My Fema People

Hip-Hop as Disaster Recovery in the Katrina Diaspora

Bibliographic Data

ID7598331
AuthorsZ Kish (0000-0003-4899-3964, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume61
Issue3
Pages671-692
Publication date2009-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-0678 • E-ISSN: 1080-6490
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/aq.2009.a317273
OpenAlexW1525905247
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited12

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, hip-hop artists responded to the disaster with an outpouring of songs that engaged with the racialization, misrepresentation and violence that framed survivors as refugees in dominant discourse. This paper explores post-Katrina hip-hop in relation to the history of post-disaster black musical production in the U.S., and considers the ways in which the music not only narrates the dislocation of the Katrina diaspora but also challenges the media's exceptionalist discourse constructing the disaster and its diaspora as a crisis for America. The music also serves to imagine new forms of home and community in which the music offers itself as a vital means of disaster recovery. Providing an affective mapping of the social, economic and discursive contradictions subtending the human disaster, post-Katrina hip hop is a critical site for interrogating the ongoing tragedy of African-American bodies that don't matter

Art · Diaspora · Geography · Hurricane katrina · Media studies · Musical · Natural disaster · Political science · Sociology · Visual arts · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Disaster Management and Resilience · Gender Studies · History · Music History and Culture

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