Nigerian Hip-Hop Round-Table
December 11, 2007 | Leave a Comment
The sound of Iran today: Hip-hop, rap and protest
December 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment
by Kamyar Bashari
The Institute for War & Peace Reporting (MCT)
TEHRAN, Iran—The sound of the Iranian revolution can be heard on the headsets worn by young people all across the country. They’re listening to a wide variety of underground music produced by bands and individuals who have no commercial recording deals and no access to professional recording studios. The music is distributed almost exclusively through the Internet.
The most popular styles of music include rap, hip-hop and heavy metal, and can be heard in almost every young Iranian’s bedroom.
Because none of these groups have obtained a required recording license, the distribution of their music is considered illegal.
Some have gained a fanatical following. The latest song by the London-based rap group Zedbazi has been downloaded more than 8 million times. Almost all of the music is available for free.
Then there is 127, a Tehran-based group whose Web site describes the band’s music as a melding of “Iranian melodies and jazz with an alternative sound.”
Point of Death is a heavy metal band from the Shia holy city of Mashhad; Mirza is a blues band from Tehran; Pedram Derakhshani and Saeed Shanbeh-Zadeh, from the south of the country, mix rock and disco.
A number of female artists have also made it big in the underground music scene, including Salome, Pani and Mana and Ghowgha. Some performers insist their involvement in the underground music world is non-political.
Kami, a rapper based in Tehran, says he is only interested in music, not politics. But even he conceded that the life of an underground artist in Iran isn’t easy.
“Everything is difficult,” he said. “I can’t come out in public and enjoy my fame. I’m sometimes afraid I’ll be arrested.”
Mohsen Namjoo is probably the best underground artist, with his unique blend of mystical Sufi music and Western rock and blues. The government initially refused to give him a license to perform, contending that his music was political. But because of Namjoo’s enormous popularity, the government’s Arts Council eventually relented and agreed to distribute one of his albums. Of course, it contained none of the protest songs that he is best known for.
Earlier this year, it appeared that the government was intent on launching a full-scale assault on underground music. It placed filters on a number of music Web sites and shut down three studios known to be used by underground artists. A number of performers were detained by the police.
After a few months, however, the government seemed to have a change of heart. The filters were removed and the artists were released.
Some think the government may have finally come to accept that underground music is a fact of life and efforts to prevent it will only become another source of dissent.
“The scale of the underground music movement and its complete independence from the establishment has reached a point where the government has no choice but to accept it,” said one artist. “Were it not to do so, underground music would become more political and critical of the authorities.”
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Kamyar Bashari is a journalist and art critic in Tehran who writes for The Institute for War & Peace Reporting, a nonprofit organization that trains journalists in areas of conflict.
Article originally printed in Pop Matters
Muslim-American Rappers Promote Tolerance in Middle East
December 8, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Washington – When Native Deen took hip-hop music to Jerusalem in fall 2006, the group of Muslim-American rappers was moved deeply by the holiness of the place and the energy of the hundreds of teens who attended their concerts. Yet nothing came close to the connection the performers felt to their faith during their Middle East trip.
“I could feel it in the stone and the rocks,” said Naeem Muhammad of Native Deen, a Muslim-American hip-hop group based near Washington that has a strong following in the United Kingdom and the United States.
“Our music inspires Muslims to be better Muslims, but it also gives other people a better view of our faith,” Joshua Salaam told USINFO in an interview.
The rhythm is there, and the beat is contemporary. But the heart of inspirational hip-hop music is in the powerful rap lyrics coaxing listeners to live better lives and be better people.
Native Deen traveled to Turkey, Dubai, the Palestinian Territories and Israel on behalf of the U.S. Department of State, incorporating the teachings of Islam into songs about respect and humanity. At all the concerts, the performers were greeted like “American superstars,” they said. In Dubai, Native Deen won the 2006 Mahabba Award at an event showcasing musicians, artists and filmmakers inspired to spread Islam through art.
The group, founded in 2000, is known for its positive energy, use of traditional percussion and lyrics focused on tolerance and the teachings of Islam.
“We use the Quran as a source of guidance for us when we write our songs,” said Abdul Malik. “We use the morals and guidelines that we find in the Quran to teach people and to guide people.” This means that the beat, or rhythm, comes second, according to Salaam. The lyrics are the most important aspect of the song, so in Native Deen’s sound, the rap is always in front of the percussion.
“Deen” is the Arabic word for “religion,” or way of life.
