Outkast
Outkast, a hip hop due from Atlanta, Georgia

 Daniel Patlán (Flickr Creative Commons)

The cultural significance of hip hop

Matt Pickles

Academics in The Oxford Research Centre  in the Humanities’ (TORCH) Race and Resistance Programme will host a discussion about the cultural value of hip hop this month.

On Friday 17th February, TORCH will host a lecture by Marcyliena Morgan, who is a professor from Harvard University’s Hiphop Archive and Research Institute.

‘The Hiphop Archive’s focus, which includes projects like analysing the poetic quality of 2Pac’s lyrics to understanding the post-civil rights dimension of Outkast’s Southern rap, demonstrates that hip hop is a source of artistic innovation and enjoyment on its own terms, while also providing us with insight into the cultural, social, and political conditions that have shaped recent times,’ says Louisa Olufsen Layne, a DPhil student in English at Oxford University.

‘Hip hop as a musical and global cultural form forces us to think critically about what we define as valuable knowledge, who we recognise as knowledge producers, and how knowledge can be created and shared. The study and archiving of hip hop encourages us to recognise how contemporary forms influence our view of the present as well as our understanding of the past.’

Harvard’s Hiphop Archive was established in 2002, and its mission is to facilitate and encourage the pursuit of knowledge, art, culture, and responsible leadership through hip hop.

Some of the questions that might be covered during the talk include: Why do universities need to archive and research contemporary popular culture? How can the study of hip hop foster new understandings of cultural value and knowledge in academia?

What kind of knowledge can be exchanged between researchers of hip hop in the US and institutions in the UK working with hip hop, British rap and grime? How can we think comparatively about similar projects and initiatives in the UK?

Hip hop is not a new subject of study in Oxford. Jason Stanyek, Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology in the Faculty of Music, has taught a course on global hip hop to first-year undergraduates since 2012, reaching almost 400 students.

The TORCH event takes place at 2.30pm on Friday 17 February at St Luke’s Chapel on Oxford University’s Radcliffe Observatory Quarter. Anyone can attend, but prior booking is required.

In the meantime, here is Hey Ya! by Outkast...