Nas, Damian Marley Gather Rap Legends For Debate

Nas and Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley have teamed with National Geographic and V-Tech to present the “Distant Relatives” panel debate in Washington, DC next month. The “Distant Relatives” panel debate will feature DJ Kool Herc, DJ Red Alert, dance hall legend Daddy U-Roy , Jeff Chang, Rakim and King Jammy. The discussion will be moderated by radio personality/MTV host Sway Calloway. The event, which is being filmed for a documentary, will explore the origins of Hip-Hop in addition to the global impact the genre of music has had around the world. For those who cannot attend the actual event, the discussion will also be streamed live and broadcast via National Geographic’s natgeomusic.net website. An after party and open-mic show at DC nightclub Zanzibar will take place following the discussion. Nas and Damian Marley’s “Distant Relatives” panel is slated to take place at National Geographic's Grosvenor Auditorium on December 12.

For the full story or to comment log on: http://www.allhiphop.com/stories/news/archive/2009/11/18/22034016.aspx

Kevin Powell's Book Release Party

The Buzz International Group and Soft Skull Press
invite you to

KEVIN POWELL’s
Book Release Party
for OPEN LETTERS TO AMERICA
(his 10th book: 3 provocative essays
on America in the era of Barack Obama)
and a celebration of
Kevin’s 25 years of activism

Hosted by SWAY CALLOWAY of MTV
Music by DJ HERBERT (of the FREEDOM PARTY)

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2009
7:00pm - 10:00pm
Green Carpet at 7pm-8pm

THE CANAL ROOM
285 West Broadway
(corner of Canal Street)
NEW YORK CITY

RSVP to The Buzz International Group
at rsvp@buzzig.com or call 212.360.0399

KRS-One interview about 'Gospel of Hip Hop'

School Teacher & Journalist Drops Book Exploring Effect Hip-Hop Has On Teens

http://www.ballerstatus.com/2009/10/02/school-teacher-journalist-drops-book-exploring-effect-hip-hop-has-on-teens/

Amanda's Ray, by noted hip-hop journalist and NYC public high school teacher Tachelle Shamash Wilkes, explores the effects of hip-hop on teens through the eyes of Amanda Ray, a 16-year-old aspiring lyricist from Brownsville, Brooklyn.

In the new book, readers will immediately compare the protagonist: Kendra Star's struggles to those of currently incarcerated hip-hop artist, Remy Ma. Tachelle doesn't deny the connection and notes that Remy Ma's struggles made her become more sympathetic to the challenges faced by many popular hip-hop artists.

"Remy was my muse," Wilkes tells BallerStatus.com. "I didn't realize all of the crazy things she went through as a child. There was a time when I was writing for The Source magazine that I was hard on rappers without knowing their past. Many of these rappers are not brought up right and our kids follow them blindly."

As a teacher Tachelle has seen both the positive and negative effects that hip-hop can have on youth. Tachelle believes that the book highlights the fact that so many young people are being raised by hip-hop, and therefore the music has a responsibility to the community.

"I think there is a great lesson to be taught concerning Remy's incarceration and Amanda's Ray explores how the lyrics as well as the lives of rappers directly affect our children," she said.

But Tachelle's book does not just point the finger at hip-hop. Instead, she delves deeper into the socioeconomic, mental and emotional issues that affect the lives of many teens in disadvantaged communities. As a teacher, she has taught students who lived in shelters, were victims of abuse and more. The common thread she found was that all of her students needed consistent attention and care from their parents and an opportunity to be successful.

"Parents need to be tuned into with what their children are listening to," she says. "Kids need unconditional love and boundaries. Parents can't just sit their kids in front of a TV when they should be checking their children's homework each night. If their children are having difficulties in school then parents must search for resolutions, so that young people can make better decisions. We also need to bring the community back. Parents, teachers, neighbors and hip-hop artists need to work together so that we can prepare our kids for brighter futures."

So, not only does Tachelle have a powerful novel, she also has a mission to make a positive impact in the hip-hop community one reader at a time.