Native Deen makes stops at religious and historic sites in Turkey, Dubai and Israel while on tour. (Photo courtesy of Native Deen)
The group’s members met when they were in their early teens in Muslim Youth of North America (MYNA) camps, most often in Ohio, where only percussion instruments were allowed because some Muslims believe that wind and string instruments should be avoided in Islam. Influenced by African-American culture, Salaam, Muhammad and Malik used “beatboxing,” or vocal percussion, and tapping on lunchroom tables to develop with their friends the first Muslim hip-hop sounds that came to be known as MYNA rap. All three Native Deen members can be heard on the MYNA Raps recordings of the early 1990s, but by 2000, Native Deen had set out on its own to record and perform inspirational and spiritual hip-hop.
In the Palestinian Territories and Jerusalem, Native Deen received positive feedback from young people attending the concerts who were impressed that the group uses live drums and percussion instead of electronic tracks. American hip-hop artists often collaborate with international musicians, incorporating traditional instruments and ethnic music. (See related article.)
“We take homegrown instruments and make them work,” Salaam said. The largest challenge for the group is that it performs raps in English. Although in Turkey the group translated some of the raps, Salaam said it was able to see in its audiences that music bridges the language gap.
“[Audiences] might have anti-American sentiment,” Muhammad said. “But they believe in democracy, and they saw us as Muslims who are able to live in America and practice our faith. We got very positive feedback.”
Salaam, who served in the U.S. military in the Air Force, hopes the group will continue to travel internationally because he sees hip-hop as a way to open doors and to encourage religious tolerance and respect.
The rappers performed three concerts in the West Bank, including Al-Quds University in Abu Deis, a village near Jerusalem, in Hebron and Jericho. Prior to arriving in the Middle East, Native Deen gave sold-out concerts at the Royal Armouries in Leeds and at the U.S. Chancery in London during the U.K.-wide Festival of Muslim Cultures, which began in January and continues through autumn 2007.
Hip-hop began in the United States 30 years ago in the South Bronx, a borough of New York City. Using turntables to spin old, worn records, teens began to talk over music, mostly on the streets and in basements in what were called block parties, creating an entirely new music genre and dance form. This "talking over," or MCing (rapping) or DJing (audio mixing or scratching), became the essence of rap. (See related article.)
Native Deen audio clips, song lyrics and other information are available on the group’s Web site.
More information about the Festival of Muslim Cultures is available on the program’s Web site.
For additional information about life in America, see The Arts and Population and Diversity.
(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
China’s hip-hop grannies
December 8, 2007 | Leave a Comment
In the November/December issue of FP, Jeff Chang’s article, "It’s a Hip-Hop World," described the social, political, and even economic implications of hip-hop’s appeal to young people around the globe. It appears, however, that age is no longer a factor in hip-hop’s growing popularity. In China, the "hip-hop grannies," a 30-member group of retirees, perform hip-hop dance routines for both entertainment and high-energy exercise. Most of the members are over 60, but that hasn’t slowed them down. The group is now performing on tour and taking China by storm.
I know the saying "you’re only as old as you feel," but I don’t think I can imagine Grandma Lewis taking part in this particular international trend.
Brazilian Government Invests in Culture of Hip-Hop
March 14, 2007 | Leave a Comment
By LARRY ROHTER
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — In a classroom at a community center near a slum here, a street-smart teacher offers a dozen young students tips on how to improve their graffiti techniques. One floor below, in a small soundproof studio, another instructor is teaching a youthful group of would-be rappers how to operate digital recording and video equipment.
This is one of Brazil’s Culture Points, fruit of an official government program that is helping to spread hip-hop culture across a vast nation of 185 million people. With small grants of $60,000 or so to scores of community groups on the outskirts of Brazil’s cities, the Ministry of Culture hopes to channel what it sees as the latent creativity of the country’s poor into new forms of expression.
The program, conceived in 2003, is an initiative of Brazil’s minister of culture, Gilberto Gil, who will be speaking on digital culture and related topics on Wednesday at the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference in Austin, Tex. Though today one of the country’s most revered pop stars, Mr. Gil, 64, was often ostracized at the start of his own career and so feels a certain affinity with the hip-hop culture emerging here.
“These phenomena cannot be regarded negatively, because they encompass huge contingents of the population for whom they are the only connection to the larger world,” he said in a February interview. “A government that can’t perceive this won’t have the capacity to formulate policies that are sufficiently inclusive to keep young people from being diverted to criminality or consigned to social isolation.”
As a result of the Culture Points and similar programs, Mr. Gil said, “you’ve now got young people who are becoming designers, who are making it into media and being used more and more by television and samba schools and revitalizing degraded neighborhoods.” He added, “It’s a different vision of the role of government, a new role.”
