast to the rest of the track, which is intonated in perfect pitch. Regarding the tonal repertoire, parallels could be drawn to the “Jerusalem-Sephardi Style”[91] which has become a commonly used requisite in modern Israel for recitation circles since the twentieth or twenty-first century.[92] Musically, there are similarities to the Arabic maqam as a significant tonal pool including tonal steps other than the “Western European” well-tempered tonal system. Specifically, the lower tetrachord of the Bayyātī[93] shows parallels to the Phrygian mode and further includes the lowered second step from Salomo’s motif.

But the constitution of this motif also allows for parallels to Mizrahi music. According to Crowdus, “Mizrahi music is a label used to describe all musical output of Jewish immigrants [to Israel] from the ‘Arab’ world,” ^[94] and this music has a marginalized status in Israel compared to the dominant European culture.[95] Since the 1960s, performers have combined this music with instruments and genres that are more commonly attributed to popular music. While the tonal pool of the accompanying arrangements is rather “Western,” the singing has characteristic quarter-tone steps which, however, do not originate from traditional maqamat.[96] The aspect of marginalization of the Mizrahi style and the similarities to the style allow for the possibility of reading this motif as a contribution to the empowering narrative or the unifying narrative. It could be connected to the above statement of converging dispossession on a musical level, as a collectivizing sound image. By specifically playing a motif potentially related to marginalized music, this can also be read as empowering against marginalization. Seen this way, sonic support of the empowering narrative and thus as a musical and sonic contribution to the memory discourse would then be a plausible way of reading the motif. Another possible way of hearing the string motif would be to see it as an entire musical unit, as the motifs are most frequently heard in the track. In this case, it would be possible to speak more abstractly of a sense of historicity, as Salomo’s own statement would suggest. This musical historicity in connection with the historical dimension of the lyrics (specifically those parts referencing Jewish liturgy and history) may lead to an understanding of these motifs as a sonic support for shaping a (Jewish) collective and, hence, a collective memory.

Conclusion and Consequences

This article highlighted the roles of victim narratives in an interview with Ben Salomo and in his autobiography, as well counter-narratives in his hip-hop track “Identität.” It showed that victim narratives consist, on the one hand of two differently conceptualized notions of family: one embodies memories of escape and mistreatment of Salomo’s (private) family (especially regarding his grandfather). The other conceptualizes family as a meta-category for negotiating “the Jewish family,” that is, as a collective construction. On the other hand, there are clearly visible contours of post-memory, since Ben Salomo transmits the family’s memories of expulsion and violence without having “actively” witnessed the Holocaust. The timeline of memories presented in the interview and the autobiography runs almost exclusively from the Nazi period to Ben Salomo’s childhood and through to the present.

Central to the hip-hop track are counter-narratives that facilitate a post-Holocaust perspective, the idea of a unified (Jewish) collective and an empowering aspect for manifesting these narratives in collective memory. All counter-narratives share references to religion as a tool for political manifestation of the narratives. They moreover share a “replacement ideology,” with an emphasis on the aim of replacing the victim narratives that are prominent in collective memory. In this regard, it is striking that the timeline presented in the track extends far beyond the Holocaust period, creating a bridge from ancient times to the future. This, in turn, is interwoven with aspects of empowerment, which are intended to encourage listeners to reflect on their own history. This replacement ideology further fosters and establishes a critical positioning against institutionalized memory discourses that enable the construction of victim narratives in the first place. Consequently, counter-narratives in the track are formed to criticize and destabilize hegemonic (memory) discourses that frame a specific “figure” of Jewishness closely connected to victimhood.[97]

When analyzing the music of the track, three motifs in particular stand out due to their instrumentation (harp, oud or qānūn, piano, and violin) as well as partly due to their melodic-tonal characteristics. Taking a closer look, parallels can be drawn between these motifs and Jewish liturgy and Mizrahi music (harp and string motif), film music (piano motif), and the tonal repertoire of maqamat (string motif). Those motifs can be read as bridging victim narratives and counter-narratives. While the piano motif can be read as linking to a broad range of victim narratives, such as from the movie The Pianist, the string motif can be linked to the marginalized role of Mizrahi music, due to its characteristic intonations. Furthermore, these motifs can be read as sound objects that are not directly charged with meanings of particular historical events, but rather associated with a broader meaning of perceived, or sensed historicity.

