Hip Hop Archives: Collection Summaries

FOLKLORE IN ARCHIVES: A Guide to Describing Folklore and Folklife Materials by James Corsaro and Karen Taussig-Lux 1998	WORKING WITH FOLK MATERIALS IN NEW YORK STATE: A Manual for Folklorists and Archivists John Suter, editor 1994
For more information about these books and how to order, visit our on-line gallery bookstore.

Read Archivist Nancy Johnson’s article, "Documenting the New: Hip Hop as Archives," about this project in VOICES, the membership magazine of the New York Folklore Society.

New York Folklore Society
P.O. Box 764
Schenectady, NY 12301
518/346-7008
Fax 518/346-6617
nyfs@nyfolklore.org

Archives

The Origins of Hip Hop

RETURN TO Archives Overview

In 2001, the New York Folklore Society and the Brooklyn-based Urban Think Tank embarked on a collaborative project documenting Hip Hop. The Community Scholars at Urban Think Tank (UTT), a "nonpartisan, community-based home for a body of thinkers in the Hip Hop generation" identified collections important to the development of Hip Hop culture. Vee Bravo, Yvonne Bynoe, and Chic Smith of the UTT recognized the need to document this material, provide access to it, and preserve it for the future.

UTT Community Scholars interviewed collection holders, and archivist Nancy Johnson produced a narrative summary of each collection, and a MARC record. The UTT identified eighteen significant collections of documentation in varied formats: commercial and homemade sound recordings in many different media; photographs, some professionally shot, some amateur, documenting people, fashions, breakdancing contests, subway art; sketchbooks; flyers and posters; interviews; even clothing. The collection summaries are available here:

Henry Chalfant: Style Wars—documentary film about Hip Hop’s early days
DAZE: Graffiti "black book" (sketchbook)
DJ Mecca (Jasmin Genevieve Thames): Hip Hop record collection
Ivan "Doc" Rodriguez (DJ Doc): Photographs and memorabilia
Ivan "Doc" Rodriguez (DJ Doc): Gold record awards
DOZE Green: Polaroid photographs
Coralee Evans: Hip Hop coats
Derek Johnson: Hip Hop sound recordings
Kathy Moses: Hip Hop sound recordings and promotional jacket
Jorge Pabon (performer known as PopMaster Fabel): Hip Hop videotapes and memorabilia
Jamel Shabazz: Photographs for book Back in the Days
April Silver: Documentation for first American Hip Hop conference: "Seizing the Cultural Initiative: Hip Hop at its Crossroads" (1991)
April Silver: Hip Hop recordings and promotional materials
Thembisa Mshaka-Morris: KRS 1 Interview
Thembisa Mshaka-Morris: Marketing plan for The Notorious B.I.G.’s Life After Death album
Thembisa Mshaka-Morris: Hip Hop artist photographs
Thembisa Mshaka-Morris: Wu-Tang Clan autographed record
Thembisa Mshaka-Morris: A Tribe Called Quest Interview (1996)
Martha Cooper: Hip Hop Files: Photos, ephemera, books and clippings

The Folk Archives Project is made possible by grants from the New York State Documentary Heritage Program and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. Additional funding has been provided by a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts/New York Council for the Arts Technology Initiative.