Rap, this ability to think and act on the world in the form of cadenced verse, punctuated by the rhythm of the DJ, has words as its raw material. And words, they say, carry weight, they have power. Rap, with this strength, has changed the world, affirming itself as a place of speech for so many communities that never had this space for intervention before. But rap wasn't born of spontaneous generation: in America, the modern poet-griots, from Gil Scott-Heron to the Last Poets, tuned their words to a music that was black and urgent, inventive and of the future. When those records were heard in the Bronx, another revolution took place that brought us here, to a world in which the art of creating something out of nothing is still valid, a world in which hip hop may stroll along at the top of the sales charts, but its roots are still buried deep in a sacred ground where all the words ever spat in front of a microphone rest, while back there boom and bap were heard in such perfect patterns that they moved the world forward. Nothing has changed. But everything is different now. (Rui Miguel Abreu)
Speakers: Capicua, Fábio Gonçalo Silva
Moderator: Rui Miguel Abreu