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.