The Body and Soul of Club Culture

PEOPLE AND PLACES INTERVIEW PLANET Through Dogon eyes Quino, on the funny side of freedom The wildlife trade: poacher or gamekeeper? ETHICS Embargo against Iraq: crime and punishment Published in 27 languages July/August 2000 Cont ent s July/August 20 00 PEOPLE AND PLACES 3 Through Dogon eyes Text by Antonin Potovski,photos by Dogon youth Director: René Lefort Secretary, Director’s Office/Braille editions: Annie Brachet (Tel:(33) (0) 1.45.68.47.15) OPINION 11 Democracy in the light of dictatorship Alain Touraine PLANET 12 15 16 The wildlife trade: poacher or gamekeeper? Kenya’s elephants: no half measures Cuba defends the turtleshell trade Rolf Hogan Joan Simba Gerardo Tena WORLD OF LEARNING 17 19 20 Brit ain: sex education under fire The Dutch model Involve the young! 2 1 Focus 53rd year Published monthly in 27 languages and in Braille by the United Nations Educational,Scientific and Cultural Organization. 31,rue François Bonvin,75732 Paris Cedex 15 France Fax:(33) (0) 1.45.68.57.45 - (33) (0) 1.45.68.57.47 e-mail:[email protected] Internet:http://www.unesco.org/courier John Slater Guus Valk Interview with Dr. Pramilla Senanayake Yo u t h ’s sonic f o rce s One was born in the fire of New York’s ghettos, the other on the thudding dancefloors of the city’s underground clubs. If there are two genres that define a generation’s coming of age, hip-hop and electronic dance music would fit the bill. From Algeria to New Zealand, youth have seized upon their rhythm and beat to express anger and aspiration, while spawning new creative project s. But as cultures of resistance and rebellion go global, do they lose their spirit to become the standard-bearers of consumption? Detailed table of contents on page 21. Edit orial st aff (Paris) Editor in Chief: James Burnet English edition: Roy Malkin Spanish edition: Araceli Ortiz de Urbina French edition: Martine Jacot Ethirajan Anbarasan Sophie Boukhari Cynthia Guttman Lucía Iglesias Kuntz Asbel López Amy Otchet Translat ion Miguel Labarca Art and production unit: Georges Servat, Photoengraving: Annick Coueffé Illustrations: Ariane Bailey (Tel:(33) (0) 1.45.68.46.90) Documentation: José Banaag (Tel:(33) (0) 1.45.68.46.85) Liaison with non-Headquarters editions and press: Solange Belin (Tel:33 (0) 1.45.68.46.87) Administrative Assistant: Theresa Pinck (Tel:(33) (0) 1 45.68.45.86) Edit or ia l Co mm it t ee René Lefort (moderator), Jérome Bindé, Milagros del Corral, Alcino Da Costa, Babacar Fall, Sue Williams Non-headquart ers edit ions Russian:Irina Utkina (Moscow) German:Urs Aregger (Berne) Arabic: Fawzi Abdel Zaher (Cairo) It al i an:Gi ovanni Puglisi, Gianluca Formichi (Florence) Hindi:Shri Samay Singh (Delhi) Tamil:M.Mohammed Mustafa (Madras) Persian: Jalil Shahi (Teheran) Portuguese:Alzira Alves de Abreu (Rio de Janeiro) Urdu: Mirza Muhammad Mushir (Islamabad) Catalan:Jordi Folch (Barcelona) Malay:Sidin Ahmad Ishak (Kuala Lumpur) Swahili:Leonard J. Shuma (Dar-es-Salaam) Slovene: Aleksandra Kornhauser (Ljubljana) Chinese: Feng Mingxia (Beijing) Bulgarian:Luba Ranjeva (Sofia) Greek:Sophie Costopoulos (Athens) Sinhala:Lal Perera (Colombo) Basque:Juxto Egaña (Donostia) Thai:Suchitra Chitranukroh(Bangkok) Vietnamese:Ho Tien Nghi (Hanoi) Bengali:Kafil uddin Ahmad (Dhaka) Ukrainian: Volodymyr Vasiliuk (Kiev) Galician: Xabier Senín Fernández (Santiago de Compostela) Serbian:Boris Ilyenko (Belgrade) Circulat ion and promot ion Fax:(33) (0) 1 45.68.57.45 ETHICS 57 60 Embargo against Iraq:crime and punishment Embargo generat ion Sophie Boukhari Josette Tagher Roche SIGNS OF THE TIM ES 61 63 Toxins and the Taj Historic Lima gets a new heart T K Rajalakshmi Luis Jaime Cisneros CONNEXIONS 65 67 The South goes mobile “ Hello, I’m Calling from Parulia...” INTERVIEW 69 Quino, on the funny side of freedom Cover: © Rastoin Asbel Lopez Farid Ahmed Subscript ions and cust omer service Michel Ravassard (Tel:(33) (0) 1.45.68.45.91) Sales and subscription agents Mohamed Salal El Din (Tel:(33) (0) 1 45 68 49 19) Stock management and shipping Pham Van Dung (Tel:(33) (0) 1.45.68.45.94) Individual articles and photographs not copyrighted may be reprinted providing the credit line reads “ Reprinted from the UNESCO Courier” , plus date of issue, and three voucher copies are sent to the editor. Signed articles reprinted must bear author’s name. Non-copyright photos will be supplied on request. Unsolicited manuscripts cannot be returned unless accompanied by an international reply coupon covering postage. The UNESCO Courier is produced in microform (microfilm and/or microfiche) by: (1) UNESCO, 7 Place de Font enoy, 75700 Paris; (2) University Microfilms (Xerox), Ann Arbor, Michigan 48100 U.S.A.; (3) N.C.R. Microcard Edition, Indian Head Inc., 111 West 40th Street, New York, U.S.A.; (4) Bell and Howell Co., Old Mansfield Road, Woost er, Ohio 44691, U.S.A. IMPRIMÉ EN FRANCE DÉPOT LÉGAL : C1 - JULY 2000 COMMISSION PARITAIRE N° 71844 Diffusé par les N.M.P.P. The UNESCO Courier (USPS 016686) is published monthly in Paris by UNESCO. Printed in France. Periodicals postage paid at Champlain NY and additional mailing offices. Photocomposition and photoengraving: The UNESCO Courier. Printing:Maulde & Renou ISSN 0041-5278 No. 6-2000-OPI 99-592 A Signed articles express the opinions of the authors and do not necessarily represent the opinions of U NESCO or those of the editors of the U NESCO Courier. Photo captions and headlines are written by the U NESCO Courier staff. The boundaries on maps do not imply official endorsement or accept ance by UNESCO or the United Nations of the countries and territ ories concerned. P EO P L E A N D P L A CES THROUGH DOGON EYES ◗ Text by Antonin Potovski Long seen only through the lens of tourists, the Dogons have now started to photograph themselves. Seven young villagers record their own people’s gentle daily lives ■ In the D ogon villages at the foot of the Bandiagara cliff, or perched on the cliff-top overlooking the gr e at plain that stretches to the Burkina Fa so b o r d er , young people can always be found busily writing letters to tourists who have visited them. T hey fill sm all exercise books with captioned drawings of the villages’ t o u rist trademarks: the m asked dance, t h e fu n e r a ls, the water bearers, the togouna ◗ Antonin Potovski has been working as a photographer in Mali since 1996 and is preparing a book entitled Les cahiers dogons (“ The Dogon Notebooks” ). A forthcoming book prepared with Bernard Faucon, La Plus Belle Route du Monde (“ The World’s Most Beautiful Road” ), is soon to be published by POL. The following photographs are a selection from an exhibition taking place this fall at the French record store Fnac. (the hut where villagers discuss their problems) and the separate storage caves for m en and wo m e n . For three weeks in May 1999, a week in Septem ber the sam e year and another one in M ay 2000, I handed over m y digit a l camera to two girls aged 13 and 15 and five b oys between 15 and 2 9 so they could extend their effor ts at describing this wise and gentle world to photogr a p hy. D ogon teenagers rarely mess around. F rom a very early age, they are exposed to the hard work cr ucial for sur vival in a sem i-arid envir o n m en t . Since the villagers’ well-being depen ds on them and their invo lvem ent in a host of daily chores, t h e classic problems encountered by urban t e e n a ge rs are not felt here. If th eir pictures seem m at u r e , poised and perfectly fram ed—almost “ p r o fessio n a l” in appearance—the reason lies in the thoughtfulness and care they bring as much to the camera as to their daily tasks. T he boys took the camera with them on walks through the villages, or onto the gr eat sand dune where in the evening they practice wrestling for the festivities that fo llow work in the fie ld s, at the end of the r a iny season. T hey also ventured up steep p at h ways in th e cliff, piercing th rough openings in the rock, clim bing up ladders made of tree trunks notched with steps and dangling over th e void to reach the storage caves and grottoes of the ancient Tellem people (see box) , where today the D ogons bu ry their dead. T hese are sacred places which strangers are not allowed to visit , but where D ogon children frolic hapJuly/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 3 P EO P L E A N D P L A CES A pair of thongs rarely survives the young Dogons‘ long walks through the villages or along the great sand dune. p ily, p laying with human skulls and bones, and dressing up for fun in dance costumes stored in the centuries-old cave rn s. T he girls did not venture as far afie ld . T hey visited their fem ale friends and wen t for walks with them, taking photos of their village and their school, where wader birds and D ogon dancers are painted on the classroom wa lls. T hey also photogr a p h e d a sandstorm that whipped up one even in g behind the high m illet stems protecting th eir storage caves befor e p utting the cam era away m oments later to protect it from dust. M any of their photos were taken in court ya r d s, which are m uch more the domain of the village women than its m enfo lk. Aside from the unhurried time spent by the girls in the court ya r d s, taking shots of their frien ds talkin g, teasin g an d cracking jokes with one another, there is little difference between the pictures taken by m ale or fem ale hands. Until now, p h o t o graphic depictions of D ogon life have concentrated on cultural a nd social aspects, such as festivities, building styles, crafts and religious activit ie s. But when the D ogons them selve s take the pictures, they barely pay any at t ention to these feat u r e s. T he special charact eristics of their culture are not the subject; 4 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 in st e a d , they serve as a backdrop to much m ore persona l aspects of their live s. T h e y take photos of their gam es, t h e en co u n t ers that pepper their daily live s ,t h e long hours of enforced inactivity stretched out on straw m ats or on the scorching rocks until the terrific heat gives way to n igh t fa ll. O r their sorties to gather wild fru it , brought down from the treetops by t h r owing sticks, or hunting sm all anim als These young villagers had no notion of photography aside from the tourists’ legacy. with hom e-m ade cat a p u lt s. E very even in g I went through the photos, su rr o u n d e d b y a dozen people peer in g into th e c a m e r a ’s tiny viewe r , and decided which shots to keep and which to discard to make room on our diskettes for the next day’s sh o t s. O ut of 2,000 pictures taken, I kept 7 0 . T h e D ogons were more interested in seeing the photos they had taken than in the selection process. A b ove all, t h e y e n joyed wa n d e ring in search of ideas and being in charge of the cam era for a whole d ay. T hese young villagers had no notion of p h o t o gr a p hy aside from the tour i s t s ’ legacy: a few magazines cut out to decorat e the earthen walls of their bedrooms, so m e t r avel books about tribal peoples in which they feat u r e , and the sight of foreigners aim ing their lenses at the villages and its in h a b it a n t s. An im age they n ever saw, unless the tourists in question posted a few photos back to them as a mem ento of their visit. G iven that I was not around when the pictures were taken, the only advice I gave to the young photogr a p h e rs was what I said as the photos were being s o r ted ou t. T he ones we d id n’t keep because of a silly look on som eone’s fa c e , a bad angle or the wrong light proved very useful in explaining how a better picture could have been shot. O ver the cou rse of these m iniat u r e advice sessions, th e seven photogr a p h e rs st a rted to pay more attention to angles, fram in g an d light, as in one picture sh owing an assortment of items taken from one photogr a p h e r ’s room and arr a n ge d on a yellow earthen step.T he D ogons have n e ver seen nor heard of still-life, so they invented it to depict the colour of objects P EO P L E A N D P L A CES Scaling the cliffs where the Tellems once made their homes, hidden perilously high above the plains. At play in the trees: the Dogons snap their everyday lives. July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 5 P EO P L E A N D P L A C E S and adobe, and to show the delightful sunlight that stream s into a room. And wa nd ering in flip -flops along barely discern ib le p aths through the rocks, or in the m aze of p a ssa ge ways where houses stand am ong h uge rocks fallen from the cliff, or in the quiet of grottoes and court ya r d s, they also invented the first ph otograp hic record of the D ogons by the people them selve s. ■ Gathering wild fruit, a favourite pastime for young Dogons. Algeria Hunting for prey with home-made catapults. M ALI Mauritania Timbuktu Gao Mopti Niger Bamako Burkina Faso Guinea Côte-d’Ivoire “ THE ONES WE FOUND” A round 700,000 people live in Dogon country, a vast region 50,000 sq. km in size that stretches from the Burkina Faso border in the east to the area of Sévaré in the west. The land extends over the entire length of the 150 km Bandiagara cliff, which rises at times to 300 metres in height. The Dogon people hail originally from the Manding mountains on the border between Mali and Equatorial Guinea. As animists, the Dogons refused to convert to Islam and were forced into exile in the 18th century, moving up the Niger delta until they reached the protection of the plateau and the Bandiagara cliff. There, they made contact with a people who lived in the cliff-face and bequeathed their cultural legacy to the newcomers before disappearing in mysterious circumstances. They were the Tellem s; or, as the Dogons call them, “ the ones we found.” Nowadays, cultural tourism has developed along the great cliff. Encouraged by the Malian government, this new activity has helped impoverished villages take concerted action against the spread of the desert and work to improve health and education, while simultaneously imperilling one of humanity’s most extraordinary cultures. 6 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 A ritual disguise for the rainy season festivities. P EO P L E A N D P L A CES Inside the cliff grottoes, young explorers fi nd ancient dance costumes from the times of the Tellem. Stifl ing days made hotter by desert wind can make life unbearable. For most, it is an imposed time of rest. July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 7 P EO P L E A N D P L A C E S Photography was approached with the same care and dignity as any other daily task. Young girls gently tease each other in the village courtyards. 8 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 P EO P L E A N D P L A CES Villagers gather around the baobab trees to savour the day. A new school building, decorated with paintings of Dogon dancers, was inaugurated with a party for which the whole village chipped in. July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 9 P EO P L E A N D P L A C E S A sandstorm darkens the sky. To capture colour and light, the Dogons invented still-life anew. Objects sit on an earthen step. 10 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 OPINI ON DEMOCRACY IN THE LIGHT OF DICTATORSHIP ◗ Alain Touraine ■ General Pinochet has frequently insisted that his actions can only be judged in C hile since they were carried out on a national scale.T he existence of “Operation C o n d o r ,” h owe ve r , p r oves his claims are m isguided. T he dictat o rs of C hile, U ru gu ay, Brazil , Pa r a gu ay and Bolivia—along with security forces in Argentina even before that country’s coup in 1976—embarked on a programm e of co-operation aimed at killing their opponents or making them disappear . T hey decided to make Asuncion the headquarters of the programme, or rather their plans for eradication.H ence the interest in papers from the period found in Paraguay. T he documents that can be consulted in Asuncion are mainly police archives coverin g Paraguay alone. Besides, as is already known, the discovery of these files dates back to October 1992, when they were made available for viewing (albeit with some difficulty) through the Supreme C ourt. It is quite possible to argue from a strictly technical point of view that U N E SC O sh o u ld attach great importance to these archives. But the enormous interest stirred by these files and their details of disappearances and murders has given the “ a r ch ives of terr o r ” a wider symbolic importance.T his was clearly shown by the press coverage in many countries devoted to the joint mission organized by U N ESC O and a group of French specialists. 