Articles tagged with ‘South West Syndicate’

• 2nd Generation Migrant Expression in Australian Hip-hop

  “Lebanon ain’t got no money, but there’s no land more greener, So proud to be a child of the cedar. Some Aussies can’t believe it when I look ‘em in the face. Proud to be a wog, I mentally laid them to waste. They say ‘But wait, you’re Australian’. ‘You wait and stop your speaking, I am, but I’m descendant from Phoenicians.’ … What we gotta do is not forget our culture, Yallah my brother, your culture given from Allah, remember your history, it helps you work harder, Helps you respect more your mother and your father, Your parents or grandparents came from another land, You might be Australian now but it’s not your mother land.”

  – Sleek the Eilte, ‘Child of the Cedar’

  This essay focuses on 2nd generation migrant hip-hop artists including MC Trey, Maya Jupiter, Sleek the Elite and Hau from Koolism and their distinctive use of hip-hop as a tool of expressing their status of being in-between their ethnic heritage and Anglo-Australian culture.

  Tags: Maya Jupiter, MC Trey, hip-hop and migrant experience, Sleek the Elite, self expression, Tony Mitchell, localising hip-hop, multilingualism, multiculturalism, South West Syndicate, Curse ov Dialect, Downsyde, Western Sydney, TZU, Koolism, breakdancing, Hau, Conference Papers

• Aboriginal Hip-hop: a modern day corroboree

  This is my lyrical healing. I can’t go and get scarred any more and I can’t become a traditional man. I’m a modern day blackfella, this is still Dreamtime for me. Hip-hop is the new clapsticks, hip-hop is the new corroboree.

  - Wire MC

  This paper was given at the Hip-hop meets Academia conference in Chemnitz, Germany, in August 2006. It is a longer and more developed version of the essay published in Meanjin’s ‘Blak Times’ issue in 2006, and draws on all the Local Noise research and interviews with indigenous hip-hop artists.

  Tags: Lez Beckett, South West Syndicate, education, Klub Koori, Aboriginal language hip-hop, Tony Mitchell, Local G, Brotha Black, Munkimuk, Morganics, language, Western Sydney, Wire MC, workshops, breakdancing, community work, Indigenous hip-hop, Local Knowledge, Conference Papers

• Munkimuk

  This interview with Munkimuk, often refered to as the grandfather of Aborignal hip-hop, took place backstage at Sydney Uni’s Manning Bar, before the inaugural Klub Koori gig in 2005. This gig was a watershed, bringing together almost all the most prominent Indigenous hip-hop artists for the first time. Munkimuk talked exuberantly about his 20 years in hip-hop, from the early days in Bankstown and Redfern with South West Syndicate to the release of his debut solo album, called Ten Years Too Late. Munki talked at length about his many adventures into the desert to use hip-hop as a tool of self-expression, especially in Aboriginal languages. Munki also spoke about his time working for the education department and his unconventional but wildly successful methods of enthusing kids to learn.

  Tags: Redfern, education, South West Syndicate, Aboriginal language hip-hop, Munkimuk, community work, Western Sydney, workshops, breakdancing, Indigenous hip-hop, Interviews