Since (especially) hip-hop is an art and cultural form in which the principle of montage is particularly central, it is worth taking a detailed look at the individual components that constitute a particular track. The tracks are not arranged, produced, or composed arbitrarily. Through their re-contextualization and interweaving with other elements, sonic components constantly take on new or changing connotations.

Thus, when researching memories in hip-hop, it makes sense, or may even be constitutive, to historicize these individual elements of the montage. And here, not only certain images, stylistic devices, or politics of the lyrics alone are to be mentioned, but also musical features, such as samples, modified and edited melodies, and motifs. In order to understand how a hip-hop track contributes to memory constructions, it is moreover of particular importance to listen closely to the particular flow of rap and the musical and sonic arrangement of the track. Hip-hop is also an art form that frequently highlights the individual rapper or ego and situates that person (often “him” rather than “her”) in a heroic or in an anti-hero role. Accordingly, it would be fruitful for future research on hip-hop, memory culture, and Judaism to consider masculinity and gender in more detail.

Research on memory conceptualized in musicological thinking benefits—here I agree with Melanie Unseld[98]—from a consideration of material, mental, and social dimensions. In this context, we can think about the extent to which the consideration (perhaps in particular) of hip-hop as a medium of memory may increasingly offer a productive perspective for researching sounds in their memorability, and how sounds and music contribute to memory discourses. Identifying the concrete constitution of sound as memorable and arranged fragments—be it in the form of melodic motifs, lyrical narratives, samples, or rhythms—in music and making them describable is an important step. Since memories are historically specific, it is furthermore an important undertaking to historicize precisely those fragments in music that are associated with such diverse memories: They can be analyzed along with the discourses of memory in which they appear, processually change, and might even be lost again.

