The African HipHop Movement: Youth Culture and Democracy in Senegal
Damon Sajnani
Assistant Professor, African Languages and Literature
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Time and Location
12:00pm, 206 Ingraham Hall, 1155 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI
Description
HipHop Studies in the U.S. and beyond have long affirmed the political significance of HipHop culture, but examples of widespread impact on the formal political sphere are rare. However, in Senegal, youth artist-activists are realizing this potential on an unprecedented scale. Sajnani’s deep participant-observation among this community revealed how Senegalese HipHoppers organically deploy an anticolonial notion of democracy that challenges orthodox democratic theory’s framing of possibilities.
Bio
Professor Sajnani is a critically acclaimed HipHop artist, Harvard’s inaugural Nasir Jones Hip Hop Fellow, and new assistant professor of African Languages and Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has authored several articles about HipHop in the US and Africa, and is developing two book projects: Critical HipHop Theory and an adaptation of his dissertation, tentatively titled “The Senegalese Spring: HipHop and Politics in Senegal.”