J. Griffith Rollefson Interview
J. Griffith Rollefson is professor of music at University College Cork, National University of Ireland. His latest book is Flip the Script: European Hip Hop and the Politics of Postcoloniality.
How did you get to where you are today, professionally?
I'm probably a good example of someone who's done it all in terms of the winding "fake it til we make it" paths we take in academia. I held precarious "adjunct" posts during and after my 2009 PhD from UW-Madison, teaching a wide range of classes and developing my resume from 2006-2011. As the most absurd example, one semester, I taught my signature global hip hop class "Planet Rap: Global Hip Hop and Postcolonial Perspectives" alongside music major surveys in "Medieval and Renaissance Music" and "the Music of Africa and the Middle East." I mean, there were some fun chances to talk, for instance, about Andalusia and cultural transfer to students in both those musicology and ethnomusicology survey courses, but it was a good example of how Music Departments are increasingly reliant on precarious workers to teach courses that should be taught by tenured specialists.
I graduated at the depths of the financial crisis as state hiring freezes hit and jobs dried up. Although I got some great interviews, I didn't get a job after graduation, so took a church choir director post as I continued to adjunct across Southern California (where my wife had scored a tenure track post). During this time I tried to keep writing and publishing through plenty of struggles and the exceptional challenges of the birth of my first child.