Unicamp, the first state university in São Paulo to adopt affirmative action, takes another step in valuing the diversity and multiple knowledge that is part of Brazilian society. On 12/11 (Friday), World Hip-hop Culture Day, the university inaugurates the “I Brazilian Hip-hop Archive”, an initiative that is part of the Black Memory Project of the Edgard Leuenroth Archive (AEL) at Unicamp. This is a joint action with Afro-Cebrap (Center for Research and Training in Race, Gender and Racial Justice), with the participation of the Center for Studies in International Migration (CEMI-Unicamp).
The event will be broadcast on channels of the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH), from 19 pm and is part of the Unicamp Afro 2021 activities. It will be attended by the historian King Nino Brown (donor of the inaugural collection) and rapper Sharylaine.
This initiative begins with the arrival of the collection of King Nino Brown, a self-taught historian and activist in the Hip-hop movement. It includes materials ranging from the memory of Bailes Black in the 1970s, the arrival of Hip-hop, the occupation of public spaces, to the formation of institutional spaces, such as Hip-hop Houses.
In various places around the world there are archives, study centers and collections on Hip-hop. They are connected to the demands of society, especially from peripheral and non-white youth. For example, the “Hiphop Archive & Research Institute”, at Harvard University; the “Hip Hop Collection” at Cornell University; the “Hiphop Literacies Conference” at Ohio University; the “Tupac Shakur Collection” at the Atlanta University Library; the “CIPHER: Hip Hop Interpellation”, at the University of Cork, La Place, the “Centre Culturel hip-hop”, in Paris, among others.
In Brazil, many of those who engaged in Hip-hop culture preserve personal collections about the development and consolidation of the movement in the country. They present interfaces with black social clubs, political articulation of youth from the outskirts, black movement and social movements, with materials that could be part of the first public archive on the topic.
These materials contribute to the understanding of peripheral and black experiences in Brazil and elucidate important historical contexts and events. There has not yet been an effort to organize and systematize these collections and, in some cases, they are being worn out, discarded or forgotten. Considering the importance of these collections for the country's black memory and also for the so-called Brazilian social thought, the “I Brazilian Hip-hop Archive” begins.
