Track 5: Hip-Hop Arts for Change

The Hip-Hop Academy—where Oyewole and Vacca engaged the histories of subjugation embedded in the use of the word “nigger,” and its controversial use in hip-hop—is a part of Africulturban, a multimedia arts center founded in 2006 by Senegalese hip-hop activist Amadou Fall Ba and celebrated rapper Matador (née Babacar Diagne). Africulturban provides free arts training, workshops and performance opportunities for youth in Dakar—and it is worth noting that more than 50 percent of the population is under the age of 20. The academy is the first of its kind in West Africa and receives partial funding from the U.S. Embassy. Amadou Fall Ba tells his story, via e-mail and Facebook.

AMADOU FALL BA: My partner Matador and I started Africulturban in 2006. American hip-hop culture has been a major force in our lives, so we wanted to be part of developing hip-hop in Africa from an African perspective. Together, we have been advocates for hip-hop as an urban art form, using the four classic elements of hip-hop culture—rapping, breaking, graffiti, DJ-ing—to help inspire youth that are interested in social change, urban arts and social development in Africa. We mobilized our desire to create a safe environment for young people to act on their dreams and to learn about the issues in our community that they have power to change.

Our annual Hip-Hop Arts Festival, “Festa2H,” allows us to display the theatrical practices informed by hip-hop culture. We offer training in graphics, video, design and marketing engaged with hip-hop in urban cultural sectors. We help youth to find creative outlets for their talents. We are able to create international mentoring networks that provide emerging artists with the foundation for a sustainable hip-hop arts practice. By using hip-hop on our own terms, we strive to empower youth to learn to promote pacifistic values, strengthen social cohesion and generate economic growth.

In 2014, the hip-hop arts scene is thriving in Dakar, and its artists are some of the best in Africa. The mainstreaming of a politically conscious hip-hop arts scene in Senegal has empowered independent artists to challenge the power dynamic between the state and the U.S. government’s diplomacy efforts in the region, and has served as a tool to create and maintain new cultural spaces of empowerment. Artists in Dakar are answering MC Solaar and Guru’s call to get up and change the world by remixing their own tracks of change. I’m glad I was there to hear the early beats.

Nicole Hodges Persley teaches theatre at the University of Kansas.