The Abrons Arts Center is proud to announce Where They At, an exhibition that portrays the founders, architects, and players in New Orleans hip-hop and the uniquely regional rap known as bounce music, a phenomenon that evolved from the communities based in the city’s housing projects. Photographs, oral histories, and video footage compiled by photographer Aubrey Edwards and journalist Alison Fensterstock document the passing of seminal beats from New Orleans music traditions to a new generation in the late 1980’s, and the creation of this new voice in Southern roots music. This multi-media archive draws a line to the present-day diaspora, as Hurricane Katrina has scattered a once tight-knit bounce and hip-hop community whose music only existed at home — a home that has been redefined physically and culturally.
New Orleans has midwifed every existing form of indigenous American music, from jazz to blues to funk, and hip-hop is the newest manifestation of that Southern tradition. Mardi Gras Indian chants, brass band beats and call-and-response routines equally inform bounce music, which almost invariably samples the Showboys’ “Drag Rap” (a.k.a. “Triggerman”) and Derek B’s “Rock the Beat” or Cameron Paul’s “Brown Beats.” Featuring lyrical patterns that focus mainly on sex, parties and dancing, it invites – even demands – audience participation by calling out dance steps or prompting replies.
This exhibition at the Abrons Arts Center features portraits culled from the larger archive of New Orleans hip-hop and bounce artists to focus on women and gay and transgendered men in early New Orleans hip-hop and bounce.
In the 90’s heyday of New Orleans hip-hop, female rappers like Mia X, Ms Tee, Magnolia Shorty and Cheeky Blakk appeared with a significant number of songs that were just as bawdy and aggressive as their male counterparts. Often, their tracks served as answer songs that challenged male MC’s sexism in a way that created playfully ribald conversation, such as Silky Slimm’s “Sista Sista” or Mia X’s “Da Payback.”
The prominence of queer members of the bounce community, such as such as Big Freedia, Sissy Nobby, and Vockah Redu, defies the myth of insurmountable homophobia within Hip-Hop, and speaks to a curious tradition in African-American entertainment in New Orleans, which has accepted and celebrated queer and cross-dressing entertainers for over half a century. Katey Red, a Sissy, was signed to the most prominent Bounce record label, Take Fo’.
Audio-visual stations offer footage of live performances as well as oral history recordings by members and tradition bearers of the Bounce community. Collected ephemera, such as LPs, tapes and posters highlight the material culture and its adaptations over time. A full online cultural archive will be launched in conjunction with the exhibition, serving as the only resource of its kind in Hip-Hop research.
Where They At is the title of a song generally recognized as the first Bounce release, recorded by DJ Jimi Payton in 1992 for producer Isaac Bolden’s Avenue Records. (The song was recorded earlier the same year as a homemade cassette-only release by rapper T.T. Tucker, with the late DJ Irv.) To all accounts, these recordings marked the point in time at which New Orleans rap found its own voice in the raw, celebratory, infectious block-party sound that would go on to influence artists at the top of the game. The chants Jimi originated on that track, “Do it, baby, stick it” and “Shake that ass like a salt shaker”, are still quoted by Bounce artists recording and DJing parties today. DJ Jimi famously used his mother and grandmother as backup dancers.
Alison Fensterstock is a New Orleans-based music journalist. From 2006-2009, she wrote an award-winning music column for the city’s alt-weekly, The Gambit. Her writing on roots music and New Orleans rap has appeared in MOJO, Vibe, Q, Paste, Spin and the Oxford American Music Issue. Recently, she wrote the text for “Unsung Heroes: The Secret History of Louisiana Rock n’ Roll,” an exhibit currently on display at the Louisiana State Museum. She is the programming director for the Ponderosa Stomp Foundation.
Aubrey Edwards is a Brooklyn- and New Orleans-based music photographer and educator. Edwards was the primary music photographer for the alt-weekly Austin Chronicle from 2004-2008; her present client list includes the United Nations, Magnolia Pictures, Playboy, SPIN and Comedy Central. She teaches photography and videography in Brooklyn schools, as well as in continuing adult education settings. Her recent work in New Orleans includes guest lecturing with the University of New Orleans photo department and conducting workshops with the New Orleans Kid Camera Project.
