THE İNDEPENDENT - Phil Meadley // 20.02.2004

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The Independent / Phil Meadley "And the beat goes on... "

And the beat goes on...

While American and British hip hop stays resolutely parochial, says Phil Meadley, the style is quietly conquering the world
Published: The Independent ,20 February 2004

It can take the British world music scene some time to catch up with current trends. That was the case when dance and remix culture rudely awakened those with a penchant for sandals, shark-calling songs from Papua New Guinea and Old Speckled Hen real ale. But when most of the hip hop community seem to accept real hip hop as only coming from America (or more grudgingly, the UK), the now liberated world music community is starting to embrace international hip hop.

It can take the British world music scene some time to catch up with current trends. That was the case when dance and remix culture rudely awakened those with a penchant for sandals, shark-calling songs from Papua New Guinea and Old Speckled Hen real ale. But when most of the hip hop community seem to accept real hip hop as only coming from America (or more grudgingly, the UK), the now liberated world music community is starting to embrace international hip hop.

Last month the Malian hip hop crew Daara J won the Africa category in BBC Radio 3' World Music Awards. Now two compilations showcase how exciting and innovative the international hip hop scene has become in the past couple of years. World Music Network has just released The Rough Guide to African Rap, which goes some way to showing the depth and quality of rap music in Africa. It is a fascinating, if at times disjointed, compilation. The liner notes make the valid observation that African rappers "have responded to social and political issues by arranging such subjects as poverty, Aids, famine, corruption and globalisation at a time when the changing economic, political, and media climate across Africa has resulted in less censorship and more freedom to be critical of people in power".

At the end of the month Manteca attempts to address the sheer breadth of the international hip hop movement by releasing Global Hip Hop. It jets gleefully across Turkey, Senegal, Chile, Lebanon, Brazil and Greece, trying to join the dots between cultural tradition and that all-important hip hop attitude. At a time when US hip hop is suffering from over-commercialisation and sanitised polemics, it's refreshing to hear social commentary from Latin America mixed with salsa and charanga, or learn of the problems facing immigrants living in French inner-city slums, rapped with Gallic speed over an Arabic oriental backdrop. It's also exciting to learn that there are more than 6,000 hip hop groups in Dakar waxing lyrical about spiralling Third World debt and corrupt governments. While mainstream American hip hop culture seems to be forgetting its role, the rest of the world is catching up quickly in terms of quality, ingenuity, and thought provoking lyrics.

America doesn't have to look very far to see the mushrooming effect of hip-hop culture. In Cuba, Chile, Mexico and Brazil, new acts are appearing at a rapid pace. Orishas are the quintessential Cuban hip hop group, from their use of sacred santeria rhythms and traditional son through to their Havana street attitude. In Mexico, the group Control Machete have the same respect for cultural tradition fused with a need to update its sound for a younger generation bought up on sampled break-beats and technological innovation. Control Machete's Toy Hernandez was influenced by Colombian cumbia, and name-checks well-known sonideros such as Gabriel Duenez and Alfredo Murillo. In the mid-1960s the former invented a type of music called rebajada, which slows down cumbia to emphasize the bass and drums - an idea certainly in keeping with hip hop producers the world over.

Perhaps the most surprising place to find hip hop thriving is in Moslem culture. Turkey has a vibrant community where young acts such as Sultan Tunc or established female rapper-come-radio presenter Aziza A continue to make successful careers out of what was originally a quintessential American art form. One of the most alluring Arabic hip hop acts in recent years has been the Lebanese/Egyptian Clotaire K (who is playing two back-to-back London shows at the end of the month). Clotaire's heady mix of tarab (traditional music from the Middle East) and hip hop beats absorbed during his adolescence in the South of France and frequent trips to the USA provides the backdrop to his album Lebanese.

As the quality of international hip hop continues to improve it will be interesting to see if the rest of the hip hop community start to sit up and take notice, or if the world music scene continues to pioneer the embracing of this truly global movement.

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