Youth Be Heard, Youth Be Seen

BY Ari, November 5, 2009

What do hip-hop and GPS have in common? For many, hip-hop provides a voice for those who have trouble being heard. Hip hop and social justice have gone together almost since the first MCs and DJs got together in New York, with artists like Run DMC and KRS-One giving the outside world a glimpse into the positivity and plight that characterized the communities they grew up and lived in. Everything from “Christmas in Hollis” to “Sound of da Police” brought us vividly into Queens and the South Bronx, and shone a light on communities that were scarcely known outside New York, let alone the boroughs these neighborhoods are in. Now the South Bronx and Hollis are legendary, and the old days of invisibility seem to be behind us.

But today, in other parts of the world, such as the favelas or shantytowns of Brazil, there are many communities that remain largely invisible.

Now, full disclosure: many of us at World Up have a soft spot for Brazil and particularly its second largest city, Rio de Janeiro, because for many of us, Rio has been a source of great inspiration and innovation both in hip-hop and other artforms. So it shouldn’t be surprising that hip-hop and other forms of underground music and culture like baile funk and graf writing have thrived here, again lending a voice to the voiceless, but what is novel is the new ways in which these communities are trying to make themselves seen by literally putting themselves on the map.

Physorg.com has a fascinating story of young women in Rio who use their GPS-enabled cell phones to map the very streets they live on, streets that often have no names or markings other than the identifiers that community members themselves use. Rede Jovem or Youth Net is an organization founded by the women in the Santa Marta favela that is using GPS to give virtual form to their physical surroundings, legitimizing these neighborhoods for the outside world to see.

This sentiment was echoed by Alina dos Santos Silva, one of the reporters assisting with the project who said, “People think that there’s nothing here but violence. But I want to show them! The favelas are, above all, places of life, of meetings.”

I think KRS-One would be proud.

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