Black Glamour and the Hip-Hop Renaissance: Idlewild's Debt to Cabin in the Sky

This essay examines the rhetorical techniques by which the 2006 musical Idlewild seeks to connect current hip-hop culture to the tradition of black arts and media by comparing it to one of its ostensible inspirations, Cabin in the Sky. Both films use folkloric visions of black culture in the 1930s to posit a vibrant black arts renaissance, Cabin in the Sky by providing a dignified and attractive showcase for jazz music and Idlewild by positioning hip-hop as the cultural heir of jazz through its anachronistic jazz-age setting.