1 We are faced with a find that has aroused the deepest emotions. T hat is why we think it vital that U N E SC O o fficially show its interest in these files echoing the terrible events that d est r oyed dem ocracy in the southern cone of Am erica . I am convinced that , in the eyes of U N ESC O , the symbolic importance of these archives as perceived by public opinion must r ate as the chief consideration—and one that goes far beyond the simple contents of the files. T here is good reason to believe that other archives exist in various Paraguayan ministries and above all in the records of the armed forces or their intelligence services. D ocum ents are probably to be found in other countries. T he presidents of the nations involved should follow the exam ple of Brazilian President F. H . C a r d o so, who has opened his country’s military archives for viewing. O n a wider front, the tim e has come throughout Latin Am erica for m em ory to be r e ga in e d .M a ny people have held, in good faith or not, t h at the conflicts of the past had to be forgotten so a new future could be built.As a result,the past was set up in opposition to the future.T his is a mistake.A country or an individual that fails to face up to the past is unable, in general, to face up to the future. D em o cr acy cannot be built if the motives and ■ workings of dictatorships are not understood. ◗ Professor at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris 1. T his mission visited Asuncion in M ay 2000 following a request from the Paraguayan authorities for help in putting these files on the M emory of the World Register, one element of a programme aimed at safeguarding and promoting the documentary heritage of humanity to ensure records are preserved and available for consultation. July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 11 P L A N ET THE WILDLIFE TRADE: POACHER OR GAMEKEEPER? ◗ Rolf Hogan The decision to strictly limit or outrightly ban trading in endangered species regularly puts governments and conservationists before a critical dilemma ■ South Africa recently announced that it is ready to par t with 1,500 elephants which, it says, are destroying trees that other species depend on for their s u rvival in the countr y’s fam ous Kr u ge r N ational Pa r k. If there are no takers the anim als will be culled and their tusks added to South Afric a ’s bu lging ivo r y stockpile. T he South African offer highlights a critical dilemma facing all those concern ed with wildlife conservation:is it possible to protect endangered species like elephants and rhinoceros effectively if trade in wildlife p r o d u c t s, e ven on a one-off basis, is a llowed? South Africa is one of m any African countries which argue that a limited trade in wildlife product stockpiles should be allowed so that the proceeds can “ The key to using wildlife sustainably is good management but in many countries the resources or expertise are simply not avai l abl e.” be used to pay for conservat io n . G overnm ents and conser vation groups that are hostile to this approach claim that any kind of sale will stim ulate the illegal m arket, encourage m ore poaching and ultimat ely push species such as elephants and rhino closer to extinction. T he debate on this contro versial issue reaches a crescendo eve r y two or three ye a rs at the C onference of the Pa rties to the C onvention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CIT ES). T he convention has 151 member states which vote at the conference on proposals to limit or place an outright ban on intern ational trade ◗ Freelance writer on conservation issues 12 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 in species considered to be at risk (see box, p. 1 4 ) . At the CIT ES conference held in N airobi, Kenya, in April this year, calls to lift the ban on trade in products such as ivo r y, t u r tle shells and whales provo ke d fierce debate. While countries like Kenya and India opposed lifting the ban on the ivory trade, Japan and Norway wanted the ban on whaling lifted because, they said, the stocks of som e whales on the endangered list are healthy enough to withstand commercial harvestin g. After long deliberat ion s, the CIT ES part ies agreed to maintain the existing trade ban on ivory products, t u rtle shells and whale meat for the next three years. C onservationists no longer oppose the idea of wildlife being exploited per se. I f prop erly m anaged, they say, wildlife can provide food for impoverished rural populations and wildlife-based tourism can be an important source of income. H owever, the sustainable use of wildlife means striking a delicate balance. “ We only su p p o rt using wildlife where it is beneficia l to both the local comm unity and to th e ecosystem,” says G ordon Sheppard of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). “It is oversimplistic to ban trade,” says Jon H utton, director of Africa Resources Trust (ART ) , an N G O invo lved in com munity conservation schemes in southern Afric a . “ We need to assess the trade-offs and com e to a rational decision. We have to weigh up the profits from trade that can be reinvested in wildlife conservat io n , through funding government law enforcem ent or indirectly through providing an income for local communities, against the possible costs, such as an increased risk of poaching. “In much of Africa , wildlife represents a net cost. It can kill people and damage crops and is therefore eradicat ed , either deliberat ely or gradually by exclusion. More and more land is being converted to agricu lt u r e,even if it is marginal for livest ock, because rural people often have no altern at ive.ART is involved in schemes which return wildlife own ership to fa rm ers. T hey then have a choice between cattle and crops or wildlife, and in many cases, they choose the second. Wildlife can be sold three times: to tourist s, to sport h u n t ers, and finally as ivory and hides. T h e sale of wildlife products often brings in the most reven u e.T he sale of ivory and hides for example represents 80 per cent of the value of an elephant. Tou rism can bring in reven u e, but most of the profits are made by intern ational tour operat ors and not by local comm u n it ies. Sp o rt hunting on the other hand can bring in enormous revenue for the local community and it can be carried out in areas t h at may not be suited to tourism .” While the “ n o n -co n su m p t ive use” o f species for tourism is accepted by most wildlife organization s, some are against “ consu m p t ive use”—the killing of animals for food or profit . Animal welfare organizat ion s b elieve that it is alm ost impossible to exploit animals without severely affecting their popu lation s. “In prin cip le, it is a nice idea,” says Sarah Tyack of the Intern ational F und for Animal Welfare (IFAW ) , “ but there are too m any examples of where it has failed .” Rhino revenue In practice, exp erts say managing sustainable use of a species can be very difficu lt because wildlife needs and animal behaviour pat t erns have to be carefully balanced with human needs. Some species such as the h awksbill turtle (see page 16), can easily be overexp loit ed , and uncontrolled tourism can severely affect some species. In Kenya ’s fam ed M asai Mara reserve, for example, scientists found that the hunting success of lions was reduced by a heavy inflow of t ou rist s. Large groups of tourist vans tend to gather around the cats and frighten off their prey. “T he key to using wildlife sustainably is good management but in many cou n t ries the resources or expertise are simply not availab le,” says Sheppard. South Africa provides a good example of the sustainable use of an endangered species. P LA N ET T he African white rhinoceros is one of the most endangered animals on earth but South Africa, as home to 80 per cent of the estim ated 8,500 animals remaining in the wild, has plenty. Well protected from poaching, South Africa’s rhino population is growin g. “ N u m b ers could double in a decade,” says the World Conservation Union’s (IUC N ) Rhino Specialist Group, “ but only if there is su fficient new land for surplus animals.” T he South African government argues that if it were allowed to export rhino h o rn , c u rrently banned under the C I T E S , the revenue generated wo u ld T he interest in rhino has also helped fund national parks. When protected from p oach in g, rhino populations can increase to a level where they are too num erous to survive in limited park areas. To keep populations within ecological limits, live rhino are sold to private rhino san ctu ar ie s. I n KwaZulu-N atal, sales of live rhino, which can fetch up to $30,000 per head, gen erat ed a turn over of $1.57 million in 1998, and last yea r ’s rhino sales provided about 10 per cent of the KwaZulu-N atal N ature C onservation Service’s operating bu d get . “ I n a time of declining government spending on rhino population was dwindling in the early 1990s due to illegal poaching, the Save the Rhino Tru st, a UN-sponsored grou p, started a project which encouraged local populations to benefit from rhino through ecot ou rism . T he project has been successful in gen erating revenue for the local community, and form er poachers have even been recruited as rhino trackers for tourist s. “ We worked with the communities and they saw that the rhino were wo rth more to them alive than dead,” says Simon Pope, who worked on the project. “T he people worked hard to save their rhino but were Hides and other wildlife products on sale at a market in Laos. help to pay for rhino conservation.What is more,profits from rhino horn would act as an incentive for private landholders and communities to maintain wild areas for rhino conser vation. South Africa charges a trophy fee for rhino hunting, which generated $24 million between 1968 and 1996, when the c o u n t ry’s white rhino population quadr up le d . R e venue from hunting finances the h igh cost of p rotectin g rhinos from p o a ch ers, which can be as much as $1,000 per km 2 per ye a r. co n servat io n ,” says M ar tin Brooks, h ea d of Scientific Services with Kwa Z u lu -N at a l N ature Conservation Service, “wildlife sales h ave been a vital source of revenue for conser vation.” H owever , other African stat es, wh ich do not have sufficient funds or staff to tackle p oach in g, argue that any legal trade in rhino horn will stimulate the illegal market and lead to heavy poaching. For example, people living in Damaraland in north west Namibia are against lifting the ban on trade in rhinos.When the region ’s very wor ried about international trade in rhino horn being allowed . T hey believed that it would encourage poachers to come and take away their live lih o o d .” U n p r otected by park rangers, rhinos on communal lands would be especially vulnerable to increased poaching. Jap an , which strongly opposed boosting trade restrictions at the recent CIT ES confer en ce, argued that com plete protection of endangered species would be detrim en t a l to national economies and comm unities dependent on wild species for their liveliJuly/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 13 P L A N ET CONVENTION ON INTERNATIONAL TRADE IN ENDANGERED SPECIES (CITES) S et up in 1975 following growing international concern about species at risk of extinction b ecause of international trade, CITES places degrees of restriction on trade depending on the perceived risk to a species. Those in imminent danger of extinction are listed on Appendix I, which bars all international trade. Less endangered species are placed on Appendix II, which allows controlled trade subject to permits, and on Appendix III, which restricts trade on a regional l evel . ■ h o o d s. D u ring the conference, Japan and N o r way aggr essively lobbied for removal of the M inke and Grey whales from the endangered species list. It is estimated that there are more than a million M inke whales. Japan and N orway argue that the population is healthy enough to allow a sustainable har ve st . H owever , many conservationists insist that the other great whale species have not yet recovered from centuries of com mercial slaughter and that a limited trade in M inke whale meat could not be regulated well enough to prevent the illegal hunting and sale of meat from these protected species. Changing consumer habits W h at hard evidence exists to show that lim ited trade in wildlife products might st im u late consumer demand and lead to increased poaching? In 1997, the C IT ES conference sanctioned the one-off sale of ivory stockpiles from Africa to Japan as an exp erim en t . About 60 tonnes of ivo ry wer e so ld .Two yea rs later African govern m en t s, including Ken ya, and a number of intern ational conservation organizations quoting independent studies, argued that poaching and the movement of illegal ivory stocks had increased as a result of this one-off sale. T here are nevertheless questions about whether trends in poaching and the illegal market can be inferred from studies which, due to paucity of funds, are often weak in their m ethodology and focus on limited areas. “Independent studies from non-governmental organizations can be unreliable,” says Sabri Zain of T R AF F IC , an intern ational organization set up by the IUCN and 14 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 WWF to m onitor inter n ational trade in wild life.To help to fill this gap, the European U nion has prom ised to donate four m illion Euros ($4 m illion) to monitor elephant poaching and the illegal trade in ivory. Another key problem is that of enforcing intern ational trade bans and keeping tabs on regulated sales. “T iger poaching for bones for traditional C hinese medicine, as well as for skins, remains a grave threat ,” says Peter Jackson , chair of the IUCN ’s C at Specialist G roup. “ U n fo rt u n at e ly effect ive measures to control or reduce illegal trade are seldom enforced in most range countries, despite resolutions by the CIT ES C onference of the Part ies.” Ad vo c ates of trade argue that tighter controls simply incite smugglers to become more sophisticated and drive illegal trade further underground. Furthermore, some wildlife derivat ives are almost impossible to detect. R aw ivo ry m ight be difficult to conceal but tiger bone can be powd e r e d and rolled into cigarettes or boiled down into gelatine. M ea n wh ile,co n ser vationists have been a c t ive in curtailing dem and for som e wildlife products. Education programmes in C hina have encouraged consum ers to reject tiger bone remedies and an international campaign is currently underway to highlight the plight of the T ibetan antelope, which is in danger of being hunted to extinction for its fine fur, used to m ake highly sought after shahtoosh shawls. C on servationists have also co-operat ed with Chinese medicinal practitioners to fin d a lt ern at ives to tiger bone and rhino horn , which are used in traditional m edicines. M ole rat bone is now being promoted in C hina as an alter n at ive to tiger bone and there is some evidence of a reduction in the use of tiger-based m edicines. Less than five per cent of Asian consum ers surveyed in H ong Kong, Japan and the U nited Stat es said that they had actually used m edicine containing tiger part s. Declining resources for conservation Trade bans should probably be give n more time to see if they can be made more effect ive through intern ational pressure on governments and educating consum ers. “ A trade ban can only be as effective as the n ational measures taken to stop illegal hunting and trade, and the efforts made to enlist the invo lvement of governments and consu m e rs,” says Steven Broad, director of T R AF F IC . But some argue that trade or no trade, tim e is running out for wildlife. “ T h e biggest single threat to wildlife is the d est ruction of habitat ,” says Simon Rietbergen of IU C N.T he figures are alarm in g: we have already