Bibliography

• Ahlers, Michael. “‘Kollegah the Boss’: A Case Study of Persona, Types of Capital, and Virtuosity in German Gangsta Rap.” Popular Music 38, no. 3 (2019): 457–80. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143019000473.
• Assmann, Aleida. Das neue Unbehagen an der Erinnerungskultur: Eine Intervention. 3rd ed. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2020. https://doi.org/10.17104/9783406652110.
• Barceló, Pedro. Hannibal. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1998.
• Ben Salomo. Es gibt nur einen. Baba City Records, 2016.
• Ben Salomo. Ben Salomo bedeutet Sohn des Friedens. Munich: Europaverlag, 2019.
• Ben Salomo. Interview. October 22, 2019.
• Binas-Preisendörfer, Susanne. “Klangliche Repräsentationen des ‘Mauerfalls’ in ausgewählten Hörfunkreportagen, Fernsehdokumentationen und fiktionalen Filmen.” In Klang als Geschichtsmedium. Perspektiven für eine auditive Geschichtsschreibung, edited by Anna Langenbruch, 183–218. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2018. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839444986-008.
• Bohlmann, Philip V. Jewish Music and Modernity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
• Bullerjahn, Claudia. “Der Soundtrack des Holocaust. Musik im Dienste einer Erinnerungskultur.” In Sound des Jahrhunderts. Geräusche, Töne, Stimmen 1889 bis heute, edited by Gerhard Paul and Ralph Schock, 534–40. Bonn: bpb, 2013.
• Chopin, Frédéric. Nocturne cis-moll: Opus postum. Munich: G. Henle, 2003.
• Crowdus, Miranda. Hip Hop in Urban Borderlands: Music-Making, Identity, and Intercultural Dynamics on the Margins of the Jewish State. Bern: Peter Lang, 2019. https://doi.org/10.3726/b14809.
• Daniel, Ute. Kompendium Kulturgeschichte: Theorien, Praxis, Schlüsselwörter. 6th ed. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2014.
• Dietrich, Marc. “‘Samy Deluxe’ Adriano (2018) Eine Analyse von Rassismus(kritik)konstruktionen aus Perspektive der Grounded-Theory-Methodologie.” In Rap – Text – Analyse Deutschsprachiger Rap seit 2000: 20 Einzeltextanalysen, edited by Dagobert Höllein, Nils Lehnert, and Felix Woitkowski, 113–24. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2020. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839446287-009.
• El-Tayeb, Fatima. European Others: Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011. https://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816670154.001.0001.
• Erll, Astrid. “Locating Family in Cultural Memory Studies.” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 42, no. 3 (2011): 303–18. https://doi.org/10.3138/jcfs.42.3.303.
• Erll, Astrid. “Travelling Memory.” Parallax 17, no. 4 (2011): 4–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2011.605570.
• Forman, Murray, and Mark Anthony Neal, eds. That’s the Joint: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 2004. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203642191.
• Güney, Serhat, Cem Pekman, and Bülent Kabas. “Diasporic Music in Transition: Turkish Immigrant Performers on the Stage of ‘Multikulti’ Berlin.” Popular Music and Society 37, no. 2 (2012): 132–51. https://doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2012.736288.
• Güler Saied, Ayla, ed. Rap in Deutschland: Musik als Interaktionsmedium zwischen Partykultur und urbanen Anerkennungskämpfen. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2012. https://doi.org/10.14361/transcript.9783839422519.
• Hähnel, Tilo. “Metrische und sprechnahe Zeitgestaltung des Rap im historischen Wandel.” Samples 18 (2020): 1–21.
• Hirsch, Marianne. “Maus, Mourning, and Post-Memory.” Discourse 15, no. 2 (1992–93): 3–29.
• Kautny, Oliver. “‘Ridin’ the Beat. Annäherungen an das Phänomen Flow.” In Die Stimme im HipHop Untersuchungen eines intermedialen Phänomens, edited by Fernand Hörner and Oliver Kautny, 141–69. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2009. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839409985-007.
• Lapidot, Elad. “Jewish Friends: Contemporary Figures of the Jew: Introduction.” Jewish Studies Quarterly 27, no. 2 (2020): 103–7. https://doi.org/10.1628/jsq-2020-0008.
• Lenhard, Philipp. Volk oder Religion?: Die Entstehung moderner jüdischer Ethnizität in Frankreich und Deutschland 1782–1848. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016.
• Levy, Daniel, and Natan Sznaider, Erinnerungen im globalen Zeitalter: Der Holocaust. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2007.
• Marcus, Scott. “Modulation in Arab Music: Documenting Oral Concepts, Performance Rules and Strategies.” Ethnomusicology 36, no. 2 (1992): 171–91. https://doi.org/10.2307/851913.
• McDonald, David A. “Imaginaries of Exile and Emergence in Israeli Jewish and Palestinian Hip Hop.” TDR/The Drama Review 57, no. 3 (2013): 69–87. https://doi.org/10.1162/DRAM_a_00280.
• McDonald, David A. “Junction 48: Hip-Hop Activism, Gendered Violence, and Vulnerability in Palestine,” Journal of Popular Music Studies 32, no. 1 (2020): 26–43. https://doi.org/10.1525/jpms.2020.32.1.26.
• Oware, Matthew. I Got Something to Say: Gender, Race, and Social Consciousness in Rap Music. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90454-2.
• Polański, Roman, dir. The Pianist. Toronto: TVA Films, 2003.
• Rigney, Ann. “Cultural Memory Studies: Mediation, Narrative and the Aesthetic.” In Routledge International Handbook of Memory Studies, edited by Anna Lisa Tota and Trever Hagen, 65–76. New York: Routledge, 2016.
• Rigney, Ann. “Portable Monuments: Literature, Cultural Memory, and the Case of Jeanie Deans.” Poetics Today 25, no. 2 (2004): 361–96. https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-25-2-361.
• Rigney, Ann. “Remaking Memory and the Agency of the Aesthetic.” Memory Studies 14, no. 1 (2021): 10–23. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698020976456.
• Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1994.
• Seeliger, Martin. “Autobiografien deutscher Gangsta-Rapper im Vergleich.“ In Deutscher Gangsta-Rap II: Popkultur als Kampf um Anerkennung und Integration, edited by Martin Seeliger and Marc Dietrich, 37–60. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2017. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839437506.
• Seeliger, Martin, and Marc Dietrich. “Zur Einleitung: Stigmatisierungsdiskurs, soziale Ungleichheit und Anerkennung oder: Gangsta-Rap-Analyse als Gesellschaftsanalyse.“ In Deutscher Gangsta-Rap II: Popkultur als Kampf um Anerkennung und Integration, edited by Martin Seeliger and Marc Dietrich, 7–36. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2017. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839437506-001.
• Spielberg, Steven, dir. Schindler’s List. Washington, DC: Universal Pictures, 1993.
• Steinbrecher, Bernhard. Das Klanggeschehen in populärer Musik. Vienna: Böhlau, 2016. https://doi.org/10.7788/9783412506988.
• Stratton, Jon. “Sampling and Jewishness: A Short History of Jewish Sampling and its Relationship with Hip-Hop.” Shofar 34, no. 3 (2016): 50–75. https://doi.org/10.1353/sho.2016.0014.
• Unseld, Melanie. “Musikwissenschaft und Erinnerungsforschung. Einige Vorüberlegungen.” In Musik als Medium der Erinnerung. Gedächtnis - Geschichte, -Gegenwart, edited by Lena Nieper and Julian Schmitz, 29–38. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2016. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839432792-002.
• Vito, Christopher. The Values of Independent Hip-Hop in the Post-Golden Era: Hip-Hop’s Rebels. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02481-9.
• Wegner, Jarula. “Kompetitiv-Multidirektionale Erinnerung im Medium der Rap-Musik.” In Musik als Medium der Erinnerung: Gedächtnis - Geschichte, -Gegenwart, edited by Lena Nieper and Julian Schmitz, 191–204. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2016. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839432792-013.
• Williams, Justin A., ed., The Cambridge Companion to Hip-Hop. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1017/CCO9781139775298.
• Wuthnow, Robert. Meaning and Moral Order: Explorations in Cultural Analysis. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.

