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Aboriginal communities expressing themselves through rap

9 June 2008 - World Student Press Agency Canada - There’s a very interesting video on ABC Online at the moment about Aboriginal communities using rap to pass down their language and stories. Aboriginal culture is traditionally an oral one and, in the absence of the printing press, stories were passed down family lines and within cultural groups using creative media such as song, music and dance.

Rap music, born of African-American culture, finds receptive ears in many other black social groups such as African migrants and Aboriginal Australians who can identify with the stories of hardship based on racial prejudice, told by such groups as Public Enemy. American rap music, though, does tell a story which is foreign to Aboriginal Australians living in remote communities. Where American rap music revolves around stories of ethnic violence and life in poor neighbourhoods in the big city, remote Aboriginal life is characterised by an interaction with the natural (rather than built) environment and the struggle to live under a foreign law without adequate services such as hospitals, meaningful employment and well resourced schools.

Aboriginal Australia, though, has a story to tell and a language in which to tell it. As an oral culture, Aboriginal Australia is certainly able to co-opt different lyrical forms with which to tell its stories. Rap music provides a framework for communication and rapping can be done in any language. Rapping in Indigenous languages not only gives the languages a new lease on life but has the potential to provide a sense of ownership of the expression. There are still a number of Aboriginal languages alive today, as opposed to Kriols or Aboriginal English, and rapping in one’s own language allows one to tell the story in the most natural way possible.

Adam Loxley of the Wakakirri Festival is working to provide a forum for this reinterpretation and reinvigoration of Aboriginal story telling (along with expressive dance), as is Matt Priestly of Desert Pea Media. Priestly refers to the songwriting, singing and scoring as providing tools of engagement for the children so they can explain how they relate to the environment around them rather than aiming to produce commercially viable music, which is fantastic.

Cultures all around the world discover new ideas through their interaction with one another and so it comes as no surprise that Aboriginal Australia would stumble upon rap music at some point. What is a surprise, and a pleasant one at that, is that Aboriginal Australia has been able to partake in the creation of rap music to tell its own story rather than merely consuming it (as much of Western culture has) or using someone else’s language to tell a story (which may also be someone else’s). The power of this creative adaptation is that it allows Aboriginal identity to be examined in a new light by those whose identity is being expressed. How does someone in a remote community such as Pormpuraaw or Yuendumu feel about themselves and the way they fit in to the world around them? Through the Wakakirri Festival we’ll be able to know in their own words.

Source: World Student Press Agency Canada

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