removed or serio u sly degraded 80 per cent of the planet’s forest cover and 50 per cent of the world’s wetla n d s. “Lack of resources and declining government budgets for conservation are leaving many parks without adequate protection,” says Rietbergen. N o matter ho w effective a trade ban, it cannot slow down the current rate of habitat loss or pay for wildlife protection. Trade which has the potential to save more wild areas and pay for their protection may ultimately be the preferred option. ■ Protective measure: sawing off a rhino’s horn in Namibia. P LA N ET KENYA’S ELEPHANTS: NO HALF MEASURES ◗ Joan Simba Even when strictly controlled, the ivory trade encourages elephant poaching and drives away tourists. Kenya’s position on the trade prevailed at the most recent CITES meeting ■ K enyan conservationists still shudder at the thought of the 1980s, wh en hardly a day went by without park r an gers discovering carcasses of elephants felled with increasingly sophisticat ed weap o n s, their ivo ry tusks crudely hacked off. Sh ort of funds and staff, K enyan rangers could neither adequately patrol their reserves nor match the poachers’firep ower. So it is hardly surprising that conservationists and the Kenyan government breathed a sigh of relief in 1989 when parties to the C onvention on Trade in Endangered Species (C IT ES) voted to ban all international trade in ivory products. H ad it not been for this decision,the country’s elephant population would be close to extinct toda y. From an estimated 140,000 elephants in 1972, the population in Kenya ’s parks fell to a m ere 19,000 in 1989. Porous borders T he ban, along with world-wide campaigns against trade in elephant products, reduced the demand for ivory and, consequently, its price. Poaching declined in Kenya and in other countries with elephant herds. At the same time, the Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS) beefed up its anti-poaching units in the country’s 26 national parks and 32 game reserves. As a result, the elephant population gradually increased and today Kenya has about 27,000 elephants. T his recovery nonetheless suffered a setback in 1997, when C IT ES parties voted to partially lift the ban on ivory trade to enable Zimbabwe, N amibia and Botswana to conduct a one-off sale of 60 ◗ Nairobi-based journalist In Kenya, ivory tusks go up in smoke as wildlife guards watch on. tonnes from their stockpiles. T he operation brought in three million dollars, which the countries concerned claimed to have channelled into conser vation efforts. But conser vationists affi rm that even this strictly controlled trading fuelled demand for ivory and led to renewed elephant poaching. According to Kenyan officials, 67 elephants were killed last year for ivory, up from an average of about 15 in the previous years—a figure they claim is directly linked to the lim ited trade a llowed in 1997. ‘‘Poaching continues because there is still a demand and borders within Africa are porous, thus mak ing it easy for ivory to be transported across the continent,’’ says F rancis M ukungu, a senior KWS official. Kenya’s vehement opposition to any lifting of the ivory trade ban during the April 2000 C IT ES conference can be understood in this light. N or can tourism be over lo o ked : o fficials are concern ed that a return to the poaching levels of the 1980s will cut into the country’s number one foreign exchange earner. Once again, Botswana,N amibia and Zimbabwe, along with South Africa, urged a lifting of the ban to sell off legally accumulated ivory st o c kp ile s. K e nya argued that such a move would send out a message saying there is no harm in buying ivory products, thus encouraging poachers. As a compromise, C IT ES signatories agreed to continue with a total ban on international trade in elephant ivory for the next three years while allowing a limited trade in non-ivory elephant products such as hides, live animals and leather products. Sharing tourist revenue While the Kenyan gove r nm ent is determined to save its elephants from poachers,public opinion within the country is divided on the issue. Rural communities living close to game reserves complain that elephant herds often invade their farms and destroy crops, sometimes causing casualties. In contrast to South African reser ves, elephants are not fenced off and freely roam over hundreds of acres. Rural populations also claim that tourism revenues generated by entries to the game reserves are never invested in their poverty-ridden areas. In their minds, efforts to save these animals at all costs are a case of misplaced priorities in a country where the majority live below the poverty line. C onservationists assert that in the long run, Kenya’s success in saving its elephant population will lie in involving the local communities around the r e se rves in tourism and conservat io n efforts, and making sure that they benefit economically from these initiatives. ■ July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 15 P L A N ET CUBA DEFENDS THE TURTLESHELL TRADE ◗ Gerardo Tena The protection of animal species is not necessarily incompatible with responsible commercial exploitation, says Cuba ■ E ve ry ye a r , thou sands of hawksb ill t u rtles (Eretmochelys imbricat a) are cau ght an d killed d espite the existence of the 1975 conven t io n ( C I T E S ,s e e b ox p. 14) banning the sale of their shells, which are the source of a hard, c o m p a c t , translucent substance much in demand for m akin g combs, je we lle r y and eye - gla s s fr a m e s. T he trade ban has contributed to h u r ting C aribbean fishing com m u nities t h at for centuries have lived off the turt le s an d their protein-rich meat and eggs. Cuba is no exception. Between 1960 and 1990, some 150,000 hawksbills (about 5,000 a year) were caught along Cuba’s coastline, which accounts for a third of the species’ nesting places in the Carib b ean . Ten yea rs ago, C uba introduced fish in g regu lations that allowed co-operat ives in only two villages, one on the Isla de la Juventud (off the south coast) and one in the eastern province of C amagüey, to catch a maximum of 500 h awksbills a year but banned hunting them d u ring the mating season or catching specim ens with shells less than 66 centim etres across.T he turtle meat is then distributed to au thorised fishing co-operatives and to Cuban h osp it als. C atching hawksbills is banned in the rest of the country and punishable by a fine of 5,000 pesos ($250) in a society where people earn only about $10 a month. Also, says José Alb e rto Alva r e z, an expert at the Environmental Inspection C entre (C IC A), “if fishermen poachers are found with their b o at , the boat is confiscat e d . T his is the harshest penalty under our fishing law.” C uba signed the C IT ES bu t , like Jap an , its main client, opted out of the clause dealing with hawksb ills. T his allowed both co u n t ries to continue trade in the shells. I n 1993,however, Japan signed the hawksbill clause and ceased to be a bu yer. Since then, C uba has stockpiled 6.9 tonnes of hawksb ill ◗ Havana-based journalist 16 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 shells in a warehouse in the fishing village of C ojimar,near H avana. CICA says the hawksbill turtle is not in danger of extinction along Cuba’s coastline, and that regulated hunting helps local fish in g com m unities. But the trade ban means Cuba’s stock of shells is steadily gr owin g. At the C IT ES conference held in N airobi in Ap ril 2000, Cuba sought permission to sell its current $5 million stockpile to Japan and then to sell the shells of up to 500 hawksbills a year. T he proposal narrowly failed to win the necessary two-thirds majorit y. A regional programme C IC A’s director Silvia Alvarez says “ t h e votes in favour were significant because they were based on technical evidence, while those against were based on emotion, because the t u rt le, like dolphins, whales and elephants, are creatures people adore. “A catch of 500 a year isn’t ve r y large at all because surveys show that there are about 1 5,000 nesting fem ale haw k s b ill t u rtles in Cuban wat e rs,” she says. “We’re defending the pr inciple of a regu lat e d trade in them , with the proceeds going to the com munities that catch them and to p ay for more research into the species.” She accepts that the rest of the wo r ld ’s refusal to back the Cuban position arise s from fear that the sale of the shells in Jap an would encourage a black m arket in them, but adds that Cuba “takes quite the opposite vie w. T here is a black m arket in the shells precisely because selling them is totally forbidden.” C uban scientists say that in the area between Puerto Rico and theVirgin Islands— cou n t ries that contain only one per cent of the total hawksbill habitat—about 2,000 turtles are caught illegally every year. “ We should h ave a regional programme for controlled fish in g,” says M s Alvarez. A C aribbean-wide group was set up in 1997 to look into the state of the species. It s m em b ers include Cuba, An t igu a-Barbu d a, St Lucia, St Kitts-N evis, St Vin cen t,Trin id ad and Tobago and Surin a m e. Ven ezu ela , Colombia and the Dominican Republic have expressed interest in joining. M ean wh ile, Cuba continues with its programme of catching an annual maximum of 500 turt les. “We’ve got two more years until the next CIT ES m eeting to show that what we’re doing is a good thing,” says Ms Alvarez, who thinks “the main obstacle is the notion th at the only way to protect natural resources is not to use them.” ■ The hawksbill turtle: a source of protein and revenue in the Caribbean. W O R L D O F L EA R N I N G BRITAIN: SEX EDUCATION UNDER FIRE ◗ Jon Slater The government’s blueprint to improve knowledge of sexual and reproductive health matters and reduce teenage pregnancy has sparked a virulent debate ■ With 65 concep tions per thousand wom en aged between 15 and 19 in 1 9 9 8 , England and Wales has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Western Europe. 1 T his rate rose by four per cent in the space of one year. But while everyone agrees on the need for action, there is a wide spectrum of opinion on how to deal with the problem . At the heart of the debate is whether inform ation or innocence is the best way of protecting Brit a in ’s children from the problems associated with teenage sex. In the blue corner are the family values ca m p a ign ers, led by churches, the Conservative Party and the high-circulation Daily M a il n e wsp a p e r. While in the red corn e r are those who believe that the only way to tackle issues such as teenage pregnancy and sexual health is to provide accurate nonjudgmental inform at ion .T he latter includes m ost children’s charit ies, the liberal wing of the Labour Pa rty and the department of h ealt h . “T he m ore inform ation young people have , the less likelihood there is that teenage girls will become pregnant,” says Anna C oote, director of the King’s Fund, a health think-tank. “It doesn’t look like what we are doing at the m oment is wo r kin g, particularly in secondary schools.” Poverty and social exclusion Caught in the crossfire between these two camps are Labour ministers wary of offending the right-wing press and keen to hold together their “ on e-n at ion ” coalition which swept them to power in 1997 after 18 years in the wildern ess. But much as it may like to, the government cannot stay above the fray. C utting the number of teenage pregnancies is vital if it is to meet its targets of reducing child poverty and social exclusion. T he gove rnment has pledged to halve teenage pregnancy rates by 2010 and is expecting to reduce by 2,000 the number of ◗ Journalist with the Times Educational Supplement girls who become pregnant this ye a r. I n Ju n e1 9 9 9 , the Social Exclusion Unit (SEU), a government body which reports directly to P rime M inister Tony Blair, produced a bluep rint for tackling Brit a in ’s alarmingly high number of teenage pregnancies. Its conclusions were stark. “ Too many teenagers are being pressured into having sex rather than really choosing to, are not using contracept io n , and are, as a result, ending up pregnant or with a sexually transmitted infection.” According to Jill F rancis of the N at io n al C h ild r en ’s Bureau, “T here are four main reasons why girls in Britain become pregn an t . We don’t give children enough inform ation ; we give them m ixed messages about sex and relat io n sh ip s; social deprivat io n m eans girls are more likely to becom e pregn an t ; and girls whose mothers were teenage mums are more likely to do the same.” Bot h teenage m others and fat h e rs com e predom inantly from lower social classes. According to the C hildren’s Bureau, “teenage mothers are less academically able than their childless contemporaries and more likely to leave school at the earliest o p p o rtunity with few or no qualificat io n s.” One national study suggests that a quarter of teenage m other s were them selve s b o rn to teenagers. T he brutal fact is that teenage parenthood helps to ensure that those at the bottom of the social pile stay t h e r e . Policies such as the N ew D eal for Lone Parents (which gives young mothers in fo rm at io n , training and other help to fin d wo r k) , im p r oved parenting advice and increased availability of childcare are all designed to help young parents escape this trap. But they are costly. M inisters would prefer prevention to cure. 1.T he Office for N ational Statistics also reports that 37.8 per cent of these conceptions led to an abortion. For comparison’s sake, it should be noted that the conception rate in N orth America stands at 83.6 per 1,000 women aged between 15 and 19, and at 101.7 in the Russian Federation, according to data from the Alan G uttmacher Institute (www.agi-usa.org). ACROSS THE CHANNEL L ast November, the French government announced that school nurses would be authorised to hand out the morning-after pill to teenagers “in situations of distress or extreme u r gen cy.” The morning-after pill, available in France over-the-counter since June 1999, can be taken up to 72 hours after sex has taken place to prevent a pregnancy. There are an estimated 10,000 unwanted teenage pregnancies in France each year, of which over half end with an abortion. Announcing the measure, deputy education minister Ségolène Royal insisted that teenagers given this emergency pill would then be put in touch with a family planning centre for advice on a “ responsible form of contraception.” The measure, welcomed by unions of school nurses, has unleashed a legal battle involving Catholic and anti-abortion groups. Although sex education has been part of school curricula since 1973, it has been given greater importance since September 1999. Schools are expected to provide 30 to 40 hours of sex education to students in grades eight and nine. Meanwhile, the government launched a much-welcomed information campaign on contraception in January 2000, with TV and radio spots and the distribution of five million leaflets on contraception to highschool students. It was the first contracep t i o n campaign in 20 years, apart from an AIDS prevention campaign in 1992 that focused on condom use. ■ So far however, they are running into stiff o p p o sit io n . O ne of the SEU’s central recom m en d ations was to extend sex educat ion in prim ary schools. But it did not take long for Education Secretary D avid Blunkett to b a ckt r a ck,saying that he did not want children under ten to have their “age of innocen ce” taken away from them.While in principle prim ary school students learn about h ow a baby is conceived and born , the SEU rep ort observed that thousands of ten- and July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 17 W O R L D O F L EA R N I N G been clubbed together with another row, which has centred on the gove rn m e n t ’s proposed repeal of Section 28 of the 1988 Local G ove rnm ent Ac t , which bans the prom otion of homosexuality by local a u t h o rit ie s. Passed un der the T h at c h e r gove rn m e n t , this clau se is jud ged d iscrim in at o ry by the present Labour majorit y. Although not directly related to the gove rn m e n t ’s drive to redu ce teenage p r egn an cies, it has sparked heated debat e. T he H ouse of Lords (the upper