Abstract
“Virtually all hip-hop archives begin either with personal memorabilia related to one's early engagement with a localized hip-hop scene or artifacts associated with the culture's foundational figures,” writes Murray Forman in his “Afterword” for the much-needed volume Hip-Hop Archives: The Politics and Poetics of Knowledge Production. Forman, a member of hip-hop's first generation of scholars, partnered with Mark V. Campbell, a comparative newcomer to academia but veteran of the Toronto hip-hop scene, to co-edit this path-breaking book. Forman's observation references a complex continuum that sits at the core of several of Hip-Hop Archives most compelling chapters. On the one side, there are the informal DIY collections of hip-hop memorabilia, documents, and material culture. The ad hoc, unauthorized assemblages vying for archival status. At the other extreme are a growing number of major institutions—universities and museums with varying histories and commitments to hip-hop—that have recently begun taken interest in recording, preserving, and archiving hip-hop artifacts and the narratives that surround them.
Hip-hop originated through DIY approaches to resisting post-industrial marginalization, to countering systematic racism, and, perhaps most importantly, to making fun. The Black and Brown youth who pioneered the culture were alternative by virtue of their race/ethnicity, class, artistic inclinations, and disenfranchised status in a rapidly transforming New York City and American economy. Through the years, their highly localized efforts have become increasingly legitimized as hip-hop has grown to become one of the most significant global cultural developments of the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century. The “archival turn” in hip-hop marks a crucial stage in this legitimation, saturated by tensions surrounding representation, scale, access, and ownership (to name just a few). The varied case studies highlighted in Hip-Hop Archives effectively chart the terrain through which hip-hop's archivization has traveled and what lies ahead.
Sandwiched between Campbell's insightful “Introduction” and Forman's thoughtful and thought-provoking “Afterword” are a dozen exemplary chapters and three extended interviews with key figures on the frontlines of archiving hip-hop. The substantive chapters, which build momentum throughout, are divided into three sections.
The first section, titled “Doing the Knowledge,” focuses on the pedagogical virtues of hip-hop's fifth element as encountered through archival collections. It begins with chapters about using hip-hop exhibitions to engage Toronto high-school students (Chapter 1) and centering Russian libraries as spaces for aligning hip-hop sensibilities with distinct aspects of post-Soviet philosophy and culture (Chapter 2). The stakes of archivization really come to the fore in Mary Fogarty's and Jason ‘J-Sun’ Noer's chapter on embodied knowledge in breaking (Chapter 3). Although often treated as secondary to hip-hop's musical elements, as the well-worn story of DJ Kool Herc's August 1973 innovations affirms, dancers were the original catalyst for transforming the music. Still, this rich history of hip-hop dancing is primarily recorded on videocassette tapes (including personal practice tapes), which have limited lifespans and therefore must be preserved. Section 1 ends with a discussion of the history surrounding Khalid El-Hakim's Black History 101 Mobile Museum and Michigan Hip Hop Archive (Chapter 4). The former, which exists in a remodeled trailer, is a DIY effort that has been exhibited at over 500 institutions in 41 states.
Section 2, “Challenging Archival Form,” is comprised of five chapters showcasing different modes and methods for constructing and conceiving of hip-hop's archives. These range from digital practices of memorializing rap battles through online discussion and debate (Chapter 5) to visual ecological approaches to archiving Stockholm graffiti murals (Chapter 8). One of the more illuminating chapters, from a DIY perspective, is Pacey Foster's fascinating account of the development and institutionalization of the Massachusetts Hip-Hop Archive (Chapter 6). Although fortunate to find committed institutional partners such as the University of Massachusetts and Boston Public Library, Foster was nevertheless challenged to uphold egalitarian, community-oriented principles that respect the interests and concerns of various stakeholders. The chapter highlights how “operational, legal, and ethical questions … arise as community collections begin to intersect with formal heritage institutions” (p. 110). The two remaining chapters in the section chart the various traces (folklore and rumors) surrounding an undocumented Philippine hip-hop origin story (Chapter 7) and the “accidental” development of a vast oral history archive, featuring several founding artists and activists, by an independent scholar and activist author from Italy (Chapter 9).
The book's third section moves “Beyond the Nation” to examine how different national contexts have impacted the formation and preservation of hip-hop archives. The former Yugoslavia offers a distinct case where tensions between nationalism and cosmopolitanism play out in mixtape practices and a notable magazine publication (Chapter 10). Chapter 11 explores the history of hip-hop in East Germany through a group interview with four pioneers/private collectors. The last chapter of the section, on Rap Cubano, brings issues of power to the fore by utilizing Afro-Cuban religious philosophy as a means to problematize the institutionalization of hip-hop heritage in Cuba, especially as it relates to Estudios Caseros (Chapter 12).
The final section of the book is made up of three interviews with Nwaka Onwusa, whose story underscores differences between showcasing hip-hop at the upstart GRAMMY Museum versus the more established and better resources Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Chapter 13); Ben Ortiz, who discusses the integration of the Cornell Hip Hop Collection with courses being taught on campus (Chapter 14); and Martha Diaz, who revisits many of the issues discussed throughout the book when describing the development of the Universal Hip Hop Museum archives and how it best fits within a healthy archival ecosystem (Chapter 15),
All together, Hip-Hop Archives is an excellent inaugural effort to announce and introduce this important turn in hip-hop's history and scholarship. Whereas the edited collection tends to focus on North America and Europe—contributions from South America, Africa, and even Asia (beyond the Philippines) would have added to its global scope—it nevertheless alerts scholars and collectors throughout the world that hip-hop has now fully entered its archival phase. These are exciting times for all of us interested in hip-hop's past and how it guides us toward the future.
