International Indigenous Hip-Hop Gathering brings artists, fans together.LOS ANGELES – For Happy Frejo, the International Indigenous Hip-Hop Gathering was a place to make a stand. Not just for Native artists, but also for women.
That’s because the lineup at the Sept. 14 show was mostly male. Frejo, a Seminole/Pawnee singer and emcee, made a shirt that she and two girlfriends wore in protest.
“Got Wombyn?” it asked on the front. “I Am Hip-hop Too,” it said on the back.
“Hip-hop is male-dominated, but there’s a lot of women in it, too – event organizers, mothers, emcees, artists, singers; we’re just not represented as much,” she said. “We just have to do what we can to make a stand and let them know we’re still here.”
In its second year, the event’s aim is to highlight Native artists within the hip-hop industry, most of whom are independent artists on the outskirts of the mainstream. That’s where artists like Prophecy are most comfortable – speaking directly to their communities about problems only they have experienced and understand, he said.
“Our goal and our focus is to emphasize the youth to our people,” said Prophecy, Anishnabe/Potawatomi, of Antithesis. “They’re the most underserved community in the nation.”
And hip-hop is a medium that can bridge the gap between youth and elders, he said.
The event began with workshops tailored to youth, including one by the creator of the Arizona skate-wear company Apache Skateboards. Performances by groups across Indian country followed, with emcees hailing from such tribes as Oneida, Navajo and Pomo, and regions including Chile, Puerto Rico, Mexico and El Salvador.
The stated purpose was to share “music, vision, unity, tradition.” At $25 per general ticket, and $18 for youth, that was a pricey task for some. But others traveled long distances to attend the event – the only one of its kind in the country.
Daygots, 22, Oneida Indian Nation Wolf Clan, flew to the event from New York with a friend. An aspiring emcee and producer, she came to meet other Natives using hip-hop to make their voices heard.
“I think it’s very important for Natives to be seen and be heard and to tell our stories,” she said. “Personally, I’m learning and developing myself. It’s really awesome to be here and exchange and to share with people. It’s a real good feeling to see Native people getting together for the purpose of hip-hop.”
Traditional music and dance were woven within the hip-hop performances by Los Nativos, Kinto Sol, Culture Shock Camp, El Vuh, Buggin’ Malone, Rebel Diaz, Akil Ammar, Audiopharmacy, Magisterio, Skool77, Antithesis, Pedromo, Yaiva and The Prophecy.
The Southern California Intertribal Bird Singers performed songs that were once on the verge of dying out, but were revived by tribal elders. Six young men and a little boy in black ribbon shirts kept the beat to their songs with rattles. Two women and a girl swayed back and forth, swishing ribbon skirts and making small steps to each side.
The men’s dance steps were heavy and rhythmic, pounding the pavement in traditional steps that almost appeared like the root of hip-hop steps performed by break-dancers.
Toby Rabugo, 15, a Pala tribal member, said the group usually performs at pow wows and the event was their first hip-hop gathering. He listens to more mainstream artists, like X-Rated, Brother Lynch and Tec. He viewed his performance there as education.
“I like to perform because it’s a way to express my culture and get the word out that there’s different types of Indians out there. When we go out of state, they’re really amazed. They don’t know that we’re modern and still have our traditional ways.”
The ties between the traditional and the modern were fused by many of the artists at the event. Designers had reprinted shirts with old images and new slogans: “You are on Indian land,” “We were here before the borders, we will be here after they fall” and “Terrorizing Native America since 1492” with a picture of Columbus.
And in the lyrics of songs.
“We possess an essence divine. Find it within our heart, spirit and mind. All my Natives keep your heads up high. Unified as a tribe once again we will shine,” rapped the hip-hop trio Antithesis.
“As indigenous people, we need to send out a voice to the rest of the world of our issues, of our lives, of our future, in order to preserve our cultures and society,” said Cee-Los of Antithesis, who is from the Santee Sioux Nation of Nebraska. “That’s what’s important to me about hip-hop.”
Underground graffiti artists Retna and Saber teach the Chicas the finer points of tagging. With help from the experts, Yasmin and Crash each create their mural-sized pieces of artwork.
