Center for European Studies

Turlington 3310

Jeremy Frusco, Ph.D. candidate in Music History and Literature

It began as a joke among friends. The André, a cover artist whose identity remains a mystery, recalled in a 2018 interview that “I became aware of trap music and I thought that it was perhaps the furthest possible thing from [Italian singer-songwriter Fabrizio De André’s] poetics, and I thought what operation (could be) more dystonic than to put the two together?” While The André intended for a comical and incongruous distinction between the singer-songwritertradition and contemporary trap music, he instead touched upon a surprising kinship. While The André’s vocabulary of humor and mimicry seems at first to soften the political edge of these genres and styles, further inspection reveals its place within a larger postcolonial discourse of the 21stcentury.

Mr. Frusco’s research examines the interdisciplinary dimensions of popular music, particularly rap, and how contemporary artists use their platform to participate in critical discourses on identity, race, and belonging.