In this very special interview for Critical Studies in Improvisation, two esteemed researchers come together to discuss hip-hop, improvisation, and Black expressive culture.
George Lipsitz is Professor of Black Studies and Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His publications include The Fierce Urgency of Now: Improvisation, Rights, and the Ethics of Cocreation (co-authored with Daniel Fischlin and Ajay Heble), How Racism Takes Place, and Midnight at the Barrelhouse: The Johnny Otis Story. He serves as President of the Board of Directors of the African American Policy Forum and chairs the Advisory Board of the University of California, Santa Barbara Center for Black Studies Research which is an institutional partner of the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation.
Tricia Rose is an internationally respected scholar of post civil rights era black U.S. culture, popular music, social issues, gender and sexuality. She is most well known for her groundbreaking book on the emergence of hip hop culture, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, considered a foundational text for the study of hip hop, one that has defined what is now an entire field of study. In 2003 Rose published a rare oral narrative history of black women's sexual life stories, Longing To Tell: Black Women Talk About Sexuality and Intimacy. In 2008, Professor Rose returned to hip hop with The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop-And Why It Matters.
Tricia Rose Interviewed by George Lipsitz