music beats – David South Consulting

Berber Hip Hop Helps Re-ignite Culture and Economy

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Music is being used to revive the ancient language of the original North African desert dwellers, the Berbers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berber_people). And in the process, it is spawning a whole new generation of entrepreneurs and generating income.

The Berbers are North Africa’s indigenous people, primarily living in Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia, but their language and culture – called Amazigh – were replaced as the lingua franca of the region after the Arab conquest in the 7th century. But all these years later, the language is enjoying resurgence under Morocco’s king, Mohammed VI, who is helping to promote the language through television programming and a new law making teaching of the language compulsory in schools by 2010.

Amazigh people – the name means “free humans” or “free men” – total more than 50 million. Their group languages, called Tamazight, are spoken by several million people across North Africa, with the largest number in Morocco.

For young Moroccans, promoting the language is more interesting when hip hop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_hop_music) is thrown into the mix.

Where once Berber culture was shunned in Morocco and the language banned in schools, the revival of the Tamazight language has led to a flourishing of summer arts festivals, thriving Tamazight newspapers _ and Tamazight hip hop.

One hip-hop outfit, Rap2Bled from the Moroccan city of Agadir, stick to social issues, singing about unemployment, drug addiction and the emancipation of women.

“My mother and grandfather don’t know any Arabic…Before they couldn’t watch television, read a newspaper. They hadn’t got a clue what was going on in the world. They didn’t know anything,” Rap2Bled singer Aziz, who goes by the street name Fatman, told to Radio Netherlands Worldwide.

“But now there is a TV channel in our local dialect and a newspaper. But our aim is to put the language on the map by fusing it with hip hop. More than 60 per cent of young Moroccans only listen to rap and western music. So we thought why not fuse Berber with that and make it really accessible?”

Just 10 years ago, rap and hip hop were virtually unknown in Morocco, with only a small group of hip hop aficionados listening to big American stars like Dr Dre, Tupac Shakur and Notorious BIG.

But today hip hop culture and way of life (of which rap and hip hop music are a part) have become a powerful force in Moroccan culture. Moroccan rap focuses on local issues like unemployment and injustice and is ubiquitous on radio and TV.

The Casa Crew, from Casablanca, has become so successful since their beginnings in 2003 that their fan base stretches to Spain and Algeria.

“First of all, to designate rap simply as mere ‘music’ deprives it of its real impact,” Caprice from the Casa Crew (http://casa-crew-00.skyrock.com/), told the Arab Media News, Menassat.

“Rap is a life style, and mainly a culture of convictions. The fact that rap is spreading in countries like Morocco is an excellent sign. On the one hand, it’s proof that the youth are starting to react, to think they have the right to express themselves in any way they see fit, without anyone judging them or denying them of that right. On the other hand, the development of rap means that the space for artistic freedom is growing particularly when considering that a majority of Arab rappers are dealing with subjects that we were forbidden to speak about a few years ago.”

The Amazigh revival industry centres around large music festivals. Timitar Festival in Agadir (http://www.moroccofestivals.co.uk/timitar.html) gets crowds surpassing 500,000, with more than 40 artists. Morocco’s biggest festival helps Amazigh artists meet world musicians and learn how to reach music fans outside of Morocco.

Another pioneer of Morocco’s music industry is Mohamed ‘Momo’ Merhari, a young music entrepreneur and winner of the British Council’s International Young Music Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2008 (http://www.creativeconomy.org.uk/).

Momo is a music consultant and co-founder of the “Boulevard des Jeunes Musiciens” (http://www.boulevard.ma/), the largest contemporary music festival in North Africa, featuring 50 bands over four days, and reaching a live audience of 130,000 people. The annual event showcases new talent from the worlds of hip hop, rock and jazz fusion from all over the region.

In January, Morocco’s culture minister Touriya Jabrane promised to introduce a range of measures to financially support Moroccan musicians, composers and the industry as whole.

