INTERVIEW WITH UK’S NATIVE SUN – PART 2
While attending the Urban Voices 2014 music festival in Stockholm, Sweden, Freedom Beat interviewed the festival’s performing artists about their music, the political atmosphere in their respective countries, music of nonviolent resistance, and how their own music engages these issues.
Hip Hop Uncovers the Legacy of Nonviolent Resistance by Daryn Cambridge
With the sounds of traditional African instruments mixed with modern Hip Hop beats, Native Sun’s song, Legacy, speaks to the powerful role of rap and nonviolent movements in stimulated social and political change – particularly throughout the African continent.
This legacy of nonviolent resistance runs through all histories and cultures across the globe and Freedom Beat’s interview with Native Sun reminds us that the voices of Hip Hop can be some of the best sources to uncover that history.
Native Sun’s Mohammed Yahya and Sarina Leah teach us that many of the chapters in this history have been written by the people of West Africa to which we can turn for knowledge and inspiration. One need only look at the three references Mohammed Yahya makes in this interview to artists from Mali, Nigeria, and Senegal.
In the song, Mohammed spits a verse referencing griots – travelling musicians and storytellers that live, travel, and perform throughout the African continent.
Believe me when I tell you blood
The movement is serious
Way beyond Hip Hop lies the legacy of griots.
Acapella, storytellas, far from jungle dwellas
Forgotten pioneers that never get the credit.
Griots played an influential role in Mali’s 1991 revolution that removed General Mousa Traoré from power and ended a 23-year, military dictatorship. One of the issues that sparked the anti-government demonstrations and emboldened movements like the Alliance for Democracy in Mali (ADEMA) were structural adjustment policies encouraged by the IMF and adopted by the Traoré government during the late 80s and early 90s. Such policies had particularly negative impacts on those who were already living in conditions of poverty (Global Nonviolent Action Database, Passanante & Rennebohm).
Where these musical pioneers deserve much credit is the role they played in educating and mobilizing the rural communities of Mali, 70% of which did not know how to read or write. Nonviolent action scholars, Katherine Nesbitt and Stephen Zunes write,
“In mobilizing the 70% illiterate population to resist Traoré’s dictatorship, griots emphasized the well-known story from the 1300s of how, after the chiefs presented the emperor Sundjata with their spears as a symbolic act of submission, Sundjata returned them to signify that the chiefs would rule autonomously. As a result of this story, Malians believe that democracy and an autonomous self-governance—mara segi so in the Bambara language, which translates as “bringing power home”—is a national tradition.” (Nonviolent Conflict Summary, ICNC)
The legacy of the griots and the story of Mali’s 1991 Revolution present a great example of music as cultural preservation, music as history, and music as amplifier (Freedom Beat, About)
Nigeria, one of the world’s largest cultural hubs for music, film and dance, is home to Fela Kuti, who Mohammed mentions in the interview as someone who has inspired Native Sun’s approach to music. “With Afrobeats you look at people like Fela Kuti, his music is like bouncey and you want to dance to it, but he is addressing political issues.”
Fela Kuti comes from a family who, throughout it’s generations has been integral in helping shape and build nonviolent social movements. In 1944, Fela Kuti’s mother, Olufunmilayo Ransome-Kuti, founded the Abeokuta Ladies Club (later known as the Abeokuta Women’s Union or AWU). The main issue targeted by the movement was the disenfranchisement of African women under Nigeria’s colonial system of government.
In her book, Our Mothers, Our Powers, Our Texts: Manifestations of Ajé in Africana Literature, Teresa N. Washington writes:
“Fighting colonialism’s patriarchal shift through nonviolent agitation, Ransom-Kuti and the AWU staged effective campaigns against discriminatory and excessive tax hikes and forced the end of rice control and seizure by government officials and Abeokuta in 1945. In 1946, the AWU worked to unseat Ademola II, ruler of the Egba Council of Native Administration.”
Fela Kuti’s son, Seun Kuti has continued the family’s legacy of helping drive social change and has been actively involved in supporting contemporary nonviolent movements in Nigeria, most specifically Change Movement Nigeria – a social movement “committed to adopting non-violent means to actualize our goals of a new nation.”
One of Seun Kuti’s more recent songs, IMF ft. M1 (Dead Prez), is born out of the same righteous indignation directed at the financial institutions that sparked resistance in Mali over 20 years ago. With the chant of “people power” repeated in the background throughout much of the track, the song is a call to resist economic policies that are being adopted by Nigeria’s government and having a disproportionately negative impact on communities already impoverished and marginalized.
Seun Kuti’s songs resonates not only with many Nigerians, but also draws on a sense of international solidarity with communities facing a similar foe. The song features American rapper, M1 (Dead Prez), who builds a connection between the suffering of Nigerians with those in the United States and other parts of the world. It is unfortunately a global story of suffering, corruption and exploitation.
Where the dollas at, where the money go
City talk fast but they move slow
Pop champagne and make it rain
Go down the drain, who feel the pain?
The President take the money and hide it
And celebrate while the people divided
Over here we call it poverty pimpin’
They boot lickin’, the people the victim
Kissin’ the ass of white power
My people are coming for what’s ours
And lastly, as Mohammed mentions in the interview, we can look at Mali’s neighbor to the west, Senegal, and the Kheur Gui Crew. Keur Gui, along with other rappers, journalists and activists helped form Y’en a Marre (We’ve Had Enough!) – a social movement with a goal to curb corruption, check executive powers, and encourage the population to practice a more participatory and representative form of democracy.
Y’en a Marre was a primary force preventing Sengalese President Abdoulaye Wade from in trying to amend the country’s constitution so that he could serve a third term in office. Many took this as a sign that Wade was attempting to permanently install himself as Senegal’s leader.
In their 2010 song, Coup 2 Gueule, the Keur Gui crew raps (translated into English):
Old man, your seven years presidential reign has been enough.
Like if it wasn’t enough you cheated during the last elections.
You ruined the I.C.S. and hijacked the ASECNA’s money.
The SARL is claiming bankruptcy and the price of gas is skyrocketing.
In this environment, old man, it is difficult for you to find solutions.
GOANA’s plan is just another of you stupid illusions.
Let’s fight these buffons who are stealing our money.
Noone shall take away the power; he fears the people’s revolution.
Mohammed sums up what these creative and influential musicians, their stories and the movements of which they are a part show us: “Wherever you find oppression you’ll find the voice of hip hop.” And as the chorus of the songs repeats for us listeners, “the journey of this legacy is the roots of our history.”
follow Daryn Cambridge on Twitter.