Launch: Representing Hip Hop Histories, Politics and Practices in Australia

Associate Professor Ian Maxwell, author of the first Hip Hop book out of Australia, Phat Beats, Dope Rhymes: Hip Hop Down Unda Comin’ Upper (Wesleyan University Press, 2003) will moderate a panel discussion with the authors and editors of the first ever edited collection focusing entirely on Hip Hop out of Australia, over two decades later.

Bringing together both scholarly and practitioner perspectives, across 11 chapters, contributors explore the diversity of identities, communities, practices, and expressions that make-up Hip Hop in Australia, including Emceeing/ music production, Graffiti and Breaking. With chapters by: Kurt Iveson, Dianne Rodger, Jason Ng, Izzy Brown, Grant Leigh Saunders, Charlotte Schuitenmaker, Annalise Friend, Lucas Marie (with J Yoon), Sudiipta Dowsett, Wanta Jampijinpa Pawu, Gemma Clendining, and Rachael Gunn.

The theoretical and methodological frameworks used include ethnographic and autoethnographic research and writing, discourse analysis, Indigenous methodologies, textual analysis and archival research. Some authors present their contributions in academic chapters, while others use creative formats. The book showcases how Hip Hop is understood and lived across numerous settings in Australia, making important contributions to global Hip Hop studies and scholarship in related fields such as popular music, youth culture and First Nations Studies.

Come hear, meet and ask questions to the panel, get yourself a discounted paperback copy and help celebrate this milestone in Australian Hip Hop history to the soundtrack provided by DJ Juzzlikedat.

Reviews of the book:

“Hip Hop aesthetics, politics, and education in Australia come alive in this sweeping survey of practices, methods, and voices, including First Nations and other marginalised artists and scholars. An inspired, vital contribution to the literature!”

-Jeff Chang, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation

“An antidote to one-size-fits-all descriptions of Hip Hop in Australia. It’s refreshing, real, challenging and inspiring. Academics and Hip Hoppers share stories from across this great southern land, never scared to ask tough questions, never shying away from the richness and complexity of those who love, live and are Hip Hop.”

-Morganics (MetaBass'n'Breath) veteran Australian Hip Hop artist.

“Much more than a set of compelling essays about Australian Hip Hop. Representing Hip Hop Histories, Politics and Practices in Australia speaks with insight and authority to both the emergence and development of a discrete field of studies, and to urgent contemporary debates about what it is to be in, and to make culture in, Australia.”

-Ian Maxwell, Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Sydney.

"Australian Hip Hop is grossly undervalued and marginalised. There is little quality academic research about it. This book brings together practitioners and academics in a wide-ranging and incisive exploration of Australian Hip Hop at the borders of Indigenous and settler culture. It is an important step forward in discussions of Hip Hop in Australia."

-Jon Stratton, Adjunct Professor, UniSA Creative, University of South Australia.