Katelyn Best

Katelyn Best
Florida State University

Katelyn Best is a Ph.D. candidate in ethnomusicology at Florida State University. She received her Bachelors of Music in Vocal Performance at St. Mary’s College. As a Master’s student at Florida State University, her work focused on the role of music within the lives of resettled refugees in Pittsburgh, PA. Today she performs as the vocalist for an intercultural ensemble called Omnimusica, while she completes her dissertation on the dip-hop movement within the United States.

Talk Title: The Deaf HipHop Movement and Struggle for Cultural Recognition

Dip-hop, which is hip-hop embodied by Deaf artists, encompasses music as it is conceptualized from within Deaf Culture – a linguistic minority that uses Sign Language as its first language. Using hip-hop as a foundation to build on, dip-hop artists create a style of music that not only promotes the recognition of Deaf Culture but also simultaneously breaks down social constructions of the term ‘music’. This paper, based off of a series of interviews, focuses on Warren “WaWa” Snipes, creator of the term dip-hop. Through his work, this presentation traces the development of the dip-hop movement and considers how he and other dip-hop artists use this musical medium to negotiate and shape new perceptions of music and cultural identity.