Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts

Saturday, November 5, 2016

Book Review: Hip-Hop Family Tree Vols. 1 & 2

I love comics, hip-hop, history and beautiful books.  All these things helped form who I am today. As a librarian I still love comics, hip-hop, history, and beautiful books. I feel it is important to cover these aspects in a library collection. Rarely do all these categories come in one work, but this series has it all.  I was stoked to receive this collection as a gift, but didn't get around to reading it until now.
Amazingly beautiful slipcase!
The Hip-Hop Family Tree by Ed Piskor Vols. 1 & 2 exceeds the bar of comics, art, hip-hop, history and beautiful books standards. It will make an invaluable addition to your library collection.  This comic is published by the amazing Fantagraphics press. Buy it now--your community will appreciate it. 

Vol. 1 traces the history of Hip-Hop from the 1970's to 1981.  It is filled with little vignettes about seminal figures and events in Hip-Hop history.  The stories it tells begin in the bronx with kids rocking out to Cool Herc's new kind of music.  Community halls Hip-Hop parties was where it all started.   The break was the instrumental part of the song.  When a break occurred Cool Herc saw that was when people really got into the groove dancing.  Cool Herc Figured out how to extend the break of the record by looping it using two copies. This spurred on Break Dancing.
Vol. 1
The story goes on to show how the dj's, dancers and artists all collaborated and formed the culture of Hip-Hop.  Fab 5 Freddy, LEE, GrandMaster Flash, Samo and all the important key players are in this amazing work.  The history covers business dealings and key PR moves that created a buzz and sold records. Artists are given their due in this amazing comic. The graffiti scene is shown and described in anecdotes and short story lines.

Panel about the film Wild Style
The artwork in this comic is so dope. Piskor's ability to caricature people and bring out their personalities in comic panels is amazing.  His caricatures of Russell Simmons and other key figures of the Hip-Hop movement had me rolling in laughter and recognition.  The use of newsprint style coloring is sometimes enhanced with special coloring to make it really zing!

Vol. 2
Vol. 2 covers from 1981-1983.  It just keeps getting better.  The stories and characters are done so well this comic reminds me of an amazing documentary.  I really love how Piskor makes these larger than life figures into real people.   These stories are historically accurate and insightful.   These volumes cover both East Coast and West Coast movements.  The Ice-T origin story and the Dr. Dre Origins are great and really fun.

What I like about these books:
  • Historically accurate
  • Beautifully drawn and colored
  • Caricatures are amazingly good and accurate
  • Coverage of different aspects of Hip-Hop
Classic Hip-Hop NYC scene.  
Why you should buy this book for your library:
  •  This book is an important work on the history of Hip-Hop
  • The art is great
  • The stories are wonderful
  • The book fits YA and Adult classifications
In addition to being an excellent addition to your library collection.  This slipcase makes an amazing Christmas gift.  I know--I received mine as a Christmas gift and was thrilled!



Any student, or fan of Hip-Hop will love these books.  Go get them!

Sunday, October 30, 2016

Book Review: An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873 (The Lamar Series in Western History)

Buy this book for your Library
An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873 (The Lamar Series in Western History)by Benjamin Madley is a book that should be in every library in the US.  This book covers an essential history that has heretofore been neglected save for a few works such as Murder State.

  • Series: The Lamar Series in Western History
  • Hardcover: 712 pages
  • Publisher: Yale University Press (May 24, 2016)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0300181361
  • ISBN-13: 978-0300181364
  • Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.8 x 9.2 inches

The book covers the history of the genocide of Indigenous peoples in the state of California from 1846-1873.  During this time, the book traces the beginnings of the genocide from scattered massacres to full scale state and federally sponsored militia and military massacre campaigns.  The sheer brutality and callousness against the indigenous people of California is stunning and hard to read.
CA Indian Population 1845-1880 Genocide in Numbers
This book shows how the pattern of forcing Indians from their home hunting grounds and by the removal of game due to large numbers of immigrants--beginning during the Gold Rush.  The indians then could not feed themselves, so they stole cattle from White ranchers.  The White ranchers would then raise a posse, or a militia force to go "teach the indians a lesson."  The lesson would entail murdering every man, woman and child of the first indigenous village happened upon.  No matter if they were 'guilty' or not.

