Hip Hop Caravan, a Hip Hop journey from South Africa to Tunisia...

Peace to the world. I hope you feel good wherever you are in this globe.Here is my FISRT HIP HOP PEACE article and I'm so excited about it ^^. Last month, after Dead Prez' show, a friend talked to me about a wonderfull Hip Hop project in Africa: HIP HOP CARAVAN which will start on February 11, 2013 to March 29, 2013. The aim is promoting Hip Hop culture across the motherland in six different cities (Cape Town, Johannesburg, Harare, Nairobi, Dakar and Tunis), one week per town. For those who ignore that, Cap Town is the tip of Africa in South Africa and Tunis top,o in Tunisia.Do you realize that, a Hip Hop roadtrip where lectures, discussions, debates, dance, shows are at the rendez-vous! So, for anyone who said: "Africa is the future", "Negus", "Cham", "Kem" "Negro culture", "Afrikya"... It is time to stand up!The African Hiphop Caravan is an educational exploration of six African cities lasting one week per city from the second week of February in Cape Town to the last week of March 2013 in Tunisia. The caravan’s symposium will engage at least 120 artists, activists and free thinkers per city as well as many more people who hear about the caravan along the way and multitude who will attend the shows. In each city, we will also participate in practical and theoretical work spaces that will lead to a continental action plan for Hiphop and street art social movements leading up to the 2013 World Social Forum (WSF) in Tunisia.A symposium will be organised in each city and will be comprised of presentations of papers and theoretical discussions on the relevance/contribution of Hiphop to community struggles as the basis of a broader struggle for self-emancipation, as well as to the politics of building alternatives. In each of the six cities, two performances will be organised, with one in a working-class community and another in the city centre. The performances will be a platform for Hiphop and street artists to interface with the poor and working people who are engaged in daily social struggles and thus foster an organic link between the cultural activists and the struggling masses.As movements, we firmly believe that if harnessed and cultivated, our words and minds are powerful weapons that can:· Transcend borders through the development of people to people and community to community partnerships throughout Afrika in the interest of supporting and developing conscious and socially critical Afrikan street art;· Reap the benefits of sharing skills, resources, organisation, intellect and struggle experiences and strategies with people engaged in similar work throughout the continent· Strengthen the role of women and men against patriarchy within these organisational spaces and bring to the fore feminist conversations that highlight the way in which gender is used to silence the voices of the vulnerable and marginalised.· Build a sense of agency and self-empowerment among community based street artists who often, due to challenging socio-economic realities, feel marginalised and isolatedWe have artists, activists and scholars, such as Deadprez, The Coup, Mic Crenshaw, P. Saucier Khalil, (the editor of Native Tongues: An African Hiphop Reader), Dr. Msia Clark, (editor of the Journal of Pan-African Studies), Prof. Adam Haupt (author of Stealing the Empire and Static) and Dr. Leon De Kock (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Stellenbosch), who all have expressed interest in participating in the shows and symposia on the following topic areas:· The roots of Hiphop as a form of protest art in Afrika.· The connection between Hiphop and the politics of social justice.· Feminist perspectives on Afrikan Hiphop.· The linguistic, literary and poetic contributions of Hiphop to Afrikan arts and culture.· The dichotomy between ‘mainstream’ and ‘underground’ Hiphop in different African countries.· The interaction between Hiphop and the state. The six Afrikan Hiphop Symposia try to fill thisvoid by offering a unique space to scholars, artists, community and culturalactivists to interface and discuss the current state of African Hiphop byexploring the following thematic areas:• The relevance of Hiphop as a tool for youth empowerment and socialjustice.• The contributions of Hiphop to social processes and communitydevelopment.• Hiphop, globalization and the commodification of culture.• Hiphop, social movements and new forms of organizing.• Hiphop, counterculture and democratization.• Feminist perspectives on African Hiphop.• The linguistic, literary and poetic contributions of African Hiphop tourban lingo, arts and culture.• The connection, or transcultural flows, between African and globalHiphop Culture.• The interaction between African Hiphop and the state.• The impact of Hiphop on urban youth culture and identity formation. For any inquiries, if you want to participate or support in anyways, please contact:Afrikah Anele (Soundz of South)    soundzofthesouth@gmail.com        +27 83 447 2939Biko Mutsaurwa (Uhuru Network)                 toyitoyi@riseup.net         +26 3 774 871 872 Peace n Kiss...... and keep Hip Hop and your head up! Lya Pouleyy