Intro: DJs, turntables, and higher learningFootnote1
This book is. . . my concerted effort to create a critical
language that is as “fly, funky, and out tha box”
as the very music and events I scrutinize.
∼Mark Anthony NealFootnote2
This autoethnographic essay explores my
academic homeplaces.
Footnote3 Like hip-hop’s original DJs
who reimagined how vinyl records were
traditionally meant to be played,
I sample and repurpose Mary Louise Pratt’s
concept of contact zones and argue that
my academic writing as a hip-hop scholar
creates compositional contact zones,
Like the DJ who mixes together snippets of songs,
I use snippets of memories within this essay
to create a layered account of my experience of being
an insider/outsider within racialized academic spaces.
Sharing these snippets lead me to a discussion
about how the choices I deploy
within my scholarship are an active attempt to
make room and create a homeplace
for myself within the ivory tower.
I also sample William Simon and John H. Gagnon’s
concept of interpersonal scripts.
Interpersonal scripting is the process
“that transforms the social actor from being
exclusively an actor to being a partial
scriptwriter or adapter shaping the materials
of relevant cultural scenarios into scripts
for behavior in particular contexts.”
Footnote5Connecting the ideas of interpersonal scripting
with social actors and performance,
I illustrate how DJs within hip-hop culture
are historical social actors,
cultural/performative scriptwriters,
and play a vital role in (re)imaging my experience
and the experience of other
scholars of color within academia.
Using the sonic aesthetic techniques of hip-hop DJs
as a metaphorical/performative lens,
I discuss how DJs use turntables and vinyl records
to sonically merge different worlds
by bringing together disparate sounds,
voices, and cultures. I argue that, like the DJ,
my writing intentionally brings together two cultures
and seemingly divergent parts of my identity,
my academic self and the self
that is a part of the hip-hop generation.
Through word choice (hiphop vernacular),
use of hip-hop aesthetics (hip-hop metaphors and examples),
and who I cite (sampling),
I remix canonical Eurocentric ways of producing knowledge,
make room for my voice to be heard
in racialized academic homeplaces,
and (re)imagine my experiences within academia.
Scholars have chronicled the challenges
Black men have experienced while navigating academia,
which include the fear
of triggering white fragility;
the constant double-conscious state
of wondering how the emotions they display
feeling the need to legitimize their existence
within academia and among white colleagues/peers;
Footnote7the perpetual awareness of how the intersections
of their Black masculine identity
mark them as Others on college campuses;
Footnote8the struggle to find academic publications that speak to
and represent the intersections of their identity;
Footnote9and the pushback they experience when attempting
to decenter whiteness and destabilize white supremacy.
Footnote10Each of these instances speaks to the struggles
and insider/outsider status Black men experience
within the culture of the ivory tower.
Using the hip-hop DJ as a metaphorical/performative lens,
this essay extends the work of the aforementioned scholars
by exploring the ways my Black masculine self
has experienced and attempted to (re)imagine
my existence within academic homeplaces,
and continuing to mark the lives Black men lead
within academia as an important
and necessary site of inquiry within communication studies.
DJs are a foundational pillar within hip-hop culture.
Traditionally, DJs are the musicians who get the party started,
keep the party energized,
play the break beat so that b-boys/b-girls can do their thing,
and curate a list of songs that allow MCs
to bless the mic and the crowd with their lyrics.
While DJs are and should be celebrated for how
they perform in front of audiences,
what crowds witness DJs do on stage
is the manifestation of countless hours
spent listening to and researching music,
and honing turntable skills behind closed doors.
Recalling the rigor and skill needed
to master this art form,
Jennifer Lynn Stoever writes it is the job of the DJ or “selector”
to meticulously engage in the “careful, deliberate,
and meaningful act of choosing music
for oneself and others to hear, feel, and move to.”
Footnote11In this autoethnographic essay, I use performative writing
to illustrate the parallels between my lived experiences
within racialized academic spaces and the performance of DJs
crate digging, sampling, and mixing.
The DJ sits on the floor in the aisle of the
music store surrounded by a sea of shelves
filled with vinyl records in plastic crates.
Minutes quickly turn into hours as she
meticulously sifts through the collections,
section by section. One by one, she analyzes each
vinyl album, carefully reading the liner notes,
examining the cover art, and looking for clues
that reveal how the record will sound or
move people. As she sifts through the stacks of
records, she is searching for sonic buried treasure.
