By Hayden Goodwin
During the emergence of hip-hop in Los Angeles in the late 1970s and early 1980, artists created friendships and mentorships which contributed to the growth of the culture, according to Samuel Lamontagne, a UCLA ethnomusicology researcher who spoke at UC Santa Barbara recently.
Samuel Lamontagne, a UCLA ethnomusicology researcher who spoke at UC Santa Barbara’s music library.
“The development of their practice was tied to the intimacy of their community, creating relationships,” Lamontagne said at the event, which was hosted by the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Music.
Lamontagne attracted a group of 20 students and professors to hear about his research into Los Angeles hip-hop communities, as well as hip-hop artist Chuck D's 2022 class, Rap, Race, and Reality, at UCLA. Lamontagne is a postdoctoral fellow in UCLA’s history department, who co-leads the UCLA Hip Hop Initiative alongside anthropology professor H. Samy Alim and Tabia Shawel, of UCLA’s Bunche Center for African American Studies.
Medusa is a West Coast hip-hop artist who ethnomusicologist Samuel Lamontagne interviewed for his academic fieldwork. He found that Medusa saw hip-hop an outlet to express herself beyond expected feminine norms.
Artists such as Medusa and Akil the MC found a new home in hip-hop and L.A. culture, at a time when establishing relationships and becoming a part of that circle was important, before hip-hop gained traction. Chris ‘The Glove’ Taylor attributes his growth as a hip hop DJ to the mentorship he received from Tony Joseph.
Hiphopography, the study of hip-hop culture, seeks to provide economic, ethical, and socially just ways to engage with knowledge and power on matters of race, art, and expression. The term was coined by the late James G. Spady, a historian and journalist who was a pioneer in hip-hop studies and wrote the 1991 book “Nation Conscious Rap.” Essential to hiphopography is a focus on participants’ experiences and expertise, Lamontagne said.
Lamontagne, originally from France, moved to Los Angeles in 2012 and began his academic fieldwork in 2014. When he interviewed members of the hip-hop community, he extended his contact beyond the interview, to generate relationships with the artists. Just as the artists he engaged with used relationships to build their art forms, he used interpersonal connections to learn more about hip-hop culture.
“It was a longstanding engagement in the hip-hop community, not just research,” Lamontagne said.
Chuck D of Public Enemy, a rapper and songwriter, spoke with hip-hop artists and faculty in UCLA’s course Rap, Race, and Reality.
Lamontagne presented voice recordings and quotations from past interviews with hip-hop artists such as Medusa, Chris ‘The Glove’ Taylor, Akil the MC, Josef Leimberg, Jimetta Rose and Chace Infinite.
In these interviews, hip-hop was portrayed as an alternative pastime that offered a place and space for growth. Besides providing an opportunity for escapism, the new music form also provided a sense of community through competitiveness, mentorship, and friendship.
In the late 1970s, the Sugarhill Gang introduced rap music to the mainstream in Los Angeles, and its initially limited reach fostered a kinship in the hip-hop scene. Individuals in Los Angeles had the pure intent of getting involved in hip-hop’s early form of practice and being a part of the inner circle, because it was completely new.
Knowledge of the genre was scarce, and you were lucky if you could set up your antenna to get to a radio station that played it. Hip-hop films and magazines were rare and considered treasured artifacts.
“They were prize possessions in L.A. because of the knowledge they carried about hip hop,” Lamontagne said.
Hiphopography and Lamontagne’s work uses the cultural genre of hip-hop to highlight the stories of those growing up in impoverished areas of America, particularly those of African Americans.
“It was a different option, an outlet that didn’t have anything to do with all the other things,” said hip-hop artist Medusa, according to Lamontagne. She is now an artist-in-residence in UCLA’s Hip Hop Initiative.
Hayden Goodwin is a third-year economics major at UC Santa Barbara. She wrote this article for her Writing Program class, Digital Journalism.