SCRIBBLE JAM 2008
MC BATTLE + DJ BATTLE + B-BOY BATTLE
BEATBOX BATTLE + GRAFF EXPO
OCTOBER 23-26, 2008
CINCINNATI, OH
2008 SCHEDULE!
THURSDAY OCTOBER 23 MEET-N-GREET
HOSTED BY MR. DIBBS
LIVE PERFORMANCES (TBA) VENUE (TBA)
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FRIDAY OCTOBER 24 MAIN EVENT DAY 1
BUY TICKETS
ANNIES NIGHT CLUB (4343 KELLOG AVE)
DOORS 6PM-2AM (ALL AGES)
2 STAGES - LIVE PERFORMANCES:
ATMOSPHERE + KRS ONE + BLUEPRINT + CHANNEL LIVE
ABSTRACT RUDE + DJ DSTYLES + MR. DIBBS
EMBEDDED MUSIC SHOWCASE + SUPASTITION
(Bisc1, Iller Than Theirs, Loer Velocity, Junk Science)
BROOKLYN ACADEMY + CYMARSHALL LAW + NOCANDO
X:144 & SPS + MADDILLZ + FAMOUS MR NOBODIES
AND MANY MORE!
MC PRE-LIM BATTLE - GRAFF EXPO ALL DAY
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SATURDAY OCTOBER 25 MAIN EVENT DAY 2 BUY TICKETS
ANNIES NIGHT CLUB (4343 KELLOG AVE)
DOORS 3PM-2AM (ALL AGES)
EMCEE BATTLE + B-BOY BATTLE + DJ BATTLE + GRAFF EXPO
BEATBOX BATTLE + PRODUCTION BATTLE + MUSIC VIDEO AWARD
2 STAGES - LIVE PERFORMANCES
...........................................................................................................................
SUNDAY OCTOBER 26 PARTY IN THE PARK
SOUTHGATE HOUSE (RIGHT OVER THE RIVER)
FREE EVENT 12PM-5PM FREE BARBAQUE
B-BOY FLOOR + DJs + LI VE PERFORMANCES
.....................................................................................................................
TICKETS ARE NOW AVAILABLE FOR THE MAIN EVENTS
(FRIDAY & SATURDAY) ON LINE AT: TICKETMASTER.COM
ALSO YOU CAN BUY THEM AT:
UNHEARDOF BOUTIQUE (DOWNTOWN CINCINNATI) 513.744.9444
SHAKE-IT RECORDS (NORTH SIDE) 513.591.0123
WE STRONGLY RECOMMEND TO BUY PRE-SALE TICKETS! ONLY $20
OVER 60 BOOTHS OF THE BEST UNDERGROUND LABELS & GEAR!
Venue: Annies NightClub
RAIN OR SHINE
Booth at Scribble Jam 2007
Please email info@scribblemagazine.com
for information on how to obtain a booth.
16/10/08 - 20/11/08
6:30 pm
Grenade Gallery
212 Kensington Park Road, London, W11 1NR
The infamous REVOK1 comes to London for his debut UK show.
'CRIME IN THE CITY' promises to be one of the most exciting, innovative and original contemporary street art shows of 2008.
The show will be open to the public between the 16.10.08 to 20.11.08
The launch night of the 15.10.08 is strictly by INVITATION ONLY.
Youth Speaks’ The Living Word Project Presents
the 7th Annual
Living Word Festival
RACE IS FICTION
A 10-day Festival
Curated by Artistic Director
Marc Bamuthi Joseph
Featuring New Performance Works, Live Music, and a Host of Outreach Activities
Including Workshops, Panels,
and a Live Graffiti Battle
October 17-26, 2008 in San Francisco and Oakland
Featured Artists and Participants Include Mos Def, Goapele, Chinaka Hodge, Rafael
Casal, Daveed Diggs, Nico Cary, Jason Samuels-Smith, Los Rakas, The Kev Choice
Ensemble, Delina Brooks, Jacinta Vlach, SF Jazz Youth All-Stars and
Guillermo Gomez-Pena
The 7th Annual Living Word Festival features the premiere of War Peace: The One Drop
Rule, a youth driven hip hop theater piece that imagines the Bay Area as a potential war
zone in a time of protracted drought. Directed by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, War Peace is
collaboratively written and performed by Chinaka Hodge, Rafael Casal, Daveed
Diggs, and Nico Cary. Now in their early 20s, these four artists boast work published
in journals such as McSweeney’s and Newsweek, hold performance credits that include
appearances on Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry for HBO, and hold undergraduate degrees
from Berkeley, NYU, and Brown. They all grew up participating in programs by Youth
Speaks, the nation’s leading nonprofit presenter of spoken word performance,
education, and youth development programs.
War Peace features an original score by the SF Jazz Youth All-Stars, while Emmy
award winning choreographer and tap sensation Jason Samuels-Smith joins the cast
and performs a percussive tap and modern movement vocabulary to underscore the
work’s spoken language.
“The Living Word Festival is committed to presenting groundbreaking new
interdisciplinary work rooted in spoken word,” said Festival Curator Marc Bamuthi
Joseph. “War Peace is another extraordinary new work that manipulates the spoken word form and introduces other collaborators and artistic disciplines to complete their
narrative scope.”
