Hip-Hop Archives: The Politics and Poetics of Knowledge Production

by Mark V. Campbell, Murray Forman

Overview

This book focuses on the culture and politics involved in building hip-hop archives. It addresses practical aspects, including methods of accumulation, curation, preservation, and digitization and critically analyzes institutional power, community engagement, urban economics, public access, and the ideological implications associated with hip-hop culture’s enduring tensions with dominant social values.

The collection of essays are divided into four sections; Doing the Knowledge, Challenging Archival Forms, Beyond the Nation and Institutional Alignments: Interviews and Reflections. The book covers a range of official, unofficial, DIY and community archives and collections and features chapters by scholar practitioners, educators and curators.

A wide swath of hip-hop culture is featured in the book, including a focus on dance, graffiti, clothing, and battle rap. The range of authors and their topics span countries in Asia, Europe, the Caribbean and North America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789388442
Publisher:	Intellect Books
Publication date:	09/04/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Mark V. Campbell is a DJ, scholar and curator. He is co-founder of the Bigger than Hip Hop radio show (1997-2015) and founder at Northside Hip Hop Archive. Mark is an Assistant Professor of Music and Culture at the University of Toronto Scarborough in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media.

Murray Forman is among the first generation of hip-hop studies scholars, his academic research having directly
engaged various facets of hip-hop culture since the early 1990s. His books include The ‘Hood Comes First: Race, Space and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop (2002), and (with co-editor Mark Anthony Neal) That’s the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader (1st edition 2004; 2nd edition, 2012) as well as One Night on TV is Worth Weeks at the Paramount: Popular Music on Early Television (2012). An inaugural Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellow at the Hip Hop Archive & Research Institute, Harvard University (2014-2015), he is Professor of Media & Screen Studies at Northeastern University.

Mark V. Campbell is a DJ, scholar and curator. His research explores the relationships between Afrosonic innovations, hip hop archives and notions of the human. He is assistant professor of music and culture and director of the Afrosonic Innovation Lab at the University of Toronto Scarborough.

Contact: University of Toronto Scarborough, 1265 Military Trail, Scarborough, ON m1c 1A4, Canada.

Murray Forman is professor of media and screen studies at Northeastern University. He is author of The ‘Hood Comes First: Race, Space and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop and One Night on TV is Worth Weeks at the Paramount: Popular Music on Early Television. He is also co-editor of Hip-Hop Archives: The Politics and Poetics of Knowledge Production and three editions of That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader. In 2003–2004, he was awarded a US National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, and he was an inaugural recipient of the Nasir Jones Hip-Hop Fellowship at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Harvard University (2014–2015).

Table of Contents

List of Figures vii

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: “An Archival State of Mind” xiii

Mark V. Campbell

 

SECTION 1: DOING THE KNOWLEDGE 1

1. The Hip Hop Archive and the High School Student: Symbiotic Knowledge Disruption 3

Kulsoom Anwer Shaikh

2. Hip Hop as a Practical and Methodological Issue: Libraries in Russia 19

Sergey Ivanov

3. Hip Hop Dance and the Circulation of Breaking Footage 41

Mary Fogarty and Jason “J-Sun” Noer

4. The Black History 101 Mobile Museum and the Michigan Hip-Hop Archive 57

Khalid El-Hakim

 

SECTION 2: CHALLENGING ARCHIVAL FORMS 77

5. As We Walk through the Archived Files of All Styles: Archival Practices and Cultural Memory on Battle Rap Forums 79

Sean Robertson-Palmer

6. The Responsibilities and Challenges of Community-Engaged Archives: Lessons from Building the Massachusetts Hip-Hop Archive 96

Pacey Foster

7. The Ballad of “Grandmaster PH”: Contesting Narratives and Lost Archives in Philippine Hip-Hop 114

James Gabrillo

8. Painting, Image, and Cultural Heritage: The Graffiti Mural Fascinate as Visual Ecology 129

Jacob Kimvall

9. Oral History and the Accidental Archive 154

Giuseppe “u.net” Pipitone

 

SECTION 3: BEYOND THE NATION 167

10. Traces of Solidarity and Breakdown: Domestic Collection in Post-Yugoslav Hip Hop Fanzines and Mixtapes 169

Owen Kohl and Dragana Cvetanović

11. Living Archives: Producing Knowledge about Hip-Hop Culture in East Germany 196

Leonard Schmieding

12. Rap Cubano in the Archive: The Immaterial Paradox 221

Pablo D. Herrera Veitia

 

SECTION 4: INSTITUTIONAL ALIGNMENTS: INTERVIEWS AND REFLECTIONS 249

13. Nwaka Onwusa (Vice President and Chief Curator, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) 251

14. Ben Ortiz (Assistant Curator, Cornell Hip Hop Collection) 268

15. Martha Diaz (Chief Curator/Archivist, Hip Hop Education Center and Associate Curator/Archivist, Universal Hip Hop Museum) 281

 

Afterword 297

Murray Forman

Notes on Contributors 309

Index 317