HIP HOP DIASPORA 2023
Archiving and Celebrating 50 Years of the Culture – Event Report
Purpose of the Event
A Closer Look By Day
On November 9th, the event opened with Everybody Wins: Using the Power of the Institution to Advocate for Hip-Hop Communities, a keynote by Courtney Chartier, Director of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Columbia University. A roundtable by Francesca D’Amico-Cuthbert, Chartier and Pablo D. Herrera Veitia followed the opening keynote. This year, one of the Hip-Hop Diaspora’s main events was the launch of Hip-Hop Archives: The Politics and Poetics of Knowledge Production, a new volume that Mark V. Campbell and Murray Forman edited for Intellect Books, which took place in the afternoon of the first day. Later that day, Martha Diaz, Jaqueline Lima Santos, and Jon Green offered a panel on hip-hop archives and their institutional alignments. The day closed with a workshop/showcase organized by Vanese Smith and Garret Keown of Loop Sessions Toronto at the William Doo Auditorium. There, Canada’s very own beatmakers Astro Mega and Cosmo discussed the status of industry-standard music technology brands as institutions and their connections to hip-hop archives and the digital humanities with Dustin Good, Product Manager at Roland Americas, and Matthew LeFaive, the Digital Humanities Developer in the JHI’s Critical Digital Humanities Initiative.
On Friday, November 10, at Scarborough campus, Jonzi D’s, Creative Director of Breakin’ Convention, keynote: How does hip-hop vocabulary define contemporary theatre and dance archives? was presented by Dr. Mary Fogarty, an Associate Professor of Dance at York University. Their conversation was followed by the three other panels. Firstly, K. Anwer Shaikh, M. Fogarty, Khalid El-Hakim, Serguei Ivanov, and Jason Noer discussed Doing the Knowledge: The Politics of Archiving Hip-Hop Histories in Canada, the US and Russia. Then, Sean Robertson-Palmer, James Gabrillo, Pacey Foster, Giuseppe Pipitone, and Jacob Kimvall held a second panel titled Challenging Archival Forms: Hip-hop Oral Histories, Bottom-up Historiographies and Non-institutional Archivist Efforts in the US, Philippines, Sweden, and the UK. Lastly, Owen Kohl, Leonard Schmiedling, and Pablo D. Herrera Veitia presented a panel titled Beyond the Nation: Practitioners’ Cultural Labour to Produce Archival Work Beyond the Constrictions of the Nation in Yugoslavia, Germany, and Cuba. Cuban-born, Chicago-based DJ AfroQbano closed all events that day with a dynamic selection of Cuban post-1959 music on vinyl. Hip-Hop Diaspora sessions ended on Saturday, November 11th, at the Art Gallery of Ontario, where, after an introduction by Martha Diaz, Fred ‘Fab Five Freddy’ Brathwaite gave an engaging closing keynote titled The Archive of the Future. Brathwaite talk and Q&A were followed by the screening of Inventos Hip-Hop Cubano by Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi.
Benefits and Nature of the Event
Among Hip-Hop Diaspora’s many benefits, this year, we examined how hip-hop street culture practices, education, and innovations ushered the many affordances attributed to the digital humanities, with scholars, community organizers, independent and professional archivists, and students from the University of Toronto. The nature of our panels allowed us to explore new ways to define and expand human/technology relations, as well as decolonial, horizontal, and study-up approaches to historicizing, sharing knowledge, and designing research. We are grateful to our partners and co-sponsors. This year Hip-Hop Diaspora happened via a partnership between the Afrosonic Innovation Lab, Northside Hip Hop Archive, the Hip-Hop Education Center, and Habana Hip-Hop. At the University of Toronto, other very generous cash and in-kind support contributors are the Faculty of Music, the Center for Caribbean Studies, the Critical Digital Humanities Initiative, the Center for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies’ Cluster for the Study of Racism and Inequality, and the Department of Arts, Culture and Media of the University of Toronto, Scarborough. Other co-sponsors external to UofT are the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Loop Sessions Toronto, and Roland. It must be noted that Roland donated two SP-404 MKII samplers to the Afrosonic Innovation Lab, Department of Arts, Culture and Media, UTSC. This equipment will become one of the tools used to further course development in music production on the Scarborough campus, as well as present a new paradigm to think with technology and digital humanities that shortens the distance between classroom and industry standards for students.
Without exception, every attendee commented on the value of Hip-Hop Diaspora as an event that offers practitioners, scholars, and students a meeting space for reflection and synergies that rarely happen yet are so necessary for future understanding of culture in the twenty-first century. Finally, considering that this year’s Hip-Hop Diaspora dates were within Reading Week at the St. George campus, the 275-plus attendees for both in-person and virtual events across the three days is a figure commensurate with the fact that it is a very new event, the first of its kind at UofT.