Vigilantes were supported by the local government and the state. 
 The combination of vigilante massacres with state sponsored militia killing campaigns and the military murder expeditions was lethal and decimated the Californian Indian population.  The Indians had nowhere to hide except high in the mountains, where there was little food.  This forced them to steal from White people, which led to more murder expeditions against them.  It was a cycle that was lethal and effective in 'eradicating' the indigenous people of California.

If you were lucky enough to survive a massacre, you would not have any food, clothing or shelter to help you live.  Many survivors died from exposure or starvation.  As I was reading this, I thought of Ishi--his story is heartbreaking.  You can read about it here: http://history.library.ucsf.edu/ishi.html.

The brutality of the immigrants is mind-boggling. 
The killing was relentless.  The Indians sometimes fought back and killed whites, which raised even more ire and retribution.  The murder unmerciful and was encouraged by California Newspapers.  These papers called for total annihilation of all Californian Indians.  

Slow death at the  reservation.
You may be thinking, "Why didn't the Indians just go to a reservation.  When Indians fled to reservations starved the Indians.  They didn't provide the promised supplies.  Many starved to death. 


This brought about the horrible choice of leaving the reservation and facing:

Enforced slavery.  There were vagrancy laws that stated an Indian had to prove they were not in debt to someone.  This entailed the possession of a certificate that stated they were not in debt.  If the Indian could not prove this, then they were arrested and put up for auction.  They were sold to someone for a period of time, usually years.  During this time they were charged for food and clothes and were never paid enough money to pay off this debt.  Therefore, they could never get their certificate of no debt.  They would be stuck in perpetual slavery.



Or

Being tracked down and murdered by a posse of citizens or a state sponsored militia.  After a theft, they would hunt down and kill any Indian they encountered.  They used this as a chance for "pedagogical violence."  Violence that would teach anyone who heard about it that they should not steal from White people or they would face utter annihilation or slavery.  They often collected scalps and brought them back as souvenirs.  Some local country stores had Indian scalps nailed to their walls well into the 20th century.


The state paid well for militiamen to track down and murder Indians in CA.  They they sought reimbursement from the the federal government.  The federal government paid for the genocide of California Indians and it paid well.  This pay, in itself, was a reason to form a militia and make some money.
State sponsored Genocide in CA.

Sometimes the children and women were kept alive, but sold into the california slave system.  Women were sold into sexual slavery and other forms of bondage.  Children were often sold to estates where they remained the rest of their lives as chattel.



Some Indians turned to gold mining when their territories were impinged upon. Once there was an influx of White immigrants into CA though, there wasn't enough for everyone and the White miners simply murdered the Indian miners and claim jumped their claims.

There is a timeline at the end of the book that tracks the murder of indigenous people in CA according to state historical record that includes body counts.  This is the most well-researched and comprehensive information on this subject to date.

US genocide has yet to be covered in any manner similar to the Holocaust in Europe.  The time is coming though.  The cat is out of the bag.

Other important books on this subject:

Churchill, W., & Mazal Holocaust Collection. (1997). A little matter of genocide: Holocaust and denial in the Americas, 1492 to the present. San Francisco: City Lights Books.

Lindsay, B. C. (2015). Murder state: California's native american genocide 1846-1873. Place of publication not identified: Univ Of Nebraska Press.

Stannard, D. E. (1992). American holocaust: Columbus and the conquest of the New World. New York: Oxford University Press.

Saturday, February 6, 2016

Colonialism and Whiteness: A Legacy of Brutality


Colonialism and Whiteness

This is the first post in a series of blog posts that seeks to understand the development of Whiteness in the Americas from colonialism to today.  These blog posts are short necessarily short and are not meant to be exhaustive, but to give the reader an idea of where Whiteness comes from and how it appears in our culture. The need for these posts came out of the backlash against Whiteness History Month at Portland Community College this April, 2016. 