She is searching for a sound that is unique and will
stand out. She is searching for music the crowd
will not just hear, but also feel. As she
holds each record in her hands, she envisions being
behind her turntables. From tempos, to drum patterns, to vocal snippets, to guitar riffs, she is searching for
songs she can sample, flip, scratch, chop, speed
up, or slow down, and help create a signature style
that will set her apart from the other DJs in her
borough. She wants the music she plays on her
turntables to be unique and different, yet still sound
like and resonate with the community she comes
from. She wants to use her turntables to create
an aural collage, one that blends and brings together
the foreign with the familiar. On the floor of the
record store she spends hours digging through crates
of jazz, blues, rock and roll, afrobeat, gospel, classical,
bluegrass, and reggae records, searching for music
her audience may have never heard, but will
move the crowd when she plays it.
The DJs are searching for voices
that speak to them.
My undergraduate academic homeplaceFootnote13
While I’ve been educated in majority-white schools for the
greater part of my life, I have never gotten over the feeling
of otherness associated with being a “minority” in them.
∼Gary L. LemonsFootnote14
I never knew how poor I was until I received an academic
scholarship to a private university. My mother and I pull
up to the pristine campus in a pickup truck that had seen
better days. The truck’s chipped and fading paint contrasts
the manicured lawn and luxury sedans surrounding
my dormitory. The buildings on campus are encircled by
flower beds boasting a kaleidoscope of colors. However,
the disproportionate number of minority students
is a very Black-and-white reality for me. Black men
represent less than 5% of the student population at
4-year institutions of higher education in the U.S.A.
Footnote15As I walk around on campus, surveying my new surroundings,
a myriad of questions summersault in my mind.
What am I doing here? Will I fit in?
Will I be able to academically compete?
Where are the rest of the Black people?
I watch as my classmates unload luggage from
the trunks of their cars and take their belongings
to their dorm rooms. My family can’t afford suitcases.
Growing up poor, you learn to make do
with what you have. My pants, shirts, and shoes are
carefully packed in plastic bags. On the back of the
rusty pickup truck with the bumper that is hanging on
for dear life, bags that once carried our groceries
now carry my college wardrobe and belongings.
I take my clothes up to my dorm room in silence.
However, on this campus, the grocery bags I carry them in
speak volumes.
In my dorm room, as I sit in silence, I am filled with an ocean
of emotions that overflows as tears stream down my face.
I am excited.
I am nervous.
I am anxious.
On this campus, which boasts over 1,500 students,
I feel alone. I feel like I don’t belong.
I am angry for, and ashamed of, being poor.
However, despite my socioeconomic status,
I am aware that my family is wealthy in love
and support. I feel out of place.
Yet, I am cognizant of the sacrifices that were made
for me to be sitting in this dorm room.
On this campus, the building hallways are decorated
with golden-framed portraits of former graduates.
Graduates who are businessmen and politicians.
Graduates whose names adorn the buildings on campus.
Graduates whose kids fill the classrooms.
Graduates whose families have been attending
this university for generations. I am the first one
in my family to go to college. Some days, I walk through
the building hallways for hours, looking at the portraits
and searching for a face that resembles mine.
Looking for a portrait that reminds me
brilliance and success come in my shade.
My graduate school academic homeplaces
[N]on-White scholars are significantly underrepresented as
published authors and under-cited as producers
of value in the field of communication.
∼Paula Chakravartty, Rachel Kuo, Victoria Grubbs, and Charlton McIlwainFootnote16
As I sit at my desk in my graduate assistant office,
I stare at the pages of my course syllabi for the semester.
It is a new year. I am hopeful this semester
will be different from the others. I am hopeful this semester
will be filled, or at least sprinkled, with more course readings
authored by people of color.
After I scan the assigned readings,
read the abstracts, and Google the authors,
I am left disappointed and instantly transported
back to my freshman year in college.
Except at this juncture in my academic career,
I am not searching for faces, but instead, voices
that remind me brilliance and success come in my shade;
voices that speak to/of the communities I grew up in;
voices that echo my lived experiences.
Like the DJ. . . I am searching for voices that speak to me.
I remember my mother and father telling me
I would have to work twice as hard
when I enter academic settings. I did not know
that the concept of doing “double the work”
would take on a new meaning for me in graduate school.
As I navigate through graduate programs,
I master the art of finding enough time to read the course materials
assigned in the syllabi and search for the articles,
books, and voices of scholars of color who are often
left out of my classroom discussions.
I am searching for voices that speak to me.
To be clear,
I know and do not assume that all people of color
have similar stories or that the stories/scholarship of white scholars
cannot resonate with people of color.
For instance, I have found parallels to my lived experiences
written in the research of white scholars who explore
their upbringing in working-class families.
Footnote17However, throughout graduate school,
I longed to read the work of minoritized scholars
who used their research to explore their
Black lived experience. Many of these scholars’ stories
reminded me of my own and reiterated that my voice/experience
had a place within the walls of academia.
