My summer research trip to New York to work at its public libraries and its archives resulted in several discoveries. I accessed the resources of The New York Public Library system, and especially, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, looking through the Hiphop Archive Project files (1979-2004), Steve Hager/Elizabeth Wheeler collection (1981-84) and others. The most significant and fascinating of the archives was the “Fab 5 Freddy audio and moving image collection” at the Moving Image and Recorded Sound division of the Schomburg Center, containing hundreds of video and audio cassettes focused around the work of hiphop pioneer Fab 5 Freddy (born Fred Brathwaite in New York in 1959). He is a graffiti artist, rapper and filmmaker.
The recordings in the collection come from a wide variety of sources including talk shows, clippings of television programs, radio interviews but also less accessible sources like lectures and public talks at colleges and museums. While it is well known that he played an important role in Charlie Ahearn’s 1982 film Wild Style, bringing hip hop culture to the attention of the wider public, and later, starting in the late 80s, mainstreaming it further through hosting “Yo! MTV Raps” as a video jockey, the material I accessed also gave me a glimpse into his life as an underground visual artist. His friendships with artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring or spraying Warhol’s soupcans on subway cars reveal not only his cultural influences but deep connections to New York’s neo-avant garde and the downtown gallery scene.
In addition to his work as an artist, the radio sources suggest strong links to community activism. The more interesting findings pertain to the scholarly side of Fab 5 Freddy in his efforts to create a ‘dictionary of slanguage’ and thus popularize and educate the public about vernacular forms of English. His lecture at Sarah Lawrence College was given under the theme of situating performance poetry within the larger context of social, political and artistic movements and how they affect and are in turn affected by writing. He took this opportunity to reminisce on his West Indian roots, life in the city and the influence of his father’s taste for bebop and jazz on his cultural education. The details of his life provided great insight into how globalization, migration, urban life and geography come to make their mark on music and culture.
The discovery that fascinated me most was the public talk Freddy delivered in 2002 at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, as part of the exhibition One Planet Under a Groove: Hiphop and Contemporary Art. The exhibition attests to the long strides hiphop made from its humble beginnings to its popularization, and finally, to its recognition as a true artistic form by dominant cultural institutions. In the talk, Freddy, referring to the origins of hiphop as a “counter-cultural revolution”, recognized that hiphop has become mainstream and the importance of “making sure to make the right moves” to preserve and nurture the spirit of its culture. In him we see a figure donning many hats, ultimately that of an ambassador of hiphop, while manifesting in himself the oppositions of our culture: high and low, mass and popular. The talk, along with the other discoveries made during the summer, gave me much food for thought and raised important questions pertaining to my work in cultural studies.
