Professor to present analysis of hip-hop artist Bambu at Dec. 3 public talk

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
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Posted: Nov 28, 2014

Dr. Roderick Labrador
Dr. Roderick Labrador

As the finale of the Fall 2014 Faculty Lecture Series titled "Sharing Our Work and Knowledge," Ethnic Studies Professor Roderick Labrador will present, "Los Angeles, Philippines: Toward a Transpacific Politics and Poetics in Bambu's Musical Autobiography," at 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, December 3, 2014, in Hamilton Library Room 301.  The lecture is free and open to the public.

Dr. Labrador will examine the ways that Bambu, a second-generation Filipino-American rapper from Los Angeles, California, constructs his life narrative throughout his mixtape, Los Angeles, Philippines.  It is a counterstory challenging majoritarian stories while simultaneously reinforcing and critiquing the operations of race, gender, sexuality, class, nation and empire in U.S. society.

Bambu is a well-known, prolific and respected Asian-American member of the independent hip-hop scene and was formerly one-third of the pioneering Filipino-American rap group, Native Guns. With its self-conscious, self-referential style similar to Chuck D's Autobiography of Mistachuck, Los Angeles, Philippines works as a musical autobiography that connects individual and collective memory, narrative and engagement with the everyday world.

Dr. Labrador's research and community work focuses on race, ethnicity, class, culture, language, migration, education, hip-hop, and cultural production in Hawai‘i, the U.S. and Philippines. He hosts "Inside the Ethnic Studies Studio," in which he and his students conduct interviews, workshops and forums with local, national and international hip-hop artists on the Mānoa campus.