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The Arts and Globalisation
The Arts stimulate connections between people. They are a form of expression often used to promote social change and stand up for human rights. Incorporating a global dimension when teaching and leaning through the Arts provides a dynamic and enriching experience. Here are just some of the places that Arts and the global dimension meet.
From the prehistoric rock paintings of Bhimabetaka in India to Mayan weaving and from ancient Inca music to Gaelic folk songs, artists have been capturing stories and experiences for thousands of years up to the present day.
Travel, trade, migration and new technologies all lead to fresh conceptions of artistic form. For example, Bollywood dancing has been influenced by hip-hop, jazz and funk.
Globalisation brings with it both the opportunity to affirm the value of human diversity and a threat to cultural identities where languages and cultural traditions are disappearing. Yet artistic forms and styles can be used to reassert identities. For example, people transported as slaves to the Americas were forced to repress their cultural traditions. Despite this, song and storytelling was developed as a means of resistance and blues, gospel and jazz helped to shape African-American identity. Today many African musicians use rap and hip-hop as an expression of defiance, protest and social conscience.
Just as the Arts can be used as propaganda, so it can also act as a social conscience where rights and freedom are under threat. Satirical songs, drama and cartoons are all ways in which artists highlight hypocrisy and abuse of power. Cultural and artistic freedoms have even been written into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Rap music with a political or social message can be a powerful force for those challenging injustice. It can also symbolise aspirations for an alternative future.
Case Study – Tanzanian Rap
Bongo Flava isn't one style. It's rap, hip hop and R&B Tanzanian style: a big melting pot of tastes, history, culture and identity.
Although Bongo Flava is a purely Tanzanian phenomenon, its use of Swahili and its strong roots in the East African reality means that the music translates across borders with a growing fan-base throughout the East African region.
Bongo Flava mixes up a whole host of styles and influences from black American music -- hip hop, rap, R&B, soul, swing - and black American culture -- the clothes, attitude and street look. All of these ingredients are combined with what East Africans have played with for decades -- music styles such as African jazz, salsa, zouk, taraab -- and the reality that is contemporary East Africa.
Bongo Flava lyrics are sung in Swahili peppered with words and phrases in English and tackle subjects faced by the continent and the world over: poverty, ambition, success, money, HIV/AIDS, education and experiences we can all relate to such as love, jealousy, beauty and loneliness. |
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