We are 16 graduate students at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. We're living and reporting in Cape Town during June and July, creating multimedia content documenting a defining time in the country's history.
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You Feelin' Me? It Is Here: Hip Hop in South Africa
For the second year, the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown added a hip hop component to its traditional lineup of theater, dance and music performances, exhibitions and lectures.
“It’s obvious to a certain extent ... If you offer something called a National Arts Festival it should speak to a range of people,” says Adam Haupt of the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Film and Media Studies, as well as the author of “Stealing Empire: P2P, Intellectual Property and Hip-Hop Subversion.”
“You’re validating a newer former of black Africa expression that a festival like this, on this scale, had never paid any attention to,” says Haupt, adding, though, that it’s not an exclusively black art form.
Last year, Haupt introduced hip hop to the festival and this year he organized a two-day lecture series with talks dissecting South African hip hop’s influence, relevance, identity, message and activism.
Drawing a large crowd to his talk was rapper Tumi Molekane, a poet, musician and MC who leads the group Tumi and the Volume.
In his talk title “Rappers R In Danger,” Tumi explored the issues surrounding and the limitations of being labeled a “conscious rapper,” as well as what’s often called the “burden of blackness” – the expectation that you somehow speak as the representative of all black people.
“When you take a position in your music to be socially mindful and acutely cognisant to the inequalities in your world, you are usually branded – all together now – conscious. Ordinarily, I would agree and even embrace this label, conscious just means awake.
The problem comes in when the title is used to describe what it is you can’t do as a conscious s rapper, or b-boy or DJ or even graph(ic) artist. It imposes limitations of the scope of the conscious artist’s work. You can’t do a party song, you can’t do that type of choreography … I want to be able to tell stories not from the super-cool, super-hero rapper perspective, but from the human being who goes to the park with his kid like everyone else, but who rhymes good, real good.”
Click to see the audio slideshow
