Messages

1

Hip Hop Events / Freedom warriors: radical Music shaking forms of power

« on: November 12, 2010, 03:57:36 PM »

             Amongst the drudgery of popular music, between radio stations hypnotizing you into liking a song, “cos everyone likes its and its top of the charts.” After the music has faded, but it still echoes in your mind, the lyrics linger on your tongue but the words and the culture its represents just don’t sit right. After all this comes, Soundz of the South (SOS) bringing you the Freedom Warriors Kollective music so radical, so conscious it speaks to the third eye, zoning in on society, it unmasks the disparities that is the face of reality.
Reality is not ma** culture; ma** culture sits on the periphery between the pages of books, newspapers and magazines, within our TV sets, films and radio stations. Its breaths influence pertaining the prejudices, myths and stereotypes of dominant culture, fostering fears it maintains the divisions within society. Ma** culture is the tool of the ruling cla**, maintaining its power over the ma**es. It enforces wants, idealising luxury, nothing will ever be enough, creating a society of eternal consumers.   

The hip hop in the Freedom Warriors comes as a refreshing challenge to dominant culture. It refigures the true potential of hip hop to develop critical thinking, embracing knowledge of self and freedom of expression. Sharing the experience of oppression and resistance, it critically engages with South Africa’s political reality. Drawing on the cultural resistance work of the movement, SOS, this CD shakes all old forms, cultivating and recreating, reclaiming the people’s power and culture.

The Freedom Warriors Kollective speaks directly to the undertakings of the movement this year. As facilitators of a monthly hip hop and poetry forums in Khayelitsha, they have created a learning space, opening critical analysis and dialogue between members of the community, raising consciousness. The CD is a direct result of in-depth writing and conversational circles held between member of SOS, spanning topics such as neo-liberalism and its effects on people’s lives, SA’s political economy and the alternatives. Driven towards change, these circles drew together the force of fifteen artist-activists in to producing the CD. It falls within the universal space of radical, revolutionary music, uniting with all independent artist-activists and emcees.

Freedom Warriors Kollective is available at:
In Cape Town:
    * African Music store in Long Street
    * Idasa cape town democracy centre lobby Bookstore in Spin Street
    * Alternatively call Solitude @ 074 960 9290

Download also available at itunes:
itunes.apple.com/mx/album/freedom-warriors-kollektive/id401509688
           

2

Hip Hop Events / HIP HOP & Poetry slam on: censorship keeping the status quo!

« on: September 14, 2010, 11:45:13 AM »

Censorship keeping the status quo!
 
Hip Hop and Poetry Slam Session, Friday 24th September
Lookout Hill, Khayelitsha, 5.30 to 21.30 pm
 
There is a small margin between freedom of expression and censorship. There are limitations to freedom of expression, like for instance if ones right violates on another’s, however censorship is the complete defeat of freedom of expression and its right hand man, the freedom of information. Like a dark reminder of the apartheid government, we have in this ‘democracy’ always been the subjects of censorship. When there hasn’t been a free flow of information and there are deliberate attempts to hide the truth, a form of censorship in itself, stories of public interest have needed to be leaked by the media.
 
But even these platforms of freedom of expression, our media, are gatekeepers of information. Media is the hands of big corporations, especially private media which speaks to the ways in which bosses view this world; public media as funded by the government have become their mouth pieces. However what should be the voice of the ma**es, community media struggle for survival and are cornered into readjusting their content in becoming attractive to advertisers. And we all know struggle for survival keeps the struggle for change pending!
 
It is clear then that platforms of expression have become privatised and all forms of expression that challenge power are silenced, like for instance hip hop artist, Zubs song titled, Get Out, kick out the Oppressor , which talks about  the oppressed people taking their power back and self-emancipation was banned. Then considering the information that does surface, we should ask who serves to benefit from it. Society as it stands now serves to benefit a few, bosses and those in power. Therefore the information we do receive serves to maintain status quo. The media that we consume is psychology keeping you locked up! If this wasn’t enough government is attempting to further entrench its censorship powers that be.
 
Newly proposed legislation may grind keeping the public informed to a halt permanently. The Protection of Information Bill, currently under consideration as proposed by the ANC, seeks to allow every organ of the state, to place secrecy over any of its documents, even our local municipality can hold its record secret and if corruption where ever to be reported in media, the new Media Appeals Tribunal could censor this reporting. It would be easy for us to scratch our heads and ask “Where’s the democracy in that?” Preventing our right to freedom of expression and freedom of information we can easily answer there is none!
 
As SOS, we stand for freedom of expression; it is this vain that we hold public forums of community freedom of expression, also known as our monthly poetry slam sessions. If more public spaces were utilised in encouraging debate, in fostering understanding and informing, we could fully emancipate ourselves and demand a real democracy! Please come out and join this public debate and fight for freedom of expression! 
# # # #
 
Why the fight for freedom of expression is necessary
There are certain freedoms that a true democracy awards you and in all likelihood these freedoms are what make a democracy real. Freedom of speech/expression encourages the diversity of public debate; diversity for every minority shall be heard, removing the blinkers off the people’s eyes for them to fully grasp and understand the world they live in. Freedom of information is to freedom of speech what the neck is to the head, it empowers speech, for they say knowledge is power, with the understanding that diversity brings, information and knowledge demand change. Change for a better society for all!