Tachelle's next stop on her promotional book tour is Friday (October 2), where she'll be stopping by the Le Grand Dakar Restaurant on 285 Grand Avenue in Brooklyn, NY.

The event starts at 7 PM and ends at midnight. For more information, people should contact: thehuffreport@aol.com.

Hip Hip Leadership DVD by KRS-One

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=26136870&blogId=495617289

New Video: Mr. J Medeiros - Constance

Check out my full album:http://www.mrjmedeiros.com/

Constance is a story about a girl in the Philippines victimized by Human Trafficking. It was directed by Sam Sanchez of Stick Productions in 2006. Special thanks to Nakeism Labs. It has spread like wildfire via YouTube, and has inspired an international human rights movement called the "Constance Campaign." Mr. J spearheaded the movement and has partnered with Non-Profit's like IamComing.org, XXXChurch, and HumanTrafficking.org. In May 2007, Constance was featured on CBS Evening News in an expose' on internet pornography

In Quiet Switzerland, Outspoken Rapper Takes on the Far Right

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/arts/music/28abroad.html?ref=world

In Quiet Switzerland, Outspoken Rapper Takes on the Far Right

By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
ZURICH — A version of the culture wars, albeit a Swiss version, has been unfolding here beyond the boxes of geraniums and shops hawking $10,000 watches.

Switzerland’s leading rapper, Stress, has come out with a new album, “Kings, Pawns and Bishops.” After provoking a minor scandal a few years ago with a song whose title had an expletive before the name of Christoph Blocher, the leader of the ultranationalist Swiss People’s Party, the country’s most popular party, Stress dishes out some more of the same this time.

In person a cordial 30-year-old immigrant from Estonia (born Andres Andrekson), Stress was raised by his mother in Lausanne and is married to a former Miss Switzerland. After college, he worked at Procter & Gamble on the Swiss Mr. Clean account. His last album went double platinum here, which for a nation of 7.6 million, culturally split among German, French and Italian speakers, meant sales topped 85,000.

Mr. Blocher, a chemicals tycoon, himself descended from Swabian immigrants from Germany (not that he makes a point of it), was until the end of 2007 the country’s justice minister. Now 68, he rose to political power as leader of the Swiss People’s Party: demonizing immigrants (in a country whose population is 20 percent foreigners, mostly Western Europeans), bashing the European Union, trumpeting privatization, lowering taxes and advocating traditional values.

The program resonated with big money and rural voters. The Swiss People’s Party won 29 percent in the last election, the highest percentage of any party, and about as high as any far-right party in Western Europe has won.

Culture has played its role. Mr. Blocher used his own collection of works by 19th-century painters like Albert Anker and Ferdinand Hodler in shows he organized to illustrate what he has said represent wholesome Swiss ideals: women in the home, farmers milking cows, a nation historically separated from outsiders by more than just mountains.

It was after Mr. Blocher’s party helped to defeat a 2004 referendum that would have made it easier for the children and grandchildren of immigrants to obtain Swiss passports that Stress wrote his song about Mr. Blocher. “There is no cursing in it,” he was keen to point out over lunch the other day. Members of Mr. Blocher’s party naturally accused the rapper of provoking a fuss to sell records, which it did. “But the song really was about telling young people, after the referendum failed, that we shouldn’t think we can’t make a difference,” Stress said. “The referendum failed because young people didn’t vote for it.”

Stress wasn’t the only Swiss artist to attack Mr. Blocher and the Swiss People’s Party. The artist Thomas Hirschhorn designed a multimedia exhibition at the Swiss Cultural Center in Paris. “Blocher is not a dictator,” Mr. Hirschhorn allowed at the time. “But he legitimizes Swiss xenophobia, isolationism, nationalism.” Infuriated conservatives slashed $1.1 million from the $38.9 million annual budget for the government-financed foundation that runs the center. A committee to promote folk music and more traditional Swiss arts, the kinds Mr. Blocher likes, was devised.

