Introduction to Straight Outta Fresno
About Straight Outta Fresno: Straight Outta Fresno: From Popping to B-boying and B-girling was founded in the Fall of 2016 by Dr. Romeo Guzmán and Professor Sean Slusser as part of the Fresno State History department’s Valley Public History Initiative: Preserving Our Stories (VPHI). Since its founding, Straight Outta Fresno has worked closely with members of the Fresno and Central Valley hip-hop community to document their contributions to hip-hop culture. To date, the project has focused mostly on documenting local hip-hop dance culture (popping and b-boying/b-girling in particular) but also includes representations of hip-hop culture’s other core elements, graffiti writing, DJing, and emceeing. With invaluable assistance, guidance, and support from dancers themselves, Fresno State faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students conducted the oral histories and collected the photos, flyers, and videos that populate this collection. In addition, Straight Outta Fresno has also provided platforms for disseminating historical information; first, through a variety of events including a museum-quality temporary exhibit, two b-boy/b-girl battles, and three separate panel discussions exploring different elements of Fresno and Central Valley hip-hop dance culture. Second, we have partnered with Tropics of Meta to publish an essay series to further disseminate the history of Fresno and Central Valley hip-hop culture to a national and international audience.
As both an archive collection and a VPHI public history project, Straight Outta Fresno is committed to disrupting the traditional relationship between academic institutions and the general public that centers the former at the expense of the latter. Instead, Straight Outta Fresno’s collaborations with the Fresno and Central Valley hip-hop community are rooted in a foundational commitment to reciprocity. In this sense, the individuals, crews, and communities represented in this curated collection are partners in archive creation and the dissemination of knowledge. The thirty-two oral histories, ninety-one photos and flyers, and ten videos included in this collection are the most tangible evidence of that partnership; each file in this curated collection was made possible by the efforts of community members to seek us out and to trust us with intimate and valuable pieces of their past whether it be their stories of struggle and triumph, or photographs of individuals, moments, or events important to them. In deciding what to share with us, community members actively expressed and shaped their own historical narrative about Fresno and Central Valley hip-hop history and culture. In this sense, our collection is not the archive of Fresno and Central Valley hip-hop history, rather, it is but one node in a larger network of formal and informal archival collections housed in garages, closets, and attics across the Central Valley and beyond.
Straight Outta Fresno’s commitment to reciprocity is further expressed in our commitment to making the material we collect accessible and useful to the communities we partnered with. For example, the museum-quality exhibit we created in 2017 was first installed not on campus or in a museum but at FresCO, a community arts collective that at the time was located in downtown Fresno; we later installed portions of the exhibit at community b-boy battles including a battle at Hmong New Year before installing it at our own “Battle For Fresno State” b-boy/b-girl battle series housed at Arte Americas and Fresno State. Integrating our exhibit with b-boy/b-girl battles allowed us to use our institutional resources to bring history to the communities that created it rather than expecting the community to come to institutions that have not always welcomed them. Furthermore, our goal is to use this curated collection to further make our archival material accessible by sharing it via digital exhibits focused on specific individuals, crews, and geographies that populate the complete Straight Outta Fresno archive housed at Fresno State’s Henry Madden Library.
Our hope is that both this curated collection and the larger archive will further our reciprocal relationship to the communities who have made our work possible in two important ways: first, the material assembled provides tangible primary source evidence of the sonic, visual, and kinetic innovations Fresno and Central Valley working-class youth of color have contributed to hip-hop culture. In documenting these contributions, we hope that this collection can correct and/or address some of the Fresno and Central Valley silences in the broader hip-hop historiography. Second, the material collected also documents a broader history of Fresno and the Central Valley defined by racial, ethnic, and economic segregation, the formal and informal policing of working-class youth of color, the perpetual decline of and struggle over resources, gang violence, and also the various ways working-class youth of color and their families sought to navigate those conditions. If Fresno itself is understudied, then communities like Southeast and Southwest Fresno that are heavily represented in this collection are nearly invisible. Our hope, then, is that the historical narratives housed in this curated collection and highlighted in our exhibits will also contribute to larger efforts to change Fresno and Central Valley social and political cartography in a way that both acknowledges the contributions of the region’s neglected communities while also actively working to bring them needed resources.
Funding: Straight Outta Fresno was made possible by funding from the President’s Commission on Human Relations and Equity, College of Social Science, History Department, Sociology Department, Cross Cultural and Gender Center, History Graduate Student Association, Phi Alpha Theta, Hmong Minor, Associated Students Inc, and a Humanities for All grant from California Humanities, a partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Special Thanks: This collection would not be possible without the stories, photographs, videos, flyers from the hip-hop community. Special thanks to b-boy legend Charles “Goku” Montgomery, Erik “Waldo” Escovedo, Eric “Flip” Costello, Deborah and Ken McCoy, Gary Yang, Popin Pete, Ge Vang, Lue Vang, Yoshi Yang, Bobby Bliatout, James Vang, and the countless folks who shared their stories with us. Thanks to Jeanine Finn and Mark Buchholz of The Claremont Colleges Library Digital Scholarship and Strategies Unit for their instrumental troubleshooting and guidance through the technical challenges and hiccups of this project. Further thanks goes to the undergraduate and graduate students who contributed valuable labor collecting and organizing archive materials and supporting our events. Similarly, Straight Outta Fresno has benefited from the labor, expertise, and guidance of various Fresno State faculty members, in particular Professor Joe Orbock. Dean Michelle DenBeste, and former History department chair Ethan Kytle provided both Dr. Guzmán and Professor Slusser with valuable time and resources to work on SOF. Thanks to Alex Cummings, of Tropics of Meta, for editing and publishing our essays. Last but certainly not least, thank you to Tony Carranza for his dope event poster designs, his curatorial guidance and vision, and for generally helping to introduce and familiarize us with the Fresno art community.
VPHI: Founded and directed by Dr. Romeo Guzmán (2016 to 2020), VPHI seeks to uncover the lost history of the Central Valley, build reciprocal relationships between academics and the public, provide opportunities for everyone to experience history in unique and innovative ways, and to train future public historians.
Digital Archive: This Omeka Digital Archive was made possible by Claremont Colleges Library's Digital Scholarship and Strategies Unit and Claremont Graduate University's History Department. It was built as a collaboration between CGU and Fresno State. The CGU team includes Dr. Romeo Guzmán, Myles Mikulic, and Colin Burch, while the Fresno State side includes Professor Sean Slusser, Professor Joseph Orbock, and Marisela Hernandez. The Straight Outta Fresno Omeka Digital archive will continue to grow with more items and exhibits to be added in the near future. The entire Straight Outta Fresno collection will eventually be available through, and permanently housed, at Fresno State’s Madden Library.
Get in touch: Have material to donate? Questions about the archive? Email, Professor Sean Slusser at: seslusser@mail.fresnostate.edu
Follow us on Instagram: @straight_outta_fresno_vph