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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