Hi Grace! I've really enjoyed reading your posts, your project in Germany sounds amazing and your reflections are super interesting. I can definitely relate to having unexpected tasks-- for me, since classes have started at the university where I am working, I've been helping out (in small ways) with teaching/organizing. This has been a surprise, and I definitely don't feel that I'm the most qualified person to be helping teach Maya classes, so it's made me pretty nervous. But I really like your reflection that sometimes the most helpful thing is not always the same thing you prepared for, or hoped to be doing. In a perfect world this wouldn't be the case, but I'm glad to have this experience regardless of whether or not I expected it, and of course it's also great to learn how to adapt and improvise. 

I'm glad you felt so welcomed and connected during your project in the UK! Before this summer started, I remember feeling worried about whether I would have any sort of social life during my project, especially since it is also my first time in the country where I'm working. However, I've received a very warm welcome to Mexico, and I've also been able to build strong connections. Like you mentioned, food and shared experiences have both been particularly effective! I think I reached a similar conclusion as you, that these informal interactions are some of the best examples of the lofty-sounding goals that Laidlaw sets, like cross-cultural solidarity. 

Hi Kashish! Your project sounds super interesting, and I think it offers very immediate real-world benefits as well. I hope everything went well during the typhoon; in Mexico there was recently a hurricane/tropical storm, so I can definitely relate to the anxiety and unexpected challenges that weather can bring. I'd love to hear more about your experience with interviews, since this seems like a major part of your methodology, and it's a significant part of what I've been doing this summer as well. Have you encountered any challenges while conducting interviews on policy, such as a reluctance to share information?

I really relate to your first answer about not initially considering politics. As I research, I'm finding that government policies, especially about linguistic rights and language education, can make a huge difference in the art that is produced in an Indigenous language. It's very interesting to think about the role that politics/law/government can play (even in the most indirect way) in personal expressions of identity.

1. Initially, I had framed my project around code-switching and the idea that when the rappers were changing languages, they were making a "switch" between two separate ways of speaking. Increasingly, however, my reading is leading me to think of multilingualism as part of one unified code. So for example, if a person speaks Maya and Spanish, they navigate the world with a distinct Maya-Spanish code that is always present, even if they are only using one language at a time. Thinking of multilingualism this way makes a lot more sense in the context of my project, because in almost all of the songs, rappers are combining both languages to tell a unified story. Also, particularly for the rappers who are natively bilingual, their speech/rapping/singing in both languages is actually "marked" as bilingual (with distinct pronunciations, for instance). 

2. Many of the resources we learned about in the beginning of the program, like Zotero and CLIO, have been very helpful. Surprisingly, I've also learned a lot about how the music is perceived from reading YouTube comments. I definitely didn't expect for this to be such a helpful way of collecting information, but reading through them tells me a lot about who is listening to a particular song (where they are from, what languages they speak, whether they understand the lyrics, etc.). 

I appreciate your comment about the formation of a dual identity, because I've noticed a similar theme in my own project, although it is not a product of assimilation as much as colonization. It would be so cool to learn about how those processes are intertwined, and how they affect identity formation similarly/differently. I can't wait to hear about your results!

1. By the end of the six weeks, I plan to have an annotated bibliography and a well-organized document with all the translated lyrics. I plan to write a paper in the future, because I think doing so would help me organize my thinking, and would also let me share my work more efficiently with people. It also feels like the more I learn about my topic, the more questions I have, so I would definitely love to continue working on my project throughout the year. For example, interviews with rap artists and rap fans would be incredibly helpful. Also, there are so many interesting elements of the music that I'm intentionally de-prioritizing right now in order to focus on the lyrics, such as the accompanying music videos. Looking more closely at these elements is a bit outside the scope of a six-week project, but would definitely be rewarding in the future. 

2. My research topic connects to several broader sociopolitical issues, most clearly a global trend of Indigenous hip hop, which is happening all across the Americas, as well as in Asia, Australia, and even some European countries. Often, this music is a highly political mode of self-expression tied to issues of language preservation/revitalization, sovereignty and land back movements, systemic injustices and violence, and the cultivation of pride in Indigenous identity. Maya and Quechua hip hop both serve as examples of grassroots efforts to handle these issues, and so are important to consider as we move towards a more equitable/just future. 

Your second comment is very interesting to me, because I'm using a similar kind of thinking in my project as well. I'm of course not imagining myself as a molecule, but it is important for me to think about how different audiences might react to the music I'm looking at.