Casta Painting
A Casta (Spanish: [ˈkasta], Portuguese: [ˈkastɐ, ˈkaʃtɐ]) was a hierarchical system of race classification created by Spanish elites (españoles) in Hispanic America during the Spanish colonial period. The sistema de castas or the sociedad de castas was used in 17th and 18th centuries in Spanish America and Spanish Philippines to describe as a whole and socially rank the mixed-race people who were born during the post-Conquest period. These unions produced in the process known as mestizaje. A parallel system of categorization based on the degree of acculturation to Hispanic culture, which distinguished between gente de razón (Hispanics) and gente sin razón (non-acculturated natives), concurrently existed and supported the idea of casta.  Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casta 

Whiteness

Whiteness has been with us since the beginning of European colonialism.  When Europeans conquered what was to become the Americas, they also established a racial caste system based on skin color.   The darker one was, the lower they were on the social scale.  Whiteness is a concept that describes the cultural, lingual, institutional beliefs, practices and behavior that maintains access to power and reinforces power for White people and people of lighter skin tones.  This colonial system was created for and by Europeans for the benefit of Europeans.  Everything was in relation to the European--this is a hallmark of the concept of Whiteness--that everything is judged in relation to Whiteness and not something else.  

Españoles (Spanish) [White people]
Peninsulares (Spaniards) [White people]
Criollos (Spanish Americans) [White people]
Indios (Amerindians)
Mestizos (Amerindian and Spanish mix)
Castizos (Spanish with some Amerindian mix)
Cholos (Amerindian with some Spanish mix)
Pardos (Spanish, African, and Amerindian Mix)
Mulattos (African and Spanish mix)
Zambos (Amerindian and African mix)
Negros (Africans)

This is, in a nutshell, how the European imposed hierarchy in the Americas looked.

This system was brutally enforced.  There were strict rules about who could do what with whom....This system was directly related to slavery and servitude.  The people higher up (Whiter) the hierarchy were granted more privileges and rights than those in the lower section.  Consequently, the amount of distance one could put between oneself and the lower states of the hierarchy, the better chance one had of making a living, or even succeeding in the European (White) dominated world of the Americas (Whiteness).   


Another casta painting

     

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     Casta paintings
The casta series represent different racial mixtures that derived from the offspring of unions between Spaniards and Indians–mestizos, Spaniards and Blacks–mulattos, and Blacks and Indians–zambos. Subsequent intermixtures produced a mesmerizing racial taxonomy that included labels such as “no te entiendo,” (“I don’t understand who you are”), an offspring of so many racial mixtures that made ancestry difficult to determine, or “salta atrás” (“a jump backward”) which could denote African ancestry. Source:https://goo.gl/O9DdUP

 These paintings show us the importance of Whiteness to the Spanish from the very beginning of their conquest of the Americas.  The resultant mixture with indigenous, African and Asian people led to a complex hierarchy of racial superiority that was adhered to and, in many ways, is still upheld today.  These notions permeate our society, but in a different guise.

High Civilization (NOT White)
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 Indigenous People and Whiteness

In an idealized Mexico where people of African, European and indigenous heritage were intermingling in seeming harmony, the paintings were a reminder to Spaniards that there was still a strong hierarchy of racial purity — with Europeans on top. Source: http://goo.gl/y1mAZQ
On the social scale indigenous people are close to last.  It was a survival strategy to distance oneself from anything that is indigenous.  Choices like adopting the god of the Europeans, to using their script instead of the indigenous forms of writing,  and becoming as Guero (White) in dress, speech and color if possible.

They had been here thousands of years and had established societies, cultures and hierarchies.

Once the casta system was imposed by invading Europeans they concept of Whiteness became increasingly important.  The abandonment of their culture, their languages and their identity is what was required, at baseline, if one wanted to survive or even advance in the new hierarchy that had been established by bloodthirsty conquerors. 


Up until recently, skin color has been a defining factor in Latino life.

Are you:

Guero?  (White, or Whiter Than)

Maron?  (Brown)

Negro?  (Black)

The answer could be a determining factor in your life....

Spanish burning indigenous books/knowledge/culture

          

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          Cultural Genocide

The racial hierarchy in combination with the destruction of the indigenous cultures by book burning, destroying cultural monuments and using them to build churches (Whiteness), and the enslavement of the indigenous people did much to reinforce the casta system.  Our (Latinos) indigenousness had been written out of the history books, it had been derided and our people discriminated against and persecuted (according to their skin color).  Whiteness can be uncovered when one thinks about how the descendants of European immigrants want to persecute indigenous people from Mexico and other parts of central America for wanting to migrate on their own continent.  Even Latinos are hesitant to use this argument against immigration restrictions on Latinos.  I can only imagine that the bias against Indios still permeates Latino culture and prevents this strong argument from being presented. 

