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Blaž Zabel
Archaic Greek Poetry and Hip-Hop:
AComparison
Abstract: This article compares two different oral traditions, namely, archaic
Greek poetry and hip-hop. It first defines what is meant by the oral character of
both traditions and then considers how research in hip-hop scholarship could
contribute to knowledge of archaic Greek poetry. Two specific topics that seem to
be mutual to both artistic forms are addressed: rhythm, or flow, and intertextu-
ality. It is argued that research on hip-hop can shed some light on the use of for-
mulaic language in Homeric poetry. To this end, the article considers how artists
in both traditions used accentuation and melody in performance. Furthermore,
by comparing the use of intertextual referencing in both hip-hop and Homer, it
is suggested that arguments about intertextuality in hip-hop support the views
of those classical scholars who oppose the generally accepted notion that oral
traditions cannot be intertextual.
Keywords: flow, hip-hop, Homeric music, intertextuality in hip-hop, intertextual-
ity in Homer, oral tradition
1 Introduction
In this article, I discuss two different oral traditions, namely archaic Greek poetry
and hip-hop. The main research question of this discussion is: what can be estab-
lished about archaic Greek poetry when it is compared to hip-hop? In general
terms, this is comparative research, meaning I compare two specific literatures in
order to provide a new outlook on the discussed material (see e.g. Aldridge 1983).
Nevertheless, this article is not a direct contribution to the very rich and fast-grow-
ing field of hip-hop studies, but rather uses the findings of hip-hop studies in
order to identify some generally overlooked aspects of archaic Greek poetry.
Although the article follows the line of research initiated by Milman Parry, who
believed that further knowledge of Homeric poetry could be gained by comparing
it to a still-living tradition of South Slavic guslars (Parry 1971), I carefully consider
recent objections against such a methodology, which warn against unfounded
transpositions of findings about one culture to another (e.g. Finnegan 1988; Foley
2005a, 2005b). Nevertheless, I promote a general argument that comparisons with
hip-hop could be fruitful in highlighting those aspects of archaic Greek poetry
that have been neglected in traditional scholarship.
Open Access. © 2021 Blaž Zabel, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110642056-040
540 Blaž Zabel
In the discussion, I understand both archaic Greek poetry and hip-hop as
manifestations of oral poetry. There are several reasons to suggest that both
poetries can be described as oral: first, both poetic traditions were/are performed
orally and do not rely on the written medium for their reception and distribution.
Hip-hop is a performed musical genre, and archaic Greek poetry was recited or
sung. Second, improvisation is an important artistic element of both genres.
In hip-hop, improvisation is the main characteristic of “free-style rap,” and in
archaic Greece, it is believed, poems were invented at the moment of perfor-
mance, at least to some degree. For Homeric poetry, this was famously proposed
by Milman Parry in his discussions of oral-formulaic language, for he believed
that Homeric bards learned how to perform poems by memorizing different formu-
laic expressions and then stitching them together in the moment of performance
(Parry 1971). Similar oral-formulaic language has, although to a lesser degree,
been observed in hip-hop as well (Pihel 1996). Another important element that
is shared between both traditions is their agonal nature. The agonality of ancient
Greek poetry and culture has been widely discussed (e.g. Vernant 1962; Colli
1975), as has the importance of braggadocio and competition in hip-hop (Bradley
2009, ch.6). Intertextuality, which will be further discussed later in the article,
is another important aspect of both Homeric and hip-hop poetry. Lastly and most
importantly, however, both traditions have a specifically oral nature. John Miles
Foley describes manifestations of oral poetry as poetry in which:
structural elements are not simply compositionally useful, nor are they doomed to a
“limited” area of designation; rather they command fields of reference much larger than
the single line, passage, or even text in which they occur. Traditional elements reach out of
the immediate instance in which they appear to the fecund totality of the entire tradition,
defined synchronically and diachronically, and they bear meanings as wide and deep as the
tradition they encode. (Foley 1991, 7)
A similar quality is ascribed to hip-hop by Russell Potter in his work Spectacular
Vernaculars:
1It is not clear whether Greek poetry in the archaic period was sung (West 1992) or merely recited
(González 2013). Nevertheless, the arguments presented in this article consider both options and
are applicable either to the melody pitch or the voice intonation of a reciter.
