Pioneering hip-hop journalist & activist Harry Allen to speak at MSU
From MSU News Service
A pioneering photojournalist of the early hip-hop movement will speak about the rise of the group Public Enemy at a free lecture set for 7pm Monday, March 4th, at Montana State University’s Strand Union Building Ballroom A.
Harry Allen, a hip-hop activist and cultural expert, captured candid images of the influential hip-hop group Public Enemy before they became famous for their highly political music and their fight for African-American rights. Allen’s photographically enhanced lecture, “Shooting the Enemy: My Life in Pictures with the People Who Became Public Enemy,” documents the rise and early stages of the hip-hop group. The lecture includes many of Allen’s photographs from the early 1980s, including rap performers Chuck D, Flavor Flav, Bomb Squad leader Hank Shocklee, Keith Shocklee and others.
“While ostensibly about these images, the discussion ultimately reflects on how one can navigate opportunity even when unsure of its outcome,” Allen said.
Allen’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Billboard, Harvard Design Magazine, Mojo, and other print media, as well as in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Allen now serves as an adviser to the Archives of African American Music and Culture at Indiana University. From 2003 to 2015, Allen was also the host and producer of the weekly WBAI-NY radio show, “NONFICTION.”
Allen has given his “Shooting the Enemy” presentation at several universities across the country including Harvard, Stanford and Cornell.
Free tickets for Allen’s lecture are available in advance at www.eventbrite.com. Ticket holders will be seated first. There will be open seating for others if seats are available the night of the event. Doors open for the lecture at 6:30pm.
Allen’s lecture is presented at MSU by the MSU Leadership Institute with sponsorship from MSU’s College of Education, Health and Human Development, Jake Jabs College of Business and Entrepreneurship, College of Letters and Science, College of Arts and Architecture, School of Film and Photography, School of Music, Department of Liberal Studies, Department of English, KGLT, Office of the Provost, and the Associated Students of Montana State University.
For more information, please call the MSU Leadership Institute at (406) 994-7275, visit www.montana.edu/leadership, or find them on Facebook. •
