BIG UP GB mixtape (the making of video)

Guinea Bissauan Rappers Use Hip Hop to Speak Out
Brooklyn, NY—June 9, 2009—Following the June 5 assassination of Guinea Bissauan presidential candidate, Baciro Dabó, and Member of Parliament, Helder Proenca, international media seized the opportunity to frame the West African country as helpless. These new assassinations come only three months after the March assassination of President João Bernardo "Nino" Vieira and his rival, armed forces chief of staff Gen. Batista Tagmé Na Waie, and are contemporaneous with numerous civil conflicts.
However, Guinea Bissau's youth combat the dark image the media constructs through powerful hip hop narratives, filled with both critique and hope.
In immediate response to the assassinations, seven Bissauan MCs, all affiliated with BIG UP GB—Movimento Hip Hop, came together to record a three track compilation expressing their feelings about the recent killings and the larger context in which they are situated.
The unity evidenced by this collaborative mix-tape, set to be released date, works to attract positive media attention to Guinea Bissau—often written off as a narco-state.
Influence of drug trafficking has entered the political and military class and there is really the fingerprints of drug trafficking in the murders, said João Gomes Cravinho, Portugal's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Co-operation.
The artists featured on the compilation refuse to be discouraged into complacency, but instead vow to use the resources accessible to them to manifest change on their own terms through hip hop. They are storytellers creating oral histories of their personal struggles and how they relate to their national and African identities.
International press devotes little symbolic or physical space to many of these stories that add nuance and light to a situation that can too easily be described as destitute.
Guinea-Bissau is full of people with good intentions and Big UP GB is a way to show what we can do when we come together and a way to show that other image of Guinea Bissau." Lil' Saná, manager of the popular hip hop group Torres Gemeos (Twin Towers), told an interviewer from South Africa's Media 24 in regard to Guinea Bissau's first hip hop festival, which filled the capital's Lino Correia Stadium on May 23.
And culturally speaking, all we've got internationally is [British author] Frederick Forsyth, for some novel, interviewing expats by the pool, getting only the 'outsider view' in a despicable attempt to portray Guinea-Bissau as the armpit of Hell. Of course, that's in his best interest, said Brian King, managing director of Cobiana Records, a small label specializing in Bissau-Guinean music.
Despite the lack of recognition of these Guinean MCs receive in international media, they are extremely popular and influential among Guinean youth. Consequently, the dozen presidential candidates who are contending to become Vieira's successor are strategically attempting to solicit the support of these musical activists. However, the movement does not intend to endorse a particular candidate.

Category : Guinea-Bissau Music Videos

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