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Accepted Paper:

Hip-hop as tradition  
Sudiipta Dowsett (University of New South Wales) Jennifer Biddle (University of New South Wales) David McMicken (Tracks Inc)

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores links between performance practice in Warlpiri ceremony and hip-hop culture in order to provide a preliminary outline of the embodied capacities of hip-hop to activate primary relationships between country, person and place.

Paper long abstract:

Hip-hop workshops have become a key feature of community arts, youth-focused programs in remote Indigenous communities in Australia, North America and elsewhere. Yet there is little research on the importance of hip-hop in Indigenous contexts. On a surface level, hip-hop aligns with Indigenous tradition through the multi-modality of story-song-music-dance-art as it has indeed been called a "modern day corroboree" by Gumbaynggirr hip-hop artist Wire MC. But what does this "alignment" mean? What capacities do rap and breakdancing have for maintaining language, culture or more intangible aspects of heritage? How does hip-hop perform place, identity, in what terms? This paper explores these questions through the phenomenon of the biannual Milpirri Festival, Lajamanu, NT, coproduced by Tracks Dance Company. Milpirri is an unlikely confluence of experimental song, dance, performance and spectacle, combining vernacular hip-hop, rap, and break dancing with Jardi warnpa, Yawulyu, and other public versions of high Warlpiri ceremony. As Steven Wanta Jampijinpa Patrick and Jennifer Biddle model (2018), Milpirri demonstrates embodied capacities of hip-hop to activate primary links between country, person and place; re-animating vulnerable place-based forms of knowledge and experience. This paper points to the gap in research needed to understand the vital role of hip-hop specifically in Milpirri, and more generally in Indigenous futures globally. What are the enduring capacities and/or limitations of hip-hop as a vehicle for Aboriginal heritage?

Panel P10
Valuing research on musical traditions and performance practices
  Session 1 Tuesday 3 December, 2019, -