Two years ago in the African -American Museum of California in the center of Los Angeles, at 3 rap of the east coast, he converged for a table: the influential rapper “paid in full” Rakim; The co -Founder of Public Enemy, Chuck D; and the royalty of indie Talib Kweli.

Called “Sweat the coach: the politics and poetics of hip-hop”, the occasion attracted a crowd only in southern Los Angeles. They did not know that the circular table, which was intended to be the first of a series of L. A. Several Phil called Power to the People! – Think about the basic concepts of the hip hop initiative that has just canceled UCLA, or that Chuck D would serve as its inaugural artist in the residence.

“The Sweat Room. He is on fire,” recalls H. Samy Alim, Professor of Anthropology at UCLA and director of the new university initiative. He said the occasion established the style of “what we can do when we all have in combination to provide the strength and strength of hip-hop. “

Presenting as “the main means for Hip Hop studies on a global scale”, the initiative aims to magnify and multiply verbal exchange on artistic disciplines of hip-hop culture “by artist apartments, network participation programs, a series of books, a series of conferences, a virtual file assignment and a virtual announcement.

The initiative will make the series of electronic books of Hip Hop studies published through the University of California Press and published through Alim and Jeff Chang, a major known for its electronic book on rap, “Can’t Stop Wonn Not Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation”. It will also be based on the archives of the decades of the university, accelerating hip-hop documentation in the Los Angeles region.

The UCLA has forged roads in the American music inventory market. The elders from their remarkable music school come with Kamasi Washington, Randy Newman, Carol Burnett, John Fahey and La Monte Young, and their university come with Herbie Hancock, Kenny Burrell, Patrice Rushen and the past Barbara Morrison, among others.

Alim describes the 2020 “Sudor” circular table, produced through the Los Angeles Philharmonic with the African -American Museum in California and the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African -American studies, as an indicative of the Hip Hop initiative project.

Keep in mind that it has been part of a century since the Bronx Disc Jockey Kool HERC sowed the hip-hop seeds, Alim asks: “If we are 50 years old, how will other people perceive the culture at 50, in a hundred years?

Tyree Boyd-Pates, curator and historian who moderated the discussion between Rakim, Chuck D and Kweli, expects the initiative to attract new generations of trainers that “really immerse themselves in the internal functioning of hip-hop techniques and examine through a scholarship goal. “

The initiative is the component of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African -American Studies of the UCLA, which for a long time has been the leader in Rap studies the paintings of researchers, especially Cheryl L. Keyes, Shana Redmond, Bryonn Bain and Robin Kelley (with Kyle Mays, Adam Bradley and other UCLA teachers in all the study fields). “Hip-Hop studies have exploited as a research domain,” said Alim. In addition to the supply of force, the initiative will be directed through the bunge deputy director Tabia Shawel and Samuel Lamontagne, Ph. D. candidate in ethnomusicology. Kelly Lytle Hernández, illustrated above, is the director of Ralph J. Bunge Center.

During a recent call to talk about his next artist in residence, Chuck D said: “All the other music was understood, interpreted, deployed, books made on this subject. Then, this new art form of the last 50 years, hyp -hop and rap music, reaches this point where you listen to resources directly, inspiration, has an effect and connectivity between creators and authors. “

Keyes, president of the Department of African-American Studies of the UCLA, was a student at the University of Indiana in the early 1980s. At that time, universities slightly identified the lifestyles of hip-hop, focusing on blues, rock’n’roll and popular music scholarships. Returning an opportunity and obsessed with the emerging culture, the graduate student knew that she was in something, from a learned perspective.

“My teachers would say:” Why don’t you examine jazz or gospel music? “” Keyes said. “But patience is one of the things I learned and that respect for the culture of hip-hop. After more than 20 years, we began to see hip-hop in the middle of the scene as a valid box of the interdisciplinary examination here in the UCLA. “

“When you look at the mercantilization of hip -hop, you have this domination in the public sphere,” explains Alim. “And only with discs and graphics sales, however, now you have hyp -hop in the exhibition of the part of the Super Bowl. You have a break as a category in the 2024 Olympic Games. Everything, from music to dance, has entered new degrees of domination of the client. We are in this new moment. “

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