Colombia City Combines Gardening and Hip Hop to Revive Community

[Judi Lynn]

Colombia City Combines Gardening and Hip Hop to Revive Community

Translation posted 1 June 2016 22:58 GMT


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Hiphopper “El Aka” and another participant practicing Agro-Art. Photo by Louise Møller, previously published at Rapolitics.org and AgroArte. Used with permission.
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Translation
Original Quote

If hip hop is the street, and below the street there's earth, we are these plants that grow through the cracks in the pavement. The cement is a way to pave over what's really happening—to say that nothing's wrong.

The quote above belongs to the hip hop artist “El Aka”, who says there's a link between his music and agriculture. He works with excluded youths from Comuna 13 in Medellín, Colombia, where he founded the program “Seeds of the Future”, which marries—unconventionally, for many people—hip hop and agriculture. El Aka says one of the most important ways to cultivate a sense of community is to blend “the recuperation of memory” and “the visibility” of people living in a particular area.

“Seeds of the Future” is dedicated to the young people overlooked in Medellín's recent urban improvements. Medellín, a city once best known for drug trafficking, is today miraculously renowned for its urban innovations. But this shimmering legacy doesn't belong to everyone, El Aka says:

Translation
Original Quote

In a city that they're describing as innovative, we say that it's becoming more deadly. [The same day] that they gave the city this title, 25 youths were killed.

Hip hop is an international urban culture movement that embraces the following four elements: graffiti, break dance, rap, and DJs. In Medallo (as the residents of Medellín refer to their city), hip hop has been an important trend since the 1980s—especially in the city's lower-income neighborhoods. Many young people grow up admiring their local “hiphopper” idols and dream of someday gaining celebrity on the local scene, as well. In a country like Colombia, which has been in a state of internal war for more than 60 years, and in a city like Medellín, which has been one of the roughest, bloodiest areas of the country, hip hop has played a vital role in popular resistance, in the creation of memory, and the weaving together of a fragmented society.

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More:
https://globalvoices.org/2016/06/01/colombia-city-combines-gardening-and-hip-hop-to-revive-community/#

(Video is 23:40, in Medellin)