War Peace is the Living Word Project’s eighth, verse-based interdisciplinary work, and
joins critical successes such as the break/s, In Spite of Everything, and the Robert
Moses’ Kin collaboration Cause. War Peace takes place at Theater Artaud on Thursday
and Friday, October 23 and 24. Additional programming on October 23 is a new solo
work by spoken word pioneer Regie Cabico, directed by playwright, poet, actor,
director, and founding member of the Pomo Afro Homos, Brian Freeman. Additional
programming includes an excerpt of Beauty, the Beast by Delina Brooks, featuring
Jacinta Vlach and Liberation Dance Theater.
On Saturday, October 25, The Living Word Festival presents the San Francisco premiere
of Mapa Corpo2, a new work by acclaimed performance artist, writer, activist, and
educator Guillermo Gómez-Peña and La Pocha Nostra at Theater Artaud at 8pm.
The Living Word Festival’s Workshops & Educational Activities
The Living Word Festival kicks off on October 17, with workshops and performances cohosted
by SF Green Festival, Global Exchange, and Grind 4 Green at the Museum of the
African Diaspora (MOAD) in downtown San Francisco. The workshops are followed by a
lunchtime outdoor concert with Goapele, Urban Word NYC, and the Kev Choice
Ensemble at Yerba Buena Gardens at 12:30pm.
The Festival’s outreach activities continue on October 18, when the Living Word Festival
presents red black and GREEN, an Environmental Caucus and Concert at deFremery
Park in Oakland. The thematic focus of the day will be eco-equity, committed to the
position that poor communities and communities of color be logistically and
psychologically included into the new, clean and green economy.
The day will feature the 2nd Annual Estria Invitational Living Word Graffiti Battle,
a partnership with Samurai Graffix. Twenty contest participants will be given a 6x8 foot
canvas, biodegradable materials, and non-aerosol, non-toxic paint and will be charged
with creating environmentally themed, graffiti style tags around the park. The work will
be sold at a silent auction to benefit Youth Speaks. An outdoor performance in the park
featuring MOS DEF, Los Rakas, and DJ Leydis will be held concurrently.
The day also features Bamboo Architecture, an educational partnership with Global
Exchange that will teach youth about the environmental strength of bamboo, and
charge them with building bamboo structures (to be later displayed at the San Francisco
Green Festival in November.)
Living Word Festival 2008
RACE IS FICTION
Calendar
October 17-26, 2008
OCTOBER 17, 2008
10am
Museum of the African Diaspora, SF MoMA, Yerba Buena Center
685 Mission Street (at Third), San Francisco
Workshops and performances co-hosted by
SF Green Festival, Global Exchange, and Grind for the Green.
12:30pm
Yerba Buena Gardens
760 Howard Street, San Francisco
Lunchtime outdoor concert with Goapele, Urban Word NYC and The Kev Choice
Ensemble
OCTOBER 18
11am-5pm
red black and GREEN
Environmental Caucus and Concert at deFremery Park (aka Little Bobby Hutton Park)
1651 Adeline Street
Oakland, CA
Featuring the 2nd annual Living Word Graffiti Battle, Bamboo Architecture, Against Eco-
Apartheid: A Speaker Series and a free outdoor musical concert featuring Mos Def, Los
Rakas, and DJ Leydis.
OCTOBER 23, 2008
7pm
Theater Artaud
450 Florida Street, San Francisco
Regie Cabico in a new solo work
And War Peace: The One Drop Rule
OCTOBER 24, 2008
7pm
Theater Artaud
450 Florida Street, San Francisco
Jacinta Vlach Liberation Dance Theater presents Animal Farm
and War Peace: The One Drop Rule
OCTOBER 25, 2008
7:30pm
Theater Artaud
450 Florida Street, San Francisco
Beauty, the Beast (excerpt) by Delina Brooks.
AND
Guillermo Gomez-Pena’s La Pocha Nostra in MapaCorpo2
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18
The Living Word Project, Samurai Graphix, & Hard Knock Radio Presents
The 2nd Annual Estria's Invitational Living Word Graffiti Battle
A part of the 10-day Living Word Festival Curated by Marc Bamuthi Joseph. 16 of California's most talented and revered Graffiti Artists in live painting battle. Artists are determined and selected by Estria, a Bay Area Graffiti Legend.
Free outdoor performance by:
Mos Def, Los Rakas, DJ Leidis
@ DeFremery Park, 1651 Adeline St, West Oakland
FREE event, bring the whole family.
11am-4pm. Winner announced at 5pm.
British graffiti artist Banksy has opened his first official exhibition in New York.
Set inside a fake pet store, works such as a robotic monkey and fish-fingers swimming in a goldfish bowl aim to question the relationship between human beings and animals.
