Although not particularly a fan of hip-hop musically, the hip-hop scene amuses me to no end. Some people think of hip hop as a tool for social change and a method of channeling anger in more productive ways, while others see it as a degrading force that alienates communities, promotes violence, and degrades music. Personally, like many other “tools,” I think it manages to do both, depending on how its being used, but surely, with all the passion and “words” in hip hop, many young people are using hip hop culture to reach out in their communities to sing about their societies and thoughts.

In the Arab world, where self-expression is not exactly a familiar concept, the hip-hop culture, recently discovered, is starting to boom as teenagers born into the hip-hop generation uncover it as a tool to put out their voices and ideas into the world. Last year, I blogged about DAM, a Palestinian hip-hop band that make music about their life in the Occupied Territories, as well as about “Slingshot”, a documentary about the Palestinian hip-hop culture. Many similar bands are stemming up all around the Arab world.

On a more local scene, the message is no where near as powerful, but I think that it is still a great step into the realm of self-expression and a great opportunity at creating alternative channels of channeling energy and anger other than cartoons.

Today, we went to a show called Harakat, which is actually the grand finale of a two week hip-hop dance workshop funded by the EU and choreographed by Samir Bakhat and Sam Revell. The performance was performed by 15 young Jordanians between the ages of 15 and 21 at the Hussein Cultural Center in Ras El-Ein. The end of the show featured a special segment for a local rap band called Sharq. The slogan of the show was “Move… Express… Dance…”

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The show was really impressive, I can’t believe that they trained for that in only two weeks. I have also never seen the hall so crowded at any event before, not even flamenco, and I have never seen the audience so excited. Everyone was going crazy over the beats, the energy was just fantastic.

Here are some terrible quality videos of the event. The music was actually much louder, but you can’t really hear much of it because of the high energy levels.

The first video is of different snippets from the entire hour;

The second video is of the Sharq performance;

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