Cultural Memory in Popular Music

Cultural Memory and Popular Music

In this research area, I examine how processes of memory are negotiated, mediated, and transformed within popular music. Focusing in particular on hip-hop, my work explores how musical, sonic, and narrative practices engage with histories of violence, trauma, and collective remembrance.

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My doctoral research, Rapping the Shoah, investigates how memories of the Holocaust and National Socialism are articulated in hip-hop from Jewish perspectives. It analyzes how artists use sound, rhythm, voice, and narrative to construct, challenge, and reframe dominant forms of remembrance.

By combining musicological analysis with perspectives from memory studies and cultural theory, I show how popular music functions as a dynamic space of remembrance—one that enables emotional, embodied, and critical engagements with the past beyond institutional and canonical forms.