2It is to some extent also possible to draw parallels between rhapsodic contests and rap battles
(cf. Béthune 1999).
3Potter utilizes the concept of Signifyin(g) as put forward by Gates in his influential work The
Signifying Monkey (1988).
Archaic Greek Poetry and Hip-Hop: AComparison 541
Simply put, Signifyin(g) is repetition with a difference; the same and yet not the same.
When, in a jazz riff, a horn player substitutes one arpeggio for a harmony note, or “cuts up”
a well-known solo by altering its tempo, phrasing, or accents, s/he is Signifyin(g) on all pre-
vious versions. When a blues singer, like Blind Willie McTell, “borrows” a cut known as the
“Wabash Rag” and re-cuts it as the “Georgia Rag,” he is Signifyin(g) on a rival’s recording.
(Potter 1995, 27; emphasis in original)
After this citation, Potter applies the concept of Signifyin(g) to hip-hop as well.
Both Foley and Potter thus describe the specific nature of oral poetry as “Signify-
in(g)” or “reach[ing] out” of its immediate manifestation to its “entire tradition,”
to “all previous versions.” Therefore, archaic Greek poetry and hip-hop express
various features that are characteristic of (at least some forms of) oral poetry.
In this article, I consider how research in hip-hop scholarship could broaden
knowledge of archaic Greek poetry and its performance, as well as productively
inform classical studies. I demonstrate this by focusing on two topics that seem to
be mutual to both hip-hop and archaic Greek poetry as manifestations of primar-
ily oral poetry: their rhythm, or flow, and their intertextual nature. First, I discuss
rhythm and flow, and argue that research on them in hip-hop can shed some light
on how the formulaic language in Homeric poetry can be perceived in terms of its
performative aspect. I then compare intertextuality in hip-hop and archaic Greek
poetry, and argue that arguments about hip-hop as a deeply intertextual genre
support the views of those classical scholars who oppose the generally accepted
notion that oral traditions cannot be intertextual.
2 Rhythm and flow in hip-hop
and Homeric poetry
In this part of the article, I analyse rhythm and the so-called flow of Homeric
poetry and hip-hop. I argue that interesting and stimulating research on rhythm
and flow in hip-hop (cf. Kautny 2015) can shed further light on how the perfor-
mance of Homeric poetry can be envisaged. In order to understand flow, however,
the development of hip-hop needs to be considered first (see Price-Styles 2015).
Hip-hop started with the invention of musical sampling by DJ Kool Herc in the
1970s in the Bronx, New York. DJ Herc picked up different instrumental portions
of songs with strong drum beats and combined them on the turntable machine.
In this way, the rhythm-section part of hip-hop developed. Another important
moment in the development of hip-hop was when MCs started talking and rapping
over such musical backgrounds. This resulted in the possibility of two different
542 Blaž Zabel
levels of rhythm, on the one hand the rhythm of music, and on the other the
rhythm of vocal performance. Therefore, rappers were free to improvise with the
rhythm of their own narrations because they had a solid and constant rhythmical
base in the musical accompaniment (very much in the way a jazz musician can
rhythmically improvise over the fixed beat performed by the rhythm section). The
outcome of this performative setting is that rappers’ voice often loses the natural
rhythm or flow of everyday speech and rather acquires its own specific rhythmi-
cal form. One of the definitions of flow supports this understanding: as Oliver
Kautny writes, flow is “the musical result of the airflow synchronized to a musical
arrangement called beat,” the result of which is “the air flowing out of the lungs,
formed into a flow of sound” (2015, 103). Since flow has its own rhythm but not
a very prominent melody, we can thus understand it as something in between
music and natural speech.
This conception is quite similar to how archaic Greek music was performed.
