An Update, and Some Thoughts

Hello all. I know I haven’t written here in a while, but I think I’m going to start contributing here more frequently in order to organize and arrange my thoughts about the meandering world of academia. Since I last wrote here, I’ve completed my master’s coursework, taught an entire course on the cultural history of rap music (I even did my own syllabus), and then spent quite some time helping my colleague Damascus Kafumbe release his album, Nsomesa Okwagala, available here in bandcamp. Check out the artwork below:

It’s actually been quite a busy summer, even though I often feel like I’m not doing enough (a common theme for most graduate students as they inch closer to their dissertation. That’s been the big thing that’s been looming over my head since defending my master’s paper. What am I going to do? To be frank - bongo flava interests me as a phenomenon, but I don’t think I adequately explained the importance of Swahili pop music as a way to create nationalism in Tanzania in my master’s thesis, and, to boot, it is a pretty specific thing to write about. I love Afrobeats, and I am interested in that phenomenon in light of the work I’m currently doing on bongo flava. Additionally, teaching this course on rap music has allowed me to articulate a lot of things about American rap specifically that I have not yet come across in the academy. I think there’s things to be said that aren’t being said about the music. Hip hop is often theorized as either strictly political praxis or party music, and I want to dive deeper into that to explore the more nuanced meanings of that music. Additionally, a genre like bongo flava is often theorized as localizing, a popular music made specific to an area because of the way it sounds. I don’t know if ethnomusicology has come up with a way to talk about music, specifically popular musics, in the same way people who create and listen to the music talk about it. Part of me wants to change the conversations about hip hop and popular music in more academic settings in order to encourage growth within the field. But it’s discouraging when I see so many senior scholars (especially coming from an listserv debacle which I will not name) be so set in their ways in thinking about music, especially because a lifetime of learning and thinking about music should have done the exact opposite. I’m also interested in the other ways we can hear and read ethnomusicological discussion outside of the field - for example - most of my sources on my syllabus this summer were recent articles of journalists whom I admire and respect. This inclusion of recent sources was inspired by me taking Professor Shana Redmond’s course on Race and Sound, which was truly one of the best courses I’ve taken yet at UCLA, even if I fumbled the final paper.

I think what’s most frightening is that I am starting to allow myself to do work on the things that I enjoy the most, and I don’t want to screw that up. The freedom of choice is just as scary as being boxed in to a specific role. I have a lot of decisions to make this year.