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Tunisia's neglected youth find their voice in hip hop, rap
On the roof of a concrete building in an impoverished Tunis neighborhood, hip hop beats pound out from a PC hooked up to cheap speakers.
Under graffiti-daubed cloth, young men in sweatpants and baseball caps breakdance, popping and locking robotically to the rhythm thumping around them. Rappers from local hip hop group Zone 5 snarl back and forth lines they’ve just written about police, poverty and smoking pot.
Zone 5 rapper Mohamed Ayari and other Tunisian youth are getting out their message of rage about life on the fringes in post-revolution Tunisia through a perhaps surprising channel: hip hop.
“You see what the system does? We write a graffiti message up on the wall and they call it ‘provocation’ and the police come after us. But why do they call it provocation?” the 23-year-old said during a break in rehearsals for an upcoming show. “It’s because we’re pointing out their faults, their weaknesses. No one wants to hear about their weaknesses.”
Since overthrowing its long-ruling dictator in 2011, Tunisia has had a string of elections and is being hailed as “the success story” of the region. But the new men in charge look very much like the old ones, with an 88-year-old president and ministers that all cut their teeth in previous administrations. Despite spearheading the revolution, Tunisia’s youth are still feeling sidelined, and one of the few ways they are getting their voices heard is through rap — shouting to anyone who will listen that all is not well in Tunisia.
Source: www.mercurynews.com