INSTITUTE NEWS
In keeping with the tradition of using American Music Review as a platform to provide news about the Hitchcock Institute for Studies in American Music, this section highlights some of our biggest accomplishments of 2024.
In a few paragraphs within this publication, I try to capture a year defined by reflection, transformation, and ambition. As the first director unaffiliated with Brooklyn College, my appointment marked a new chapter for the Institute, solidifying our growing ties with the Graduate Center and other CUNY campuses. Since assuming this role, I have worked tirelessly to further our mission of diversifying the study of American music and amplifying the voices of those advancing the field through scholarship and practice. Over the past academic year, we commit- ted to expanding HISAM’s reach across CUNY, and our public-facing events reflected this renewed focus on accessibility and inclusivity.
Our programming this year paid homage to HISAM’s history while embracing its evolving future. Leaving Fall 2023 inspired by the celebration of H. Wiley Hitchcock’s centennial birthday, we embarked on a mission to honor the legacy of the great scholars that have passed through the institute, many of which are our board members today. During the spring we celebrated Judith Tick’s nationally acclaimed book Becoming Ella Fitzgerald. The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song (Norton 2023), with a conversation that allowed people to engage with her rigorous scholarship and a reception with a listening party; an homage to the artist she so vividly portrayed.
Another tribute to HISAM’s legacy led us to our 2024 symposium, where we used the 20-year anniversary of our 34th monograph Critical Minded. New Approaches to the Study of Hip Hop (edited by Ellie Hisama and Evan Rapport), to celebrate the long-lasting impact of hip hop scholarship emerging from CUNY. The Critical Minded symposium inspired this issue of American Music Review (AMR), which deals exclusively with hip hop and offers new insights and historical perspectives that build on the recent 50-year anniversary of this revolutionary music genre that emerged from New York City.
Our Critical Minded symposium featured presentations of the authors which contributed to this year’s AMR. Each talk inspired insightful conversations with audience members. The event was completed with performances of current CUNY students. We were blown away by LemBo’s (Paolo Lembo) and his one-man performance. On his way to becoming a world-famous beatboxer, Paolo is a student at Brooklyn College. Towards the end of the night, the talented Afro Beats Dance Club from Lehman College enlivened the audience with an unforgettable medley that they choreographed from beginning to end. The symposium closed with a moving keynote speech by Ellie Hisama and Evan Rapport, co-editors of Critical Minded in 2004, the transcript of which is included in this issue of AMR. We were able to fund this symposium, and the satellite hip hop-re- lated events that will succeed it in early 2025, through a generous grant from the Baisley Powell Elebash Foundation.
Our 2024 Music in Polycultural America series was a concert, talk and book presentation around Switched On. The Dawn of Electronic Sound by Latin American Women. Switched On is the first book dedicated exclusively to the female pioneers of Latin American electronic music, challenging the traditional history of 20th-century avant-garde electronic music, which has predominantly been narrated from Anglo-American and Western European perspectives and centered on male protagonists. For this event we were able to bring one of the book’s co-editors, Peruvian sound artist Alejandra Cardenas (Ale Hop) and provide a space for her to dialogue with other chapter contributors (Alma Laprida and Natasha Tiniacos) about the present and past history of women in electronic music in Latin America. The event concluded with a concert that an audience member shared they waited six years to witness in New York City.
The last set of news is about our internal transformations. This year we had the pleasure of working with Michelle Yom as our Graduate Assistant during the spring semester. Michelle was the man- aging editor of this issue of American Music Review and a great contributor to our public-facing agenda in the first part of the year. In the fall semester, Kelsey Milian became our new Graduate Assistant. She is a doctoral student in the ethnomusicology program at The Graduate Center, a published poet and talented musician. None of our celebrated events in the latter part of the year, from the symposium, to the Switched On book presentation, could have happened without her assistance. Kelsey will be the managing editor of our next issue of AMR which will focus on music from Mexico, with a particular emphasis on the diasporic communities from Oaxaca. This year we had our first undergraduate intern! Madison Valentin, a recent graduate from Lehman College who helped us increase our social media presence and online footprint.
Looking ahead, we remain focused on grant seeking, on organizing public events throughout CUNY campuses, and pro- viding a platform for impactful research. We are grateful to our donors, supporters, and partners who have been essential in helping us diversify the knowledge pro- duction and vernacular understanding of American music through an anti-racist, feminist and social-justice oriented agenda. To our readers, and those who show up or log-in to our events, we thank you for your continued support, and look forward to another year of growth and collaboration.
IN THIS ISSUE
This year’s American Music Review publication may be the most robust issue in HISAM’s history. Focusing solely on hiphop, the pages of this journal provide a platform for cutting-edge interdisciplinary scholar- ship, all of which emerges from current or past CUNY faculty and students. It begins with a brief introduction which I wrote after an inspiring conversation I shared with Ellie Hisama and Evan Rapport while preparing Critical Minded’s celebration. “Bespoke analysis. Diversifying scholar- ship through transformative pedagogical practices” is a short piece that reflects on the ways in which we can use teaching to create long-lasting knowledge production, and in the potentials of collaboration and student-centered instruction for creating mobilizing frameworks for music pedagogy. The publication continues with the transcript of Ellie Hisama and Evan Rapport’s keynote speech at the Critical Minded symposium, a touching narrative through Ellie Hisama’s years as director of HISAM and about the graduate seminar that inspired the publication of Critical Minded. With candid and engaging memories, Ellie and Evan recount a different time for popular music and American-centered music scholarship and reflect on the legacy of the monograph that inspired this issue of AMR and our 2024 symposium.