Whether sung and accompanied by an instrument or only recited, Greek poetry
was rhythmically highly defined. Epic poetry, for example, was performed in
hexameters, but accentuation played its role too. Since the ancient Greek lan-
guage had a tonic stress, parts of words were spoken in a higher pitch than others
(Probert 2006, 47–48, 53–57). This was most probably reflected also in the melody
of musical accompaniment. Based on the analysis of existing musical documents
and other sources, scholars have proven that the melody of ancient Greek music
generally reflected the pitch accent: the accented syllable (´) usually resulted in
a higher pitch in the melody; if the circumflex (^) was divided by two notes, the
second tone was lower than the previous one; and after the grave accent (`), the
melody did not fall again until the next stress (Winnington-Ingram 1955; Ander-
son 1973; Landels 1999, 235; Cosgrove and Meyer 2006; West 1992, 199; Pöhlmann
and West 2001, 11, 62–85).
This combination of rhythm and tonic stress is, in my opinion, a characteristic
that is shared between archaic Greek poetry and hip-hop but is rarely considered
in classical studies. I will demonstrate this with an example. In hip-hop, artists
sometimes use flow in order to recreate direct speech. For example, in the song
Stan, Eminem uses a different flow in order to present a different first-person
narrator, a person called Stan, who writes Eminem three letters. In the last line,
the rapper changes his flow in order to indicate that he himself is now writing
a response. Another example would be Kendrick Lamar’s song Swimming Pool,
in which Lamar uses two different flows in order to create a dialogue between
himself and his own conscience.
In Homeric and classical scholarship, however, this performative aspect has
been almost completely ignored. One such example that I am going to discuss
here is a formulaic line in Od. 16.48, which says: “νθα καθέζετ πειτα δυσσο
Archaic Greek Poetry and Hip-Hop: AComparison 543
φίλο υό” [the son of Odysseus sat there]. I have chosen this line mostly because
it has already been discussed by two scholars, Milman Parry and Margalit Fin-
kelberg: in this way, it is possible to clearly demonstrate the general academic
disregard for melody and flow in Homeric performance. Parry uses this example
to demonstrate how the bard stitched together two formulas, the formula “νθα
καθέζετ πειτα” [sat there] and “δυσσο φίλο υό” [the son of Odysseus],
thus creating a metrical irregularity (Parry 1971, 318–319). Finkelberg, on the other
hand, argues that Od. 16.48 is a clear example of Homer’s aesthetic individuality,
for he could have used the metrically correct formula “ερ Τηλεάχοιο” [the
sacred strength of Telemachus] and avoided the hiatus, but Homer has decided
that naming Telemachus as Odysseus’ son is much more appropriate for the nar-
ratological context (Finkelberg 2012, 79–80). Both scholars thus insist heavily
on metrical rules and the semantic meaning of this particular phrase, but leave
aside its performative aspect. The hip-hop scholarship on flow, I believe, puts this
whole discussion in a new light.
When all the occurrences of the formula “δυσσο φίλο υό” (i.e. Od.
2.2, 2.35, 3.64, 2.415, 3.352, 14.515, 15.59, 15.337, 16.48) are analysed, it becomes
apparent that it is always used in longer narrations and never as an introduction
to direct speech. On the other hand, the formula “ερ Τηλεάχοιο” is (with
one exception at Od. 16.476) always used as an introduction to direct speech (Od.
2.409, 18.60, 18.405, 21.101, 21.130, 22.354). This is, I believe, the result of how
both formulas were spoken or sung during performance. The formula “ερ
Τηλεάχοιο” was, because of the specific pitch stresses, sung or narrated in a
lower voice register. The formula “δυσσο φίλο υό” on the other hand, has
a melodic rise at the end, and a partial drop on the “,” and was thus probably
recited or sung in a higher register. It was precisely this melodic difference or dif-
ference in narrated pitch that determined the position of the two formulas in the
context of the poem. The first one was therefore appropriate for naming Telema-
chus in the narrative parts (in a higher melodic register), while the second one
was always used as an introduction to direct speech (in a lower melodic register).
