Voice, Vibe, and Place: Rewriting Spatial Histories Through Hip Hop Aesthetics

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 3:45 pm - Gold 4
  In Roundtable Session: Spaces of Sound, Memory, and Meaning in Hip Hop Education

Abstract

This paper brings together two immigrant researchers from India—one conducting (auto)ethnographic research as a rapper in the Midwestern U.S., the other conducting ethnographic research with youth-led hip-hop collectives in India—to explore how hip hop enables the reimagining of space and place. Through dialogic inquiry, we trace how hip-hop aesthetics allow artists to unforget, remember, and rewrite silenced and distorted histories. Drawing on theories of space (Massey, 2005), global hip hop (Motley & Henderson, 2008; Alim et al., 2009), and hip hop aesthetics (Petchauer, 2015) we show how hip hop reveals topographies of power embedded in space. Our findings highlight how identity emerges through the aesthetic remaking of spaces, which enables burden-sharing through multimodal practices.

Authors

• Viraj V. Patel, Illinois State University

• Rabani Garg, University of Pennsylvania