1. All translations by the author unless otherwise stated.

2. Accessed on February 24, 2021.

3. Miranda Crowdus, Hip Hop in Urban Borderlands: Music-Making, Identity, and Intercultural Dynamics on the Margins of the Jewish State (Bern: Peter Lang, 2019), https://doi.org/10.3726/b14809; David A. McDonald, “Imaginaries of Exile and Emergence in Israeli Jewish and Palestinian Hip Hop,” TDR 57, no. 3 (2013): 69–87, https://doi.org/10.1162/DRAM_a_00280.

4. Crowdus, Hip Hop, 117.

5. Ibid., 116.

6. McDonald, “Imaginaries.”

7. David A. McDonald, “Junction 48: Hip-Hop Activism, Gendered Violence, and Vulnerability in Palestine,” Journal of Popular Music Studies 32, no. 1 (2020), 26–43, https://doi.org/10.1525/jpms.2020.32.1.26.

8. Jon Stratton, “Sampling and Jewishness: A Short History of Jewish Sampling and its Relationship with Hip-Hop,” Shofar 34, no. 3 (2016), 50–75, https://doi.org/10.1353/sho.2016.0014.

9. Ibid., 55.

10. Jarula Wegner, “Kompetitiv-Multidirektionale Erinnerung im Medium der Rap-Musik,” in Musik als Medium der Erinnerung. Gedächtnis - Geschichte, -Gegenwart, ed. Lena Nieper und Julian Schmitz (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2016), 191–204, https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839432792-013.

11. Fatima El-Tayeb, European Others: Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), https://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816670154.001.0001.

12. Oliver Kautny, “Ridin’ the Beat. Annäherungen an das Phänomen Flow,” in Die Stimme im HipHop: Untersuchungen eines intermedialen Phänomens, ed. Fernand Hörner and Oliver Kautny (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2009), 141–69, https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839409985-007; Tilo Hähnel, “Metrische und sprechnahe Zeitgestaltung des Rap im historischen Wandel,” Samples 18 (2020), 1–21; and Michael Ahlers, “‘Kollegah the Boss’: A Case Study of Persona, Types of Capital, and Virtuosity in German Gangsta Rap,” Popular Music 38, no. 3 (2019), 457–80. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143019000473.