Contemporary Latinos and Whiteness 

As always, this is not a sweeping generalization, but a description of a large part of Latino society in the US that I have been witness to my entire life.

Latinos in large part lost their indigeneity by distancing themselves from their indigenous heritage and appropriating the European religion and culture as much as possible.   It was advantageous to do so, economically, socially and health-wise, it was advantageous to be as European (White) as possible.  This is where we see Whiteness beginning in the Americas.

Since the 1990's there has been a resurgence of interest in indigenous culture by Latinos who want to claim that part of their heritage.  It had never really been a option before--now we see Aztec dancers, and other parts of our indigenous heritage celebrated and exalted by some Latinos.

An example of contemporary Whiteness 

When I pick up a book entitled, American Ethnic Folklore and I open it up and it is really about Indigenous mythology.  I then realize that this is whiteness.  The fact that this book has been written for White people by White people without regard to any other readership uncovers Whiteness in this particular context and moment.  This is Whiteness.  These kinds of subject categories still permeate education and information in general.

We must seek to uncover Whiteness where it is, when it appears.  Whiteness is not a stable, abstract concept.  Whiteness changes according to setting, in shifts it's mode of providing access and maintaining power for White people.   We should and help our allies see and explicate Whiteness when it appears in our institutional and social contexts.

Whiteness displayed before the Irish were considered White



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One other thing about Whiteness is that it can be adhered to by non-white people.  Many people of color and those who purport to want to help People of Color adhere to the system of Whiteness that the educational system upholds, supports and requires of POC who want to succeed.  I say that this is why we have made little to no progress in equity, diversity and inclusion in our school systems and our society.  

The brutalities that were used to enforce the racial hierarchies of yesterday are still with us today.They used to come in the form of lynchings--back in the days of Jim Crow.... Now they come in the forms of Police shootings of unarmed African Americans and Latinos in far greater numbers than Whites.  They come in vigilante shootings of unarmed African Americans, for example--the shooting of Trayvon Martin.  

Colonialism is still in full effect....

I appreciate any and all comments (except spam).


 

 



Saturday, November 28, 2015

Knowledge, Affiliation, Identity, Librarianship


Photo of people dressed as Star Trek characters.
Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Star_Trek_uniforms.jpg

