In my most recent dissertation interview with Toni Blackman, I asked how a non-rapper like me might approach rap songwriting with music education students. The best approach, of course, would be to just invite Toni herself to come in and teach it, but I wanted suggestions for what to do when that’s not possible. She …
Tag Archives: dissertation
Brandon Bennett interview remix – What is hip-hop education?
For my dissertation on hip-hop educators, I’m creating a mixtape of remixed interviews with my research participants. Here I talk through the process of remixing an interview with Brandon Bennett that I recorded on September 22, 2020 in Washington Square Park. The remix is made from the twenty most interesting/pertinent/relevant minutes of several hours of …
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Adam Neely video on rap covers
I have been enjoying Adam Neely’s videos for a few years, so it was pretty exciting when he asked me to help out with his recent examination of white supremacy and music theory. It was even more exciting when he invited me to do an interview on the problem of the white rap cover. See …
Toni Blackman interview remix – What is hip-hop education?
For my dissertation on hip-hop educators, I’m creating a mixtape of remixed interviews with my research participants. Here I talk through the process of remixing an interview with Toni Blackman that I recorded on August 20, 2020 in Prospect Park. The remix is made from the eighteen most interesting/pertinent/relevant minutes of an hour and a …
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Martin Urbach interview remix – What is hip-hop education?
For my dissertation on hip-hop educators, I’m creating a mixtape of remixed interviews with my research participants. In this post, I talk through the process of remixing an interview with Martin Urbach that I conducted on July 30, 2020 in Prospect Park. The remix includes the highlights of about two hours of recorded audio. Dissertation …
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What does it mean to remix the classical canon
Here’s an exciting thing that happened recently. https://twitter.com/olabscott/status/1270192351215005697 I didn’t have an explicitly anti-racist motivation when I started making the remixes, but if they’re being received that way, I’m delighted. In this post, I’m going to do some thinking out loud about what it all means.
The racial politics of music education
In the face of ongoing protests against police brutality in the US, I’m seeing some music educators fretting about the relevance of their work. I believe that Eurocentric music education can validate and perpetuate white supremacy, and that our responsibility is to dismantle it. Here’s an excerpt of my dissertation in progress. I hope you …
Hip-hop glossary
This is not meant to be a comprehensive guide to hip-hop slang and vocabulary. Such a thing would be impossible, especially because the culture is constantly producing new terms. This list will necessarily be out of date by the time you read it. My purpose is to introduce the most important musical terms, along with …
Remixing Ben Shapiro
My dissertation research includes a methodology of my own invention, which I’m calling analytical remixing. I’m writing about three hip-hop educators, in order to illuminate hip-hop as an education philosophy, not just a subject area. That includes centering the remix as an important and underexplored music education practice. Beyond just writing about remixing, I am making …
Brandon Bennett: the ethnopedagogical remix
In this post, I present a remixed recording I made of hip-hop educator Brandon Bennett running a session of the afterschool Producer Club run by TechRow Fund at New Design Middle School in Harlem. From the beginning until 1:18, you hear Brandon lead a game of his own devising, where he raps lines with missing …
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