Saturday, November 04, 2:30 pm–4:30 pm
Galleria II
This live event will not be recorded.
Chair: Langston Collin Wilkins (University of Wisconsin, Madison) and Fernando Alfonso Orejuela (Indiana University)
Forum participants:
Autumn Brown (Oklahoma Oral History Research Program)
Nia I'man Smith, (Indiana University)
Stephanie Shonekan (University of Maryland, College Park)
Junious Lee Brickhouse (Urban Artistry Inc.)
Lisa Rathje (Local Learning)
It is hip hop’s 50th anniversary, and we are in Portland for National Hip Hop History month. In the past half century, hip hop has moved from street-level performances to one of the most important and influential musical scenes guiding song genres, dance forms, and multimodal artistic styles all over the world today. We are public sector folklorists, community scholars, academics in folklore, ethnomusicology, and literature, and local Portland artists who address different ways hip hop has catalyzed artistic advancements, curated curricula, social change, and produced leaders of the future. This roundtable aims to share personal and professional interactions with hip hop and raise questions regarding folkloristics and hip hop culture from the past to the present and beyond. We will begin by framing the roots of hip hop and folklore followed by panelists confronting, interrogating, and challenging “rootlessness” as it migrates outside the boundaries of its earliest New York City communities to the convergent and divergent ways multigenerational, intercultural, and global hip hop communities engage with African American and African diasporic cultural traditions.