kvarterakademisk - Akademisk kvarter - Aalborg Universitet

akademiskacademic quarterkvarterThe Rise of the UndergroundMoulay Driss El Maaroufin life are looking for that.` Josef stop for a second and goon, `if you look at hip hop in Palestine right now. Peopleare surrounded by a wall. They cannot move. They cannotleave, but music breaks the wall. Music gives them thechance `to fly` -here he uses his fingers to draw quotes inthe air- as clichéd as it is , but music gives them freedom.Music, according to Joseph, leads to freedom, or the illusion of freedom.I think it is necessary, when dealing with Africa, to speakabout freedom and the illusion of freedom, democracy and the illusionof democracy, order and the illusion of order, love and the illusionof love, peace and the illusion of peace. These are concepts thatcome with their shadows. It is interesting to ponder how the illusionof freedom could substitute freedom and act like its model.Joseph mentions how music breaks the wall, how repressed peopletranscend their reality(the wall) through music to attain freedom. However, realityhas it that the wall is always there. In the Moroccancontext, Big the Donn together with all the subculture artistsI interviewed reflect a grim and miserable undergroundreality, this being music that hinges on social realismto break the wall, which in its basic functions restrainsthe freedom of both individuals and groups. All of themuse language to refer to the problem, which should otherwisestay unspoken. The problem (the wall, poverty, corruption,and the like) stays. However, these musicians findthe platforms available (festivals) to speak and be heard.Festival promulgates, driven by artistic imagination ofboth artists and organizers, into positioning transgressionin a liminal space between power and the illusion of power,between singular demonstration and collective demonstration,between the festival and the street, between resistanceand trance, or what I call resistrance. The termresistrance hinges on contradictory states, reality and reverie,violence and peace, puppeteered transgression andexpression, dispatch and receipt, power and vulnerability,soberness and drunkenness, rage and elation, integrationand alienation, tension and relief, control and stupor. Re-Volume03 45