We Rock Long Distance: M.anifest and the circulations of diasporic hip-hop

Abstract

We Rock Long Distance is about the life and music of the emerging diasporic Ghanaian hip-hop artist M.anifest. Tracing complex threads of geography and generation, home and family, I examine what it is like to make hip-hop from someone in M.anifest's position, but also what it's like to make a dissertation and documentary about someone in M.anifest's position. After outlining the major questions motivating the project, I articulate the distances crossed in music and life between Minnesota and Ghana, the methodological distances that inevitably arise in ethnography and documentary film, the digital distances crossed through new media and social networking sites, and the generational distances explored between M.anifest and his grandfather, J. H. Kwabena Nketia. To tell these stories, I use numerous pieces of embedded media (photos, audio, and video), positioning We Rock Long Distance at the intersection of textual and visual knowledge production as I explore the question of where M.anifest both comes from and where he's at.