As the ministry sees it, hip-hop culture consists of four elements: M.C.’s (rappers), D.J.’s, break dancers and graffiti artists. At the Projeto Casulo, a community center here on a narrow, winding street at the foot of a favela, or squatter slum, all four art forms are being taught to dozens of young residents.
“This program has really democratized culture,” Guiné Silva, a 32-year-old rapper who is the director of the center, said during a tour of its simple concrete building. “We’ve become a multimedia laboratory. Getting that seed money and that studio equipment has enabled us to become a kind of hip-hop factory.”
Though links to music run strong and deep in Brazilian culture, the notion of using taxpayers’ money to encourage rap and graffiti art is not universally accepted. But because Mr. Gil’s musical judgment is widely respected, the level of skepticism and resistance is lower than might be expected.
“Gil still has to fight against other parts of the government in favor of things that everyone else there thinks are alienating junk, but he’s willing to do that, whether it’s on behalf of rap or funk or brega,” another style of music considered vulgar and lower class, said Hermano Vianna, a writer and anthropologist who works in digital culture programs. “He looks at that sort of thing not with prejudice, but rather as a business opportunity.”
On the other hand, some important exponents of hip-hop culture in Brazil, like the rapper Manu Brown and the writer Ferréz, remain skeptical and have chosen to keep their distance from the government program. Others are participating but complain of the bureaucracy involved.
“The idea is great because it has brought about a level of recognition we didn’t have before,” said the rapper Aliado G., president of an entity called Hip Hop Nation Brazil. “But people get frustrated when a project of theirs is approved, and they can’t get the money because they don’t know how to do all the paperwork.”
Brazilian rap, at least as it has developed in poor neighborhoods here in the country’s largest city, tends to be highly politicized and scornful of lyrics that boast about wealth or sexual conquests. In contrast, the funk movement in Brazil, also imported from the United States but centered in Rio de Janeiro, is unabashedly about celebrating sex, bling and violence.
“When U.S. rap groups come here and try to be ostentatious or do the gangster thing, they get booed off the stage,” Mr. Silva said. “We feel a kinship with Chuck D and Public Enemy” — known for their political commentary — “but we don’t have any respect for people like Snoop Dogg and Puff Daddy.”
Since established commercial radio stations and publishing houses have shown minimal interest in the music and poetry that new hip-hop artists are producing, or want to impose contract terms that are too stringent, rappers have developed their own channels to distribute their work. These range from selling their discs and books themselves on the streets and at shows to having the works played on a network of low-power but linked community radio stations.
“There is an entire industry being built in the informal sector,” Mr. Vianna said. “If you were to apply all the laws in place today, no producer can release a record from a favela. So you have to create a new model, and Gil is willing to do that.”
At the Projeto Casulo, the Culture Points program has produced a pair of documentaries about housing problems, complete with a rap accompaniment, that were broadcast on commercial television. The center has also generated a radionovela, a fanzine and a community newspaper and plans next to set up an online radio station to broadcast the rap songs that its musicians and those at similar community centers here have composed and recorded.
In addition, a Culture Ministry grant enabled Hip Hop Nation Brazil to publish a book called “Hip Hop in Pencil,” a collection of rap lyrics. After a first edition of 2,000 copies quickly sold out in 2005 and was nominated for a literary prize, a conventional publishing house was interested enough to negotiate a deal to publish subsequent editions.
“We had never before seen our story told in a book, and at first the publishing houses didn’t take us seriously,” said Toni C, one of the editors and authors of the collection. “Books had always been used as a weapon against us, and people didn’t know that such a thing as hip-hop literature existed. Now they do.”
Brazilian law also offers tax breaks to companies that contribute to cultural endeavors like films, ballet and art exhibitions. Rap music has now been granted similar standing, and as a result, some of the country’s largest corporations have begun underwriting hip-hop records and shows.
At a recent event in Campinas, a city of one million an hour’s drive from here, the sponsors included a power company, a bank, a construction business and an industrial conglomerate. As a troupe of break dancers strutted their most flashy moves, D.J.’s and M.C.’s railed against social, economic and racial inequality with lyrics like “Reality is always hard/for those who have dark skin/if you don’t watch out/you’ll end up in the paddy wagon.”
“It took a while for companies to wake up to the potential this offers,” said Augusto Rodrigues, an executive of the power company and the director of the cultural center where the show was held. “But there’s a hunger for cultural programs like this, in which for the first time in 20 years, the ideology of the periphery can express itself.”
