Hank Shocklee, Public Enemy founder, joins NAMAC 2012 Conference

Pathbreaking music producer and Audio Innovator, Hank Shocklee, addresses digital rights and artist leadership at NAMAC 2012

The National Alliance for Media Arts + Culture (NAMAC) is honored to announce that Hank Shocklee, the breakthrough music producer, audio innovator and founder of the group Public Enemy and the BOMB SQUAD music production outfit, will join the 2012 NAMAC National Conference in Minneapolis, September 6-8, 2012.

Shocklee will participate on the Friday plenary session on “Artists As Leaders,” as well as a Saturday morning panel on “Digital Frontiers” exploring digital rights, censorship and other issues of online media and culture.

“We’re thrilled to have Hank Shocklee join us for these conversations,” said Senior Policy Strategist Belinda Rawlins. “His work as a pioneering sampling and remix artist, and his commitment to creator’s rights and social justice, are deeply relevant to NAMAC’s constituents in the media and visual arts fields.”

Shocklee’s producer/creator credits include landmark Public Enemy recordings such as “It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back,” and a lifelong career creating powerful musical vehicles for the life- and culture-changing messages of rap and hip-hop. With a collection of platinum and multi-platinum albums, and work at the executive level with MCA and Def Jam records, Shocklee also has produced recordings with Mary J. Blige, Janet Jackson, Ice Cube, Madonna, Peter Gabriel, Anthony Hamilton and others.

As a sound designer, film composer, media entrepreneur and champion of electronic music worldwide, Shocklee is always seeking new and innovative ways to transform the audio arts. His company Shocklee Entertainment focuses on a series of multimedia projects which he calls the “Future Frequency,” while his popular website Shocklee.com highlights a curated mix of future music, tech, film and multimedia culture.

As an advocate for creators' rights, Shocklee says copyright law and digital licensing systems are biased toward “elite,” established artists who can afford the fees required to sample widely from the pop-cultural lexicon. This limits the ability of emerging artists and marginalized communities to participate in the cultural discourse of democracy in the United States.

NAMAC was founded in 1980 by media/arts organizations from different regions that realized that together they represented a stronger social and cultural force than alone. Today, NAMAC stands as the collective expression of the media arts as the common language of democracy.

NAMAC’s 2012 Conference will bring together hundreds of media and visual arts producers, advocates, organizational leaders, innovators and philanthropists for panels, workshops, networking, exhibits, installations, parties and tours — promising an inspiring and informative "deep dive" into the fast-changing issues and opportunities of the media and visual arts fields.