FRESNO– Fresno State’s Valley Public History Initiative launched the public history and archive project Straight Outta Fresno: From Popping to B-boys and B-girls at FresCo on December 7th. Straight Outta Fresno seeks to document and showcase the local history of hip hop in Fresno and the Central Valley by bringing together academics and the hip hop community. More events will follow. Follow their progress on Tropics of Meta: Historiography of the Masses.
Read this compelling article, “South of Shaw: Introducing Straight Outta Fresno” which details the conception of this public humanities project– to get the entire Fresno community and especially young folk to understand that their lived experiences– including hip hop culture and Fresno’s designation as the birthplace of popping dance style– are meaningful, worthy of investigation, documentation and discussion.
Organizers share about their upcoming events: “Next, we are inviting winners of the “Battle of the New year” to be hosted December 27 at Fresno’s Hmong New Years Festival and winners of our own battle taking place February 3rd at Fresno’s iconic b-boy spot, Holmes Park, to a final battle at Fresno State that will include an exhibit and a panel discussion featuring multiple generations of Fresno hip-hop dancers. Each event will include on-site walk-in oral histories and photo digitization with all materials being uploaded to our archive.”
Check out this exhibit preview article which shares some more treasures, photographs and ephemera from the archive that the project is currently building.
Event details from Dec 7th event:
From 3pm to 6pm, Fresno State faculty and graduate students will conduct walk-in oral history interviews with community members and scan any photographs and fliers related to hip hop in the Central Valley. All documents collected at this event will be archived.
From 7pm to 10pm, community members are invited to view the Straight Outta Fresno exhibit, to browse the current Straight Outta Fresno archive, and to watch multiple generations of hip hop dancers perform.
FresCo
1918 Fresno Street, CA 93721
Free event
Street parking available
RSVP appreciated but not required
For more information, contact Professor Romeo Guzman at romeog@csufresno.edu or Sean Slusser at seslusser@csufresno.edu