South African Hip Hop Museum is back up and running

As I made my way up the stairs that seemed to be going round and round endlessly, and I must say for the unfit that should have proved to be a good way of losing that extra weight. After all we have just come out of a festive season and you know what happens during that time when it comes to how some among us suddenly find food to be extraordinarily more delicious than during the whole year.
But these steps were necessary and for some, even the pain of shedding the extra weight accumulated over the festive season of gluttony was necessary. After all we were summoned here by the Minister of Arts and Culture Nathi Mthethwa to witness the launch of a weighty cultural project, especially among the ranks of young people pursuing their dreams within the highly competitive hip hop sector.

We were at Museum Africa in Newtown on Thursday, February 3, 2022, for one of the greatest reveals in the history of South African hip hop, and by extension, even globally. You see, although there are moves in the US to establish a Hip Hop Museum, South African Hip Hop  promoter and its most prominent advocate, the man behind the popular Back to the City Festival and the foremost hip hop Awards in the country, Osmisc Menoe pulled a fast one on the American hip hop establishment. He and his mates were faster as they miraculously managed to get there before the Americans.  After all the US the place where hip hop originated in the 60s as a form of youth expression in the streets as the black youth grappled with a host of problems ranging alienation from mainstream culture  to unemployment and hopelessness in a place where black people are generally pushed onto the margins of society and are a minority. As iit were they invented hip hop to express themselves and the art form has since spread all over the world.
South Africa in Africa is certainly a leader when it comes to the genre of hip hop, as a performance art form, a recorded music form and as a cultural movement. In fact hip hop has grown phenomenally in South Africa over the years, pioneered by early exponents of the art form , notably Prophets of Da City (POC) that took the art form to heart, expressing their own feelings of social alienation in their own country, adopting it from its American roots and adapting it as an art form of the Cape Flats in Cape Town, to heal  a population of youth whose life was wracked by drugs, alcoholism,  gangsterism and other ills.

“Hip Hop gave me that option as I got attracted to community projects run by Prophets of DA City. As a youngster still at high school growing up in a crime and gangster ridden place like Mitchell’s Plain, I stopped and though carefully about what options were available to me> I could continue being a gang member and look cool, or I could become a dancer. I chose to become a dancer. I travelled the world, sharing stages with too international artists one could only imagine about. I was still at High school when I did this and you can imagine what that did to me. Each time after travelling and performing internationally I could come back to Mitchell’s Plain, and try to tell the youth who in their entire life had never been on a bus, never been to a beech and it was unbelievable.  Hip Hop is life and Hip Hop has the ability to heal communities, unite people and in fact have been wondering for sometime why does the United Nations not use hip hop to unite people because hip hop has that ability,” said a Hip Hop cat called Vox at the launch.
He added that the fact that he was given a platform to share his journey at the launch of South African Hip Hop Museum is testimony to the fact that the art form has a healing quality, otherwise he would not be there did he not encounter Hip Hop in the Cape Flats.
Amu, a hip hop legend, who in the 90s was one of the stars of the movement, dominating in especially clubs with his fresh sound and travelling internationally to represent the Hip Hop movement, also had an opportunity to add his voice and his appreciation for the government’s support to the Hip Hop Museum, and addressing Mthethwa directly he said: “Grotman, it was a journey we travelled with you till we reached this day in as far as the South African Hip Hop Museum’s establishment is concerned. I am old now and my time in Hip Hop is over. What i concentrate on is to mentor young people, producing them and making sure that they get an opportunity in the game.  We are grateful that government has financially supported this museum, and we will keep coming back. That we will do believe me. But that the Hip Hop movement wants from government is not necessarily monetary support. More than anything else we need moral support, and support in different ways other than always financially. For example If a young Hip Hop artists is performing in the US, the South African diplomat there, an Ambassador would invite him for dinner and that way the American fans would be impressed and respect the artist even more  and take him even more seriously. Again for example, If South African Airways, and I want to believe it is back in the skies, is flying to the US, the government would help with tickets for A Hip Hop artist and his crew. This is the kind of support we are talking about other than financial,” Amu said.