The African Hip Hop Project

Throughout Africa hip hop is a vehicle for social consciousness and specifically for AIDS awareness. An irrepressibly popular musical phenomenon, hip hop is close to spoken word and focuses on lyrics with a message, reviving local traditions of song that tell histories, council listeners, and challenge participants to out-do one another in clever exchanges. These links to local lore are also reviving languages that had seemed unnecessary or inappropriate for modern development. Thanks to hip hop in local, national, and international languages, masses of youth know about contemporary AIDS prevention and they develop sensitivity to other issues including gender inequality. As with our work on Making Salsa: The Jewish Latin Mix, and with Sweet Mother Tour" African Hip Hop develops ways in which music animates social development.

Links

The African Hip Hop Project

Sweet Mother Tour