Articles tagged with ‘workshops’

• 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

• Joelistics

  This 2005 interview with Melbourne-based TZU MC Joelistics took place in Sydney while he was taking part in a Sydney Festival hip-hop event bringing together artists from The Herd, The Bird, Resin Dogs and TZU. In a lengthy conversation, the ever-articulate Joelistics covered a huge range of issues. He spoke about the early influence of Eastern philosophy and its splicing with the influence of hip-hop and freestyle rapping. He also talked about hip-hop as a form given to political polemics and Empty shows (held in empty warehouse and industrial city spaces where artists would converge). Joelistics spoke of the influence of Terrence McKenna on his ideas about language, both in the way that the world forms language and how language forms and structures the world. He talked also of hip-hop workshops, the influence of Jack Kerouac, the orthodoxy of hip-hop and Curse ov Dialect, music labels and the industry, the history of hip-hop and appropriations of the form in terms of aesthetics, identity, place and self-pride.

  Tags: workshops, empty shows, politics, freestyling, language, Melbourne, philosophy, Interviews

• Lecture at University of Sydney - Aboriginal Hip-hop: a modern day corroboree.

  An edited recording of a lecture given by Tony Mitchell to the Koori Centre’s Indigenous Studies class (run by Peter Minter) on the 16th of May, 2007.

  Tags: DIY ethos, multilingualism, self expression, localising hip-hop, Aboriginal language hip-hop, Tony Mitchell, gangsta rap, education, Redfern, language, Sydney, workshops, cultural identity, community work, Indigenous hip-hop, Audio

• Local Knowledge

  Local Knowledge, who have now split into two different groups [Street Warriors & Last Kinection], were for a time the strongest force in Indigenous Australian hip-hop. Local Knowledge spawned after the two Wright brothers, Predator and Wok, approached Weno, who was already into hip-hop at the same time as working as a health lecturer at the University of Newcastle. The raw passion and powerful stage presence saw them gain immediate attention. This interview, which took place backstage at the Manning bar before a gig with The Herd and TZU, covers everything from Local Knowledge’s beginnings to their ideas about representing Aboriginal issues and working with communities.

  Tags: Newcastle, DJJT, Indigenous hip-hop, health, community work, Predator, Wok, social work, workshops, Local Knowledge, Weno, Interviews

• MC Que

  We met up with MC Que on Brunswick Street in Fitzroy for dinner and an interview whilst we were in Melbourne in 2005. Que told us about the way she first heard hip-hop through the tapes her sister’s brought back from trips to the city, and then plugging into the underground Australian scene through radio and going to gigs. She spoke about the genesis of the film All the Ladies, and her 15-member crew Ladies Love Hip-hop, as well as a much more broad-ranging discussion about being a woman in a male-dominated hip-hop culture, dealing with discrimination and supporting women in hip-hop. Que also spoke about the strong link between her ethnicity, marginalisation and her connection to hip-hop as an alternative to the Anglo-centric mainstream pop scene.

  Tags: cultural identity, breakdancing, MC Que, Ladies Love Hip-hop, DJing, workshops, women in hip-hop, Melbourne, All The Ladies, graffiti, Interviews

• Monkey Marc

  Local Noise met with Combat Wombat producer and Lab Rats member Monkey Marc after he had finished running a workshop on altering engines from petrol to vegetable oil at TINA (This is Not Art) festival in Newcastle 2005. Marc spoke about the beginnings of Lab Rats at the Jabiluka protests in 1998, where he met Izzy Brown (Combat Wombat MC and other half of Lab Rats) and how initially the Lab Rats were a traveling sound system that went to the front of protests and blockades, running huge parties with solar- and wind-powered sound system and cinema. Marc talked about the evolution of Lab Rats into a mobile hip-hop, circus, video production and performance workshop that tours to the most remote Indigenous communities in the country. Marc spoke about this work, the idea of cultural preservation and continuation of Indigenous languages, recording songs all across the desert and the issues of mimicking American hip-hop. Marc also talked about the recently released album Unsound $ystem, hip-hop as a form ripe for political expression and being written off as a left-wing extremist hip-hop group by the hip-hop ‘mainstream’.

  Tags: Combat Wombat, Monkey Marc, Lab Rats, community work, eco hip-hop, Indigenous hip-hop, politics, Melbourne, Curse ov Dialect, Elefant Traks, workshops, Interviews

• Morganics

  We caught up with Morganics for a quick interview at the Sydney Opera House before a performance of Morganics and Wire’s two-man hip-hop theatre show Stereotype. Morgan talked to us about the evolution of the show, the relationship of both black and white to lineage and a real sense of connection to the songlines and bloodlines of place. Morgan also discussed the crossover between hip-hop and theatre and the richness of what both forms have to offer each other. The theatrical roots of MetaBass N Breath were also discussed. Morgan also talked about the constant travel and rigours of life on the workshop trail; the great value of workshops and the issues of setting up facilities that will be of lasting effect in the communities, like recording studios.

