Undergraduate Columbia College Chicago scholars Jaeya Bayani (Music Business & Hip Hop Studies '24), Vi McMahon (Creative Writing & Dance '24) and Myka Okot (Dance & Hip Hop Studies '25) share their research on who or what “belongs” in Hip Hop culture, in practitioner communities, or crews and draw particular attention to what Hip Hop will look like in the coming generations and Dr. Imani Kai Johnson.
Dr. Imani Kai Johnson is an interdisciplinary scholar, specializing in the African diaspora, global popular culture, and Hip Hop. She has attended UC Berkeley (BA), New York University (MA), and the University of Southern California (Ph.D.) where she received her doctorate in American Studies & Ethnicity. Dr. Johnson’s book on the ritual circle in international Hip Hop dance communities is titled Dark Matter in Breaking Cyphers: the Life of Africanist Aesthetics in Global Hip Hop (Oxford University Press, 2023). She is also co-editor, alongside Mary Fogarty, of the Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Dance Studies, the first collection of peer-reviewed research on Hip Hop streetdances, including work by practitioners, practitioner-scholars, and scholars of dance, music, sociology, and the hard sciences. As the founder, chair, and sole Artistic Director of the Show & Prove Hip Hop Studies Conference Series, Dr. Johnson’s work on Hip Hop extends to cultivating sites for Hip Hop scholars to speak to one another and to a knowing Hip Hop community to foster the growth of Hip Hop Studies as a field that is responsible to communities beyond the academy.
B-Long: Honoring and Examining Lineage, Legacy, and Belonging in Hip Hop and Street Dance Culture celebrates ten years of the B-Series Festival with workshops, cyphers, panels, screenings, battles, and jams that unite academic scholars, commercial practitioners, and community innovators.
The presentation of the B-Series 10th Anniversary is made possible in part by support from Alphawood Foundation, Chicago Arts Recovery Program grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events, Honey Pot Performance's The Chicago Black Social Culture Map, the Illinois Arts Council, and Red Bull.
The presentation of 7NMS|PROPHET Wkshp: PILLARS was made possible in part by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and the Mellon Foundation.
This project is partially supported by a grant from the Office of Academic Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Columbia College Chicago.