Published: March 2009

Resources

International Young Music Entrepreneur of the Year award: an award from the British Council. Website: http://www.creativeconomy.org.uk/UKYCE/index.asp?ID=35The British Council also sponsors numerous awards for international creatives. Website: http://www.creativeconomy.org.uk/
The United Nations of Hip Hop: A web portal for African hip hop news, music and resources. Website:http://www..unitednationsofhiphop.com/
The Timitar music festival happens every year in July in Morocco’s Agadir. It brings together Amazigh musicians with other African and world musicians. Website:http://www.festival-timitar.com/timitar.html
The annual Amazigh Film Festival happens every year in January in Los Angeles, California, USA. Website: http://www.tukshop.biz/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/02/african-afro-beats-leads-new-music-wave-to-europe/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/17/cashing-in-on-music-in-brazil/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/12/18/disabled-congolese-musicians-become-world-hit/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/11/09/mauritanian-music-shop-shares-songs-and-friendship/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2020/12/17/mongolias-musical-entrepreneurs-led-way-out-of-crisis-2018/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2023/02/07/mongolian-rock-and-pop-book-mongolia-sings-its-own-song/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/11/09/ring-tones-and-mobile-phone-downloads-are-generating-income-for-local-musicians-in-africa/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/11/09/taxis-promote-african-music-beats/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2020/11/24/too-black/

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2023

Taxis Promote African Music Beats

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

South Africa’s township music is pounding its way into the global music charts. How has music made in the impoverished townships that are a hangover from decades of apartheid – the country’s former racial separation laws, which trapped millions of black South Africans in disenfranchisement and poverty – travelled around the world? By hitching a ride with the country’s ubiquitous taxi drivers.

In the age of digital downloads and rampant pirating of music CDs by bootleggers, musicians in the South face an epic struggle to earn income from their music. It’s estimated 95 percent of digital downloads of music are unauthorized, with no payment to artists and producers (www.ifpi.org).

And for musicians and artists from the world’s poorest places, who are far out of sight of the mainstream music business, life is even harder. The question remains: what on earth do you do to get heard?

Many South Africans are big fans of European House, a type of dance music. An enterprising group of producers living in the townships of Pretoria started to experiment, taking the House they loved and turning it into something more reflective of where they lived. The result, dubbed Township House, blends the school-of-hard-knocks beats of South African hip-hop, Kwaito, with House music’s tempos and electronic sounds.

Being from the townships meant the musicians behind Township House were frozen out of the mainstream music industry. And as every artist knows, if you can’t get heard, then your music will go nowhere. Rejected by radio stations and big record labels, they turned to an unlikely outlet: taxis, the ubiquitous small minibuses that are the only alternative form of transportation for people who do not have a car.

They are heavily used: the University of Pretoria (www.web.up.ac.za) estimates between 5 and 10 million people use minibus taxis every day to get to work or get around.

“In South Africa, the easiest way to the people is through the taxis,” musician DJ Qness told CNN.

The vast network of taxis serving the country represent a captive audience of listeners. Many are simply bored as they endure lengthy commutes. The Township House producers handed out compact discs (CDs) of their tracks to taxi drivers to play. They soon had a hit on their hands. But without any presence in record stores people couldn’t buy the CDs they wanted. And a new source of income was born for taxi drivers: selling CDs from their taxi stands or roadside stalls.

With appetites whetted for Township House, it started to outsell imported dance music.

The biggest hit maker of this pioneering group was DJ Mujava, whose track Township Funk was a global dance club hit in 2008.

“These people created a demand. The Mujava’s ‘Township Funk’ blew up on the streets and everything went crazy,” said Qness, who works for record label Sheer Music.

After all this home-grown success, the record labels jumped in. DJ Mujava landed a record deal with the small label Sheer Music. But the township musicians were still just reaching a local audience. However, by putting together a low-budget video using township dancers, and by posting the video on the YouTube (www.youtube.com) video-sharing website, they attracted the attention of British record labels Warp Records and This is Music, who re-mixed the track for clubs.

The model of using taxis as a music distribution vehicle has been copied by others. Pretoria’s Gospel Taxi Club uses the method to promote their religious music. Political parties are also using music CDs to get their message out.

Other Pretorian township successes are making waves as well. They include Bojo Mujo and Tembisa Funk by McLloyd.

“By combining the electronic sound from European House with the hard drum and the raw snare they’ve created something totally unique. You can’t find it anywhere in the world — only in South Africa,” said Qness.

Published: June 2009

Resources

DJ Mujava: Listen to all of DJ Mujava’s tracks at his website. Website:www.myspace.com/mujavaDigiArts Africa: The DigiArts Africa network is a tool to find people working in Digital Arts in Africa and to provide a collaborative working space to promote digital arts in Africa. Website:http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=5346&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.htmlAfrican Musicians Profiles: A lively website featuring profiles of African musicians by alphabetical listing and also reviews African films. Website: www.africanmusiciansprofiles.comRecording Industry of South Africa (RiSA): RiSA is the main body representing the South African recording industry. Website: www.risa.org.za