Dr Charity Marsh
Raincity Rap
Raincity Rap Festival is a festival that was held in 2011 and again in 2013. Elaine Carol, the artistic director of MISCELLANEOUS Productions, an interdisciplinary arts organization located in Vancouver, ran the festival. Early on she invited me to come and participate as a facilitator and presenter on the history of hip hop in Vancouver and more specifically, on the significant contributions Indigenous artists were making to hip hop culture. After the success of the first festival, Carol shifted the theme of the second round and invited me to conduct public interviews with artists, Kinnie Starr and Chin Injeti (audio recordings from the interviews are below). I was thrilled to return and to also moderate a panel of Fierce and Powerful women in hip hop. From this session, I wrote the conclusion chapter of the edited collection, We Still Here: Hip Hop North of the 49th Parallel.
Utopia Festival:
Women in Electronic Music
There are some pretty fantastic and "cool" moments as a researcher of popular music, but to be invited to keynote at a festival where Peaches is the headliner, that's pretty cool for me. DJ Betti Forde, the artistic director, curated a festival dedicated to celebrating women in electronic music, musicians, producers, scholars, and fans. The event also included a keynote by Dr Tara Rodgers, and an incredible line-up of women performers, including Tanya Tagaq, Isis, DJ Blondetraon, and DJ Betti Forde. After presenting a keynote and facilitating a panel discussion, I was thrilled to end up on stage dancing while Peaches and DJ Bettie Forde played to an appreciative dancefloor!
Soundshift Festival
This international festival was held in conjunction with the ICTM international conference in St. John's, Newfoundland. Accompanying me on this journey were three of the students who had participated in three different versions of the Scott Collegiate/ IMP Labs Hip Hop Project, and one of my graduate students who had been part of the IMP Labs' research team and mentored in three of the five projects. At the festival we facilitated hip hop workshops, including one on beat-making, DJing, and breakdancing. All of the students assisted in facilitating the workshop and demonstrating their skills. As a researcher and teacher, it was one of those proud moments, where I witnessed these students evolve into mentors and teachers of the skills themselves. For the three students, it was also the first time they travelled outside of Saskatchewan.