Kael Moffat
Information Literacy Librarian, Saint Martin’s University


As librarians, one of our many hats could be expressed as “identity formers.”  At first glance, this may seem like a grandiose claim, but if we look at aspects of our profession in light of Georg Simmel’s concept of the web of group-affiliations, we can see that we do play such an important role.  Simmel was a late nineteenth-century, early twentieth-century German sociologist and philosopher who wrote on such broad topics as the history of philosophy, philosophy of money, and social structure.  One of his influential shorter works, “The Web of Group-Affiliations,” published in 1922, can be used as lens through which we can look at how librarianship affects identity formation.
Simmel points out that an individual’s identity is initially imposed on them through the “web of circumstances” of family and other heterogeneous groups, such as religious and geographical communities (p. 331).  The family is the primal group-affiliation, obviously, but as the individual grows, he or she “establishes for himself [or herself] contacts with persons who stand outside this original group-affiliation,” but these first forays into non-familial affiliations tend to be with persons that are still somewhat similar to the individual (p. 331).  Affiliations like family, religion, and geography constitute organic affiliations since they arise “naturally” and lay claim on the individual without the individual’s own efforts and consent.  These affiliations are, according to Simmel, “sensual” (p. 331), meaning tied to what one experiences with the senses, and are also marked by “self-interest” and emotion, or a “mixture of both” (p. 334).
If we think of information as a kind of basis for community, connecting disparate individuals, we can see that it operates in similar ways to the webs of group-affiliation that Simmel writes about.  Patrons have their first information webs imposed on them through family, religion, social class, ethnicity, neighborhood, country, etc.  This gives them their initial worldview.  The individual experiences this worldview as “natural,” marked by sensuality, emotion, and self-interest.  Information, in this state often seems to be judged by how it “feels” or how it supports or contradicts the given worldview.  
Community definition text
Source: http://www.thebluediamondgallery.com/pictures/community.jpg
Group-affiliations, though, grow beyond these initial affiliations when they become defined by “purpose [by] factual considerations, or, if one will, [by] individual interests” (p. 331).  At this point, individual interests are those interests the individual gravitates towards by choice, although compulsion from parents, friend, religious leaders, etc. may also play a role.  These associations are “formed by objective criteria” and “constitute a superstructure which develops over and above those group-affiliations which are formed according to natural, immediately given criteria” (p. 333).  In contrast to the organic affiliations, these affiliations are more rational in nature because the individual can choose to cultivate or ignore them.  These wider contexts expand the individual’s world by putting him or her in contact with people and ideas that lie outside the contexts of family, religion, and geography.  Simmel observes that these affiliations “[tend] to enlarge the sphere of freedom” because the individual begins to choose “with whom one affiliates and upon whom one is dependent”; these wider contexts allow for and even encourage or demand change and make it “possible for the individual to make his [or her modified] beliefs and desires felt” (p. 3330).  
As an example of interest affiliation, Simmel discusses the emergence of Renaissance humanism as a competing form of affiliation to the medieval worldview, which was based primarily on religion and emotion.  The emergence of humanism coincided with the development of non-theological “academic” education, and the “independence of the intellect” (p. 333).  Humanists’ commitment to the life of the intellect, their “restless” and “adventurous spirit,” made them “indifferent to all other obligations usually incumbent” on individuals in the medieval world and engendered different forms of social interaction, embracing “the poor scholar and the monk, the powerful General and the brilliant Duchess, in a single framework of intellectual interests” (p. 333).  Such affiliations would likely not have arisen in the pre-humanist world.  He refers to such affiliations as “secondary groups,” and are more “rational” in character since the “substantive purpose of these group [was] the result of conscious reflection and intelligent planning,” rather than the happenstances of birth and geography (p. 334).  These broader affiliations of interest contribute to the individual’s sense of identity because they are more elective and each individual’s “pattern of participation is unique; hence the fact of multiple group-participation creates in turn a new subjective element” (p. 334).  Thus, the individual creates a sense of separate selfhood through his or her particular web, or combination, of group-affiliations.
Woman reading in library
Source: https://www.jisc.ac.uk/sites/default/files/library-study.jpg
An important part of these group-affiliations is the information associated with that affiliation.  A person affiliated with golf and the stock market will have a qualitatively different set of knowledge from somebody else who affiliates with quilting and community service, for example.  Different worlds require different information and knowledge; thus, in the spirit of Simmel’s analysis, our patrons are, in part, unique because of their unique combinations of knowledge.  As librarians, we help facilitate our patrons’ interactions with multiple large information and knowledge domains, thus playing a role in their emerging unique “pattern of participation” in the world.  This understanding should cause us to consider how we contribute to the emerging identities of our patrons.  Do we encourage their agency, their ability to explore and more deeply engage with their information worlds?  Do we consider how the information and knowledge we help our patron’s to discover enmeshes them in oppressive or liberating information worlds or contexts?  Once we understand how our work contributes to the development of our patrons’ identities, our reference and instruction activities should take on a new sense of significance.  In helping patrons access specific books, articles, DVDs, etc. we are in a material way contributing to their sense(s) of selfhood.  How are we doing?  Are we reifying systems and structures of oppression?  Are we encouraging open inquiry and exploration?  Enormous questions, to be sure, but ones we need to ask over and over again, even and especially when the answers may be uncomfortable.


Simmel, G. (1998). ‘The web of group-affiliations’. In M. S. Kimmel & C. Stephen (Eds.), Social and political theory: Classic readings (pp. 331–341). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.


2. Simmel’s reading of the medieval and Renaissance worlds is a bit simplistic here, of course, but his point that broader group-affiliations allow for broader social interaction does seem to hold.


Friday, March 13, 2015

Information Diffusion and Hip-Hop


Information and knowledge are diffused via artistic expression in Hip-Hop culture among other methods. Here is a very brief sketch of some ideas on this topic. ANY and ALL comments will be answered and are valued. 

Graffiti and Tags

There is a lot of metadata here!  
Tags and other graffiti carry metadata. for instance, when one sees a tagger's tag--and one is familiar with the the tagger, then one will know about them--how brave they are--by where they throw up their tags--the more dangerous, the braver. One would know much about their style oftentimes. If they are a local, they might have legendary status, people might know much about the tagger from the metadata derived from their tags, yet they might not even know the tagger's real identity.

