Post - Rebel Diaz
Rebel Diaz came last Friday and kind of blew away my expectations with their workshop. Well, I suppose I didn't really have expectations per se, but it's just that they were so engaging and articulate, passionate and informed, and at the same time, just very chill or easygoing, which I appreciated in a setting like that. It was a bit lecture-esque in format which surprised me, but I think that they do the best they can to make it as interactive as it can be, like with the displacement exercise that they did with us. As kind of a side note too, I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of talking that G1 got to do due to my previous sort of pondering about him and his voice since RodStarz often seemed to be the one articulating their motivations and beliefs in the interviews I found in my research about the group. I also was glad to hear about a bit about their music making process since that was another one of my inquiries, and I think that that answer also helped me to get a feel for the brothers' musical relationship, seeing as G1 seems to be the producer, the organizing force that puts together in coherent stylistic form the raps and ideas that they said are constantly flowing from RodStarz. I was also fairly surprised but also pleased at the large amount of overlap between the workshop information and the things we had discussed in class the day before (even showing the same video from 9/11/73 that we had watched). I knew that I may have a bit of an upper hand with my background in Chilean history, but they also were pointed in talking about the New Song movement which I wasn't officially familiar with before our class and about Victor Jara's story which I'm sure we all remembered vividly even as RodStarz was telling it.
Additionally, as I had looked briefly at the descriptions of the workshops beforehand, I suppose I was surprised at the amount that they spoke about hip-hop history and such, even given that our workshop was the one titled, "Cultural Resistance and Self-Determination," while the other workshops they give sometimes have an explicit mention of hip-hop in the title. But my best guess as to why that is is because hip-hop is an inescapable topic for them. It is their roots and their work and why they do what they do. Their upbringing in the midst of the evolution of that piece of cultural memory is what inspired them even from a young age to do the activist work that they do specifically in the way that they do it--through music. I think that they also kind of made an effort to incorporate a sense of communicative memory in their concert via their engagement with the audience and their sharing of stories. They asked people where they were from and they told us about times in their lives that were relevant to the songs they were singing in order to make it mean something to us too right there in the moment.
I think that the main connection between our discussion on hegemony vs. counter-hegemony and our day discussing issues with Rebel Diaz would be the fact that the brothers, although they don't call it by the same academic terms, are a driving force of the counter-hegemonic musical movement, and not only that, but also the counter-hegemonic social movement, even if on a smaller scale that what people might expect. I think they did a great job of emphasizing the little things that people can do to make a difference in their community and to be a part of organizing a larger effort, that sometimes will grow beyond what the initiators initially thought. It's about the day to day effort. You can't spark a social movement and expect it to rage if your starting point is handing out flyers to strangers and trying to convince people to believe in your cause. Firstly, it's about connecting and establishing relationships with people to create unity. Then maybe somewhere down the line in the middle of a normal conversation, some of you will begin to realize that you are passionate about a cause and will decide to rally around it together. And in that process, you'll bring out the bad-ass biker plumbers and the sketchy brilliant Titos of your neighborhood, which will only deepen the mutual appreciation within the community. I think that really their particular style of activism is well summed up in one of the phrases they repeated many a time throughout the day--"you just gotta work from the bottom up."
Additionally, as I had looked briefly at the descriptions of the workshops beforehand, I suppose I was surprised at the amount that they spoke about hip-hop history and such, even given that our workshop was the one titled, "Cultural Resistance and Self-Determination," while the other workshops they give sometimes have an explicit mention of hip-hop in the title. But my best guess as to why that is is because hip-hop is an inescapable topic for them. It is their roots and their work and why they do what they do. Their upbringing in the midst of the evolution of that piece of cultural memory is what inspired them even from a young age to do the activist work that they do specifically in the way that they do it--through music. I think that they also kind of made an effort to incorporate a sense of communicative memory in their concert via their engagement with the audience and their sharing of stories. They asked people where they were from and they told us about times in their lives that were relevant to the songs they were singing in order to make it mean something to us too right there in the moment.
I think that the main connection between our discussion on hegemony vs. counter-hegemony and our day discussing issues with Rebel Diaz would be the fact that the brothers, although they don't call it by the same academic terms, are a driving force of the counter-hegemonic musical movement, and not only that, but also the counter-hegemonic social movement, even if on a smaller scale that what people might expect. I think they did a great job of emphasizing the little things that people can do to make a difference in their community and to be a part of organizing a larger effort, that sometimes will grow beyond what the initiators initially thought. It's about the day to day effort. You can't spark a social movement and expect it to rage if your starting point is handing out flyers to strangers and trying to convince people to believe in your cause. Firstly, it's about connecting and establishing relationships with people to create unity. Then maybe somewhere down the line in the middle of a normal conversation, some of you will begin to realize that you are passionate about a cause and will decide to rally around it together. And in that process, you'll bring out the bad-ass biker plumbers and the sketchy brilliant Titos of your neighborhood, which will only deepen the mutual appreciation within the community. I think that really their particular style of activism is well summed up in one of the phrases they repeated many a time throughout the day--"you just gotta work from the bottom up."
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