Precinct Reporter Group News

Top Menu

  • Precinct Reporter News
  • Food
  • Subscribe
  • Privacy Policy

Main Menu

  • Home
  • About
  • Contact Us
  • Read Our E-Edition
  • ADVERTISE
  • Subscribe
Sign in / Join

Login

Welcome! Login in to your account
Lost your password?

Lost Password

Back to login
  • Precinct Reporter News
  • Food
  • Subscribe
  • Privacy Policy

logo

Precinct Reporter Group News

  • Home
  • About
  • Contact Us
  • Read Our E-Edition
  • ADVERTISE
  • Subscribe
  • Black Rose Awards Set For Sat., February 4

  • OC Black History Parade & Unity Festival

  • LBCC Students Get Ready for Male Success Initiative

  • Advocates Address Rise in Suicide for Black Males

  • Cops Search Black Teens 6X More Than White Peers

Latest PRGNews
Home›Latest PRGNews›Hip-hop Diaspora: Life, Culture & Academia

Hip-hop Diaspora: Life, Culture & Academia

By Precinct Reporter News
December 6, 2018
7738
0
Share:

By Sandra Baltazar Martinez

When Imani Kai Johnson was in graduate school, she began thinking about what hip-hop is – and where it’s going.

Several years later, Johnson created her own space to showcase and discuss the future of hip-hop studies. On Dec. 7-9, the University of California, Riverside’s Department of Dance will host the fourth biennial Show & Prove Hip Hop Studies Conference at the Barbara and Art Culver Center of the Arts in downtown Riverside.

“There is no one thing that is ‘hip-hop.’ Whatever is the popular assumption that hip-hop is, it goes beyond that. There is much more depth,” said Johnson, Show & Prove founder and chair, and assistant professor in critical dance studies within UCR’s Department of Dance. “Students, scholars, etc. are tapping into the ways hip-hop culture enacts its own approach to study and research. It gives insight to the world.”

Show & Prove is free and open to the community. Artists, practitioners, and community organizers are all welcome. Participants are encouraged to make reservations.

This biennial conference series is interdisciplinary in practice and international in scope, Johnson said. Throughout the three-day conference attendees will find panel discussions led by industry professionals, faculty, and undergraduates, with sessions such as “Hip-hop as counter-hegemony,” “Hip-hop and the hustle of history,” and “Black Asian solidarity in hip-hop.”

The conference is also sprinkled with exhibits, workshops, and performances. The topics cover everything from breaking, females and hip hop, sexuality and gender identity, incarceration, journalism, the role of technology, and millennial rap, to name a few.

One of the conference’s goals is to give exposure to community organizers and scholars developing their work, Johnson said. At UCR, offering a biennial conference has become a cross-campus collaborative effort, with at least 14 cosponsors for this year’s events.

Bringing an international community together to Riverside to learn and shape the future of hip-hop studies, is one of her greatest accomplishments, Johnson said.

As a young, black girl growing up in San Jose, she still remembers listening to the music and watching news on television highlighting breakers in New York. Except, on the West Coast in San Jose, nobody was around to teach the 5-year-old girl who was loving the music. Occasionally, she would watch her older brother and his friends rapping in the living room. Johnson would imitate them and practice her own moves over and over again.

But it wasn’t until she heard Rapper Roxanne Shante that hip-hop took a larger meaning in her life.

“Roxanne Shante was the first female artist I listened to. I remember adamantly trying to learn her rhymes and relating to her songs so much. For the first time it felt like someone was speaking directly to me,” said Johnson, who obtained her undergraduate education at UC Berkeley, masters from New York University, and doctorate from the University of Southern California.

Coming of age in the 1990s has made her appreciate the artists and the music that at times is more abstract, more deep, than mainstream media is willing to showcase, she said.

“Work in hip-hop studies started not long after hip-hop in the 1980s, people were already writing about it. Hip-hop as a field of studies is still in formation, though,” Johnson said. “But we are in a moment to have a say how hip-hop proceeds in the academic world.”

TagsconferenceeducationHip hopprecinct reporterRiversideUCR
Previous Article

Akoma Unity Center Gifts For the Kids

Next Article

Covered California’s Dec. 15 Enrollment Deadline Nears

0
Shares
  • 0
  • +
  • 0
  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Precinct Reporter News

Related articles More from author

  • Latest PRGNews

    Neighborhood Assns Weigh in on City Issues

    July 11, 2019
    By Precinct Reporter News
  • Latest PRGNews

    Thanksgiving Heroes Bring the Holiday Feast

    November 15, 2018
    By Precinct Reporter News
  • Latest PRGNews

    White House Gun Reduction Strategy

    July 15, 2021
    By Precinct Reporter News
  • Latest PRGNews

    What Holds Up COVID Vaccines

    January 14, 2021
    By Precinct Reporter News
  • Latest PRGNews

    This is America: Shackled for Praying

    June 28, 2018
    By Precinct Reporter News
  • Latest PRGNews

    Despite U.S. Open, Serena Williams Still Greatest of All Time

    September 19, 2019
    By Precinct Reporter News

You might be interested

  • Latest PRGNews

    Experts: Reparations Are Workable

  • Latest PRGNews

    Riverside BackPack Giveaway

  • Latest PRGNews

    Students and Educators Honored by MOSAICLegacy

Ads

Advertise with us!

Ads ||

Ads |

ADS III

Find us on Facebook

Ads

Precinct Reporter News Group

Your local news resource for 50 years in the Inland Empire, Orange County, Long Beach and surrounding areas!

To subscribe or advertise, call 909.889.0597

About us

  • Broadcasting & Media Production Company
    357 W. 2nd Street
    San Bernardino, California, CA 92401
  • mailto:sales@precinctreporter.com
  • Recent

  • Popular

  • Black Rose Awards Set For Sat., February 4

    By Precinct Reporter News
    January 26, 2023
  • OC Black History Parade & Unity Festival

    By Precinct Reporter News
    January 26, 2023
  • LBCC Students Get Ready for Male Success Initiative

    By Precinct Reporter News
    January 26, 2023
  • IE/OC Prostate and Breast Cancer, Change the Menu

    By PRGNews
    July 16, 2015
  • Join our Recipe Competition!

    By PRGNews
    July 16, 2015
  • SB Budget Cuts CDBG

    SB CDBG Cuts Have Local Nonprofits Braced for the Worst

    By PRGNews
    July 16, 2015

Follow us

© Powered by Hotspotwebsites.net. All rights reserved.