The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill
89 Seventh Avenue South (Between West 4th and Bleeker)
New York, NY 10014 map
Open from 10am-midnight daily through 31 October 2008.
via:
bbc.com
&
coolhunting.com
The City of New York is the most populous city in the US, one of the preeminent global economic centers having worldwide influence, but most important: The Graffiti-Mekka.
The city comprises five boroughs, each of which is coterminous with a county: The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island.
The Subway is notable for being among the few rapid transit systems in the world to run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
NYC still is a tuff place for Graffiti, pretty well illustrated by the mad propaganda NY-authorities run against Ket. Eventhough Graffiti is a part the NY soul, the restrictive attitude of the city towards Graffiti makes it hard to realise Meetings.
After the BX-spot of past years had been sold, it wasn´t really sure whether the Meeting will happen or not. But after Cope had gotten the permit, the owner has withdrawn it recently.
A mad move of the owner, a great pity, heads from Europe booked flights, US-, NY-artists and crews made their schedule.
After it all looked bad for the 008edition, luckily 5Points in Queens decided to help and to give space. Different hood, but all good. Everybody who has been to New York knows the famous 5Points-building, where a lot of famous artists from all over the world left marks of their skills. To get there jump on the 7train and hop off at Hunterspoint. As wallspace is always tight you need to be notified to paint. In any way: respect the hood!
Among the ten busiest systems in the world in terms of annual passenger traffic, it is the only one to hold such a distinction, setting it apart from cities such as London, Paris, Tokyo, and Moscow.
In all those years of the NYC-MOS it has never been easy to get it going.
As the city has been tagged and bombed hard for decades „zero tolerance” and „broken windows” has been created.
Graffiti was intensively targeted, and the system was cleaned line by line and car by car from 1984 until 1990. Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani also adopted the strategy more widely in New York City, from his election in 1993, under the rubrics of ‘zero tolerance’ and ‘quality of life’. If you are a Rapper, DJ, Breaker or Writer…
If you are a potential partner, sponsor, supporter…
If you want to propose a venue…
If you want more details…
Get in touch. Mainzer Strasse 52
55252 Mainz-Kastel
Germany
0049-(0)6134-287540
www.S8Yard.de
info at s8yard.de
Via:artnouveaumagazine.com
Leave it to Juxtapoz to treat artists like rock stars. The magazine has banned together with Sparks, Upper Playground, to create a follow up to last year’s inaugural Ignite What’s Next Art Tour. The three different events will showcase live painting by Sam Flores, Alex Pardee and N8 Van Dyke. The events will also feature performances by up-and-coming DJs. This year the tour will stop in Atlanta on Saturday, September 13th, 2008 at 10pm at Lenny’s Bar; Boston on Saturday September 20th, 2008 at 2pm at Underground Snowboards in Boston; and finally, Phoenix on both Friday, October 3rd and Saturday, October 4th at 10pm at The Marquee Theatre.
“James is a unique voice in the world, who lives and breathes art and technology for the purpose of promoting and enabling freedom of expression for all,” said Nathan Dorjee, Director of Technology for Students for a Free Tibet. “His trip to Beijing, in support of the Tibetan people and all people around the world whose voices have been silenced by their governments, is a small piece of his portfolio as an artist who won’t back down in the face of authority.”An American artist who planned to use laser beams to flash "free Tibet" on buildings in downtown Beijing was detained Tuesday, according to a colleague and a pro-Tibet group.
James Powderly, co-founder of Graffiti Research Lab in New York, was detained before dawn as he prepared to use a handheld green laser to project messages on prominent structures in Beijing, according to Students for a Free Tibet.
Mr. Powderly's colleague, Nathan Dorjee, said in New York that he received a text message from the artist which said he had been detained around 3 a.m. by police.
Officials at Beijing's Municipal Publicity Security Bureau did not answer phone calls Tuesday night. His whereabouts remained unknown, the group said.
“He was going to project a message that said, ‘Free Tibet,’ and some other messages that would have been three-stories high in different locations in Beijing,'' Mr. Dorjee said.
Mr. Powderly is the latest foreign activist detained after seeking to use the Olympic Games to criticize China for its rule in Tibet, alleging human rights abuses and religious restrictions. Other foreign demonstrators, many of whom tried to hang “Free Tibet” banners in Beijing, have been quickly picked up and deported.
Mr. Powderly is a well-known New York graffiti artist who projects laser beam “tag” messages onto iconic skyscrapers and other notable structures such as the Brooklyn Bridge. His messages are typically political and often promote freedom of speech and expression.
His projects have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate Modern museum in London.
Students for a Free Tibet said Mr. Powderly and some colleagues had been “disinvited” from a new media art exhibition in Beijing at the National Media Art Museum of China earlier this year due to their uncompromising stance on freedom of expression.
via:crainsnewyork.com
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