Shout out to Dr. Adam Banks for supporting the work of MXM and extending the invitation. We are honored to be sharing a session with DJ and scholar Lynnee Denise. If you’re heading to CCCC and want to connect, holla!
The Mixtape Museum: Preserving Analog in a Digital Era
Thursday, 4:45–6:00 p.m. | JW Marriott, Grand Ballroom V, Third Floor
The Mixtape Museum (MXM) is an archive project dedicated to advancing public understanding and appreciation of the art, history, and technique of the mixtape, as well as the impact mixtapes have made around the world. The MXM encourages research of mixtapes as records of time, place, and situation and of the individuals that have helped to shape their existence.
The introduction of analog recording media, i.e. compact cassettes, made it possible to store and duplicate music, but also to interact with music. The MXM aims to uncover how DJs used this medium to change the landscape of the music industry. Little research has been specifically devoted to the intellectual history of these DJ-produced recordings and their artifactual qualities and many of these analog recordings are deteriorating and must be reformatted to ensure their existence for study and pleasure.
In this session, Sommer, founder of MXM will take the listener through her journey to encourage the use of these recordings to document history and to achieve systematic preservation in the DJ community.
Sommer has 10 years of experience in the music industry as a manager and currently works at The American Council of Learned Societies in Web & Information Systems, where she manages the database, social media, and fellows’ publications. She serves on the Hip Hop Hall of Fame Artifacts, Exhibits, and Preservation Committee, is Director of Educational Programs at Rhymes Over Beats: A Hip Hop Theater Company, and is a member of the Hip Hop Education & Preservationists Alliance.
Lynnee Denise is a cultural producer and independent scholar who uses turntables and scholarship to create forums exploring and celebrating Afro-Diasporic electronic music. Her work is informed and inspired by social and political movements, gender studies, and Black science fiction.
Lynnee is the founder of WildSeed Cultural Group an organization whose mission, “entertainment with a thesis,” is driven by a desire to incorporate the nontraditional elements of literature, cultural criticism and ethnomusicology into the New York, Atlanta and South African music scene. Through an interdisciplinary approach such as podcasts and lectures, she explores the migration of Black cultural products, people and ideas. In 2013, she partnered with Spelman College as the first DJ to present independent scholarship through a seminar series titled: Music, Migration and Movement.