Examples of this can be seen in Aisha Durham’s research
about Diggs Park,
Footnote18 which reminds me of my own
inner-city upbringing in Little Rock, AR.
I also feel it in the work of Vershawn Young
and Bryant Keith Alexander, whose critical examinations
of barbershop culture
Footnote19 cause me to reminisce
about the different establishments where
I’ve gotten my hair cut and locs twisted
over the years and the cultural significance
barbershops have had in my life.
This connection to the work Black scholars produce
can also be seen in the scholarship of Mark Anthony Neal,
Footnote20 whose use of slang within his writing reminds me
of the vernacular I use when I’m discussing
hip-hop culture with family and friends.
These scholars and their voices/stories remind me of home.
However, these voices/stories from and about Black culture
are often absent from my syllabi.
Thus, in graduate school, I master the art of
making sure I complete the readings the professor assigns
and making time to search for the voices
and read the work of scholars who remind me my research
and stories that explore Black lived experiences
have a place within the academy.
I am searching for voices that speak to me.
The DJ stands in front of her turntables.
Her eyes and ears are focused on the
glossy rotating 45 in front of her.
As she plays, and replays, and replays,
and replays, and replays,
each record from her latest crate digging expedition,
she listens. She listens and meticulously analyzes
each sonic part of each vinyl record, searching
for a section to sample. She listens for a soulful organ
or horn riff that she can creatively flip, make her own,
and move the crowd to lift their hands towards
the ceiling in excitement. She listens
for a lyric or phrase that she can isolate, highlight,
repeatedly play, and move the entire audience
on the dancefloor to sing along in unison
and point to the DJ booth in approval.
She is searching for a portion of the song
that she can remix, (re)imagine,
and help the crowd hear it in a new way.
She wants to pay homage to and highlight
the creative work of the original artists,
expose her audiences to their work,
and explore/extend the work of those artists
through her own artistic expression.
My graduate school academic homeplaces
Nervously. . . I stand in front of my classmates
to conduct a conference style PowerPoint presentation
on my final paper in the course we are enrolled in together.
Within the paper and presentation,
which explores Black popular culture,
Black masculinity and Southern hip-hop,
I cite/sample the work of scholars of color
who were not included in our course syllabus but contribute
to many of the intellectual discussions we had in class.
Within my presentation, I articulate how each scholar of color
informs my research paper and how I extend their work.
After my presentation, many of my classmates ask me
how I found time to read our assigned course
readings and the work of the other (Othered) scholars.
Most of my classmates admit they have never heard of
the Othered academics whose work I sampled in my presentation.
After class, some of my classmates have questions for me
and want to learn more about the scholars of color
I mentioned. Some of my graduate school colleagues
even ask me for a list of the authors I cited,
so that they can explore their work further.
The academic practice of citing
parallels the hip-hop DJ’s practice of sampling
by highlighting voices/contributions,
exposing audiences to particular work(s), and
exploring/extending the work of these scholars through our own.
The sampling, or to use another DJ metaphor,
“increasing the spins,” of the work of scholars of color
within our research not only makes sure
marginalized voices are heard within academic spaces,
but also increases their intellectual currency.
As Paula Chakravartty, Rachel Kuo, Victoria Grubbs, and Charlton McIlwain state,
“publication and citation practices produce
Following their lead, this essay
seeks to bring further attention to
the political nature and palpable impact of
citational practices within academia.
With our citations, we identify
individuals as knowledge producers
and possessors of intellectual capital.
Similarly, within hip-hop culture, when a DJ
or producer samples someone, they identify
the individual(s) as a possessor(s) of creative/cultural capital
and mark the work of the artist(s) as valuable
and worthy of being highlighted.
Within communication studies,
we must follow suit and sample/cite/value
the work of scholars of color more.
If we do not, we risk diminishing
the quality of knowledge produced within
our discipline by limiting the voices
we deem valuable and worthy of being heard.
Footnote23Citing/sampling the scholarly texts of academics of color
also works to “decenter white masculinity as the normative core
of scholarly inquiry” and illustrates in a real and material way
that diverse opinions, voices, and ways of knowing/being
When appropriate, citing the work of minoritized scholars
expands the communication studies canon
and makes room for non-white academics
to find a homeplace for themselves
and their work within academia.
The academic practice of citing
parallels the hip-hop DJ’s practice of sampling
by highlighting voices/contributions,
exposing audiences to particular work(s), and
exploring/extending the work of these scholars through our own.
Contact zones
Pratt defines contact zones as
“social spaces where cultures meet, clash,
and grapple with each other, often in contexts
of highly asymmetrical relations of power.”
Footnote25Pratt’s primary goal for creating this concept
was to “reconsider the models of community
that many of us rely on in teaching and theorizing.”
