Kyra Gaunt: How the jump rope got its rhythm
A member of the inaugural TED Fellows class, Dr. Kyra Gaunt is an ethnomusicologist, singer-songwriter, and a social media researcher on faculty at University at Albany, SUNY. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
TICK-tat, TICK-tat, TICK-tat.
the Jump Rope]
a clothesline, twine.
is that it has a certain weight,
that kind of whip sound.
of the jump rope is.
that it began in ancient Egypt, Phoenicia,
to North America with Dutch settlers.
when women's clothes became more fitted
wouldn't catch the ropes.
to train their wards to jump rope.
in the antebellum South
Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens,
lots of girls playing with ropes.
and turn them as a single rope together,
them in like an eggbeater on each other.
was like a steady timeline --
and rhythms and chants.
to contribute to something
than the neighborhood.
a powerful symbol of culture and identity
basketball and football,
that boys weren't a part of that.
so many hip-hop artists
in black girls' game songs.
act like you know how to flip,
french fries, ice cold, thick shake,
became a Grammy Award-winning single
your street in a Range Rover ... "
down down the roller coaster,
in any black urban community
helped maintain these songs
and the gestures that go along with it,
to what I call "kinetic orality" --
passed down over generations.
is the thing that helps carry it.
to carry memory through.
for all different kinds of things.
because people need to move.
can make the most creative uses.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Kyra Gaunt - EthnomusicologistA member of the inaugural TED Fellows class, Dr. Kyra Gaunt is an ethnomusicologist, singer-songwriter, and a social media researcher on faculty at University at Albany, SUNY.
Why you should listen
Kyra Gaunt's book, The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop, published by NYU Press, won of the 2007 Alan Merriam Book Prize awarded by The Society for Ethnomusicology, which contributed to the emergence of black girlhood studies and hip-hop feminism. It also inspired a work by fellow TED Fellow Camille A. Brown, BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play, which was nominated for a 2016 Bessie Award for Outstanding Production.
Gaunt's articles have appeared in Musical Quarterly, The Journal for Popular Music Studies and Parcours anthropologiques, and she has contributed chapters to I Was Born to Use Mics: Listening to Nas’ Illmatic and The Hip-hop & Obama Reader, among other publications.
Gaunt's scholarship has been funded by The Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities and is a nationally- and internationally-recognized speaker. She also is a certified expert witness in federal and state cases on the unintended consequences of social media. She also continues to perform and record as a classically-trained, jazz vocalist and R&B singer-songwriter. Her original compositions are available on the CD Be the True Revolution available on iTunes and CDBaby.
Kyra Gaunt | Speaker | TED.com