Niel Scobie, a second year Master’s student in Music and Culture at Carleton University, has won a TD Travel Grant award to attend an academic conference in the United Kingdom.
Scobie’s thesis will profile Jamaican-Canadian hip-hop musicians as examples of the cultural and musical hybridity in Toronto and other cities across the country; therefore, travelling to the University of Sussex to attend the African Studies Association of the United Kingdom’s biennial conference was extremely productive. Scobie took part on the panel entitled “Race and Place in Hip-Hop Outside the U.S.A,” and his presentation, entitled “BaKardi Slang: Negotiating a ‘Janadian’ Identity in the Music of Kardinal Offishall,” explores how this artist negotiates his identity as both Canadian and Jamaican within his recordings and videos, so as to affirm his dual cultural heritage and his credibility within the hip-hop scene that prizes authenticity. This dual identity is particularly common for second- and third-generation Canadian hip-hop artists. Scobie also attended the panels, “Diasporas and National Development in Africa,” “African Migrants in Emerging Diasporas,” and “Migration / Diaspora.”
Scobie states: “The research I presented at the conference is the foundation for my current thesis work. I am expanding it to include other Canadian hip-hop artists of Jamaican ancestry to further advance the discourse and scholarship on this topic as it applies to notions of personal and national identity and diaspora studies in Canada. The opportunity to discuss my research with experts in the field of diaspora studies was invaluable. I met and have since corresponded with: Dr. Tony Mitchell, senior lecturer of Cultural Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia and author of Global Noise: Rap and Hip Hop Outside the U.S.A.; Dr. Adam Haupt, professor of Media Studies at the University of Cape Town; and Dr. Kendra Salois, professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Maryland, among others.”
Scobie expressed his gratitude for TD’s generosity in supporting his research trip and he looks forward to future success.