Traveling Hip-Hop and Culture Collide

This event introduces the UCI campus and the greater southern California community to the multi-layered travels of U.S. hip-hop culture around the world, with a special emphasis on the historical and contemporary presence of African-American and Afro-German hip-hop performance in Europe. Nationally and internationally known musician, hip-hop artist, and poet shirlette ammons (Durham, NC) will describe her work in Serbia with the State Department “Next Level”-program, which sends hip-hop artists and DJs to underserved communities in six countries around the world on people-to-people diplomacy and professional development projects, and speak about her collaboration with Berlin-based queer hip-hop and Spoken Word artist and activist, sookee, in collaborative music videos and tours. ammons will also perform her award-winning work. Professor Priscilla Layne works on the history of Afro-German hip-hop across several media, and has collaborated with ammons in translations of her lyrics into German for performance in the project, “Poetry in Motion: From Duke to Berlin.” Layne has written and spoken widely about translation theory, music, and about connecting queer audiences and performers across the Atlantic and around the world. Her book on the complex representation of Blackness in post-war German film and culture, White Rebels in Black: German Appropriation of Black Popular Culture, is forthcoming from University of Michigan Press, and she is currently completing a study of Afro-German Afrofuturism in contemporary fiction and theater. Her lecture is entitled: “Dissonant Chords: Translation as Activism."  

All UCI students, staff and faculty, and community members are welcome to attend the performance and the lecture, free of charge. We do request pre-registration, as both venues have a limited amount of space. Please RSVP by 15 November, 2017.

Sponsored by ILLUMINATIONS, African-American Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, European Languages and Studies, International Studies, and the UCI African American Student Experience Committee.

Register/RSVP here:
http://illuminations.uci.edu/events/2017_12_01_Traveling_Hip_Hop_Concert.html