Arab Party for Justice and Equality

Transcription

I am going to tell you about the power of music. More specifically, the power of Hip hop. And how hip-hop has become one of the most important artistic tools for social justice, but more importantly, for social equality. About ten years ago, I found myself in the heat of the summer in Brazil. I found myself on the outskirts of Sao Paulo attending a hip-hop show as the guest of an U.S. artist named Lyrics Born. And as I sat on stage, backstage, I took my place sort of in the shadows in the back right corner. And I looked out over the crowd. And as the music started, I looked in front of me I saw the DJ scratching, laying down the beat, the foundation. And in front of him, I saw Joyo, Lyrics Born's back up singer and wife, singing her heart out, weaving beautiful song into his perfectly rhyming lyrics. And then, in front of her, there was Lyrics Born pacing back and forth, sweating under the hot stage lights - green, blue, orange, and red. And in front of him, just passed the sort of haze and perspiration of the hot Brazilian summer, I could see the glow of faces. Ten thousand sweaty young faces, jumping up and down, flailing their hands in the air, and singing along to all of his lyrics. And that astounded me. As I sat there in the back of the stage, as I felt the base sort of rumbling beneath me and cascading out into the crowd, jumping up. I coul feel the energy and the joy in the room. But what really stuck with me was that all of these kids were singing along to his lyrics. This was an artist who had no distribution in the country he was playing in. This was an artist who had no radio play. This was an artist who's saying a different language. There was no broadband internet. This was a hand-to-hand pirated CD generation. And as I sat there pondering this, I realized that the Argentinian group and the Brazilian group that had opened up for Lyrics Born had resulted in the same reaction from these kids. And they have been singing along the entire time to lyrics they did not necessarily understand. But I realized that it wasn't about the lyrics; it wasn't about the music; it was about the message. All of these artists, I realized share a common thread, a common subject matter. Sure of they were singing party rocking anthems and you know, songs about joy and fun. But within all of that was a common theme of social justice, social equality, of subject matter that related to each of their communities, of AIDS, of unemployment, of poverty, of hunger. And as the show ended, and the autographs were signed and everyone filed out into the hot Brazilian night, we were tied to the Liberdade, the little Tokyo of Sao Paulo. And all the arists and promotors and managers and a few random international journalists sat down over sushi and started to discuss the power of music. And I posed a question to everyone. I said, "Is there anyone out there, in the world, that anyone knows who's harnessing this power, who is paying attention to the power of this specific music?" And everyone at the table, sort of cocked their head and said, "No, I don't know anybody that is really paying attention to this." Nobody is galvanizing this community. Nobody is talking about this. And in my naiveté at that time I said, "You know what, that is what I'm going to do. I want to start a music festival that talks about this that highlights the power of this music. And everyone said, "Oh, that is awesome, cool, great!. You should talk to this guy and this guy and this guy." And before long, I had two pages of contacts of people around the world. And for the next few months, I started researching, I started contacting people. And in my research, I quickly discovered one common thread, that I theorized, was the reason that this specific genre, hip-hop, had become so ubiquitous. I was talking to people in Mongolia. I was talking to people in The Outback of Australia. What they had in common, is that hip-hop shares two basic elements: a beat and a voice. These are the two basic elements of any folk music tradition around the globe. Everyone can identify with it. No one needs electrictity; no one needs a turn-table; no one needs a guitar; no one needs a saxophone. All they need is a rythem and a voice. And so, I took this knowledge. And a few months later, I moved to New York and founded an organization, called World Up. Initially, World Up started out to celebrate this music. We threw shows in the Lower East Side, downtown. We found artists that were already coming to New York from Senegal, from Brazil, but they were only playing their small microcosms. Those from Senegal were playing the little DaKar; if they were from Brazil, maybe Queens, maybe Newark. But no one was giving them the opportunity to play in front of a diverse audience. So, we did. And what we soon discovered, in our sold out shows was that a lot of our audience members were teachers, were young progressive open-minded teachers. And they quickly started calling us, and emailing us, and asking, "Can you book that band to come into my classroom? Can we have them talk about the issues that they are singing in their songs, that maybe no one was paying attention to in the club?" And we started doing that. And what happened was amazing. The energy and the excitment that the students had, the hands that were waving in the air, transforming artists. Their music transformed the students and back again. The artists eyes lit up, we were getting more pleasure from the classroom than the club; it was amazing. And so we stopped doing club shows, and focused on the classroom. A couple of years ago, we were fortunate enough to design a curriculum for the International Rescue Committee. The International Rescue Committee as you may know, is the one of the oldest non-profits that helps resettle refugees. They asked us to develop a curriculum for their refugee youth summer program. This was a quite opportunity for us, we would be working with an audience that we weren't familiar with, a diverse audience made up of kids from thirty different countries, twenty different languages, and varying degrees of English language ability. We quickly discovered that all the kids knew what hip-hop was. Of course, they did. They all came from different backgrounds, but hip-hop wove a thread throughout the globe that they understood. Except two. We had two mild mannered polite scrawny Iraqi brothers, named Ali and Mahamoud. And Ali and Mahamoud's father had been a journalist, they sought refuge in the US. And they were great, but they just didn't get it. They just weren't connecting with everyone else, until the day that we brought in Arabic hip-hop. And that day their eyes lit up. That day they understood that they had something in common with everyone else in the room that they share a common bond through music that it didn't matter that the person next to them was from Vietnam or that person was from Burma or that person from Columbia or Guinea. They got it. And they quickly started bringing in YouTubes clips for me to look at. You know, new Arabic hip-hop artists that I'd never heard of. And what I realized was this wasn't about connecting across borders and boundaries. It was about connecting linguistically, politically, socially. As Eric B & Rockem said, "It is not about where you are from, it is about where you are at." And these words from Eric B & Rockem couldn't ring more true than what we have seen in the past year. We've seen protests around the globe; we've seen occupy Wall Street; we've seen the Arab Spring; and we've seen the student protests in Chile for the past year. A song I am about to play you is a song by an artist named Ana Tijoux. Ana Tijoux is an artist from Chile who didn't set out to write an anthem. She didn't set out to rally a people or empower a generation, but her song, the song called 'Shock', has done exactly that. Has become the rallying anthem of student protests around Chile, of violent protest. The students there have taken over an antiquated education system because it's an unjust system; it's a system that was based on Augusto Pinochet's regime. It's a system that favour the rich over the poor, and if you didn't have money, you didn't get a great education. And the students have stopped that. They've sat in on schools they've closed them down and closed the universities. And 'Shock', the song, maybe some of you are familiar with Naomi Klein on The Shock Doctrine, is based on all of this; is based on the history and importance of education and the system that's put them where they are today. Let me read you some of the lyrics before we start the song. "Your state of control" - I am not going to read in Spanish, sorry - "Your state of control, You corrupt throne of gold, your politics and your wealth. And your treasure, no. The hour has struck, the hour has stuck. We will allow no more, no more your doctrine of shock." Thank you, that's it. Or no, we're not going to play the song? Maybe. (The song plays in Spanish) (Applause)