Colombia Offers Passion for Hip Hop, Renews Vision of Universal Language
It didn't Help that my government name and my place of birth are identical to a supposed terrorist who was captured and convicted years ago, for allegedly having ties to al qaeda. Although I'd been hassled before on basically every flight I've ever taken since 9/11, nothing had been equivocal to my first international flight. It was straight out of a James Bond movie. I was surrounded, insulted and harassed about my identity by airport police. After a call to Washington D.C. and a twenty minute wait, I was cleared by the NSA. Their insincere apology only exaggerated my want to fly as far as possible. It was only the beginning of what was soon to be a interesting trip.
We were culture shocked as the plane landed tightly on the strip. Slowing to a halt the picture from my lens focused on a country so rich and green yet so stained with the stigma of government propaganda, police brutality, military repression and to what American media has trained our minds to believe that Colombia was just a mountain of cocoa leaves, coffee beans and poppy seeds (of which we have been for decades the largest of all importers). I let the high altitude air affect my breathing patterns on its own. I didn't allow the rumors of kidnapping for ransom spoil my impression. I was here only to witness their concept of hip-hop in first person and then some. Meeting the promoters at the airport, I could see a welcoming smile cracking through their faces and in a genuine handshake, I felt how much of an impact we were leaving just in our arrival.
We quickly stuffed ourselves in a pint sized taxi towards the hotel. During the drive I was surprise to see more vegetation then concrete, still innocent to corporate colonization and a breeze free from impurities. The thought that, for three years these young, ambitious promoters from Bogota and Medellin sought to bring our music to Colombia, was humbling. As persuasive as the offer was we initially needed this trip for more then financial reasons, it was our moral obligation as emcees, fellow Latinos and fans, to support the same occupation that saved us from identical conditions we faced in America. I was educated on how the seed of Hip-hop was planted years ago by a few defectors and exiles from America, who had either enough of unaffordable living or whom did time in the Bing somewhere, and were forcefully deported back to Colombia. Born and raised in East New York, Brooklyn to Puerto Rican parents who allowed me to follow my dreams although, hip hop sacrificed my further studies, I couldn't be more grateful. Rapping kept us writing, beat boxing gave us rhythm, break dancing kept us in shape, graffiti kept us artistic; Hip-hop gave us character. It kept us busy from the distractions of drugs, home complications and a boatload of inactivity that would've destroyed our motivation.
English became the necessary language and Spanish my secondary language. Subsequently the company of Spanish words barely being thrown around, slowly staggered to their death, along with the lisp and the accent, and all the stereotypes a wisecrack could think of. Thank God I'd digested enough Spanish quotes in my adolescents to help me survive a trip of this magnitude. I never felt like a fish out of water during my time in Colombia. I learned from artists that came and went before my visit and saw and understood with the same obvious appreciation, that the uprising of hip-hop here was no different than the Bronx in the 70s and 80s. However, it seemed more meaningful here. Colombians don't take Hip-hop for granted. They understand it's a privilege like a four year scholarship, free health care or the freedom of speech, even in its current political turmoil. At times there were dialects, slang and mom and pop quotes that I could not make out, that occasionally made it a bit hard to communicate. But the friendships and experiences, and the realization that struggle, poverty, oppression and death have no national boarder, hip hop and humanity equaled us.
Eventually our mutual understandings will bridge the gap, even if it was only of coca cola, President Bush and hip-hop.
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