I ♥ Hip Hop in Morocco

My husband showed me the I ♥ Hip Hop in Morocco site today, the home base for a form intercultural dialogue of what its film school and hiphopping creators are calling "hip hop diplomacy," all through documentary film and live performance.

These festivals, like the Slam ou Klam Festival in Fes (I think it shows a lot that one of Morocco's most "traditional" Arab cities is also the home to such an innovative world music scene) featuring improv rap slamming, DJ spinning, breaking and musical performance by Morocco's most prominent artists are receiving support not only from a small number of Americans who are plugged into the scene there, but more importantly from the American government in Morocco itself. It's so cool that chose to develop this program with the support of his Fulbright scholarship.

The author of The Morocco Report makes two good points on her blog :

"So, what do I think? Well, I live with a hip hop loving husband who seems to feel that it’s gone too far here - that Moroccan rappers are throwing American gang signs and wearing Yankees caps when they’ve never even seen a televised baseball game. He feels that a lot of international hip hop artists simply parrot the originals, that their use of words like “nigga” is simply ingenuine. On that note, I tend to agree."

"But more than that, in my own classroom, I have seen how hip hop lyrics are the most understood facet of American culture. I have watched a fellow teacher use hip hop as a learning tool and have seen the results. I personally believe hip hop, as a musical style, to be an art form, and a tool for activism. It has changed the American landscape over its past thirty-odd years of mainstream existence and is clearly filling in some gaps in the youngest generation. "

Man, I could just spend a year travelling around Morocco going to every different festival; there's at least one every month -come to think of it, that would make a great travel show for something like Lonely Planet etc...

If the I Love Hip Hop in Morocco film comes to your local film festival (see the site for tour dates) I highly suggest you check it out -reviews so far have claimed that it's very well done.

Peace.