AES New York 2019 Presenter or Author
R. Sommer McCoy
Primary Affiliation: The Mixtape Museum/Columbia University - New York, NY, USA
Secondary Affiliation: Hip-Hop Hacks - The Brooklyn Academy of Music
Regan Sommer McCoy is a community organizer and music industry veteran who is passionate about the intersection of hip-hop, education, and technology. Inspired by her history in the music industry, database management, and nonprofit administration, Sommer founded the Mixtape Museum and Hip-Hop Hacks.
The Mixtape Museum, currently being supported by the Columbia University Community Scholar program, is an archive project dedicated to advancing public understanding and appreciation of the art, history, and technique of the mixtape. It explores how mixtapes changed the landscape of music, encourages protection of DJ-produced mixtapes in danger of deterioration, and seeks to achieve systematic preservation in the DJ community.
Hip-Hop Hacks is an initiative that explores and promotes ways in which hip-hop interacts with and inspires technological innovation and entrepreneurship. Events have been held at Spotify, Microsoft Store, Wix, Queens Public Library, LIU Brooklyn, Carnegie Mellon University, and Google.
In 2018, she joined the Brooklyn Academy of Music as Operations Manager in Education and Community Engagement. She is a co-producer of the Hip-Hop Can Save America podcast, a member and grantee of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC), and a charter member of the William & Mary Hip-Hop Collection. She is a member of the XFR Collective and sits on the board of Minds Behind the Music and The Hip-Hop Association. She’s spent 15 years in the music industry, most notably as a liaison to Virginia hip-hop duo Clipse.
More Info: http://sommer.nyc/
Session List
Oct 18:
AR02: Cache Rules Everything Around Me: Archiving and Preserving Hip-Hop in a Digital Age (Chair)