The response belonged to a broader cultural agenda by the People’s Party. “We call it the Americanization of Swiss politics,” explained Pascal Sciarini, who runs the political science department at the University of Geneva. “Crime has remained the same in recent years, but Blocher and his allies cultivate a sense of insecurity by running a permanent political campaign, particularly against immigrants, and this resonates with Swiss people who fear change and find comfort in traditional 19th-century values.”

Jérôme Meizoz, a political researcher at the University of Lausanne, elaborated. “Culture is not the major part of the People’s Party platform. But it’s been useful in spreading the view that the left controls the arts and the universities, so that there needs to be a counter model, more American, with private foundations, not public subsidies, except, of course, for exhibitions featuring nationalistic painters like the ones Blocher collects and concerts of yodeling or Glockenspiel.”

Stress laughed at that remark, when it was later recounted. “Blocher’s Switzerland is people in the mountains making cheese,” he said. “But you also have a Switzerland where people struggle to make ends meet. His party doesn’t represent the Switzerland where I grew up, which is made up of people who came to build the country, literally to build its buildings and streets. The Swiss People’s Party campaigns by using Osama bin Laden in posters about the threat of immigration. For me this is just unfair.”

He added: “Swiss people are not used to speaking their minds. The left wing parties haven’t wanted to lower themselves by reacting to Blocher’s tactics. So I just felt there had to be some reaction.”

Yuval and Shantala Dishon, a husband-and-wife duo, run a street theater company called Zanco in Geneva. Zanco staged its own protest, after a different referendum making it especially tough to gain asylum here passed with 68 percent of the vote in 2006. The company put on a show that toured the city’s public schools and neighborhoods. It told the story of a village that closed its doors to a foreigner and ended up never even learning who he was.

“Being politically outspoken is not usual for the cultural community here, we’re a quiet country, but some things need to be said,” Mr. Dishon said. “For more than 400 years, this city has been at least 30 percent foreigners. We live on a street called Swiss Village. Back in 1896 there was a fair here and bits of Swiss architecture from different cantons were combined to make houses on our street that supposedly represented Swiss culture. It’s the same thing Blocher’s party is doing by saying that Swiss flag tossing and the Alpenhorn represent the real Switzerland.”

Shantala Dishon pointed out a People’s Party poster in which native-born Swiss were white sheep, kicking a black sheep off the country’s flag. (The United Nations condemned it as racist.) The party also showed Swiss leftists as red rats, eating public money.

“Blocher’s party claimed the black sheep did not represent black people, but then it also put out an advertisement with black hands trying to grab a Swiss passport,” she noted. “It was in code, but in a code everyone could understand.”

Mr. Sciarini, the political scientist, went a bit further. “The party plays with the red line of racism without crossing it,” he said, “which means that no leader of the party is publicly racist but there’s still a strong message conveyed.”

Mr. Blocher declined a request to talk. Shunning the Swiss governing principle of collegiality and consensus as justice minister, he was kicked off the federal council by fellow parliamentarians, replaced by another member of his own party. Even so, his tough-on-crime, immigrants-out, traditional-values platform is still popular, notwithstanding that the Swiss economy and the overall low level of crime here, unlike in other parts of Europe, remain relatively stable. “It’s all a question of perception and political marketing,” is how Mr. Sciarini put it.

On one track, “The Fear of the Other,” from his new album, Stress asks, “Why do we let politicians manipulate our fears?” He began a song on his previous album, “Renaissance,” in German, pretending to telephone Mr. Blocher’s party headquarters, asking to speak with the former minister, “my friend.” Then he switches to French:

My Switzerland sees its future in multiculturalism.

My Switzerland doesn’t see mosques and minarets as a threat.

My Switzerland is open, pro-European

And she doesn’t make a fuss about granting citizenship to foreigners.

For Switzerland, that’s down and dirty political rap.

“No more talk — action,” Stress declared on the same song with Gries and Bligg, two German-speaking Swiss hip-hop stars, who went on to implore young people to vote. Stress included them to make sure his message crossed the country’s biggest language barrier.

This being Switzerland, the rappers added, “even if it means we have to be controversial.”