Giving Hip Hop a bad rap

Torres Strait Islander Hip Hop artist Patrick Mau, or MauPower.

NATIONAL: SAM COOK* believes Hip Hop should be a celebrated part of modern Indigenous culture, not a ridiculed one.

A couple of years back, I was at a meeting, attended by local Blak** artists and government representatives. I’m a bit unclear as to how the rant began, but I’m definitely clear on what was said.

Addressing the table of people, one musician began to seethe, spewing vitriol, pounding fists on the table and staring individuals down as if to force you to align to their thinking.

“Aboriginal youth have lost their culture, they all think they are black Americans, they’ve got nothing, no respect, no future and no hope.

This rap s**t is not theirs, they’re doomed,” the musician fumed.

Sitting across the table, watching this play out, I let the rant finish. Then I spoke. I had two points.

Firstly, respect is a mutual exchange and as the generations above our youth, what have we done to nurture and support them culturally?

Secondly in a passive aggressive tone, I pointed out the elephant in the room, that this person sits here, clothed, in a government office, speaking the colonisers tongue, sipping tea out of a cup and saucer and as a musician plays rock and roll. Tell me again, who has lost their culture?

Needless to say, I’m on their s**t-list for life, but I’m not too concerned about that. I call it as I see it. Unfortunately this type of rant against the Blak Australian Hip Hop movement is not uncommon.

I hear it, and refute it on a regular basis. I do this because it’s ignorant and is something manifested by a colonised mindset, used to attack and diminish a movement and disenfranchise a body of Indigenous youth, right up to the middle-age brothers and sisters who are at the coal face of Blak Rap and have been holding it down for decades.

It is true that Hip Hop is a form of musical expression and artistic culture that originated in African-American and Latino communities during the 1970s in New York City, but its roots are bona fide Indigenous.

This was confirmed in a conversation I had with the Grandfather and Amen Ra of Hip Hop, Afrika Bambaataa back in 2007. He spoke of the influence of traditional Griot (West African storyteller) and Indigenous culture had on Hip Hop.

Clearly within key elements of Hip Hop you can see the influences of the world’s Indigenous peoples in tradition and ritual. From capoeira, kung fu, body percussion, to stencil and rock art, it is all elemental.

The only difference is Hip Hop is upfront about its origins and this time and whitefellas can’t claim they invented it. Within Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth firmly embraced Hip Hop as a vehicle to express themselves.

This was and is not limited to the music, with our blak pride soldiers represented in Street Art, DJing, beatmaking and our B-Boys and Fly-Girls pressing the lino in battle.

To the youth, it made sense. Be it through a feeling of cultural connection to blackness, be it universal blackness or their own cultural identity, the fluidity of the Hip Hop movement resonates with our own oral traditions and cultural practises.

You see this today in collaborative acts such as “Grrilla Step” that can teleport you back along a continuum that deposits you at “Krumping”.

It should be noted that this is a historical cycle of connectedness to the global black universe, which has been in existence since the days of Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, Black Panthers, Paul Robeson, Nat King Cole and the Jacksons.

Our civil rights are intrinsically linked to the USA and global arts and rights movements. Hip Hop is an extension of this timeline. The movement, has not been limited to the brothers. Sisters like Ebony Williams, Little G, Lady Lash, Darknis, Swanz and MC Nay have been holding it down for the female MCs, comparable in skill and talent to any one who steps to the mic.

So what is the value of the movement to the greater Indigenous space? We could start at language preservation and the value of engaging and encouraging Indigenous youth to rhyme in their own voice, language and style.

Role models from rappers such as blak rap legend Munki Mark, Brotha Black, MC Wire and the Godfather of Torres Strait Islander rap MauPower, breathe life into native tongues and are prolific in keeping culture alive.

We can also look at the work of crews such as Downsyde and Street Warriors, who have reached out to a large demographic of Indigenous youth in the juvenile justice system or outreach programs.

Not limited to this are the artists such as Lez Beckett and Native MC whose performances incorporate painting and traditional dance into their sets.

I could go on and talk on the legacies of Native Rhyme Syndicate, Local Knowledge, NokTurnL, South West Syndicate who by any measure could’ve been considered to be before their time, however I’d ask, if they weren’t holding it down and trailblazing, then we wouldn’t have gotten to the point we are now.

So as the once young Warriors descend upon middle age, we should take stock of the legacy that opens the door for the new voices in Blak Hip Hop.

It has made a difference on the cultural landscape and is a force of change, positively, socially and culturally.

This is why I’d stand up over and over, to defend those who stood up not to be popular, but to embrace and manifest Blak Hip Hop in Australia.

But I’d like to go further. In 2010 a series of meetings were held at The Dreaming Festival. Known as the Bunya Hut Meetings, they were held with key artists and industry to gauge interest in the development of a dedicated focus to be held at the festival in 2012.

The framing of these dialogues were to recognise that Indigenous Hip Hop movements have sat on the margins of the Australian and Indigenous arts cultural identities for too long and that the time was now to bring together a cohesive way forward.

The conversations looked at creating an intellectual, artistic and networked ecology, which reflected the various career stages of artists from emerging to established.

It also sought to better connect the global movements and make a direct line back to the veterans of Hip Hop, to support an intergenerational space created.

Since then I’ve been pounding the pavement and information super highway to link an promote a gathering that will finally recognize and connect Blak Hip Hop to the worlds Indigenous Hip Hop movements and conscious soldiers worldwide in a way that has not yet been realised.

It is hoped that “Rhymes Universal: will become an inclusive space for all, one that recognises the movements that exist within the First Nations such as Myanmar, Palestine, Ainu, Taino, Kanak, Punjab, Cymru, Gaelic, Tuvan, Sami, Indigenous Australia, Africa, the diaspora in the United States, the UK, Europe and everywhere in between. No more bad rap, no more margins – Blak Hip Hop stand up and shine!

*Sam Cook is a Program Director for the Dreaming Festival, a monthly arts columnist for Tracker.

**Blak is not a deliberate typo. Aboriginal peoples are the most labelled and categorised cultures in the world. We’ve been Aborigines, Aboriginal, Indigenous, First Nations, Black, Full-blood, Half-caste, and much more. Blak is a choice of empowerment over these terms, it’s not enforced through government but a statement of self-determination.