house of parliament) has repeatedly rejected the gove rn m e n t ’s push to repeal the clause. To break the deadlock, the gove rn m e n t ,in c o n su lt ation with church leaders, h a s come up with new guidelines on sex educ ation in schools that would becom e statutory—obliging all teachers to adopt them—if they are p assed. T hey wo u ld notably oblige teachers to teach about the im p o rtance of marriage and stable relationships. Morning-after trials Teenage mothers receive guidance and support at a specialised centre in Leeds, in northern England. e le ve n - year-olds receive no inform at io n about perio d s, despite the fact that one in ten girls starts menstru ating before fin ishing prim ary school. N or can secondary schools rest on their lau rels. “We’re not good at talking to you n g people about sex. Lack of sex education is an im p ortant contribu t ory factor in individuals getting pregnant,” says Francis. Sex education is compulsory in secondary school, but parents have the right to withdraw their children from lessons. T he curricu lu m ch iefly focuses on the reproductive system and how the foetus develops in the uteru s, along with the physical and em otional changes that take place during adolescence. Anything beyond this is discretionary, including contraception, safe sex and access to local advice and treatment services. Several studies into unplanned teenage pregnancies point to a lack of inform at ion 18 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 about contraceptive use and em barrassm en t about discussing contraception with a partn er. In Fe b ru a ry 2000, the U niversity of Brighton conducted a survey of nearly 700 pupils between 14 and 15 that revealed a d eep -seated anger about sex education in their schools. Girls felt that classes focused on the m echanics of sex and contraception rather than on em otions. Boys claimed they were denied access to inform ation judged too explicit. T he majority were “ fu rio u s” because they felt legislat io n , such as that which requires teachers to inform pupils’ parents if asked about contraception, h a s stopped them from gaining access to inform ation . Schools are expected to inform parents when a pupil tells a teacher they are having sex or asks about contraception in all bu t the “most exceptional circumstances”. T he topic of sex ed ucation is all the m ore sensitive at the m oment as it has M any teachers in Britain feel that they are already being asked to single-handedly tackle society’s ills and are reluctant to accept responsibility for reducing the rate of teenage pregnancies as we ll.“ Teenage pregnancy is a major social issue which education alone cannot solve ,” said a spokeswoman for the Asso ciation of Teach ers and L e c t u r e rs. “T his is a cross-depart m e n t a l issu e, we need more joined-up thinking.” T he AT L is concerned that the new statut o ry guidelines would undermine teachers’ ability to conduct sex education well. “ I f there are legal constraints, t each ers will not have the confidence to teach it well.” C oote agrees that more is needed than just improving sex education.“T here are a num ber of fa c t o rs at wo r k. People don’t feel the services on offer are properly accessible to them . Professionals often don’t speak their language, either literally or m et ap h orically.” M ean wh ile, as debate over the guidelines lingers on, the department of health has approved trials in some parts of the country making the morning-after pill available from pharm acies—including to sch o o lgirls as young as 14. D o ct o rs usually p rescribe this pill. T he initiat ive has sparked a media backlash and it is by no m eans certain that it will be extended nat io n - wid e. But the government holds firm to its line. As the SEU repor t stat e s, “preaching is rarely effective . Whether the gove rn m e n t likes it or not, young people decide what they’re going to do about sex and contrac e p t io n . Keeping them in the dark or preaching at them makes it less likely they’ll make the right decision.” ■ W O R L D O F LEA RN I N G THE DUTCH MODEL ◗ Guus Valk With the highest use of contraception among young people worldwide, the Netherlands has attracted international attention ■ How would you react if your boyfriend refused to use a condom? How do your friends feel about condoms?Write down what you think they will answer and ask them if you were right. T his open talk is how some teachers in the N etherlands approach sexuality with students between 12 and 15 years old. Su bsidised by the Dutch govern m en t , the “La ng leve de liefde” (“Long Live Love”) package was d eveloped in the late 1980s, when AI D S became recognised as a threatening health p rob lem . “AID S was an impetus for sex education in schools,” says Jo Reinders of Soab est rijd in g, the Dutch foundation for ST D (sexually transmitted diseases) control, which d eveloped the package in consultation with ch u rch es, health officials and family planning organizat io n s. “It forced teachers to become m ore explicit and to discuss norm s and values using a part icip at ory approach.” Decision-making skills With the lowest teenage pregnancy rat e in Europe (8.4 per 1,000 girls between 15 and 19), any initiative in the N etherlands d eserves at t en t io n . “T here is no countr y that has invested so much in research into fam ily planning…, m edia attention and improvement of service delivery than the N e t h e r la n d s ,” wrote exp er ts from the N etherlands Institute of Social and Sexo logical Research (N ISSO) in a specialised jo u rn a l . Althou gh th e countr y has no mandatory national curriculum, nearly all seco n d a ry schools provide sex educat io n as part of biology classes and over half the c o u n t ry’s prim a ry schools address sexuality and contraception. According to H . R olin g, a professor of education at the U niversity of Amsterdam,“the D utch government has always accepted the fact that educ ation was better than denial,” and the subject has been tackled in schools since the 1970s. Since 1993, the govern m en t , wit h o u t st ip u lating the contents of classes, h a s stressed that schools should aim to give students the skills to take their own decisions ◗ Journalist based in the Netherlands, with additional reporting by the UNESCO Courier regarding health, and in par ticular sexu- still difficult for many teachers to talk with alit y.Textbooks were revised and according studen ts about sexu ality, despite training to Reinders ,n ow take a more “ co m p r eh en- p rovided over the years, notably by the Rutsive approach to sexuality. T he curricu lu m gers Foundation. Family planning organifocuses on biological aspects of reproduction zations are also concerned about the higher as well as on valu es, at t it u d es,co m m u n ica- rates of teenage pregnancy among Turkish tion and negotiation skills.” Some schools an d M oroccan gir ls, and are deve lo p in g sim ply use these textbooks, o t h ers comple- p rogrammes specially geared towards them. m ent them with th e foundat io n ’s pack, But the country’s record has attracted which includes a video, a teacher’s manual attention from abroad.T he Rutgers Fo u nand a student magazine. “T he educat io n d ation provides training to doctor s and system is ver y much built not only around social workers as well as assistance to edutransmitting knowledge but giving the skills cation ministries in developing curricula, to apply that knowledge in everyd ay life,” notably in C entral and Eastern Europe and says Reinders. “D ecision-making skills are C entral Asia . To some critics who argue very import an t .” that “talking about sex gives children the But sex education in schools is not enough wrong idea,” Jos Poelman of the Fou n d ation to explain the D utch record. T he Rutgers for ST D control has one answer. “ Face the Fo u n d at io n , a family planning associat io n fact s.We have the lowest number of teenage t h at has launched several large-scale public mothers [in Europe], and D utch students in fo rm ation campaigns in the past decades, do not start having sex at a younger age than sees a constellation of other factors.T he media their foreign counterparts.” ■ has been at the forefront of an open dialogue: b et ween 1993 and 1997, a prime-time talk sh ow featured a leading D utch pop star www.rutgers.nl discussing sexuality. C o nfid e n t ia lit y, gu a r a n t e e d an onymity and a non-judgmental approach are hallmarks of th e h ealth care syst em . Last but not least, “parents in the Netherlands take a ve ry pragmat ic ap p roach . They know their children are going to have sex, and they are ready to prepare them and to speak with them ab out their resp on sib ility.T his is the key word ,” says Mischa H eeger of the Rutgers Fou n d at ion . C o n t r a cep t ives are widely u sed . According to a N ISSO stu d y, 85 per cent of sexually a ct ive young people use a con t racep t ive, and the pill is freely availab le.T he average age of a you t h ’s first sexual in t ercou rse is 17.7 years. Even with this record, Early on, Dutch children learn about sexuality and contraception the Fo u n d ation for ST D at school.Here, students in Almera,in northern Holland control recognises that it is +… July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 19 W O RLD O F L EA RN I N G INVOLVE THE YOUNG! For Dr Pramilla Senanayake, assistant director-general of the International Planned Par ent hood Federat i on ◗, young people hold the keys to improving the record on reproductive health Pregnancy related problems are a leading cause of death among adolescents. Are most of these unwanted pregnancies? You have to distinguish between pregnancies within and outside m arria ge . I n cou n t ries like Bangladesh, N epal and some p arts of Africa, the number of girls married by 15 or 16 is exceedingly high—up to 70 or, 80 per cent. In those situat ion s, p regn an cy within marriage may be wanted but we know t h at it is hazardous, in term s of its consequences on health, ed u cation and economic o p p o rt u n it y. Outside of marriage, the vast m ajority of pregnancies are unwa n t ed .T h e “ su ga r - d a d d y” phenom enon is comm on, while a more recent trend is the false belief by some men that by sleeping with a virgin , they will not get AID S. Does pregnancy generally mean an end to education ? Yes, or else girls often end up having botched-up backstreet abortions because they are afraid of being expelled.You could argue that schools should be encouraged to keep pregnant students but in reality, this d o e sn ’t really wo r k. T hese wom en have special needs. In countries as far afield as Jamaica and Tanzania, we have set up special schools for pregnant m others allowin g them to com plete their educat io n . O n ce the child is born, they often continue into vocational education as long as childcare facilities exist. slow. NG Os are setting the example in most cases, notably with peer education projects that are giving promising results. To what extent has sex education improved, particularly in developing countries? In some countries including my own (Sri Lanka) sex education exists, but in reality teachers are not trained to handle these issues. Sex education is not just about having sex, it’s about relationships and making choices. G irls need empowerment to say “ n o ” to a relationship and this is difficult for them . T h is kind of sex education is still rare in schools and often starts too lat e.P rim ary school is the im p ortant starting point. But you also have to look at what is happening outside the school, because very often girls drop out at the secon d ary level, and there are some 125 million children who never go to school at all. T h e potential of distance learn in g, media and other communication forms has to be more broadly harn essed . What do we know about the impact of sex education programmes? Study after study has pointed out tha t sex education delays childbearing and does not lead to promiscuity or to early sexual experimention. It is usually the reverse: if you are forearm ed with that knowle d ge , you are more cautious. In eve ry walk of life, we train young people to cope, we give them skills and knowle d ge , but when it What impact did the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development have? BASIC FACTS T he U nited N ations Population Fund took a leadership role by spearheading the need to look at adolescents as a group whose sexuality had to be recognised and whose needs had to be met in terms of educat io n , in fo rm ation and services. T his has to be done in a holistic way. T he conference made the world aware that this was not a problem that you could just sweep under the carpet. But at a country level, progress in taking care of teenagers’ needs has been There are more than 1.5 billion young people between the ages of 10 and 24; 85% of them live in developing countries. ● About one in ten of all births worldwide are to adolescent women ● Below 18, a pregnant adolescent is two to five times more likely to die than a woman 18-25 ● The majority of first births in sub-Saharan Africa are to adolescent women ● Low birth weight is more common in babies born to adolescents than in adult women ◗ IPPF (www.i ppf.org) links family planning associations in 150 countries. It is the largest voluntary organization in the world concerned with family planning and sexual and reproductive health. 20 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 ● Source: World Health Organization comes to sex education, there seems to be a myth that the less you tell them the better off they are. It makes no sense. It is control of power by an older generation. How can access to contraception be improved, notably in Africa? T here is a crying need for inform ation on contraception. In form ation has to be made available through a va riety of sources: in clin ics, in pharm acies, through peer grou p s, the media, et c. Services have to be made more yo u t h - friendly an d accessible to all young people regardless of their marital statu s. Young people themselves should play an active role in defining how health services should be ru n .T he press can play a pivotal role: we are running a particularly successful operat ion with the BBC World Service known as Sexwise. It is a 12-part series on sex educat ion , fam ily life educat ion , contraception and parenting. In South Asia, where it was first launched in eight languages, we received some 75,000 qu eries from listeners. After being extended in 1999 to Europe and Eurasia, the series will go global in July 2000 and is expected to reach over 60 million listeners in Africa, the Arab world , L atin Am erica, South East Asia and China by the end of the year. In 1999, the U.S. introduced a rule that aims to defund organizations outside the U.S. which provide any abortion-related information and assistance to women in need. Are you concerned about this? T his r ule is hurting wo m e n . It is depriving funds for N G Os like ours. T his means we are unable to provide reproduct ive health services, including contraception and family planning to women who are in need.T his results in more unwanted pregnancies because services are not available and women who could have gone to ha ve services ended up having botched-up abortions. It is very shortsighted. ■ Interview by Cynthia Guttman, UNESCO Courier journalist +… www.unfpa.org The site of the U N Population Fund includes news, features and The State of World Population 1999. Six billion: a time for choices. Yout h’s sonic forces Yout h’s sonic forces Fo cus Co nt e nt s 1 | Setting t he stage 23 Born in fire: a hip-hop odyssey 26 28 Recording heavyweights Jeff Chang The body and soul of club culture Hillegonda C. Riet veld 2 | Local scenes 31 32 34 Black is back Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar and Vijay Prashad A Maori warrior claims new territory Kerry Buchanan rom the nose-ringed neo-hippie in Belgium to the dread- F locked, baggy-jeaned breakdancer in Tokyo, one element unites the disparate bands of youth: music.A style guide, social companion and spiritual force, music offers directions in the quest Algerian rappers sing the blues for autonomy and a medium to express the highs and lows of the j ourney. M ama Africa meets the