The Kitchen Sisters Present Remembering Marcyliena Morgan - Keeper of the Hip Hop Archive at Harvard
Nov 18, 2025
In this tribute to Marcyliena Morgan, a linguistic anthropologist and founding director of the Hip-Hop Archive at Harvard, she and scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. explore the origins and significance of archiving hip-hop culture. They discuss the importance of preserving artifacts like boomboxes and turntables while framing hip-hop as a vital art form deserving of academic study. The conversation highlights hip-hop's role as social commentary and its impact on community voices. Students share personal stories, showcasing the archive's emotional significance and its capacity to inspire future generations.
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Archiving Hip‑Hop As Serious Scholarship
- The Hip Hop Archive treats hip-hop as serious cultural scholarship worth preserving at institutions like Harvard.
- Marcyliena Morgan and Henry Louis Gates Jr. argue archives create a canon and legitimize hip-hop as art and history.
Student Projects Sparked A Physical Archive
- Marcyliena Morgan collected boomboxes, turntables, Adidas, and graffiti materials from students' projects at UCLA.
- Those student collections seeded Morgan's material archive and convinced her hip-hop needed preservation.
Document Albums With Their Source Materials
- Curate albums with full documentation: track lists, samples, production credits, and related source materials.
- Use cross-references to reveal artistic lineage and support scholarly study of hip‑hop.