Music plays a central role in every human's life. By composition, music was created to serve a particular purpose. As many would relate, the nature of music is that the composer plays both the role of a scribe and a performer. This post is going to introduce the reader to the type of music artists in the BWARF movement listened/listens to, explain the allegiance to this type of music and most importantly review the music video embedded in this post. The ultimate aim here is to highlight the relationship between what others often refer to poetry and that which others call hip hop. What are the similarities? Any differences?
Type of music
Throughout BWARF's trotting of Limpopo province's landscape, music has always played a central role. It is not surprising to note that most of the preliminary engagements between local artists at our weekly poetry sessions would include introducing new members, the state of the arts and culture industry, the exploitation experienced by artists, the line up for that day and most importantly; what everyone who was part of the movement was/is listening to and by that i mean the type of music they had in their MP3 players, mobile phones and computer hard drives - that is music.
For BWARF, hip hop has always been the number one choice. And by hip hop we are not just talking hip hop, but
Underground Hip Hop - a mixture of ghetto life experiences, jazz, gospel djelis and hard hitting lyrical content marinated with cultural, social, political and economic commentary. It cuts across cultural, social and economic divides. For those in the crucible, listening to one type of genre was never encouraged and so the slogan was always
"explore the adventure like End Beginnings". Suffice to note that our understanding of the concept underground simply means the raw often uncensored not easy to find on the mainstream media type of music for obvious reason: its too educational to be allowed to dominant the Free Market Economy.
Allegiance with hip hop
As the mission of the movement stated, our role was to create a local platform from where artists can grow and this meant that a visit to our sessions encouraged artists to share what they were listening to and that in itself helped shape and increase their music collection. Perhaps our love for hip hop was/is also inspired by the fact that out of all available genres in the world, hip hop captures black culture and talks the musical language taught by the socio-economic conditions we face as a black nation worldwide. Of course we were/are poets and authors; not Mcees although the two are closely inter-related and separation thereof could mean a death of either one of them.
Music video review
Anyone who listens to Underground Hip Hop should know who
KRSOne,
Zac De la Rocha and
Last Emperor are. Perhaps considered heavy weights alongside
Public Enemy,
Rakim,
Wu Tang Clan,
Afrika Bambaata & the Zulu Nation,
Grand Master Flash, these three Mcees are known for writing and reciting lyrics that are astute in observation and politically relevant in a time when the black nation is under siege from forces hard to identify? Wonder why i chose this music video in the first place? Hip hop is a spiritual genre; meaning; it allows the third eye to protrude and shine the way when things arent going right. BWARF was/is a movement of symbolic resistance and we were/are activists through the spoken words we scribed/scribe and "by all means necessary". So now lets look at the lyrics as Zac De la Rocha introduces: "...
and shatters the calm of the day/like an alarm/so wake up brad and you/take up arms...".
As one would imagine, the existence of secret societies on the planet is a reality we wake up to everyday. As the content in the lyrics attest, secret societies like the CIA(Central Intelligence Agencies) or Criminals In Action as the Mcees call it appear to have a dual nature. On the one hand the public knows that the main objective of secret societies like the CIA is to gather intelligence for national security reasons but according to the assertion made by these three Mcees and many other activists of the underground, the CIA is simply saying one thing and doing the opposite - and this is often manifested in; like Last Emperor retorts "
as the Free Market Economy of Crony Capitalism advance", the selling of "
rocks" is orchestrated and encouraged
against the democratic principles of constitutionalism and social liberty as represented by nations such as the United States of America. And all this, as KRSOne remarks; is:
"all in the name of intelligence gathering?".
Does that ring any bells or listeners will take this music video for just another unreasonable tounge lashing cum forever whinging attitude of artists in the underground? Be that as it may, the content is as was/is as prophetic as the words written in the Bible. The last line of verse "
in the new millennium/there will be no central intelligence" in the music video by KRSOne illustrates this prophecy. Since the birth of hip hop after Jazz and Reggae as an instrument of inspiration and a symbol of black resistance, freedom of expression and the promotion to access to information through art; the new millennium has seen a rise in new social movements of resistance against secrecy and censorship. Who would have thought an organisation like
Wikileaks for instance; would ever emerge and continue the resistance on a scale that its founder
Julian Assange has come out and given us a new interpretation of resistance, using new ways nogal? Who would have thought
Edward Snowden; a agent of the NSA in the United States; would bow the whistle and reveal so much about CIA surveillance programs to a point where the world super power(US) was left bitter and shaken; fearing the unknown?
Its is clear from the points highlighted above that the power of Underground Hip Hop is endless. That the genre plays a vital role in our everyday lives. The fact that hip hop is able to come forward against the world's most powerful systems and secret societies is indicative of its intellectual form and the inspirational nature of the music given the existence of problematic social paradigms, oppressive political and economic systems across the world.
