She was the trailblazer in the study of hip-hop as a high art

Currently, hip-hop reigns as the most widespread music genre across various commercial metrics. However, that was not true three decades prior when linguistic anthropologist Marcyliena H. Morgan began advocating for her innovative concept to Harvard administrators: a groundbreaking hip-hop archive and research center.

“She aimed to provide a deeper legitimacy to the examination of this globally significant style of artistic expression,” reminisced her spouse of 28 years, Lawrence D. Bobo, W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences.

Morgan, the founding director of Harvard’s Hiphop Archive & Research Institute, departed on Sept. 28 due to complications from Alzheimer’s disease. The emerita professor of social sciences and African and African American Studies was 75 years old.

“Marcy will be forever celebrated as the visionary who established the world’s inaugural hip-hop archive and research facility,” stated Morgan’s long-time colleague and friend Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research.

In tribute to that legacy, Hopi Hoekstra, Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, recently sanctioned a new title for the gallery-like space within the Hutchins Center: the Marcyliena H. Morgan Hip Hop Archive & Research Institute.

As Gates mentioned, the news of the renaming was conveyed to Morgan a few weeks earlier. “I dispatched a letter that was read at her bedside,” he shared.

Morgan, who spent her childhood with five sisters on the South Side of Chicago, attained advanced degrees in linguistics from the University of Essex and the University of Pennsylvania. In the early 1990s, while instructing a course on urban speech communities at the University of California, Los Angeles, she observed students submitting papers on creative speech patterns employed by Ice Cube and other West Coast rappers.

“This highlighted for her the immense creativity with language on one side, and a profoundly influential youth culture on the other,” remarked Bobo, who was a fellow faculty member at UCLA during that time. “She spent much of the latter part of her career focusing on hip-hop culture while striving to preserve and enhance the understanding of its material and cultural contributions.”

Morgan began curating an extensive collection of hip-hop albums, publications, fashion items, and concert posters while still at UCLA in the 1990s. As Gates recounted, her aspiration for a museum-quality archive was initially articulated to him around 1996.

“At that time, it was impossible to foresee that hip-hop would evolve into the global youth musical language,” Gates remarked. “It would be akin to W.E.B. Du Bois or Alain Locke in 1925 contemplating documenting the emergence of a newly formed musical genre called jazz.”

After rejoining Bobo at Harvard in 2002, Morgan promptly set about establishing the archive within the Department of African and African American Studies. The Hiphop Archive was briefly relocated to Stanford University, where Morgan and Bobo were faculty members from 2005 to 2007. Its current location at the Hutchins Center opened in 2008, shortly after the couple’s return to Harvard.

“Many individuals, including numerous artists, visited the archive throughout the years and were immediately moved to tears,” Bobo noted. “They viewed hip-hop as integral to their creative and personal journeys and felt deeply honored to see it regarded with such reverence and seriousness.”

During a symposium two years back, colleagues, friends, and former students celebrated Morgan’s retirement by honoring her methodology within the discipline. Her 2009 publication “The Real Hiphop: Battling for Knowledge, Power, and Respect in the LA Underground” was commended for its exploration of innovative language uses at a moment when most academics viewed hip-hop through political science or sociology lenses.

“These young individuals were expressing themselves in a musical poetic format regarding their emotions, aspirations, personal wisdom, or the insights they had gleaned from others,” stated colleague and friend Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Victor S. Thomas Professor of History and of African and African American Studies. “Marcy articulates it as an intergenerational conversation. They utilize the art form not just to express their experiences but to articulate their understanding of the world they inhabit.”
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in, yet the universe they envision for the future.”

Also celebrated at the 2023 homage were Morgan’s appreciation for the genre’s activist aspects (such as hip-hop figures taking a central role in advocating for safe sex during the HIV/AIDS epidemic) along with the gatherings she organized under Harvard’s auspices, including a 2003 symposium analyzing the artistic impacts of Tupac Shakur.

“She adopted a comprehensive perspective of the hip-hop community,” Bobo remarked. “During her events, there were scholars, there were creators. There were journalists and other influential voices who consistently assessed the quality of what is produced.”

Morgan launched the Classic Crates project in collaboration with the Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library, placing groundbreaking hip-hop albums alongside Beethoven and Mozart at the University’s esteemed music repository. Included in the collection are liner notes by distinguished academics, including Harvard Professor Brandon Terry on Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly” (2015) and City University of New York’s Dionne Bennett on “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” (1998).

“She’s among the earliest individuals, if not the very first, to acknowledge the intellectual significance of this emerging form,” Higginbotham stated. “Now, courses on hip-hop exist not just at Harvard but throughout the nation. Kendrick Lamar secured the Pulitzer Prize in 2018. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History unveiled a multiyear project to collect elements of hip-hop art and culture in 2006.”

Morgan also focused on nurturing personal connections. The 2023 symposium celebrating Morgan’s legacy attracted former students and mentees from all over the U.S. and even from Italy. “There are individuals of color around the globe who hold Ph.D.’s because Marcyliena Morgan guided us and had faith in us,” Bennett shared with the audience.

Morgan, renowned for her coconut cake, was raised in a household rich with music, cooking, ideas, and camaraderie. She continued that legacy with Bobo in their Cambridge residence. Extravagant meals were prepared for teaching assistants. A dozen or so guests gathered for Thanksgiving dinner annually. Two days later came the second gathering, when 40 to 50 people would arrive for an annual event Morgan affectionately dubbed “It’s Not Over Yet.”

“Marcy, at her core, was a builder of community, a creator of connection,” Bobo stated. “She viewed food, conversation, and critical thinking as vital components for a rich and fulfilling life.”

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