Fulbright Scholarship sends grad student to research hip-hop in South Africa

By: Franco LaTona

Andy J. Normann, a Ph.D. student in ethnomusicology, is heading to the University of the Witwaterstrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, for one year as a recipient of a Research Award from the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. While there, he’ll conduct fieldwork for his dissertation on the South African music industry.

While the project focuses on hip-hop (an interest Normann developed in 2015 during his master’s degree at Bowling Green University), he said he hopes to include house and improvised music as well. To conduct fieldwork, Normann said he’ll collaborate with Back to the City Festival, the South African Hip-Hop Museum as well as independent record labels in the Johannesburg area.

“I hope I'll capture at least some of the vibrance and multi-faceted-ness of Black South African popular music,” Normann said. And add to the wonderful and expansive literature written by Black South Africans and by other scholars, thinkers, and writers from around the world.”

Normann also said he’s increasingly interested in exploring how scholarship is multi-modal and can address the spaces that are important to people working in the music industry - through writing, but also through mediums such as podcasting and video.

Normann said he’s grateful for the vast support he’s received throughout his academic career, and is particularly grateful to Butler School Professors Veit Erlmann, Charles Carson, Sonia Seeman and Allison Maggart for their knowledge, support and letters of recommendation during the application  process.