kwaito generat ion 38 The rap cartel and other tales from Colombia 42 the stage Bouziane Daoudi 36 40 1 Se t t ing Maria McCloy This dossier will trace two genres carving the deepest inroads in the globalisation of popular music: hip-hop (p. 23-25) and elec- Timothy Pratt tronic dance music (p.28-30). While there is no denying the com- Mapping the meanings of dance music mercial muscle of recording giants in pushing these genres world- Caspar Melville Growing pains in Byron Bay wide (p.26-27), young people aren’t just swallowing these “ goods” Sebastian Chan but fashioning sub-cultures in adapting the music as their own. From 43 Belgrade’s free electrons a political platform for indigenous rights in New Zealand (p. 32-33) Dragan Ambrozic to a foundry for moulding a sense of identity among black youth 45 The club DJ: a brief history of a cultural icon in Colombia (p. 38-39), hip-hop thrives on the transformative 47 49 51 53 55 Kai Fikent scher Asian Overground powers of its bricoleurs. In South Af ri ca, the genre has been hard- Interview by Amy Otchet wired to amplify the messages of the post-apartheid generation Grannie doesn’t skip a bhangra beat (p. 36-37) while Algerian rappers no longer see hip-hop as just a Sudhanva Deshpande wishing-well for a better economic life, but a stepping stone to polit- 3 | Defusing the alarm ical debate. Fear and loathing in Goa Ho w ev er, these positive chords of independent think- Arun Saldanha ing and multiculturalism ring hollow when the rebellious gestures A convenient scapegoat surrounding the music mask a capitulation to hyper-consumeri sm Davey D Excess for all Micz Flor and the refusal or inability to fight racism (p. 31-32). In the UK for exam pl e, the rage for Asian sounds and fashion appears to be July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 21 Youth culture may well degenerate into simply another way for capitalists to sell back to people a picture of the life that has been stolen from them. Yet it would be foolish to dismiss youth culture simply because it has not yet produced an organised political movement. George Lipsitz, U.S. professor and author of M icrophone Fiends, Youth M usic and Culture (Rout ledge, 1 9 9 4 ) little more than an example of niche marketing (p. 47).Yet in India, t he same eclectic mixes of traditional music are leading the sons and daughters of an anglicised elite to discover their roots via their expatriate relations. Herein lies the key to deciphering globalised music and youth cult ures: identify the particular politics shaping each local scene (p. 4041). The Australian bush, for example, seems to offer ideal conditions for realising the “ fut urist ” dream of techno’s punk-like resistance (p. 42-43), yet the impact of tourist dollars may spoil the scene. In Belgrade, electronic music is a rallying call for isolated bands of youth rebels, holed up in the cracks and abandoned spaces of the regime (p. 43-44). The very sound of a revolution provokes reaction.And music is no except i on, as parents and police panic over the now traditional mantra of “ sex, drugs & rock ’n’ roll” . Instead of sounding the alarm, we chose to defuse it by considering the alternatives.As thousands of Western neo-hippies descend upon Goa for trance music parties, parents and state focus exclusively on the spectre of cultural imperialism without recognising ways in which their communities benefit from the scene (p.51-52). By reading between the lines of media sensationalism and stereotyping, the violence associated with hip-hop can be cast in a different light (p.53-54). Finally, young Internet pirates, branded as criminals by the recording industry, are in fact showing the way to new forms of international solidarity (p.55-56). ■ Dossier concept and co-ordination by Amy Otchet, UNESCO Courier journalist One in a series of FSUK (Future sound of the United Kingdom) albums, a compilation of modern break beat music produced by the M inistry of Sound. Creative direction,artw ork and graphic design by Tom and Joel Lardner. 22 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 Yout h’s sonic forces Born in fire: a hip-hop odyssey ◗ Jeff Chang From the Bronx to Los Angeles and beyond, a rough guide to the voice of a generat ion D uring the summer of 1975,the South Bronx was burning. N ew York C ity officials admitted that they couldn’t battle all the fires, let alone investigate their origins. C haos reigned.One long hot day in June, 40 fires were set in a threehour period. T hese were not the fires of purifying rage that ignited Watts in 1965, N ewark in 1967, or St. L o u is and a half dozen other U .S. cities after the assassination of M artin Luther King, Jr. T hese were the fires of abandonment. As hip-hop journalist S.H . Fernando notes, t h e Bronx had been a borough of promise for African American, Puerto Rican, Irish, Italian and Jewish families after World War II. But as industry moved n o rth to the suburbs during the sixties, housing values collapsed and whites fled,leaving a population overwhelmingly poor and of colour. So slum lords were employing young thugs to syst em atically bu rn the devalued buildings to chase out the poor tenants and collect millions in insurance.H ip-hop, it could be said, was born in fire. As rapper G randmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “T he M essage” would describe it, the N ew York ghettoes that fuelled hip-hop’s re-creat ive project were spaces of state neglect and fading liberal d r e a m s. “ Got a bum educat io n ,” the narr at o r r hym ed ,“ d o u b le-d igit inflat io n ,ca n ’t take a train to work there’s a strike at the stat ion .” But these wou ld also be spaces of spiritual and creative renewal. In an earlier era, say the 1920s and 30s when jazz legends like C harles M ingus grew up, a youth might find an extended web of peer s, m e n t o rs , p at ron s, bands and venues through which he or she might master an instrum ent and find a vo cat io n . But by the late 1970s,such music education was a luxury for most families. Jamaican connection ◗ Senior editor/director of the website ‹360hiphop.com› which features music,lifestyle, hip-hop culture and politics. T he result? Play, as African Am erican author Robin D .G . Kelley has put it, became an alternate fo rm of work for a new generat io n . Adapting the Jamaican tradition of outdoor dance parties to the grid and grit of N ew York, young black and Puerto Rican entrepreneurs illegally plugged their stereo system s into street light power supplies, and start ed the party. With vinyl grooves as sheet music, and a rig of two turntables,a mixer and an amplifier as instruments, Black Art began reinventing itself in 1974 and 1975.T hat’s when a Jamaican immigrant disc jockey named Kool H erc started gaining a reputation in the Bronx for filling the smoky air with “the b r ea ks” —t h at portion of the song, often as short as two seconds, where the singer dropped out and let the band immerse itself in the groove. Punching back and forth between two copies of the same record’s breaks,then ratcheting up the excitem ent by shifting to ever more intense breaks, D Js like H erc and Afrika Bambaataa were creating a new aesthetic, which simultaneously sat iated and teased the audience. Escaping the chaos on the streets On the one hand, a loop (of beats) became a metaphor for freedom: through movem en t ,d a n cers stretched within the space sculpted by the break. A new canon of songs—drawn from funk, d isco, r o ck, jazz,Afrobeat and reggae—launched new, athletic forms of dancing, which would become known as breakdancing or b-boying.Rather than being passive spectators,the audience engaged in a real dialogue with the disc jockey. T he N ew York D Js began employing M C s— m asters of ceremony—to affirm the crowd ’s response to proven breaks, win them over to new breaks, d ivert them during bad records and generally keep spirit s h igh . In time, the MCs becam e attractions in their own righ t . Rocking m emorized poems (“writ t en s” ) or improvising them on the spot (“freestyles”), t h e M C becam e Eve rym a n , the representat ive of the audience onstage. T hey reacted to the MC’s flow, laughed at his clevern ess, cheered his braggadocio, t h rilled at his tall-tale spinning, felt his bluesy pain, riding the riddims with words (or “ rap p in g” ) . T he Black Arts poets, the Black Panther messiahs and other revolu t ion ary firebrands sharpened their words into spears to at t ack. T his new generation of rap p ers let the words flow generously, in search of a moment that might serve as a shield of protection, or a transcendent escape from the chaos on the streets. Popular culture in America is one space where the trope (expression) of working-class creativity is still firmly lodged. American markets are good at p r oviding poor audiences of colour easy access to goods such as music, video and clothing. In the last three decades, a whole class of middlemen entrep ren eu rs have made fortunes by charting the rapidly shifting terrain of black and brown ghetto chic. July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 23 By the late 70s, black and Jewish record label owners in H arlem noted the popularity of hip-hop and rushed to record leading crews. Basically, t h ese own ers were geographically and personally close to the music. When a novelty record by the Sugar H ill G ang, “Rapper’s D elight” became a surprise in t e rn ational smash, m ajor labels began sniffin g around uptown for th e next h it. In 1980, Ku rt is B low released rap’s first full-length album on a major label.T he stage was set for the ascendance of hip-h op culture into the m ost powerful intern ational youth culture of the late twentieth centur y. Until the late 80s, the undisputed centre of this culture was N ew Yo r k. T he visual signifie rs we r e provided by the vibrant graffiti movement, whose young renegade artists braved electrified razor-wire fences and armed M etropolitan T ransit Authority sampling technology, rap producers were turning their new toys into unrelentingly dense, r eflexive gr o ove s. T h e n , as the anti-apar theid m ove m e n t crested in the U .S., groups like Boogie D own Productions and Public Enemy extended rap’s social realism into broader discussions of political action. But the lofty views of revo lu t io n ary nat io n alism and hardrock spiritualism veered back to the streets in 1989. A group of barely twen t y- so m et h in gs,wh o not so ironically called themselves N iggas With At t it u d e, released what would becom e an anthem for a gen erat ion , Gangsta Gangsta.Within six weeks of its release, the album went “ gold ” , selling over 500,000 co p ies. Hip-hop shot itself into the heart of wo r ld culture. T he albu m , S traight Outta Compton, d ecen t er ed hip-hop from N ew York to Los An geles. By the mid- We want ‘poems that kill.’ Assassin poems, Poems that shoot guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys And take their w eapons. Amiri Baraka, U.S. poet (1934-) Hip-hop’s foundry, the Bronx, fi red a w orldw ide culture straddling the lines betw een rebellion and capitulation to hyper-consumerism. guards to apply bright spraypaint hieroglyphics onto the city’s subways. Every time a train pulled into a station,hip-hop was in respectable society’s face,like a middle-finger. Rem em ber the backdrop to the 1980s: the Reagan administration was launching an attack on the “ welfare stat e” , wiping out subsidies for the poor, allowing housing agencies to becom e dens of corruption while closing down entire cat egories of government programmes. H ip-hoppers were on the counter-offensive. As the Furious Five warned: “ D on ’t push me ’cause I’m close to the edge. I’m trying not to lose my head. It ’s like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from going under.” On the technological front, h ip -h o p p ers racked up one breakthrough after another.While most rock musicians of the mid-80s were perplexed by new 24 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 dle of the Reagan adm inistrat io n , Com pton wa s one of a gr owing number of inner-city nexuses where deindustrialization,devolution,the cocaine t r ad e, gang structures and riva lrie s,a rms profit eering and police brutality combined to destabilize poor comm unities. Chaos was settling in for a long stay and gangsta rap would be the soundtrack. By con flating myth and place, the narrat ives could take root in every ’hood (neighbourhood). From Portland to Pa ris , e ve ry ’hood could be C om pton; everyone had a story to tell, a cop to fight, a rebellion to launch. Iron ically, gangsta tales populated with dru n ken , h igh , r owd y, irr e sp o n sib le , c rim in a l, m u r d e r o u s “niggas”—its practitioners likened it to journalism and called it “reality rap”—seemed to be just what suburbia wan t ed . As student populations diversified , yo u t h Yout h’s sonic forces were increasingly uninterested in whitewashed cultural han d -m e-d own s.T he 1988 advent of the M T V show, “ Yo MT V Raps”, made African Am erican ,C h ican o, and Latino urban style instantly accessible across the world . With its claims to street authenticity, its teen reb ellion , its extension of urban stereotype and its individualist “get mine” cred o, gangsta rap fit handin -glove with a generation weaned on racism and R eagan ism . T hese were not the old Negro spirit u als of the civil rights era. T hey were raw, violen t , u n d iscip lin ed ,o ffen sive,“ n iggafied ”r hym es, often homop h ob ic, m isogyn ist ic. G angsta rap drew new lines in the culture wars. As the music crossed over to whiter,more affluent co m m u n it ies, gangsta rap inflamed cultural conse r vat ives like Bob D ole and neoliberals like C . D elores Tucker into demanding new corporate ghetto commentary to druggy hedonism, a n d ,wit h its polished chrome sound,onto mainstream radio playlists. As cast by M T V and the expanding hiphop press, a rtists such as the late Tupac Shakur, the son of a Black P anther revo lu t io n a ry, m a d e rebellion less a battle in the culture wars,and ever more a mere marker of youth style. T he shrinking music industry also transform ed the hip-hop scene. Between the early to mid-90s, several of the independent record label own ers who had been instrum ental in launching the music sold their companies to major labels,which also began co n so lid ating and reducing the size of their rosters. As a result, grassroots acts no longer went from the streets to the top of the charts. M anagement firms guaranteed polished stars and funded the fa rm teams that would take those stars’ places in turn. T he new hip -hop sound, c risply digitized and radio-ready, became mainstream pop. With the massive major label distribution juggernauts behind them , it became routine for the biggest hip-hop acts to debut with gold (half-million) or more sales. A half-dozen magazines were launched to take advantage of the new wealth of advertising dollar s. H ollywood’s big money came c a llin g, m aking multim edia stars of rappers LL C ool J and Ice C ub e. Com mercial tie-ins with products such as Sprite or the G ap clothing prolife r ated for second-level art ist s. Producer Russell Simmons began calling the hip-hop generation “ t h e biggest brand-building generation the world has ever seen”.T he audience had matured into a marketable demographic. Rebellion or capitulation? © Bernstein/Spooner/Gamma, Paris and state repression. Gangsta rap was even showin g up in presidential debates. P r o gr e ssives often speculate that gangsta rap was foisted on a young public by reactionary record labels. But to a great extent, the rise of these popcultural trends was completely unplanned.Well into the 1990s, m ajor recording labels had no idea what kind of hip-hop would sell. U nlike rock music, which had long before matured into a stable and culturally stale economy, hip-hop was like a wild child whose every gesture and motion was a com plete surprise. In the wake of the Los Angeles riots after the brutal police beating of motorist Rodney King in 1 9 9 1 , gangsta rap and hip-hop marched towa r d their gr eatest comm ercial success. D r. D r e’s albu m The Chronic topically moved gangsta rap away from As U. S . author D on D eLillo has writ t e n ,“ C a pital burns off the nuance in a