  Tags: beatboxing, theatre, MetaBass ‘N’ Breath, community work, Indigenous hip-hop, Sydney, workshops, breakdancing, Interviews

• 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

• Peacefender

  Peacefender is a sound artist and hip-hop producer of Lebanese background who has been working in western Sydney for 20 years. He formed C.O.D. in the early 1990s, and did production work with veteran Westside group Def Wish Cast, among others. He was also a key figure in Death Defying Theatre’s 1995 Sydney Community hip-hop project Hip-hopera, and has run numerous hip-hop workshops with young people of non-English speaking backgrounds at the Liverpool Migrant Resource Centre, Bankstown Youth Centre and elsewhere. With Information and Cultural Exchange (ICE) in Parramatta he has co-ordinated exhibitions and workshops with Australian visual and sound artists of Arabic background. He has done sound installations, hip-hop workshops and visual arts projects in Sydney, Beirut, and Berlin. He has also released several CDs of his own work and compilations of hip-hop by young people of Arabic and other backgrounds, including Unit 5 Welcome You to the Camps, recorded in Arabic in Beirut with Palestinian refugees. In this interview, Peacefender talks to Tony Mitchell about running workshops, combining hip-hop with theatre, visual arts and sound design, and using hip-hop within Sydney’s Arabic speaking communities.

  Tags: Arabic hip-hop, youth work, juvenile justice, Hip-Hopera, multiculturalism, Western Sydney, workshops, community work, Interviews

• Reason

  Local Noise met up with Melbourne MC, Australian hip-hop stalwart, radio DJ and high school teacher Reason in Melbourne in 2004. In a long and in depth discussion, the voluble Reason touches on most of the central discussions surrounding Australian hip-hop, including identity, locality, women in hip-hop, indigenous hip-hop, the diversity of styles in Australian hip-hop and living it everyday. Reason also spoke about juggling hats of being both a teacher and a rapper. He also gave some great historical background to the Melbourne hip-hop scene, the key players in the early days, the origin of Obese Records as well as the relationships between the music industry and Australian hip-hop.

  Tags: community work, Reason, patriotism, politics, Obese, workshops, Interviews

• The Reography of Reason: Australian hip-hop as Experimental History and Pedagogy

  If habitus is regarded as ‘deep seated generative principles of thought, perception, appreciation, and action’, this ‘fit’ seems eminently applicable to the ‘embodied history’ of hip-hop subcultures and the expression of their ‘objectified history’ in practices such as recording, performing, internet interaction, music journalism, and independent radio and television broadcasting.

  This paper, originally published in Media International Australia, looks at the Australian hip-hop culture in terms of its do-it-yourself ethos, which is, in part, a result of a lack of support from the commercial record labels. Tony Mitchell here discusses the artists, groups and independent labels that have championed this DIY ethos and have built a community of practice outside the mainstream industry.

  Tags: Reason, education, localising hip-hop, globalisation, Tony Mitchell, environment, community work, patriotism, Melbourne, Obese, workshops, politics, ARIA, Conference Papers

• Tunz One

  Tunz One is a Newcastle-born and bred MC and graffiti artist. He got into hip-hop as a young child after watching Beat Street on video. He describes hip-hop as his “outlet, release, presence”, a positive mode of art-making and expression which has helped him develop as a person and a performer. He is a youth worker and community volunteer, and has worked with young people on graffiti projects, hip-hop workshops and putting on plays and gigs. In this interview, conducted during the annual This Is Not Art festival in Newcastle, the earnest Tunz One talks about the closeness of the Newcastle scene, his group Bric A Brac, his experiences as a youth worker and artist and joint projects with TAFE Outreach, and his life as a father of two young girls.

  Tags: community work, Tunz One, theatre, battling, Newcastle, graffiti, workshops, Interviews

• Wire MC

  A fascinating discussion with the articulate, pugnacious and vibrant Wire MC. In the interview, Wire uses the lens of hip-hop to zoom in on Indigenous cultural practices, history and colonisation, identity and community and avoiding being a reconciliation poster boy – all from a relentlessly contemporary viewpoint.

  Tags: Redfern, Aboriginal language hip-hop, community work, Indigenous hip-hop, Sydney, workshops, Interviews