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Distributed for Intellect Ltd

Hip-Hop Archives

The Politics and Poetics of Knowledge Production

Distributed for Intellect Ltd

Hip-Hop Archives

The Politics and Poetics of Knowledge Production

A collection of essays on archiving the history of hip-hop, featuring a range of official, unofficial, DIY, and community archives.

Despite the vast popularity and cultural influence of hip-hop, efforts to archive its history are still in fairly early stages. This book focuses on the cultural and political aspects of those undertakings. It addresses practical aspects, including methods of collection, curation, preservation, and digitization, and critically analyzes institutional power, community engagement, urban economics, public access, and the ideological implications of hip-hop culture’s enduring tensions with dominant social values. A wide swath of hip-hop culture is covered by the contributors, including dance, graffiti, clothing, and battle rap.
 

320 pages | 16 images | 6.69 x 9.61 | © 2023

Culture Studies

Music: General Music

Sociology: Theory and Sociology of Knowledge


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Reviews

"The editorial duo comprised of the OG of hip hop studies, Murray Forman, and one of the pioneers in hip hop archiving, Mark V. Campbell, provides a comprehensive volume of essays dedicated to the understanding of the intricacies and challenges of archiving... The authors bring their own flavor while remixing the traditional archival studies by incorporating hip hop’s concepts of representing, digging, building, and sampling. They also challenge cultural institutions and their assumed neutrality and objectivity by shedding light on gatekeeping tactics, and the existing power relations and ideologies. Essays of this volume challenge professional archives that focus on elites while ignoring the contributions of popular culture in general and underrepresented groups and their culture in particular.

Authors of this volume make a strong case for the topics of archivization, museumification, and the role of private collections, to be introduced as a stable part of popular music studies and curricula in general, and hip hop in particular, in hopes of inspiring the next generation of professional archivists and curators."

Anna Oravcova, Popular Music History

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