Although librarians and archivists do not typically spring to mind when considering hip-hop music and culture, Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections (RMC) is down with it to a degree that might surprise you. In 2007, RMC acquired a significant archive on the history of hip hop and rap music, documenting its emergence in the Bronx in the 1970s and early 1980s. The collection includes nearly one thousand sound recordings, the photographic archive of Bronx photographer Joe Conzo, Jr., textile art, books and magazines, and a collection of more than five hundred original flyers designed by Buddy Esquire and others.
The photographs and other printed materials are being processed by staff in RMC. LTS music cataloger and assistant music librarian Jim Alberts was charged with cataloging the sound recordings in this important new collection and set an ambitious goal for himself: to process the entire set of 1000 LPs, EPs and singles by the end of October. The target date was important; it coincided with a hip-hop conference held at Cornell over the last weekend of that month. Jim was assisted by LTS colleagues Margaret Nichols, Liz Muller, and Roswitha Clark. This ad-hoc posse managed to complete the processing of the many unique titles on schedule, making them intellectually accessible for those scholars visiting Cornell during the conference as well as for our own local researchers.
The founding materials in Cornell’s hip-hop collection were the gift of collector and author Johan Kugelberg. Materials in the collection form the basis for the book Born in the Bronx: a Visual Record of the Early Days of Hip Hop (November 2007) edited by Kugelberg with contributions from hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa (foreword), Buddy Esquire, Jeff Chang, and Conzo (photographer). The collection documents the origins of hip-hop as culture and community, and its influence on the history of music, art, performance, and activism in America during the final third of the 20th century and beyond. It provides original research materials for students and scholars in the fields of music, American studies, urban studies, theater, film, dance, art history, African American studies, government, literature, and history. It also provides CUL with what the Cornell Daily Sun called “some serious street cred.”
For more about the collection, see the RMC Web site at: http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/hiphop/
|