13. Ayla Güler Saied, Rap in Deutschland: Musik als Interaktionsmedium zwischen Partykultur und urbanen Anerkennungskämpfen (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2012), https://doi.org/10.14361/transcript.9783839422519; Serhat Güney, Cem Pekman, and Bülent Kabas, “Diasporic Music in Transition: Turkish Immigrant Performers on the Stage of ‘Multikulti’ Berlin,” Popular Music and Society 37, no. 2 (2012), 132–51, https://doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2012.736288; Martin Seeliger, “Autobiografien deutscher Gangsta-Rapper im Vergleich,” in Deutscher Gangsta-Rap II: Popkultur als Kampf um Anerkennung und Integration, ed. Martin Seeliger and Marc Dietrich (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2017), 37–60, https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839437506; and Martin Seeliger and Marc Dietrich, “Zur Einleitung: Stigmatisierungsdiskurs, soziale Ungleichheit und Anerkennung oder: Gangsta-Rap-Analyse als Gesellschaftsanalyse,” in Deutscher Gangsta-Rap II: Popkultur als Kampf um Anerkennung und Integration, ed. Martin Seeliger and Marc Dietrich (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2017), 7–36, https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839437506-001.

14. Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1994); Marc Dietrich, “Samy Deluxe’ Adriano (2018): Eine Analyse von Rassismus(kritik)konstruktionen aus Perspektive der Grounded-Theory-Methodologie” in Rap – Text – Analyse Deutschsprachiger Rap seit 2000: 20 Einzeltextanalysen, ed. Dagobert Höllein, Nils Lehnert, and Felix Woitkowski (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2020), 113–24, https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839446287-009; Matthew Oware, I Got Something to Say: Gender, Race, and Social Consciousness in Rap Music (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90454-2; and Christopher Vito, The Values of Independent Hip-Hop in the Post-Golden Era: Hip-Hop’s Rebels (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02481-9.

15. Martin Seeliger, “Autobiografien,” 40.

16. Ibid.

17. Ute Daniel, Kompendium Kulturgeschichte: Theorien, Praxis, Schlüsselwörter , 6th ed. (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2014).

18. Ibid., 440.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid., 441.

21. Ann Rigney, “Remaking Memory and the Agency of the Aesthetic,” Memory Studies 14, no. 1 (2021): 11, https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698020976456.

22. Astrid Erll, “Travelling Memory,” Parallax 17, no. 4 (2011): 14, https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2011.605570.

23. Daniel, Kompendium Kulturgeschichte, 440.

24. Crowdus, Hip Hop, 119.

25. Ibid., 71.

26. Ann Rigney, “Cultural Memory Studies. Mediation, Narrative and the Aesthetic,” in Routledge International Handbook of Memory Studies, ed. Anna Lisa Tota and Trever Hagen (New York: Routledge, 2016), 70.

27. Ibid.

28. Ann Rigney, “Portable Monuments: Literature, Cultural Memory, and the Case of Jeanie Deans,” Poetics Today 25, no. 2 (2004), 361–96, https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-25-2-361.

29. Ibid.

30. Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, Erinnerungen im globalen Zeitalter: Der Holocaust (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2007), 116, 128.

31. Ibid., 128.

32. Ibid., 137.

33. Ibid.

34. Robert Wuthnow, Meaning and Moral Order: Explorations in Cultural Analysis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 124–132.

35. Levy and Sznaider, Erinnerungen, 138.

36. Ibid.

37. Philipp Lenhard, Volk oder Religion? Die Entstehung moderner jüdischer Ethnizität in Frankreich und Deutschland 1782–1848 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016), 203.

38. Ibid.

39. Levy and Sznaider, Erinnerungen, 106.

40. Ben Salomo, personal communication, October 22, 2019.

41. Levy and Sznaider, Erinnerungen, 128.

42. Ben Salomo, personal communication, October 22, 2019.

43. Erll, “Travelling Memory,” 12.

44. Ben Salomo, Ben Salomo bedeutet Sohn des Friedens (Munich: Europa Verlag, 2019), 24.

45. Ibid.

46. See ibid.

47. Ibid., 18–19.

48. Ibid., 22.

49. Ben Salomo, personal communication, October 22, 2019.

50. Levy and Sznaider, Erinnerungen, 137–138.

51. Astrid Erll, “Locating Family in Cultural Memory Studies,” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 42, no. 3 (2011), 315, https://doi.org/10.3138/jcfs.42.3.303.

52. Aleida Assmann, Das neue Unbehagen an der Erinnerungskultur. Eine Intervention, 3rd ed. (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2020), 207, https://doi.org/10.17104/9783406652110.