As the analysis of flow has demonstrated, the formula “ερ Τηλεάχοιο”
was sung or recited in a lower register. It was thus used to create a difference
in pitch between the introductory sentences to direct speech and direct speech
itself– just like rappers use different flows in order to indicate the switch between
narrators. The analysis of all direct speech after the formula “ερ Τηλεάχοιο,”
indeed, reflects this transition from lower to higher pitch. This can be seen most
4All translations from the Greek in this article are my own. References to the Odyssey (hence-
forth Od.) are to Homer (2017).
544 Blaž Zabel
clearly in Od. 21.101 and 21.130, where the direct speech begins with an excla-
mation, “ πόποι,” which was most probably sung or recited at a higher pitch,
but other examples reflect a higher register as well. That this is a standard prac-
tice in oral poetry can also be seen in performances by South Slavic guslars, as
for example in The Wedding of Mustajbey’s Son Bećirbey as Performed by Halil
Bajgorić:
vOnda reče beg Mustajbeg lički:
“vO gazijo, vo ti jabandžijo,
Na čardaku ji konaku mome
Sramota je ja ću teb’ upitat’,
Daj mi, kai ko si dji kako si.”
A šede mu momak govoriti:
“vOj Turčine, beže sa Grbave,
Ja sam otud sa Bosne ponosne --
vAj! U glavu Djerdelez Alija.
Dajidža mi gazi Hrustanbeže.”
[Then the bey Mustajbey of the Lika spoke:
“O hero, stranger among us,
Here on my enclosed porch and in my palace
It is shameful for me to ask you,
But grant me -- tell us your name and condition.”
And the young man began to speak to him:
“O Turk, bey of Grbava,
I am from over there, from proud Bosnia --
Aj! I am none other than Djerdelez Alija.
The hero Hrustanbey is my mother’s brother.”] (Wedding of Mustajbey’s Son Bećirbey 2004,
lines 217–234).
As in Homeric poetry, it can be observed that the guslar Halil Bajgorić introduces
direct speech with a sentence that is sung in a lower register (“vOnda reče beg
Mustajbeg lički”) and then uses different exclamations in a higher tonal register
to indicate the nature of the direct speech (e.g. “vO,” “vOj Turčine,” “vAj!”). As a
recording of this specific performance is available, it is even possible to confirm
this argument with a musical analysis.
Hence, with the discussion of flow and rhythm, I have demonstrated that
hip-hop scholarship can productively influence classical and Homeric studies,
helping them to consider questions related to Greek literature’s performative
5PN 6699. Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature, Harvard University. Also available at
http://www.oraltradition.org/static/zbm/zbm.mp3 (16 December 2018).
Archaic Greek Poetry and Hip-Hop: AComparison 545
context. An understanding of flow and performance has, in the example con-
sidered, assisted in moving the discussion away from the purely textual under-
standing of Homeric poetry and shifting the focus to the performative aspect of
poetry– something that, as I have shown, traditional classical scholars have not
considered. I will now press forward and discuss how research on hip-hop can
shed further light on another aspect of archaic Greek poetry that has recently
been heavily debated– that is, the concept of intertextuality and its role in oral
tradition.
3 Intertextuality in archaic Greek poetry and
hip-hop
In this part of the article, I argue that research on intertextuality in hip-hop can
be productive for understanding intertextuality in ancient Greek oral poetry. The
research on intertextuality in hip-hop is vast and diverse, and researchers usually
focus on two specific aspects of intertextuality (see Williams 2013, 2015). First,
scholars of hip-hop often understand intertextuality as musical intertextuality
(Williams 2014). Such musical referencing is most often the result of musical
sampling, since record producers compose music and beats from different music
samples taken from other artists. Because all of music of the archaic period is
lost to us, however, it is extremely hard to discuss musical intertextuality in oral
Greek literature. Nevertheless, one example might be reflective of it, the so-called
song of the Sirens in the Odyssey. It has been often argued that the genre most
appropriate for the Sirens would be lyric poetry (Pucci 1979; Segal 1994, 85–109;
Scodel 1998, 188–189). This is reflected in the very peculiar use of their opening
formula “δερ’ γ’ ών,” a formula hinting at an anapest-like rhythm, which was
used in lyric poetry (Anderson 1994, 40). Furthermore, particular phrases in their
song are reflective of, for example, Sappho’s poetry (Peponi 2012, 79). If the song
of the Sirens thus indeed imitated the rhythm of lyric poetry as well as its formu-
laic language, it is possible that the accompanying melody was specific as well.
