Continuing the quest for legitimacy: The institutionalization of hip-hop DJing education

Since the early 2000s, many hip-hop DJs have taken on teaching roles in educational institutions, whether in secondary schools, universities, or for-profit ventures. This thesis explores this development as part of an ongoing quest for legitimacy within hip-hop and the broader world and also as a response to the increasing dominance of digital technologies. Teaching offers DJs the opportunity to preserve their foundational values of innovation, experimentation, and personalization. Their approach tends to be fundamentally multimodal, emphasizing the use of sight, sound, and touch to demonstrate the artistry necessary to becoming a DJ.;There are many benefits to formal education, such as bringing about gender equality in the field, as well as concerns related to standardization and authenticity of pedagogical methods based on informal learning traditions. My study is more broadly relevant to popular music institutionalization, authenticity debates in hip-hop education, and informal and formal approaches to learning music.