03/09/2023 story Meng Ren, a doctoral ethnomusicology student, is documenting the evolution of Chinese hip-hop in her dissertation titled “Forbidden Sound: The Art, Culture and Politics of Chinese Hip- Hop,” the first full-length work on this topic. Through her research, Ren speaks to how hip-hop gives the marginalized a voice to express their political discontent through creative sound.Her contribution to music research earned her the 2021 Presser Foundation Graduate Scholar award as well as second place in UNT’s Three-Minute Thesis (3MT®) competition. She plans to expand her research by exploring the preservation of Yunnan reggae and investigating music as a mode of healing.