HEADZ-zINe is a periodical output of the HEADZ Project. Taking the form of the fanzine with a critical edge, it challenges the convention of academic knowledge production and dissemination. HEADZ-zINe seeks to capture the personal, local, and communal histories of hip hop. HEADZ-zINe is foremost interested in the stories of its participants, and through a series of in-depth interviews and complimentary analysis of the artefacts and archives of hip hop, reveals a set of previously untold stories. HEADZ-zINe is created with much the same immediacy as a zine. It is produced within a period of weeks, is self-published and designed using standard domestic hardware and software. Although the topic addressed is historical, participants’ reflections illustrate the immediacy and closeness of this material to their current lives. True to the aims of the fanzine, HEADZ-zINe illuminates the histories of music culture which have previously been largely un-documented. These histories are told through the personal and collective stories of their participants. HEADZ-zINe is freely distributed, and the inaugural issue has been manufactured with a print-run of only 200 copies, in addition to being available in an expanded edition online. The zine presents a continued engagement with questions of knowledge production and dissemination. HEADZ-zINe has been developed in collaboration with practitioners and seeks to foreground their histories, thoughts, and ideas. We are interested in how hip hop offers practitioners a way of engaging with and knowing the world through music, artistic and dance practices. In this, we take hip hop seriously as a cultural form through which practitioners and fans learn, share and archive knowledge. Hip hop practitioners are both the creators of and thinkers about hip hop, they are local intellectuals. The principal focus of this zine is on the voices of hip hop practitioners themselves as they not only tell but theorise hip hop history. As accumulators of vinyl records, flyers, posters, photographs, and magazines ourselves we are interested in what these artefacts and archives can reveal to us about the creative acts of curating and remembering cultural history. We are interested in exploring how involvement in hip hop culture shaped the lives of practitioners and provided a space for creatively, imaginatively, and intellectually engaging with the world around them.

本書はヒップホップを単なる流行ではなく、地元の知性が紡ぐ「切実な叙事詩」として再定義する一冊です。ブリストルの熱狂を封じ込めたジンという形式は、当事者の生の声を直接魂へ届けます。断片的な記憶が壮大な文化の記憶へと昇華される瞬間には、正に文学的な美しさが宿っています。 映像版が躍動感を肉体的に捉えるのに対し、原作の核心は「思考の深み」にあります。活字だからこそ描ける世界との対峙や哲学的な強度は、映像を補完し重層的な意味を与えます。視覚的な熱狂と紙上の思索が交わる時、読者は文化の深淵に触れる至高の体験を得るはずです。