culture.” To be sure, hip-hop has transformed popular culture across the world. In Kenya, youngsters wear Adidas baseball ca p s, N ike shoes and stage rowdy rap concer ts that look like ve rsions of Bam baat a a ’s rom ps in the Bronx of yo r e . I t ’s unclear whether such performances reflect a hybrid youth rebellion or capitulation to global capitalism. Yet som ewhere within the culture lies the key to understanding an entire generat io n . T his culture forged in fire still keeps its han d near the m at c h . Rap rewards those who “ r e p r e s e n t ” it s a u d ie n c e s’ r e a lit ie s. If this often appears as cavin g in to baser impulses, h ip - h o p ’s defense is that it speaks to young people as they are and where they ar e. And yet a growing movement believes that the culture is liberat in g. In cities across the wo r ld , youths use hip-hop to organise the struggles against racism, police brutality, and the prison-industrial co m p lex. For them, the culture and the politics are inseparable—they are all part of a cohesive worldview. T herein finally lies the story:hip-hip, born of the destru ct ive fires of the 1960s and 70s, has rekindled creative flames of hope in a new generation. T he cleansing fires are still to come. ■ Perhaps all music, even the newest, is not so much something discovered as something that reemerges from where it lay buried in the memory, inaudible as a melody cut in a disc of flesh. Jean Genet, French dram at ist and author (1910-1986) July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 25 Recording heavyw eights Total music sales (in U.S. $ billions) Total music sales in 1998 38.7 Aust ralasia 1.8% 1991 1998 M iddle East /Turkey 0.9% Africa 0.6% Asia (excluding Japan) 3.4% Lat in Am erica 6.1% 27.5 Japan 16.9% Nort h Am erica 36.6% 14.2 13.0 Europe 33.6% 11.0 8.4 7.8 5.7 1.2 2.3 0.6 0.7 0.3 0.3 0.2 0.2 Source : International Federation of the Phonographic Industry M arket shares of the major and independent labels in selected countries, 1998 (%) M ajors Independents 97 World market shares of the five major labels, 1998 92 91 90 90 88 83 83 80 80 79 BM G 11% 68 Ot hers 23% Warner 13% EM I 14% Universal 21% 32 Sony 17% 17 8 Source : Music Business International World Report 2000 26 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 3 9 10 10 12 17 20 20 21 Yout h’s sonic forces Audio milestones Countries with the highest CD piracy figures, 1998 1 8 6 5 English physicist James Maxwell (1831-1879) discovers the existence of electromagnetic waves. 1 8 7 6 Scottish-born physicist Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) invents the microphone in the U.S. 1877 Thomas Edison (1847-1931) invents a recording device and the phonograph. 1888 Emile Berliner (1851-1929) of Germany develops the first vinyl record in the U.S. 1928 Maurice Martenot of France invents the first electronic keyboard based on an earlier device designed by Leon Termen of Russia. 1 9 3 1 The “ Frying Pan” , the first commercially successful electric guitar, is developed in the U. S. by George Beauchamp and Adolph Rickenbacker. 1 9 3 4 The German company BASF develops magnetic recording tape. 1935 The German company AEG manufactures the first tape recorder. 1945 Sound recording dramatically improves with the post -war conversion of research facilities for peaceful purposes. 1956 Stereo LPs (record albums) become commercially available. 1 9 6 5 Pre-recorded music cassettes are released. Philips first introduced the cassette two years earlier and encouraged other companies to license its use. 1 9 6 9 American Robert Moog develops the “ M ini-M oog” , a small,affordable synthesizer with a distinctive sound that can be used for “ l i ve” performances and studio recordings. 1 9 7 5 Computer memory is added to studio equipment for more complicated recordings. 1979 A key year in recording history when Philips introduces the digital format for recording music on the compact disc (CD). Sony (Japan) introduces what will be known as the Walkman. The New England Digital Synclavier becomes the first commercial model of the socalled “ w orkst at ion” , a computerized synthesizer capable of sequencing,sampling,playing and scoring music. 1 9 8 0 Roland releases the fi rst drum machines which can be “ p l ayed ” or programmed to produce original rhythms instead of preset patterns. 1986 By standardizing the musical instrument digital interface (MIDI), the industry opens the floodgates to more creative and independent recordings. Digitel releases the fi rst consumer-level softw are to record and edit sounds on a (Macintosh) computer. 1987 The first digital audio tape (DAT) is marketed in Japan, notably improving sound reproduction and storage. 1 9 8 8 For the first time, CD sales in the U.S. surpass vinyl (records), which begin disappearing from stores. 1996 The first DVD (digital versatile disc),which is basically a faster CD capable of holding video and audio computer data,is commercialized. 1998 Music piracy on the Internet, using the MP3 format, is strong enough to rattle the recording industry. 310 Source : International Federation of the Phonographic Industry Piracy (U.S. $ millions) 70 70 70 Piracy level (% of units) 240 60 240 60 45 45 40 110 80 60 40 40 25 25 30 20 Source : International Federation of the Phonographic Industry Music cassettes and piracy in selected African countries (1998) Country Number of music cassettes sold (millions) Retail value (U.S. $ millions) Piracy level (% ) Ghana 7 .4 25 1 0 -2 5 Kenya 0 .4 2 over 50 South Af rica 7 .3 196 1 0 -2 5 Zimbabw e 1 .5 9 2 5 -5 0 Source : International Federation of the Phonographic Industry July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 27 The body and soul of club culture ◗ Hillegonda C. Riet veld Elect ronic dance music is constantly spawning new strands of music like techno and acid house. Behind the thudding beats, communities of DJs and dancers try to stay one step ahead of entertainment multinationals— and the law U ◗ Lecturer in Media Studies at South Bank University, London, and author of “ This Is Our House: House Music, Cultural Spaces and Technologies” (Ashgate,1998) 28 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 nited on the dance flo o r ,r e ve lle rs of different some ways a reconfigu ration of the disco era of the ethnic backgrounds,sexual orientations and m id -t o-late 70s. All of us probably remember that ages dance wa ll- t o - wa ll, swe at in g, sm ilin g p eriod as one of poor taste and excess, symbolised in and enjoying the D J’s clever acoustic tric ks. T h e the mainstream by John Travolt a’s white suit in the c o m b in ation of loud, r hythmic music and visual Am erican movie, Saturday Night Fever. But before d ist o rtion heightens the collective spirit as the N o rth Am erica ’s white, su burban middle classes sound enters the crowd—machine rhyt h m s,p o u n d- adopted the commodified BeeGee’s Stayin’Alive vering dru m s, overlaid with a gospel spirituality of sion of disco, the music was considered an offshoot of p e a c e ,love and unity.Welcome to Body and Soul in funk and soul music. Commercial in aspirat ion , yes, N ew York C ity, where the dream of danceflo o r bu t , at its best, fun and funky. D isco, under the presU topia lives on and (in the words of one dance sures of the “disco sucks” campaign (orchestrated by music diva) “everybody’s free (to feel good)”. disaffected rock fans) and the global over-exposure of At Body and Soul, D Js like Joe Claussel still Saturday Night Fever, waned in popularity as the three embody the determ in ation to mix and match —b oth gr e at anti-comm ercial genres of popular music styles of music and their audience—to remain aloof em erged : reggae in Jam aica, punk in the UK, h ip -h op from the machinations of the global entertain m en t in New York City. H owever, the disco principle of gian ts, to find more in “club culture” than getting p laying a smooth mix of long single records to keep high or getting paid. And it takes determ in ation , for people “dancing all night long” lives on in the endless over the past decade or so, “ d an ce” or “club cul- stream of electronic dance music. ture”—based on electronic music and its derivaH ouse music, in part icu lar, is often held up as a tives—has become an intern ation al, m u lti-m illion kind of banner of cultural diversity owing to its oridollar market despite the gins in black and Latino discos, efforts of DJs like Claussel to where it first found its audience promote the dream of culturFor many of its devotees, (see p.45). O ne could point to al diversit y, artistic indepenthe 1980s, when African Am erthis club culture dence and universal spiritu alican producers/D Js, like Frankie ity. For many of its devotees, represents an escape from K n u ckles,M arshall Jefferson or this club culture represents an DJ Pierre, began refining the allthe regimentation escape from the regim en tanight dancefloor workouts at of modern life and even u n d er ground gay and m ixed tion of modern life and even a r et u rn to a pre-industria l a return to a pre-indust rial clubs in NewYork and Chicago, pagan shamanistic utopia. pagan shamanistic utopia. like the legendary War eh o u se But before delving into from which house music derives this global phenomenon, a its nam e. Or there is D J Larry little history and vocabulary is called for. To begin L e va n , whose residence at N ew Yo r k’s Pa r a d ise with, let’s deflate the generic use of the term G arage not only defined a distinct sub-genre of its “techno” to describe anything with a thudding own (“garage” is slower and more gospel orien t ed electronic beat. Techno is actually one strand of than “house”) but set the tone for today’s raves1 — an ever-expanding genre generally called “elec- no alcohol, heavy drug use, a mixed , “up for it crowd ” tronic dance music”. A veritable cannibal, this and loud, p u lsating music for 15-hour stretches withgenre spawns a constant stream of variants as the out a break. technological wizards, D Js, re-configure any kind of music or sound—from a train whistle to the 1. In the 1970s,Afro-C aribbeans and Afro-Americans chant of a T ibetan lama—within the thud-thud- colloquially used the word “rave” to mean “party” or “have ding of a four-beats-to-a-bar rhythm. Two of the fun”. In 1987/88,U K youth began calling large, often unlicensed parties “raves”. D Js play through the night a t major sub-genres are techno and house. these events which can attract thousands of paying T he club culture surrounding the m usic is in participants. Yout h’s sonic forces At the same time, in the post-industrialising concrete jungle of Detroit (M ichigan), tech n o, a cooler, more futuristic form of house—intensely layer ed rhythm s, often pierced by machine noises and reconfigured over diva-vocals—emerged from a cross-Atlantic dialogue between you n g, radical African Am erican producers like Kevin Saunderson and Derrick May and electronic Euro-pop, notably by Kraftwerk, a Germ an exp erimental group of the 1970s. By the mid-80s, a series of influential independent record labels had appeared and the various strains of N o rth Am erican house, garage and techno wer e exported to Europe, triggering the rise of local varian ts and scenes.Which kinds of music were adopted where is a story in itself. Briefly, warmer, more gospel-oriented holiday club in the sun by taking over disused warehouses or railway arches where an older mid20s crowd had an ecstatically good time. T he parties thundered on for about a ye a r before parents and police panicked over their “amoral” and illicit dimensions. T he media had a field day sensationalising the raves’ dangerous reputations,which,of course,heightened their attraction for thrill-seeking teenagers. As the chill of the British winter set in, acid house parties went furt h er underground to escape police interference but by summer 1989, they re-surfaced outside metropolitan areas, in leisure centres, rural wa r eh o u ses,even field s.T he scene mushroomed: one eve n t ,S u n rise , reputedly attracted 10,000 participants. An ecstasy is a thing that will not go into w ords; it feels like music. M ark Tw ain, U.S. novelist (18351910) Europe’s biggest party, the Berlin Love Parade. house music found a ready audience in Italy. N orthern E u r o p e,H o llan d ,Belgium and Germ any proved fertile ground for cold, hard techno, which those count ries’ own electronic traditions had a hand in creat in g.H owever, the UK took the lead in adopting and adapting the new U. S .so u n d s. Each variant found a British audience: soul- and gospel-tinged house was adopted by “ sou l” fan s, while techno drew devot ees from rock and even punk. In 1987 a group of British D Js and pleasureseekers, enjoying the traditional British sun’n’fun holiday on the Spanish island of Ibiza (a legendary spot on the hippie trial, with a casual attitude to drugs) discovered a potent mix. T hey found that the empathy-generating drug M D M A (aka ecstasy, “E”) proved the perfect accompaniment to a night in the clubs dancing to the new, wobbly, futuristic sound of “acid house” (a var iant of American house). On returning to rainy England, these D Js tried to “recapture” the Ibiza feeling by starting their own clubs and holding unlicensed “acid house parties”, the prototype of the “rave”. T hey began re-creating the feel of a Within about five years of “the birth of the rave” , the UK government passed a series of proh ib it ive laws to crack down on the even t s. T h e C riminal Justice Act of 1994, for example, p rovid ed the police with sweeping powers to squelch any event feat u ring amplified repetitive beat s. But the repression had contrasting effects. F irst , by drivin g the events further undergrou n d , it actually spurred their politicisation with the so-called D iY (D o it You rself) aesthetic: organise events out of a comm itment to independence and explicitly anticon su m erist political action. D iY ravers were no longer just organising dance events but musical protests around environmental and social justice issu es. Groups like the legendary Spiral Tribe also began spreading the “ gosp el” of punk-like resistance across the European continent by helping to kick off “ T ekn ivals”( t ech n o-fest ivals) in France and G erm any. Similar groups had a hand in develop in g the major European Tech n ival circuit, which now includes one of the world ’s biggest part ies: Berlin ’s L ove Parad e, which attracted an estimated 1.5 m illion revellers from across Europe in 1999. July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 29 At the same time, legislation also led crowds to retu rn to licensed nightclubs.T he late 1990s gave rise to “super clubs”, with rationalised administration and m arketing strat egies. Clubs such as the M inistr y of Sound in London and Cream in Liverpool are hugely p rofitable bu sin esses, flying in the latest “star DJs” t o p lay in a tightly controlled and regulated atm osp h ere. O t h e rs, like H om e and G at ecr a sh er , are export in g their branded goods (like t-shirts and records) overseas. Home even opened a club in Sydney (Australia). Yet despite this com mercial explosion, t h e dream of club culture’s democratising power lives on, particularly in how the music is produced and co n su m ed . T he entertainm ent industr y has conventionally followed a “ r o ck”m o d el, which relies on bands signing long-term recording contracts with record labels (production and distribution companies) so they can afford to record an album of songs in an expensive,commercial studio.T he label then sends the band out to promote the album by playing live concerts in large venues. Copyright chaos D ance music has shaken up this m odel. Instead of hiring and promoting an entire band of musicians, the club and recording industries have the much easier and affordable task of signing and managing individual D Js who “play” the ever more affordable digital equipment produced by com panies such as Roland of Japan and Sequential C ircuits of the U .S.With drum boxes and synthesizers, technological wizards mimic musical instruments. By “sampling” (a form of digital copying), they can digitally record and manipulate any sound, thereby throwing copyright law (and its principles of originality) into a disarray from which it has yet to recover. C