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- Convenors:
-
Sudiipta Dowsett
(University of New South Wales)
Lucas Marie (University of Melbourne)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Thursday 25 November, -
Time zone: Australia/Sydney
Short Abstract:
This panel explores ethnographic approaches to the study of hip-hop culture and invites papers with a focus on hip hop performance practice, in Australia and beyond, as a method of exploration, experimentation, expression, and politicking.
Long Abstract:
Australian research on hip-hop has a history of important contributions to international hip-hop scholarship, including Ian Maxwell’s early phenomenology of performance, Tony Mitchell’s work to globalise hip-hop studies and Sujatha Fernandes’ practitioner-based research on hip-hop in Australia and Cuba. Hip-hop artists from Australia have also made an impact in global hip-hop music, breaking and graffiti.
This panel this aims to bring together hip-hop practitioners, thinkers and writers from diverse and interdisciplinary fields with a focus on highlighting the insights anthropological approaches bring to hip-hop studies. A key intention of this panel is to open up a discussion about what people are doing with hip-hop in the contexts of their own lived experience and life worlds, as well as discussions surrounding the state of hip-hop and hip-hop studies within Australia and “where to from here?” As such the last “paper” in the panel will be reserved for a 20min “roundtable” type discussion between panelists. This panel is open to different types of presentations which may include formal papers, performances, or short film, keeping within the limits of the online format.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 25 November, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
This paper combines insights from two very different Adelaide-based Hip-Hop research projects to explore the range of methods that anthropologists can use to understand the lives and perspectives of Hip-Hop practitioners in Australia.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the relationship between changing life circumstances and research design by comparing two very different Adelaide based Hip-Hop projects that I conducted nearly a decade apart. My PhD research involved fieldwork with Hip-Hop practitioners from 2006-2008. This research could be defined as ‘classical’ ethnographic research, where the central aim was to learn via participant observation and long-term immersion in the ‘field’. After a long break where my career and life priorities shifted, including becoming a mother, I returned to Hip-Hop research in 2019 when I began a smaller-scale, team project that examined First Nations Hip-Hop workshops. At this time, it was no longer feasible (or desirable!) for me to consistently participate in the local Hip-Hop scene. I was often unable to attend late-night events and other research activities had to be carefully scheduled. These time and access limitations meant that formal methods like semi-structured interviews became central. Initially I saw these differences as a failure, feelings that were exacerbated by my own struggles to reconnect with Hip-Hop culture. However, over time I started to challenge my idealised / nostalgic understanding of ethnography and to think more critically about the strengths of collaborative, team research. In this paper, I draw on these experiences to contribute to a growing body of work that examines ageing in subcultural / youth collectives, and, to reflect on the diverse range of methods that can be utilised by Hip-Hop researchers in Australia, who each write from their own particular vantage point.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the auto-ethnographic aspect of my methodology that was employed and theoretical framework that underpins my recently submitted DCA exegesis and film documentary on socially conscious Hip-hop in Australia, JustUS:What Hip-hop Wants You to Know. (https://vimeo.com/561269114)
Paper long abstract:
It was not until much later in my research- based practice (making a Hip-hop film) that I discovered that the best academic articulation for my research methodology, apart from being practice-led, was inherently Auto-ethnographic. Also, as an indigenous person who identifies with the Hip-hop community, my identity very much informed my style of questioning, observation and reflexivity; where I chose to conduct interviews, when it was appropriate to conduct research, who I chose to question or in a metaphysical sense who chose to be interviewed by me. It is these decisions on who, what, where and when to research that are ultimately made through subjective choices. Alternatively, auto-ethnography is not only transparent about subjectivity, it “accommodates subjectivity, emotionality, and the researcher's influence on research, rather than hiding from these matters or assuming they don't exist” (Ellis, Adams and Bochner 2010, p. 2). Autoethnography is “a tool with which Indigenous people can decolonise research practices and representations of themselves. This is possible with Indigenous autoethnography because the researcher is the subject, the key informant and the expert” (Pratt quoted in Houston 2007, p. 48). For instance, my own scholarly resistance is evident in my editing process; juxtaposing news media accounts of Aboriginal so-called “rioting” against the alternative truth behind Aboriginal uprisings. As the key informant and expert sharing this alternative knowledge with my participants, I have been able to provide not only alternative information relating to these events, but also new meanings that can enhance existing understandings of Australian Hip-hop.
Paper short abstract:
In December of 2020 Breaking was officially confirmed to be included in the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. Drawing on ethnographic research with Breakers across Australia, this paper discusses how Australian Breakers have responded to, and made sense of, Breaking becoming an Olympic sport.
Paper long abstract:
In December of 2020 Breaking was officially confirmed to be included in the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. This paper draws on ethnographic field research with Breakers across Australia to discuss how Australian Breakers have responded to, and made sense of, this development. What will be illustrated is how some Breakers see the Olympics as an opportunity and space for wider recognition, but that many have also expressed concerns with the growing influence (and embrace) of transnational commercial organisations and institutional governing bodies in shaping and managing Breaking’s future. Alongside concerns of an increasing sportification of Breaking, this trajectory points towards an increasing loss of self-determination, agency, and spontaneity for local Australian Breakers, and will have profound consequences for the way in which Hip Hop is expressed, understood and practiced. Additionally, this paper points out that Breaking’s institutionalisation via the Olympics will place the dance more firmly within this sporting nation’s hegemonic settler-colonial structures that rely upon racialised and gendered hierarchies.
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses hip-hop embodied performance practice in Milpirri festival and argues that a phenomenological understanding of 'representing' reveals hip-hop's anticolonial capacities for maintaining at-risk ways of being in the world.
Paper long abstract:
The hip-hop imperative to represent where you come from 'typically involves the articulation of spatial affinities and place-based loyalties' (Forman 2014, p. 300). Beyond 'shout outs' to places of origin hip-hop practitioners represent through senses of place and a sense of emplacement in, and orientation to the world as revealed through the body - in gesture, vocal inflection, vocabulary, embodied stance, embodied collectivity, style, and themes in performance. The ethic to represent, when understood through the phenomenological body, is central to hip-hop's anticolonial capacity to maintain, revitalise and experiment with endangered ways of being in the world. This paper draws on ethnographic research in Lajamanu, NT, in making a case for sensory experience and embodied knowledge as central to the political capacities of hip-hop beyond lyrics. Milpirri festival, a biennial whole of community event in Lajamanu, NT, deeply embeds Warlpiri ceremony, knowledge and kinship into youth rap and breaking practices. Milpirri maintains senses of Country and belonging through experimental forms of collective embodied performance practice, as the youth performances take place alongside abbreviated performances of Jukurrpa (Dreaming). Hip-hop's particular utility here lies in the intersection of the ethic to represent place and embodied connection to Country.