1st Edition
Representing Hip Hop Histories, Politics and Practices in Australia
This long-awaited volume is the first to focus entirely on Hip Hop in Australia. Bringing together both scholarly and practitioner perspectives, across eleven chapters, contributors explore the diversity of identities, communities, practices, and expressions that make-up Hip-Hop in Australia, including Emceeing/ music production, Graffiti and Breaking.
The theoretical and methodological frameworks used include ethnographic and autoethnographic research and writing, discourse analysis, Indigenous methodologies, textual analysis and archival research. Some authors present their contributions in academic chapters while others use creative formats. The book showcases how Hip Hop is understood and lived across numerous settings in Australia, making important contributions to global Hip Hop studies and scholarship in related fields such as popular music/ youth culture and Indigenous Studies.
It will prove essential reading for students, academics, and practitioners interested in Hip Hop, popular culture, music and dance in Australia.
Introduction: Representing Hip Hop in Australia, Sudiipta Dowsett, Lucas Marie, Dianne Rodger and Grant Leigh Saunders Section 1: Hip Hop Histories, Eras and Evolutions 1. Graffiti and Hip Hop in Australia: An Interview with Matthew MISTERY Peet, Kurt Iveson 2. From Gen X to Gen Y: Hip-Hop Life-Stories in Australia, Dianne Rodger 3. Revisiting Nationalism and Multiculturalism in So-called Australian Hip-Hop, Jason Ng Section 2: Hip Hop Activism and Politics 4. Hip-Hop, Activism and Other Stories (Herstory), Izzy Brown 5. ‘Hip Hop Crim’ - A Discourse Analysis of Conscious First Nations Hip Hop Contesting Australia's Criminal Justice System, Grant Leigh Saunders 6. “We Need to Infiltrate Those Spaces”: Space-Reclaiming through Counternarratives in First Nations Hip-Hop in Sydney, Charlotte Schuitenmaker 7. ‘Hip-Hop Fam’ or a Larrikin Brand? Urthboy and the Bind of the Conscious MC, Annalise Friend Section 3: Hip Hop Performance Practices and Place 8. Hip Hop Dance Jams and Cyphers, Lucas Marie, with Jo Yoon 9. Pirlapakarnu Cypher: Beyond Representing Place to Warlpiri Embodiments of Country in Milpirri Hip Hop, Sudiipta Dowsett and Wanta Jampijinpa Patrick 10. ‘Who is this Imposter?’: Women in Australian Underground Hip Hop, Gemma Clendining 11. “In a Good Way There’s No Beef, but the Bad Thing is There’s No Beef”: Tensions and Changing Cultural Politics in Sydney’s Breaking Scene, Rachael Gunn
Biography
Sudiipta Dowsett is a Research Associate in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at the University of New South Wales, Australia.
Lucas Maris is the Deputy Director for Culture, at the Centre for Defence Leadership & Ethics (CDLE), at the Australian Defence College, Canberra.
Dianne Roger is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology and Development Studies at the University of Adelaide, Australia.
Grant Leigh Saunders is a Biripi First Nations independent researcher, Aboriginal studies lecturer and award-winning filmmaker.
“Hip Hop aesthetics, politics, and education in Australia come alive in this sweeping survey of practices, methods, and voices, including First Nations and other marginalised artists and scholars. An inspired, vital contribution to the literature!”
-Jeff Chang, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
“An antidote to one-size-fits-all descriptions of Hip Hop in Australia. It’s refreshing, real, challenging and inspiring. Academics and Hip Hoppers share stories from across this great southern land, never scared to ask tough questions, never shying away from the richness and complexity of those who love, live and are Hip Hop.”
-Morganics (MetaBass'n'Breath) veteran Australian Hip Hop artist.
“Much more than a set of compelling essays about Australian Hip Hop, Represent speaks with insight and authority to both the emergence and development of a discrete field of studies, and to urgent contemporary debates about what it is to be in, and to make culture in, Australia.”
-Ian Maxwell, Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Sydney.