Murals

Political Information Hip-Hop Mural

Hip-Hop murals tell stories. Sometimes the story is that of the local neighborhood. The art will be done by someone who intimately knows the neighborhood's characters, triumphs and tragedies. This kind of artwork is powerful, moving and imparts information and knowledge about the neighborhood even if the observer is a stranger to the area.

Educational Concepts in Hip-Hop Lyrics



Hip-Hop lyrics are often full of rich educational information that informs the listener in their own language and on their own terms via Hip-Hop music. For example, Immortal Technique imparts knowledge on a wider-variety of subjects from politics to the drug war. His song Peruvian Cocaine tells the story of the drug trade from the people's point of view--in this case indigenous people forced into the drug trade and how the governments involved in the drug war all profit from it in one way or another.

Dead Prez are another amazing example of Hip-Hop imparting knowledge via flow and beats. Their music addresses so many topics it is hard to cover. Some topics include, social behavior information, political information, historical information, artistic information among other great and relevant topics. Dead Prez has songs about health and fitness, discipline and education--real education--not the White-supremacist standard education, but education from the people's POV.



Both Immortal Technique and Dead Prez sample historical figures such as Malcolm X, Mumia Abu Jamal, members of the Black Panther Party for Self-defense and others. These samples allow young people to hear historical leadership and their ideas. They impart an historical narrative from a Black and Brown POV The information and knowledge imparted by Dead Prez and Immortal Technique cannot be underestimated.

Only Educational Opportunity for Many



In many cases these are the only arenas people will get a chance to hear about COINTELPRO, Colonialism concepts, other political viewpoints. Also, the people speaking are respected teachers and artists in our community and have authority to speak to social, cultural, educational and political issues. I know I trust these artists more than almost any politician I can think of today.

These ideas can be more fully developed, but I would love to work with someone to get more detailed articles written on this subject.

Monday, February 2, 2009

Hip-Hop and Web 2.0 (something I wrote a long time ago and haven't done anything with)

[If anyone is interested in this and wants to collaborate--get in touch with me please]


This is kind of an outline of the paper I want to write on hip-hop. Please give me your advice about how I could make it better.

I've noticed some striking similarities between hip-hop and our field--web 2.0 aspects and more.

Take for instance one fundamental aspect of hip hop--REMIXABILITY--one takes what one deems is valuable, and creates something new.

Mashups have been fundamental in hip hop since day one!


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix


The fact that knowledge does not come from a vacuum, and pretty much EVERYONE who has contributed important knowledge to the world has had a teacher who's ideas the student REMIXED.

Take Franz Brentano for instance--he taught both Edumund Husserl and Freud, while Freud went on to teach Jung, and Husserl went on to teach Heidegger. The students REMIX their teachers work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Brentano

Tagging--hip hop tagging is placing one's mark on something, claiming it as one's own--this is what we do when we tag something in flickr, or whatever we use that gives us the option to TAG something. We can find it again, so with tagging, when one, or others see the tag they know who tagged it, and how often it comes up—how much the tagger has gotten “thrown up.”

Not only do we make it our own, but we also influence others. When someone tags a train they throw some art up there that is distinctive. I'm talking about bombs--where they don't just write their name as the tag, but they put on the train. If someone becomes familiar with these types of tags--they can tell which tagger is which and know their styles.


http://www.graffiti.org/


This is similar to the tagging we do on the web, and to how information is transferred between people--be it artistic style, or some other type of information. Our tagging can influence others through the discovery of new information that leads to the creation of new knowledge.



Also the fact that hip-hop and web 2.0 did NOT come from big corporations.

Hip Hop came from a small group of individuals, and web 2.0 also came from a relatively small group of individuals developing new ideas that were creative as well as social.

I mean when hip hop was first developed--the dj's would plug-in to the street lights and broadcast their mashups and new beats to the public, who in turn remixed this new information into knew knowledge to create something new. It was fully open-source and free. How beautiful can you get? This was actually a result of a remix from the Caribbean—dJ cool-herc came to nuy from there and brought the style, and influence of the Caribbean DJ’s who would put their systems on the backs of trucks and broadcast their shows to entire neighborhoods.


Do you know of anyone who has done any work on this?

I've never encountered it.

I think it can be a way to reach both people interested in libraries and hip hop.


What do you think?