Cultures of Resistance

The famous "City of God" slum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is a site of abandonment, where vital social services are lacking and the only government presence is the police. Hip-hop artist MV Bill is one of many residents who are determined to change the community by both steering youth away from violence and altering public perceptions.

Cultures of Resistance teamed up with Hich Kas to produce this track and video to expose some of the diversity of Iranian culture not shown in western media, and to invite people to take another look at Iran and its people.

Cultures of Resistance has collaborated Shadia Mansour and Lowkey on numerous occasions. The artists two toured with Norman Finkelstein for his book tour and they took part in a CoR-supported initiative to teach Palestinian youths about hip hop and graffiti. Check out this short film that follows them during a day they spent in New York City.

The language of music is universal. Although each culture produces its own specific musical forms, the appeal that these forms hold is not limited to any particular time or place. Like the other arts, music is able to transcend the arbitrary boundaries that humans devise to separate themselves from others.

First inspired by the Israeli military’s bombing of Lebanon in 1982, British musician Muslimgauze channeled his compassion for the Arab peoples into his unique, uncategorizable hybrid of genres. Now, ten years after his death, music writer Ibrahim Khider’s new book takes a look back at the artist’s political influence on the electronica scene.

As the inventor of the escopetarra—a rifle transformed into a guitar—Cesar Lopez breathes life into instruments of death. In response to the violence that has plagued his home in Bogota, Colombia, Lopez has discovered a way to channel this violence into "art, where creation triumphs over destruction."

In early December 2010, Cultures of Resistance traveled to Nairobi, Kenya, to film at the first annual Gatwitch Festival, organized by international hip-hop star and former child soldier Emmanuel Jal. The festival brought together artists and intellectuals from Africa and abroad to put forward a positive message about the potential of the continent’s people.

We often engage with musical practices as strategies of resistance that may be cathartic, communicative, and subversive. The Sound of Resistance endeavers to be an ever growing encyclopedia of the traditions of musical development and resistance in countries throughout the world.