![Sample our Social Sciences journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110822/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Social-Sciences.jpg"})
Abstract
Hip-hop workshops have become a key feature of youth-focused community arts programmes in regional and remote Indigenous communities in Australia over the past twenty years with music videos being a primary output. While literature on Indigenous hip-hop in Australia has demonstrated that rap music provides a powerful medium of expression for representing identity, there has been little research on hip-hop workshops. In the early 2000s Indigenous hip-hop artists, many of whom co-facilitated the first hip-hop workshops, demonstrated an understanding of hip-hop as a new form of ceremony. This paper makes a case for hip-hop-as-ceremony as a framework for understanding what Indigenous communities might be utilising hip-hop workshops for, moving beyond lyrics and images to the collective public performance events that music videos depict. This article analyses two music videos produced through hip-hop workshops in the central Australian desert to point to the possibilities hip-hop culture provides for maintaining ceremonial practice.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to acknowledge and thank the participants in her Honours research (Macquarie University Ethics Committee ID: HE23JUN2006-H04736) especially Brad Cooke (manager at Gadigal Information Services/Koori Radio), Wire MC, MC Birdz, BrothaBlack, J-Dash-P and James Mangohig. The author would also like to thank the people who have helped shape her limited understanding of Milpirri, especially; Wanta Steve Jampijinpa Patrick, Jerry Jangala Patrick, Myra Nungarrayi Herbert, Enid Nangala Gallagher, Tracks Dance company Directors Tim Newth and David McMicken, Kelly Beneforti, Monkey Mark, Elf Transporter, Jennifer Biddle and Georgia Curran. This paper was made possible by support from University of New South Wales through a Faculty Research Grant (Art & Design, IR001, Project:PS49877), HREAP ethics approval (ID 14140), and Warnayaka Arts Centre, all of which supported travel to Lajamanu including Milpirri festival 2018.
Notes
1 Breaking or breakdance is one of the elements of hip-hop.
2 http://www.deadlysounds.vibe.com.au Transcript accessed June 16, 2006. Webpage no longer available, author retains a copy of the transcript.
3 The Honours thesis, entitled Testimony and Narrative in Indigenous Hip-hop, compared the ‘Aussie hip-hop’ scene in Sydney and Indigenous hip-hop spaces and events in the early to mid 2000s within the context of historical and contemporary settler/colonial relations and trans-generational trauma.
4 Interview with Wire MC, August 3, 2006.
5 http://www.deadlysounds.vibe.com.au Transcript accessed June 16, 2006. Webpage no longer available, author retains a copy of the transcript.
6 Interview with MC Birdz, August 20, 2006.
8 Vibe Australia, which ran Vibe3on3, was defunded in 2014 in favour of the Indigenous Advancement Strategy (IAS) that funds programs through grants. VIBE Australia also ran the Deadly Awards and the breakdance-inspired television program Move it Mob Style. IAS funds, among other projects, non-Indigenous organisations running hip-hop workshops in Indigenous communities.
14 See http://barklydesertculture.com/.
16 ‘A “seven” is a boomerang carved from the strongest hardwood in the rough shape of the number 7, and is used by men in conflict and ceremony’ (Desert Pea Media Citation2013a).
19 The terms ‘Dreaming’ and ‘dreamtime’ are short-hand translations of a complex ‘religious’ system and may refer to, for example, ‘dreaming narratives’ or ancestor beings themselves, and form the basis of a knowledge system including specific knowledge of land and country and codes of ethics (Nicholls Citation2014).
20 A ‘purpose' cannot be assumed. The ‘reason' or intention of the video production, from the perspective of the elders, may have been to enact ceremony, to enable community performance and intergenerational learning. The video as ‘product’ then may be intended to inform future teaching opportunities. It may also be a powerful claim to land deliberately enacted for the national and global reach of the video on YouTube.
23 For detailed information on the Milpirri Banners, see https://tracksdance.com.au/milpirri-banners-home-page.
24 Skookum Sound System. 2012. Skookum Sound System – Ay I Oh Stomp & Operator (ft. Deano & Amphibian). [Online Video] 4:47, January 19. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS43pk8Yjos.