Footnote26Ultimately, Pratt uses the concept of contact zones
to reimagine classroom spaces. Explaining
how creating contact zone can transform
academic settings, Pratt writes:
The class functioned not like a homogeneous community or a horizontal alliance but like a contact zone. Every single text we read stood in specific historical relationships to the students in the class, but the range and variety of historical relationships in play were enormous. Everybody had a stake in nearly everything we read, but the range and kind of stakes varied widely.Footnote27
By analyzing how contact zones manifest
themselves in Pratt’s classroom, one can conclude
that a primary tenet for constructing
a contact zone is the acknowledgement
and bringing together of different identities
and positionalities, no matter how disparate they may appear.
Further exploring the concept of contact zones,
spaces where different cultures and identities meet,
Pratt analyzes a historical document written
by Peruvian nobleman Guaman Poma.
Throughout her examination of Poma’s manuscripts,
Pratt articulates the many ways his writings
harbor the characteristics of a contact zone.
For instance, one of the primary reasons Poma’s
writings are considered a contact zone is
because the historical documents he produced
were composed in two languages,
Spanish and Quechua. While Quechua was Poma’s
first language, Spanish was the language Poma
learned after his homeland was conquered by Spaniards.
By composing a manuscript in two languages,
Pratt asserts, Poma was able to create
a contact zone through his writing
and bring two cultures together on one page.
With one document, Poma was able to address
different groups of people who occupied different
positionalities, and simultaneously speak from and through
the multiple identities that existed within himself.
Footnote28The discipline of hip-hop studies is an
intellectual site where scholars embody
Pratt’s concept of contact zones,
speaking from and through the multiple identities
that exist within themselves, and bringing together
two worlds—the neighborhood/block and the ivory tower—
as hip-hop culture resurrects itself
on the pages of their research and within the halls of academia.
This bringing together of two worlds
can be seen when hip-hop scholars
turn their essays into metaphorical turntables
and use their research to mix and merge
academic terms/theories and hip-hop vernacular.
Footnote29This contact-zone-creating can also be seen
when hip-hop scholars use song lyrics
and other components of hip-hop culture
as metaphors within their research to critically analyze,
through a sociocultural lens, their lived experiences
and the locations they mark as homeplaces.
Footnote30This speaking from, through, and merging of
multiple identities is present within the
work of hip-hop academics whose scholarship
intentionally mirrors the structure of hip-hop songs
as they utilize poetics, figurative language, and rhythm
to construct the prose within their research.
Footnote31This essay honors and extends the work
of these hip-hop scholars by using my research
to create contact zones, explore the ways
hip-hop aesthetics and culture can (re)imagine
traditional Eurocentric ways of producing/(re)presenting
academic knowledge, and bring together
my hip-hop self and my academic self within
the pages of my scholarship.
Mixing
As she plays and scratches one record
on the turntable to her left,
headphones cover one of her ears
so she can also listen to the record
she is cueing up on the turntable to her right.
Sweat drips from her brow
as the energy in the party intensifies.
She slows down the rate
at which the record on the right is playing
so its tempo can be synchronized
with the record on the left.
Once the records and their rhythmic patterns are in sync,
with her hands alternating between different sonic universes,
she uses her crossfader to seamlessly navigate
back and forth between and combine the musical worlds.
As she mixes reggae music with hip-hop music,
and the rhythms of soul music melt into R&B,
her turntables and the dancefloor
become a place where different
cultures come together
seamlessly.
National Communication Association annual convention, 2018
As I sit in the audience,
I hear the presenter at the front
of the room call my name.
My neighbor turns to me and smiles.
I stare back at her in disbelief.
Thoughts like Are you kidding me?
and Is this really happening?
flood my mind.
I stand up and walk to the front
of the room. I am shocked and humbled.
The essay that cites academics
and samples hip-hop lyrics.
The essay that unites different worlds
and puts university scholars into a conversation
with hip-hop artists.
The essay that blends academic theories
with hip-hop aesthetics.
The essay that I worked extremely hard on
but didn’t believe would be accepted
to this conference, because I thought
my use of slang and hip-hop vernacular
would mark the paper as unintellectual
or too urban.
That essay. . . has just won
the John T. Warren Top Student Paper Award
at the National Communication Association
annual convention. After I retrieve my award
and take a picture with the chair of the division,
I return to my seat in the audience.
As I sit with the award in my lap,
I am still in awe.
When I wrote the essay that won the award,
I just wanted to unite my academic self and my hip-hop self
on the same page.
Like the DJ does on her turntables,
I just wanted to seamlessly bring together
two worlds in the hopes that
it would resonate with someone.
I just wanted to create a homeplace
for myself within my writing.
