Hip Hop and Graffiti Revolution: A Video Manifesto
EPATU stands for Popular School for the Arts and Urban Traditions, but it is also Spanish for ‘Hey you’. The schools, developed jointly with the Venezuelan Ministry for Communes, are non-formal spaces for youth to learn rap, break dancing, graffiti, and DJ, and are an alternative to the consumerism, violence, and criminal life that young people are often exposed to..
EPATU Manifesto
Transcription:
Group: We are a School
Male1: We take on militancy and we learn to be rebels
Male2: Always inventing
Male3: From the grassroots
Male4: Because we base our knowledge on experience and invention
Male5: Producing
Male6: And generating a space for thought and discussion
Female1: Aiming for the inside (of ourselves)
Male7: And aiming for the endogenous
Male8: Inviting our people to investigate
Male9: To discuss, to activate, and to collectivise
Male10: Making art
Female2: Inclusive
Female3: Born from the people
Male11: What you don’t see in museums
Male12: Something you want to show.
Male13: The art of creating and of the collective with the word
Male14: Painting!
Female4: With the body, sound, and spirit
Male15: Accompanying traditions
Male16: Because rage is our ancestor
Child1: Blacks!
Child2: Indigenous!
Child3: Llaneros (inhabitants of the plains)
Child4: Gave rise to our arts
Male17: And they integrated them into one single movement
Male18: An inheritance transmitted through drums and
Male19: Decima poetry
Male20: The beats of Joropo (a Venezuelan dance)
Female5: And the feet of a dancer
Male21: That are based on urban expressions
Male22: That encourage respect for the original (inhabitants)
Female6: For the social
Male23: For our roots, for the appropriation of spaces that belong to us
Male24: To achieve the demolishment of the system
Male25: That oppresses us
Male26: Making revolution
Male27: Communicating an alternative for advancing and constructing
Male28: We do it through communicating
Child5: (through) the people
Female7: (through) rebellion
Male29: (through) what isn’t sold.
EPATU stands for Popular School for the Arts and Urban Traditions, but it is also Spanish for ‘Hey you’. The schools, developed jointly with the Venezuelan Ministry for Communes, are non-formal spaces for youth to learn rap, break dancing, graffiti, and DJ, and are an alternative to the consumerism, violence, and criminal life that young people are often exposed to. Instead, the schools focus on developing cultural, social, and collective awareness.
Transcription and notes by Tamara Pearson for Venezuelanalysis,com