Among the contributions to this year’s American Music Review is a thoughtful piece by Noriko Manabe, chair and professor of music theory and affiliate faculty of ethnomusicology and East Asian studies at Indiana University, and alumna from the CUNY Graduate Center. Manabe’s paper “Awich: A New Era for Japanese Women Rappers” examines the rise of Awich, a female rapper from Okinawa, and her transformative impact on the Japanese hip hop scene. In a culture that traditionally values cuteness and polite- ness, Awich’s success challenges these norms by blending authenticity with a strong, empowered female image, claims Manabe. This thought-provoking analysis shows how Awich redefines the role of women in hip-hop, confronting stereo- types within the US music industry and fostering greater cultural exchange and female participation.
Rômulo Moraes, a writer, sound artist and Ph.D candidate in Ethnomusicology at The Graduate Center (CUNY) wrote about the metaphorical language surrounding the practice of sampling in hip-hop. Focusing on allegories of “digging” and excavation, his paper “Notes to a Metaphorology of Sampling” shows the complex cultural, aesthetic, and commercial dynamics sur- rounding the somewhat “archaeological” practice of digging for samples. Donna-Lee Granville, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College (CUNY) contributed an insightful piece that examines hip hop’s transformation from a grassroots cultural movement to a global industry. Granville’s article “Hip-hop Started Out in the Heart”: The Evolution of Hip-hop from Extraction to Consumption” builds on her career as an enthusiast and an educator of this genre, critiquing the impact of commercialization and commodification on hip-hop’s produc- tion and consumption while proposing a future that prioritizes the music’s cultural integrity by empowering artists and con- sumers over exploitative market forces.
MX Oops, Assistant Professor in the dance program in Lehman College (CUNY) and transmedia performance artist explores the perception of time in club culture in their article “ECSTATIC AESTHETICS: DJing and Dancing in Dynamic Time.” Focusing on how DJs and dancers experience and manipulate time through their craft –drawing from personal practice as a dancer, DJ, and meditation practitioner– MX shows how time can be simultaneously engaged from multiple temporal experiences and the agile transitions between them. Stephen Gomez-Peck, an instructor of music theory at the University of Alabama, alumni from the Graduate Center (CUNY), found a creative way to examine the recent feud between rappers Kendrick Lamar and Drake. Using quantitative analysis, his study “The Kendrick Lamar/Drake Beef by the Numbers” categorizes and evalu- ates the disses exchanged in their songs focusing on aspects such as density or polysemy, finding a clear winner in the dispute while reflecting on the evolving cultural and aesthetic values of hip-hop audiences in the twenty-first century.
Drawing on ethnographic research in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Juliana Catinin, a Ph.D student in the ethnomusicology program at the Graduate Center (CUNY), explores the role of underground rappers in empowering black and poor communities through Gramsci’s notion of the “organic intellectual.” Using NylMCasa casestudy, Catinin’s paper “Amid Urban Contradictions: A Dialectical Reflection on the Role of the Rapper as an Organic Intellectual in Rio de Janeiro” examines how rap serves as both a cultural expression and a revolutionary tool for collective resistance, despite the contradictions posed by systemic racism and classism. Elizabeth Newton’s article “Toward Abolitionist Frameworks for Hip- hop Studies” tackles similar contradictions affecting the “Hip Hop 50” homages in New York, against the increasing police presence in the city. Newton, a writer, editor, and musicologist who got her degree from the Graduate Center (CUNY), provides a pathway through which to transform con- temporary hip hop scholarship through abolitionist frameworks.
Altogether, the articles in this issue of American Music Review present a rich and complex portrayal of what is like to theorize about hip hop fifty years after the genre emerged from the streets of The Bronx. Across these interdisciplinary and creative approaches to hip hop –its methods, discourses, performance practices, political and aesthetic values, new and ongoing configurations, and inspiring participants –the richness and complexity of the genre are highlighted, across broader cultural and social dynamics. Just like Critical Minded. New Approaches to Hip Hop Studies did twenty-years ago, this publication contributes to our understanding of hip hop as a platform for resistance, identity formation, and cultural exchange while addressing issues of power, representation, and community. Each paper illuminates hip hop’s capacity to challenge norms, create new narratives, and foster connections across diverse contexts. They look inward, into the complexities of this globally renowned cultural expression, to create tools that go outward: towards futures where artists can empower com- munities with intentional goals and political aims; where gendered stereotypes are rendered meaningless; where powerful expressions can resist and not be swallowed by commodification; and where disruptive messages and rhythmic flow –and the ways in which we write about them– can render actual liberation.
Agustina Checa
Director, Hitchcock Institute for Studies in American Music
agustina.checa@lehman.cuny.edu
All photos of the Critical Minded symposium and the Switched On event were taken by Coline Chevrin.