Furthermore, if musical accompaniment and the flow of narration were indeed
reminiscent of lyric poetry, the performance of the Sirens’ song would result in a
kind of musical intertextuality.
The second aspect of intertextuality in hip-hop is the intertextuality of lyrics.
Justin A. Williams, for example, lists the following intertextual techniques as the
main characteristics of hip-hop composition, production, and performance: sam-
pling, re-performing past music (by way of a DJ or live band), referencing other
lyrics, matching the style of another rapper’s flow, and quoting sounds and dia-
546 Blaž Zabel
logue in the music (2015, 208). As Williams concludes, hip-hop is a highly inter-
textual musical genre, one that uses this technique intentionally and consciously
in order to celebrate its own past and tradition. The intertextuality of lyrics is an
important characteristic of hip-hop tradition. It can be understood in many ways,
including through the concept of Signifying(s) (discussed above), or even as a
semantically productive dialogue as perceived by post-structuralist critics such
as Kristeva, Barthes, Genette, and others (e.g. Diallo 2015).
Indeed, these findings are relevant, and can be paralleled to, present-day dis-
cussions about archaic Greek poetry. For the past two decades, the intertextuality
of oral poetry has been hotly discussed in classical studies. Some, as for example
Foley and Arft, argue that oral poetry cannot be intertextual:
In such oral-derived texts, interactions are much too complex, multidirectional, fluid, and
dynamic for a purely intertextual model to fully explain. Further, traditional referential-
ity and an absence of textual fixity– typical features of oral and oral-derived narratives–
undercut the notion that the elements and patterns that constitute a tradition can migrate
from one poem to the other by a simple transference of units. (Foley and Arft 2015, 95)
Foley and Arft argue that intertextuality cannot apply to oral poetry since it is
in its nature to be referential of its own tradition. On the other hand, however,
the school of neoanalysis, a mix of analytical and oralist understandings of
Homeric poetry, argues that archaic poetry can be intertextual precisely because
of its specific oral character. Different performances and poems constantly reflect
and communicate with each other, and their meanings derive precisely from this
interaction (Tsagalis 2011; Burgess 2012). A relatively recent concept of interfor-
mularity proposed by Bakker (2013, 157–169) is an interesting attempt to capture
this. Bakker sees formulaic Homeric language as very similar to natural language,
which makes use of generic formulaic expressions as well as highly and intention-
ally intertextual references.
A comparison of research on archaic Greek poetry with hip-hop scholarship
supports such a neoanalytical understanding of oral intertextuality and interfor-
mularity in ancient Greek poetry. Both hip-hop and archaic Greek poetry can thus
be understood as using various intertextual techniques that range from purely for-
mulaic to highly intertextual. I will illustrate this with some comparisons. The first
example is an examination of the word “motherfucker,” in Greek “ητροκοίτη,”
as used in hip-hop and archaic Greek poetry. In hip-hop, the expression is used
often in a mostly formulaic manner, expressing simply the semantic meaning of
“people” that can range from pejorative to approbatory to fairly neutral (as for
example in Wu-Tang’s Reunited). In Greek literature, however, “ητροκοίτη” is
a hapax legomenon, meaning it is recorded only once (Hipponax fragment 12,
in West 1989), and is generally taken to be extremely pejorative, in line with the
Archaic Greek Poetry and Hip-Hop: AComparison 547
genre of iambic poetry. If the word was used by others at the time, we could con-
clude that its use was intentionally intertextual or at least referencing a particu-
lar genre. The second example is the comparison of two expressions, “book of
rhymes” and “πεα πτερόεντα προσηύδα” [he/she spoke forth winged words].