reative individuals without musical training and only rudimentary electronic know-how can now produce dance music on their personal computers with programmes like C ubase. U sing digital equipment, a “track” (not a “song”) can be composed, produced and mixed entirely by the D J/producer. Although digital production is the standard in house music , vinyl (records), as opposed to digital forms like C D, still predominate in clubs. D Js seem to prefer the immediate tactile advantages offered by the old “needle-on-the-record” that allows special forms of manipulation (“scratching” records while rewinding and fast-forwarding by hand to taunt and titillate the audience). Turntables also seem to produce a warmer sound than C D players. H owever, many local scenes, such as those in Portugal or Belgrade (see p.43), lack vinyl pressing plants and must rely on imported vinyl from N ew York or London. M a ny ar tists would like to rem ain independent and set up their own labels, som etimes eve n d ist ributing their products from the D J booth of a club or delivering by car to specialist record shops. H owe ve r , if that recording does becom e a hit, t h e artist will soon need substantial investment to supply dem and. T herefore artists are forced to do deals with either independent or “ m a jo r ” d ist ribution groups or to sell the track outrigh t to a record company. In this way, e ven independently produced m usic is incorp o r ated into the global music m arket. While digital technology may ha ve opened up new possibilities for independent production, o b viously not ever yone has equal access. For the vast majority of the world’s population this technology is economically out of reach and overwhelmingly c o n c e n t r ated in the U. S , We st e rn Europe and Japan.Even in the West,the majority of producers and D Js are male in keeping with social codes. E ven when female D Js do achieve a degree of “respect” from club crowd s, they are marketed as sexual icons in music magazines rather than technically competent producers.When I m ention my experience in an electronic dance music group (as a progr am m er and keyboard player ) , the first question I often hear is:“Were you a singer?” In the global loops of music production and distribution, dance or club cultures are taking root from Sao Paolo to Tel Aviv across a wide political and cultural spectrum.Yet the spread has done little to shift uneven power distribution; Western global cities continue to dominate along with the five major record companies which control distribution and abide by the stubborn distinctions of gender and class. We cannot help but ask, “Is everybody equally welcome at this global party?” We must question the diva quoted earlier: Is everybody really “free to feel good”? ■ Could it be the “ home studio” of one of the w orld’s best-paid DJs, Fatboy Slim? 30 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 +… ● Beverly M ay (from Toronto, Canada), http://www.futurejazz.org ● M ad M ike (Detroit producer featured on a French website), ht t p://w w w.mult imania.com/fi ght ers/madmike.ht m ● Raya:Atmospheric Engineering, http://raya.org.uk ● House M achine (from M ilan, Italy), http://www.housemachine.co m The discovery of the DNA code, for example, focuses on how you can create different species of beings by starting from the very smallest particles and their components. (...) In music, we do exactly the same. Karlheinz Stockhausen, Germ an experimental electronic composer and musician (1928-) Yout h’s sonic forces 2 Local scenes Direct from the U.S. prison-industrial complex in New Jersey, Lifers Group find a captive audience. Black is back ◗ Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar and Vijay Prashad Hip-hop’s art of rebellion can trigger a battle against racism or raise the white flag to hyper-consumerism F ◗ Jeffrey Ogbar teaches history at the University of Connecticut and is a W.E.B. Du Bois research fellow at Harvard University specialising in the Black Power Movement. ◗ Vijay Prashad is a professor at Trinity College (Connecticut) and a board member of the Center for Third World Organizing.He is also the author of Karma of Brown Folk (Minnesota,2000) and Untouchable Freedom (Oxford,2000). rom Bogota to Beijing, hip-hop’s apostles are spreading “the word”, striking chords of rage and rebellion in privileged and poor kids alike, in rich countries and poor.T he wo r ld , it seem s, is in love with black America. But this is a treacherous affair. Back in the homeland,a war is being waged against this very same group. One of the frontlines is the priso n - in d u st rial complex—an exp anding fo rt r e ss, with the U. S . r ate of incarceration (682 per 100,000) six to ten times higher than that of most industrialised nat ion s. Of the two m illion priso n e rs, 49 per cent are black and 17 per cent are Latino even though they respectively represent 13 and 11 per cent of the population.Almost one in three black men between the ages of 20 and 29 are caught in the web of correctional control (incarcer at io n ,p r o b ation or parole).T hese men lose their right to vo t e, lose their place as citizens, both in the eyes of the State and in white society. Outside of the penitentiaries,u n em p loyment is a p rison of its own . At seven per cent, the rate may seem low, but look closer and you find that this does not recognise the “ d isp osab le” p art-time workers, generally com posed of ethnic m inorities and wo m en . About eight per cent of African Am ericans are officially unemployed , but the real bombshell is reserved for black you t h : almost 32 per cent cannot find a job. H ip-hop is the “C N N of Black America”,raps Chuck D of P ublic Enemy. Read this line with a metaphorical eye to catch a crucial but not complete reflection of the world’s Janus-like attraction to rap’s art of rebellion. O n the one hand, C N N o ffe rs constant news coverage wo r ld - wid e . I n symbolic term s, we find rappers cast as report ers on the frontline, o ffe ring live updates through their music of the trials,tribulations and peculiarities of neighbourhoods and cities, from Lagos to Frankfu rt . O n the other hand, global media netwo r ks, like C N N , just scratch th e surface and cater to m ainstream political “ t a st e s” by offering easily digestible nuggets of infotainm ent. I llu st r ating this n egat ive side, we find a few posses of To kyo rappers and fans, for example, literally burning their skin in tanning salons. T his is an extreme example reflecting the international mantra:“Be black for a d ay, wigger for an after n o o n !” [Wigger refers to white people who copy black fashions.] Contradictory impulses Much like jazz and rock ’n’ roll in the past, h ip hop has made working class U.S. youth in general and African Am ericans in particular a cultural h earth for the intern ational market. Its iconic p ower takes many form s, depending upon the particular political goals and constraints of its practit ion ers. For some, hip-hop is used to attack povert y, oppression and government corru p t ion . O t h er fans and musicians take aim at cultural ort h od oxy by glorifying gang violence, hyp er-m at erialism and explicit misogyny. Often these contradictory elements take shape simultaneously. In the heart of advanced industrial countries,h ip hop serves as a liberation anthem for those oppressed by racism and povert y. In the disadvantaged subu rb s of Paris, the lilting sounds of Senegalese MC Solaar rad iate beside N orth African-inspired rai rap, wh ile July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 31 NT M (Nique Ta Mère – “screw your mother”) besiege the fascism of Jean -M arie Le Pen ’s Front N at ion al p a rt y. Across the C hannel, British Asian rappers F un^Da^M ental enshrine the right to self-defence against racist at t acks, while German hip-hoppers incite respect for their Turkish origin s. Yet at the same time,hip-hop is also just one of m any commercial products or props used for yo u t h rebellion against the established orders of parents. T he music, dress and attitude are used to visibly divide one generation from another. In T hailand, male teens speed through the streets in swanky cars, pumped on the raw energy and anger of U .S. rap without the slightest connection to the underlying politics. In Kathmandu,teens use rap’s breakbeats to break with tradition, perh aps temporarily, in forging a “modern” identity. As U.S. rapper L.L. Cool J rhym ed ,“ t h er e’s no category, for this story. It will rock in any territ ory.” C uba offers an “ acad em ic’s delight” in contradict ion s. Since 1996, the government has helped to sponsor an annual N ational H ip-H op Conference sh owcasing local and intern ational stars, m ost ly from Latin Am erica. According to the U.S. h ip -h op m agazine The Source, F idel Castro “sees rap music as the existing revolu t ion ary voice of Cuba’s future.” Yet hip-hop also challenges the socialist vision when fans at concerts proudly wear images of the U.S. dollar bill on their hats and shirts and scream “ it ’s all about the Benjamins” ( referring to the image of Benjam in Franklin printed on $100-bills). Ironically, as post-C old War hyper-materialism endangers the destiny of young people everywh er e, the contradictory message of hip-hop begins to make sense. A decisive feature of the music/culture’s ethic is: to “want mine”, meaning a share of society’s wealth.T his desire operates at both the individualist and collective levels. D o you want “it” (luxury, security, etc.) for yourself, or do you want a fair share for your community or society? T he urge is so complex that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to find one without the other. Take the case of South Africa , whose town sh ip s only recently produced some of the m ost disciplined and inspirational fighters for social justice. N ow in “ m ixe d - r a c e ” areas around Cape Town , gangs take their cue from gangsta rap, calling them selves “the Am erican s” and “ t h r owing up the W ” , a hand signal from West Coast gangsta rappers of the U. S .T he South African exam ple shows us that hiph o p ’s art of rebellion does not only lead to antiracist and anti-capitalist rebellion, but it often falls victim to the pitfalls of systemic oppression against which it attempts to rebel. H ip-hop alone cannot rise up to the task of political transformation—this is pop culture not a manifesto. H owever, by looking at the particular political situations and aspirations of its musicians, we can trace its rise as an iconic power and its demise when the assimilationist powers of the capitalist economy flatten out the music’s richness to render it a message of personal gain. ■ Smoking with the truth that the righteous say Choking on the games that the foolish try to play We gotta roll with the blows from below And give them a show Teach the truth to the young So they’ll never step back Against the Flow “Against the Flow”, by rappers Upper Hutt Posse of New Zealand A M aori warrior claims new territory ◗ Kerry Buchanan Dean Hapeta launched New Zealand’s political hip-hop scene by linking the force of M aori cult ure with the struggle of black nationalism to fuel consciousness and controversy “N ◗ Freelance political writer and hip-hop correspondent for Real Groove magazine 32 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 igger!” T he biker’s insult blindsided the eigh t -year-old boy, sh attering his vision of both M aori and pakeha (white) society in Aot earoa, the original name of N ew Zealand. T h e verbal attack sharpened the boy’s awareness of his society’s colour lines. Afterwards, he couldn’t stand the sight of his fellow Maori cast as the peaceful but subord in ate native. N or could he look up to indigenous gangs in his working-class neighbourhood of Upper H u tt, outside the capital Wellin gton .Tu rning to white societ y, he felt oppression. So the boy began to look in war d , to imagine a “new breed”—proud of his M aori past and committed to a radical break with the legacy of colonial dominat ion . Tod ay, at the age of 34, Hapeta will refer to him- self as “one bad nigger” in reference to his hardcore politics as a rapper. H ere lies H apeta’s strength and, for some, his weakn ess: the ability to weave Maori cultu re, language and political demands—from land and fishing rights to economic equality—within the style and context of black Am erican hip-hop. Indeed Hapeta and his group U pper H utt Posse (UH P) have influenced a generation of hip-hop bands and fans across the country. Before these “ warrio rs” st o rmed the st age,M aori music was generally marginalised like an exotic trinket of the past used in the “ rit u al” of entertaining tourist s. By rapping in their language and in corp orating the sounds, values and history of their people, Hapeta and like-minded artists shatter stereotypes of what it m eans to be M aori. Yout h’s sonic forces H a p et a ’s political consciousness did not flow from the “cultural awaken in g” of the 1970s when the M aori middle-class rediscovered its roots. He followed the learning curve of the streets, his wha ka pa pa (“ th e place where one belongs”).Tuned into the liberat ion music of Bob Marley, Jam aica’s legendary reggae m u sician , the songs of resistance rang true in his d isad vantaged neighbourhood, where police confron t ations were a rite of passage. By valou rising the h ist ory of former slaves and colonised peoples, t h e music enabled H apeta to discover “black outern at ion alit y” or the collective struggles of the oppressed. The impact of M alcom X In fa c t ,H a p e t a ’s group UH P began in 1985 by playing reggae inspired by the political message of Marley, considered a veritable saint. But then a new set of prophets landed in Aotearoa: U. S .r a p p ers like Afrika Bam b aataa and Grandmaster F lash. Br eakd an cin g and rapping with crews in the street, Hapeta began mixing a homegrown message with two major ingred ien ts:experience and inspiration . Landing a job at the Justice D epart m en t , he scoured the country to hear M ao ri land grievan ces. T he second elem ent flowed from overseas via The Autobiogra phy of Malcom X. “T he book knocked me out,” he says. “It was great in sp iration … that pride in the self and the ability to do something about it.”T he life of the black nat ionalist—a cultural hero for his radical defence of racial p ride in the 1950s and 60s—led H apeta to see himself as a leader with hip-hop as a m ovem ent against racism and a political plat form for M aori interests. Iron ically, H apeta was soon approached by the son Te Kupu:w ords intended to penetrate mainstream society. 