53. Marianne Hirsch, “Maus, Mourning, and Post-Memory,” Discourse 15, no. 2 (1992–93): 8.

54. Ben Salomo, personal communication, October 22, 2019.

55. Interestingly, parallels can be drawn here to the discourse surrounding family and victimhood as discussed in the context of medial representations of victims during and after the Eichmann trial discussed in the section above.

56. Ben Salomo, personal communication, October 22, 2019.

57. Ben Salomo, “Identität,” in Es gibt nur einen (Berlin: Baba City, 2016), compact disk.

58. I will use the spelling of the name “Jonathan” given in the CD liner notes.

59. Crowdus, Hip Hop, 125.

60. Levy and Sznaider, Erinnerungen, 106.

61. Daniel, Kompendium Kulturgeschichte, 441.

62. Daniel, Kompendium Kulturgeschichte, 440.

63. Stratton, “Sampling,” 55.

64. Salomo, personal communication, October 22, 2019.

65. See section 2.

66. Crowdus, Hip Hop, 119.

67. Ibid., 125.

68. This has been outlined in section 3. See Levy and Sznaider, Erinnerungen, 106.

69. Crowdus, Hip Hop, 126.

70. See section 3 and Lenhard, Volk oder Religion?, 203.

71. Pedro Barceló, Hannibal (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1998).

72. Crowdus, Hip Hop, 71.

73. Crowdus, Hip Hop, 159.

74. Ibid., 71.

75. Elad Lapidot, “Jewish Friends: Contemporary Figures of the Jew: Introduction,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 27, no. 2 (2020): 105, https://doi.org/10.1628/jsq-2020-0008.

76. Ibid.

77. A 12-bar form might remind some listeners of the blues form. However, none of the material analyzed here exhibits any further parallels to the blues.

78. Kautny, “Ridin’ the Beat,” 147.

79. Ibid., 148.

80. Ibid.

81. Only the aspects that are relevant for the study of counter-narratives are mentioned here. Since the flow and rhymes play an important role in the entire track, other, non-Holocaust related issues are emphasized by these musical parameters as well.

82. Salomo, “Identität.”

83. For the sake of simplicity, I will use the term “harp motif” in the following.

84. A clave beat usually consists of a repeating rhythmic pattern comprising a mixture of dotted and undotted quarter notes (tresillo, often in a 3-2 or 2-3 ratio). This specific constellation of dotted and undotted notes creates characteristic rhythmic shifts involving accents on the off-beats.

85. Susanne Binas-Preisendörfer, “Klangliche Repräsentationen des ›Mauerfalls‹ in ausgewählten Hörfunkreportagen, Fernsehdokumentationen und fiktionalen Filmen,” in Klang als Geschichtsmedium: Perspektiven für eine auditive Geschichtsschreibung, ed. Anna Langenbruch (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2018), 196, https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839444986-008.

86. Ben Salomo, personal communication, October 22, 2019.

87. Claudia Bullerjahn, “Der Soundtrack des Holocaust. Musik im Dienste einer Erinnerungskultur,” in Sound des Jahrhunderts: Geräusche, Töne, Stimmen 1889 bis heute, ed. Gerhard Paul and Ralph Schock (Bonn: bpb, 2013), 538.

88. Ibid.

89. Bullerjahn, “Der Soundtrack des Holocaust,” 540. In my work, I hold the position that there can be no such thing as a “specifically Jewish” sound and/or music.

90. Philip V. Bohlmann, Jewish Music and Modernity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), xxii–iii.

91. Ibid., xxiv.

92. Ibid.

93. Scott Marcus, “Modulation in Arab Music: Documenting Oral Concepts, Performance Rules and Strategies,” Ethnomusicology 36, no. 2 (1992): 173, https://doi.org/10.2307/851913.

94. Crowdus, Hip Hop, 49.

95. Ibid.

96. Ibid., 50.

97. Lapidot, “Jewish Friends,” 105.

98. Melanie Unseld, “Musikwissenschaft und Erinnerungsforschung. Einige Vorüberlegungen,” in Musik als Medium der Erinnerung. Gedächtnis – Geschichte – Gegenwart, ed. Lena Nieper and Julian Schmitz (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2016), 29–38, https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839432792-002.