“Book of rhymes” is a standard expression used in hip-hop to describe the book
where rappers write their lyrics and ideas (Bradley 2009, xi). In this respect, its
use is generally formulaic. However, after the extremely influential song Book of
Rhymes by Nas, the use of the expression almost always brings at least partial
recollection of that song. The same can be argued for the Homeric expression
“πεα πτερόεντα προσηύδα”: in Homeric poetry, it was indeed used as a formula
meaning simply “he/she spoke,” but in later poetry or in other genres, as for
example in lyric poetry, the audience must have recognized a Homeric or epic
background to the expression. The third example is the comparison of highly
intertextual referencing. In hip-hop, the lines “I carry the cross, if Virgin Mary
had an abortion/ I’d still be carried in the chariot by stampeding horses” were
first used by Nas in his song The Cross and later reused by Ab-soul in his song
Stygmata. Ab-soul’s use of these particular lines is intentionally intertextual, and
the semantic meaning of the lines is constructed in a dialogical relationship with
Nas’s The Cross. A parallel can be drawn between this intertextual connection and
a similar intertextual relationship between Od. 9.442 and 22.32. In both passages,
the formula “τ δ νήπιοι οκ νόησαν” [they, clueless, did not grasp] is utilized
in a specifically intertextual manner, for it is used only at the moment when Odys-
seus and his companions escape the Cyclops’ cave and when the Suitors do not
recognize Odysseus. As Bakker argues:
The Suitors are like the Cyclops in their total lack of understanding of their situation, but
they are at the same time in the position in which Odysseus once was, trapped in the cave.
But Odysseus was able to escape, whereas they are not. The similarity thus sets up Odysseus
as a successful Cyclops and the Suitors as the equivalent of an unsuccessful Odysseus, the
link between the cave and Odysseus’ megaron being established in the process. (Bakker
2013, 167)
What the comparison of scholarship’s take on intertextuality in hip-hop lyrics and
in archaic Greek poetry has thus demonstrated is that both oral traditions express
different levels of Signifying(s). As we have seen, scholarship in both fields has
identified that references can range from purely formulaic to a highly dialogical
intertextuality. Some expressions and lines are indeed formulaic (as much of the
language itself is to a certain extent formulaic), but that does not mean that many
other expressions, verses, motives, scenes, and themes cannot be intentionally
intertextual. A review of hip-hop scholarship on intertextuality can thus produc-
tively inform the ongoing debates in classical studies about the role and nature of
548 Blaž Zabel
intertextuality in oral poetry. In fact, as I have argued, it supports theories which
argue for a more dynamic and flexible understanding of various formulaic and
intertextual connections in ancient Greek poetry.
4 Conclusions
In this article, I have argued that hip-hop scholarship can productively inform
research on archaic Greek oral poetry. On the one hand, research on hip-hop can
highlight particular aspects of Homeric and archaic Greek poetry that have been
generally disregarded in traditional classical scholarship. This I have demon-
strated by discussing the importance of flow for understanding Homeric epics.
On the other hand, I have demonstrated how hip-hop scholarship can inform
some of the ongoing debates in classical studies. This I have done by comparing
discussions about intertextuality in archaic Greek literature and hip-hop, essen-
tially arguing that both oral poetries can be understood on a scale from purely
formulaic expression to highly intertextual reference.
In more general terms, however, I hope my article also promotes the view that
scholarship on one specific poetic tradition (in my case, classical studies) should
not disregard other manifestations of literature and research on them. Such a
broader outlook on literature can, as I have argued, be productive for scholarship
and can even correct some erroneous convictions. Furthermore, it also promotes
a more democratic and all-embracing outlook on literature itself, accepting that
different cultures and traditions around the world have their specific forms of
artistic expression. As David Damrosch (2009) has argued, one way to broaden
the concept of world literature is to read widely across times and cultures; com-
paring ancient literature with hip-hop certainly falls under this category. Reading
hip-hop alongside archaic Greek poetry thus promotes a view of literature that is
to a certain degree more inclusive, as does the acknowledgement of findings of
hip-hop research in classical studies.
Archaic Greek Poetry and Hip-Hop: AComparison 549
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Blaž Zabel is a PhD candidate at the Department of Classics and Ancient History,
Durham University, UK. His research project investigates the history of Homeric
scholarship and classics in the context of comparative and world literature. He is
also interested in new approaches to Homeric poetry.