Blog Post #4

 

Rebel Diaz Concert & Workshop

At first, I was very skeptical of the workshop that Rebel Diaz was hosting because I was worried that it was going to be something along the lines of "Our president is awful! We need to get him out of office! This is all his fault" because from what I have researched about them, they really do not like our president. I do have to say that they exceed my expectations and established a strong ethos with me due to the sheer amount of research they seem to have done in the subject matter that they discussed with us.

Something about the workshop that was surprising to me was how the Bronx used to look like an absolute warzone. I have lived in small towns my entire life and I have never seen such a rough looking place. I also did not expect a place in the U.S, AKA "The Best Country" to look like that. People should not have to live in such conditions and I feel incredibly powerless to help enact change. Something that was fairly interesting about the concert is how the rappers worked personal stories into the concert. I know that it was a very small audience so that is probably why they did it, but still, it felt like they were constantly trying to connect with me and it was different from other concerts that I have attended in the past.

Throughout the workshop and concert, Rebel Diaz engaged with the issue of memory by means of referencing people that were important to the founding of Hip Hop such as DJ Kool Herc, who is known as the father of hip hop. Also, they referenced how their music uses aspects of Chilean New Song music because Viktor Hara is one of the brother's idols. All of these things are used in terms of memory because the people mentioned are symbols of hip hop and the aspects of Chilean New Song that they use in their music help people remember what times were like back during the Chilean dictatorship.

(I am not quite sure how to answer the last question. I am going to inquire more about hegemony and counter-hegemony as I am still having trouble defining the terms and applying them).