Articles tagged with ‘Culture’

• 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

• Mark Pollard

  We met with Stealth magazine editor Mark Pollard in September of 2005. His knowledge, passion and diplomacy in discussing a huge variety of issues within and around Australian hip-hop was a demonstration of the crucial role he has played in fostering the culture. Mark spoke about his early teens, making tapes with friends in summer and doing gigs at under-18 shows around town. He spoke about he entry into the scene as an 18-year-old through the Cell Block Youth Centre and the 2ser radio program The Mothership Connection, which he took over from Miguel D’Souza. Mark talked about what he considered to be the most significant moments in Australian hip-hop in the last few years, including the solidification of Obese Records, triple j’s Hip-hop Show and the success of The Hilltop Hoods. Mark also had many salient points to make about identity and music, the issue of accent and American mimicry, over-ocker Australian vernacular and the connections between gansta rap and rural Aboriginal Australia. Mark also told us about the distribution of Stealth globally and the feedback he gets from kids in the country as well as the focus of giving coverage to little known scenes overseas.

  Tags: Indigenous hip-hop, Mark Pollard, Stealth magazine, triple j, politics, 2SER, Obese, Sydney, Hilltop Hoods, 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

• One Step Ahead (Review)

  A review of Reason’s LP One Step Ahead published in Music Forum

  Tags: multiculturalism, environment, Tony Mitchell, Music Forum reviews, masculinity, vernacular, Obese, politics, cultural identity, patriotism, Press & Media

• 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

• Players Club (Review)

  A review of 2up’s LP Players Club published in Music Forum.

  Tags: Tony Mitchell, patriotism, cultural identity, Press & Media

• 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

• Sonic Allsorts (Review)

  A review of the Cyclic Defrost compilation Sonic Allsorts published in Music Forum.

  Tags: globalisation, Tony Mitchell, Music Forum reviews, multilingualism, hip-hop and migrant experience, cultural identity, hip-hop and folk music, multiculturalism, Press & Media

• Sounds From Our Town: Tasmanian Hip-Hop

  “Music emanating from Tasmania has generally been pretty much off the radar in terms of mainstream or even underground success or acknowledgment in Australia.” On a trip to Tasmania in April 2007, Tony Mitchell went forraging through fragments of the Tasmanian music scene in search of the underground traces of Hobart hip-hop. This piece - published as a feature in Music Forum - is a result of a forraging which included an interview with Hobart-based porducer Crytearia (this interview can be viewed at the website also).

  Tags: globalisation, Tony Mitchell, Hobart, independent record labels, production, instrumental hip-hop, Somalia, Press & Media

• Survival Tactics (Review)

  Survival Tactics, a hip-hop theatre show created collaboratively by Morganics, Nick Power, Wire MC, Sista Native, Maya Jupiter and BBoy Jay (Wikid Force), was performed in Melbourne (ArtsHouse 18-21 July), Brisbane (Powerhouse 25-28 July) and Sydney (Opera House Studio 8-11 August). This review by Tony Mitchell was published in Music Forum.

  Tags: four elements, Hip-Hopera, Tony Mitchell, Music Forum reviews, MCing, multiculturalism, graffiti, breakdancing, theatre, Press & Media

• Sydney-centrism, Parochialism and Popular Music Studies: a review of Ian Maxwell’s book “Phat Beats, Dope Rhymes”

  A review of Ian Maxwell’s book Phat Beats, Dope Rhymes: Hip-hop Down Under Comin’ Upper (Middletown, CT:Wesleyan University Press), 2003, 294 pp. ISBN 0-8195-6638-1), published in the UTS Cultural Studies Review.

  Tags: subcultural theory, Ian Maxwell, four elements, Tony Mitchell, Music Forum reviews, Place, localising hip-hop, hip-hop and academia, Sydney, Western Sydney, 2SER, cultural identity, self expression, masculinity, Press & Media

• Te Kupu

  Te Kupu is a founding member and MC of the Maori hip-hop crew Upper Hutt Posse, who have been on the scene in Aotearoa since 1988. Upper Hutt Posse have recorded hip-hop tracks in Maori language, and are a strong political voice for Maori cultural, linguistic and historical autonomy in New Zealand. They have toured Australia a number of times, performing with Indigenous crews in solidarity. Their most recent trip was in October 2007, when they played a gig at UTS with Aboriginal hip-hop artists in support of Australian Indigenous communities affected by the Australian Federal Government’s controversial intervention. We talked to Te Kupu before the gig, and he spoke about his rapumentary project, Know Your Links, in which he is filming hip-hop in twenty different countries, Maori language hip-hop, politics in Aotearoa and his wariness at the New Zealand ‘Kiwi’ identity.

  Tags: New Zealand, Aotearoa, Maori language, Maori hip-hop, postcolonialism, Maori culture, Interview Transcript, gangsta rap, politics, language, breakdancing, battling, MCing, multilingualism, Interviews