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Time Traveling With Hip-Hop

gzaFor a moment, imagine a little girl in the American South, watching her uncles — mid-20th century blues men, with harmonicas, guitars, bottles, standing in the round, telling their stories. And then suddenly a flash of the spirit, what Robert Farris Thompson, might describe as a rupture in the space, time, rhythm continuum, and that little girl is transported to the Bronx. It’s late 1977, and she stands over a box with levers, with circular devices on each side that remind her of the devices that played records in the houses her mama cleaned.

This little piece of time-traveling science fiction captures the genius of Hip-Hop culture, where young folk accessed the existing technologies at their disposal to create a world that sounded, looked like and felt like the world they wanted to live in–that allowed them to travel to the past and the future. In this conversation between the legendary GZA, a founding member of the Wu Tang Clan, and Professor Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of black popular culture at Duke, they will discuss the role of Hip-Hop in challenging our ideas of what science fiction is, and its connection to futures that Hip-Hop has always imagined.

For more information, and to attend, visit http://sched.moogfest.com/event/6mFa/time-traveling-with-hop-hop