1. M alcom X was fatally shot on February 21, 1965 while addressing his followers in N ew York C ity. T hree member s of the N ation of Islam were convicted of the crime. of Elijah M uham m ad, the m an who banished 1 Malcom X from the N ation of Islam, an influ en t ial and controve rsial black m ilitant gr o u p. To u rin g Ao t ear o a, Rasul M uhammad invited Hapeta and his posse to perform in D etroit and meet the N ation ’s lead er, Minister Louis Farrakh an , whose antisem itic remarks and inflam m atory views on racial separation h ave sparked heated debat e. In many ways, the trip reflects H apeta’s ongoing dialogue between Maori culture and African Am erican influ e n c e s. At first , the balance was tipped overseas. But with time H apeta struck an equilibrium. For example, he recalls that “meeting Farrakhan was like going to the m ountain-top.” T h er e was also the thrill of perform ing in D etroit and N ew York and even being intervie wed inside H ar lem ’s Apollo T h eat re, where nearly all the gr eat African Am e rican m usicians have playe d . Bla c k audiences were apparently amazed by the fluency and force with wh ich U pper H utt drew links between M alcom X and M aori leaders like H one H eke. Praise in the homeland of hip-hop helped to legitimize H apeta’s own sense of authenticity. But back in Ao t ea r o a , the fiery brand of M aori n ationalism has fuelled consciousness and controversy. In particu lar, his no-compromise stance on land rights rattles more conciliatory activists and, at times, Polynesian groups originally from the Pacific Islands of Samoa, N uie and To n ga. For example, at a 1990 co n cert , Polynesian fans told Hapeta “to go home” after he announced that Aotearoa was the land of the M ao ri. T he same year, H apeta successfully sued for d efam ation the newspaper Auckland Star over claims th at Upper H utt Posse had barred two pa keha you th s from a concert .I r o n ica lly, the political talks peppering H apeta’s shows are generally well accepted by pa keha au d ien ces. Inner peace Today, H apeta is working as a solo artist under the name Te Kupu (the word) instead of the form er D Wo r d . Two versions of his latest album Ko Te M atakahi Kupu (or T he Words that Pen et r ate) wer e released in January:one entirely in M aori and the other in English.T hese changes reflect H apeta’s personal evolu t ion . Before the evils of society appeared to dominate his work.N ow, H apeta seems to have found an inner peace in his reliance on his culture. Within the M aori community, he is respected as a political leader for his dedication to Te Rao ( M a o ri language) and culture. But the wa rrior is still alive, staking claims in new territ o ry: mainstream society. “Promote it [Te Rao],push it into the mainstream. U se its concepts of caring, social concern as a way of changing at t it u d es,” says H apeta, who is pushing for more than just space for his albums in record shops and on radio stat ion s. H is words are intended to penetrate mainstream society. H apeta’s horizons widen as he travels internationally to check out the local political plat fo rms of other “conscious rappers” in the U K, for example. “I’m learning from all struggles,getting out of m y skin and [coming] back to share, as an ambassador for the M aori people.” In many ways, this mission reflects the advice of the great Maori leader, Sir Ap irana N gata. In 1897, he wrote of the need to harm onize one’s conflicting ideas while daring “ t o wander in moments of the greatest exaltation and wildest imaginings.” ■ +… ● For more information on Te Kupu: http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/matakahi/ July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 33 Algerian rappers sing the blues ◗ Bouziane Daoudi Taking aim at the war, corruption and economic crisis, Algerian rappers have turned the kingdom of rai into the Arab world’s most vibrant hip-hop scene “T ◗ Music reporter for the French daily newspaper Libération 34 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 h ey’re down there on Loubet / T h ey’ve all and its pioneers, all from very poor fam ilies, are pushgot big houses / T hey’ve got the cheek to ing on 40. Hip-hop became the rage about a decade tell us / ‘We live in a ghetto’ / H e smokes a go, led by middle-class perform ers. To d ay, it has foot-long joints / H e’s pretty addicted / H e looks spread around the country (neighbouring M orocco like a gangster / But he’s just scared / O f getting has only a small hip-hop scene), t u rning Algeria into thrown in the slammer.” the rap leader of Arab nations and probably of the T he four mem bers of the group Perfect G ’s entire Muslim world despite a meagre musical output ham mer the lines with “ at t it u d e ” . B o r d e ring on (each album only sells about 10,000 copies) considinvoluntary self-parody, this send-up takes aim at ering the dizzying num ber of grou p s. the strew of other rappers who hang out in the same O ran had about 40 hip-hop groups in 1990. neighbourhood of O ran as they do. N one wo u ld Tod ay there are more than 60. Algiers had 60 last look out of place in the tough suburb of a French year and now has about 100. T he capital has given city or a lower-class district of N ew Yo r k, with their b irth to a wave that has spared no city in the country. p ricey track-suits em blazoned with the logos of big Groups recite their rhyming verses in a weird frenzied sp ort swear firm s, the name of their group (Ol’D irt y la n gu a ge, switching from one tongue to another, S h a m e, Killa D ox, Lord Squad, Black Eye s ,T h e then to a third and a fourt h . In a single sentence, Com m ission) and their stage nam es (O ddman, F ren ch , English and the two forms of Arab ic, lit erary N.Fect, M C G hosto, Flyman, M achine G un, Vex, and spoken, are jumbled together.T hey invent a flexJigy, Baby, and so on). ib le, ir o n ic, language with bold descrip t ive power: T he rappers of Oran, Algeria’s second largest city, “ T igh t - fitting hijeb [the Islamic headscarf]/Seeare to be found in a down town area that has been the through hijeb/Swim suit hijeb/Flashy hijeb/M ultihaunt of “ cool” people for several decades. T hey sit coloured hijeb/Crumpled hijeb/Frisky hijeb bought on the benches along the Avenue Larbi-T ébessi (for- on the C ham ps-Elysées/O K hijeb/M alaysia n merly Avenue Loubet) or on the h ijeb /R em ovable hijeb/Airsteps of shuttered shops in conditioned hijeb.” “ M anipulat ion, M ohamed-Khémisti (once E ve ry T V im age fin d s aggression, Alsace-Lorraine) Street, because its way into their lyrics: wars, they can’t gather in the local the ozone layer, famine, fashdisappointment / cafés and tea-houses. It is in this ion models, films,contracepThat ’s what my lot is 200-metre radius area that they tives, soap operas,ads,hooligather to shoot the breeze in the today / My only crime is to gans. Everything is evoked , late afternoon, or whenever they com pared and twisted to fit hope and to dream.” take time off from their studies, the rhym e . T hen com es the their casual jobs or just from doing nothing. real problem of finding a proper recording studio. T his west ern Algerian city is the birthplace of rai, Two famous groups in Algiers, MBS (Microand of one of its leading stars, K h aled . But Oran’s phone Breaks the Silence) and Intik (“cool” in Algerrap p ers and disc-jockeys aren’t too keen about each ian slang) have already brought out their first C D in ot h er. “ T h ere’s just copycats left in rai these days,” F ran ce, Algera p on one of the big labels. Wa hra p ( an says H Rime, of the group MCLP. “ Rai’s just for hav- ab b reviation ofWah ran , which is Oran in Arab ic, p lu s ing a laugh,” says Vex of the group Da Tox (T heory of the word rap), a compilation by several Oran grou p s, E xist en ce) . Jealou sy, almost hat red , is in the air. came out in June 2000. T he theme of the album is T he rapper s see the m any rai singers as the summed up by MCLP’s refrain: “We’re microphone main obstacle to their hitting the big time with their fiends / We’re telling you what we see / W h at ever’s provocative rants delivered at the speed of light to going on / Some people steal / Others suffer.” music that doesn’t lose face to foreign rap: From a musical standpoint, the compilation is “In the bat t le ,Alge ria ’s there / With Oran guys rap- well above the first Algerian rap album s that hit ping / T hey’ll get revenge / T hey’ll settle their F ran ce. N on et h eless, from the outset, Algerian rap scores / T heir heads are hot / As boiling water.” was well received in F rance. R ap p ers met with symElectronic rai has been going for 20 years now pathy for evoking the massacres and social ills afflict- Yout h’s sonic forces A display of bravado during a youth festival in Algiers, home to some 100 rap groups. The Impossible attracts me, because everything possible has been done and the world didn’t change. Sun Ra, U.S. f ree jazz musician (1 9 1 4 - 1 9 9 3 ) ing their country. But the genre is still struggling to establish itself: audiences in France are more drawn to im m igrant Algerian rappers such as F reeman and Im hotep, of the Marseilles group IAM , Rimka of Collectif 113, and non-Algerians like Joey Starr, of the duo NT M , who worked on the albums of M BS and In t ik. Last ye a r , Alge rian rappers only produced a dozen recordings on mediocre cassettes, but today hip-hop products are springing up all over,reflecting young people’s formidable need to speak out. Algie rs is hom e to a constellation of rap gr o u p s including the H amm a Boys, C ause To u jo u rs, K Libre,Les M essagères,C ity 16,D e-M en and Tout Pa sse . T he flo u rishing resem bles the exp losive growth of the written press during the democratisation that followed the riots of October 1988. Since those days however, disillusionment has taken hold, as the Algiers group Intik raps: “ M an ip ulation ,aggression , disappointment /T hat’s what my lot is today / My only crime is to hope and to dream.” In An n ab a, a town in eastern Alge ria ,L o t fi an d Wah eb , of D ouble Kanon, who are considered the best rappers of the day, openly denounce the count ry’s ills: “T hey come and they come armed / D evils or people / T hey come down from the Jewish cemet ery / Tod ay it’s a crackdown / T here ain’t no football m atch / T hey com e from the parade grou n d / Carrying the flag like in the Lebanon war / Up there people are fleeing / T he land’s become black.” T he war between the security forces and Islamic fundamentalists (“terros” or terrorists in rap language) is the focus of such hip-hop, along with attacks on corru p t io n ,o p p o rt u n ist s, the “ t rab en d o” (black market),hatred,injustice and the blues. “Zero morale”, the name of a song by the longstanding Oran group Vixit , sum s it all up: “ T h e Escobars / T he Al C apones we have right here / We have the mafia / What is left? / Engineers, doctors, d ip lo m ats / T hink about begging cigarettes / Jo b less people just hang around / T he market economy / We are condemned / Like animals in a zoo.” SOS But a new trend is emerging. In its early days, rap was the privy of well-off m iddle class yo u t h s who wrote their rhymes and worked out their tempos in the com fort of fa n cy villas. N ow it is becoming more democratic and inspiring young people from underp rivileged backgr o u n d s. In short ,Alge rian rap has taken off across the social spectrum. T he rappers of MIA (Made in Algeria) rehearse inside an empty container in their high-rise suburb of Ain -el-T u rk, while those belonging to the group Cott ages, from the small town of Boufarik, sell veget ables and cigarettes on the street. It ’s com mon knowledge that Réda, of the group Intik, had to sell his shoes in the Algiers flea market to pay for the last recording hour of his grou p’s first cassette. But everyone believes in just trying to get by, as products of local educat ion without a future, of satellite dishes spewing unreality and of inescapable povert y. In early M ay 2000, about 30 groups gathered in the city of M ostaganem for a hotly-contested rap competition. T he first prize went to a group from Algiers. Its name was SOS. ■ July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 35 M ama Africa meets the kwaito generat ion ◗ Maria McCloy South Af rica’s legendary M iriam Makeba raps with a young upstart Thandisw a, how w ould you describe kw aito? Thandiswa: It’s about the energy of the time, post-independence youth expressing their freedom and excitement about everything being so brand new. Listen to the music and you’ll find it’s danceoriented but there is also a very positive vibe in its energy and message. M iria m: It ’s South Africa’s counterp art to rap. K waito has its own way of spreading a positive message. In our society, we have always passed messages A recipe for kwaito et’s begin with the basic ingredients: South African disco music, hip-hop, rhythm & blues, reggae and a mega-dose of American and British house music.Mix it all up, add loads of local spice and attitude and you’ve got kwaito. Mostly, but not always, the lyrics are chanted or rapped— not sung— over a slowed-down bass heavy, electronically programmed beat. As pioneering DJs like Oscar “ Warona” Mdlongwa, explain, in the late 80s, “ we started remixing international house tracks to give them a local feeling.We added a bit of piano, slowing the tempo down and putting in percussion and African melodies” . “ Lyrically we were inspired by people like Brenda Fassie and Chicco Twala,” says another founding father, Art hur M af okat e. Brenda and Chicco were the rising stars of the older “ Bubblegum” disco music. “ They were representing us and talking about what was happening in the ghettos, and they spoke in a mixture of English, Zul u, Sesotho and Iscamtho (slang).” Kwaito is steeped in the ghetto, often reeking with a roughneck attitude. But don’t be fooled into thinking that these stars are cheap imitations of U.S. gangsta rappers.These musicians are far too street-wise to glorify violence in crime-ridden South Af ri ca. Nor is there a need to inflame race relations after the victory over apartheid. For today’s youth,the struggle lies in securing a better economic life. In fact,kwaito producers were the first in the country to launch their own black-owned record labels.The major companies are now trying to cut in on the scene with their own kwaito rosters but most of the big names are sitting tight with the original labels. The genre is a major moneyspinner, with leading groups like Bongo Maffin, TKZee and Boom Shaka releasing albums that clock over 50,000 in sal es. If there’s a sound that represents young South Africa right now, it’s kwaito. M.M. ■ L Thandisw a radiates before M iriam M akeba. M iriam Makeba is a living legend, whose music inspired m illions in the struggle against a p a rt h eid . Forced into exile for 30 yea rs, M akeba performed for the likes of the Ethiopian Emperor H aile Selassie, JF K , Fidel C astro and the Po p e. Yet on this sunny South African morn in g, “Mama Africa” opens her door in Joh an n esburg to a jit t ery journalist and a young upstart ,T h an d iswa ,t h e lead singer of the kwaito group Bongo Maffin .K wait o is a local brew of hip-hop, house and reggae music. Bongo Maffin ’s fame dates back to their 1997 hit version of M akeba’s classic song, “Pata -Pata ” . “She’s young enough to be my granddaughter! W h at are we going to discuss?” cries the 68-year-old gr e at - gran dm other M akeb a. But as soon as T handiswa walks in,they embrace. How did you feel w hen you first heard Bongo M affin’s version of “ Pata-Pata” in 1997? ◗ Based in Johannesburg, editor of the Black Rage Internet magazine on South African urban culture:http://www.rage.co.za 36 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 M i r i a m: I was ve ry pleased because when I came back hom e [from exile], some people said, “ Ah , t h ey’re the oldies!” And here are these ver y young people, sin ging my songs. It also m ade me happy to see youth still so attached to Afric a n m u sic, especially considering the influence of what they hear on the radio. H o n est ly, when you listen to these stat io n s, you don’t know if yo u ’re in Africa or C aliforn ia . N ot just because of the musical cont en t … Thandisw a:Also from the tone and attitude of the D Js. Yout h’s sonic forces using kwaito to push the message through to the young kids. [ T h a n d iswa and a number of other kwaito stars are spokespeople for an anti-Aids cam paign called,“Love Life”.] M iriam: And the boys are not so nice.T hey force their way… When I go on tour, I’m bombarded with questions like, “What about all the rapes in South Africa?”You feel em barr a sse d ,h u rt and, as a woman, you could kill someone… The road that I follow Leads me on my way Got my eyes on tomorrow And my feet on today. M iriam M akeba, South African singer (1932-) Thandisw a, M iriam’s music is know n all over the w orld.Are you aiming to do the same w ith Bongo M affin? and expressed ourselves through song.T his is why the former governm ent was so scared of musicians… Thandisw a, do you feel that young people have a negative attitude tow ards the old-school musicians? Tha nd i sw a: I t ’s not about negat ive at t it u d e s, but we didn’t gr ow up in the sam e situation of s t ru ggle against ap art h e id . T he only tim e I remember being stuck in a situation of revolution was in 1985/86 [a state of emergency was declared as massive student riots erupted]. A lot of young people know all about the struggle but they wer en ’t directly involved. With the new freedom in 1994 [the first free elections], we started “eating” everything given to u s, including stuff from Am erica… Many in the “kwaito generation” began living in town, disconn ected from their gr a n d m o t h e rs , p arents and cousins. M iria m: It ’s as if kids today don’t realise just how little time has passed since M andela was in prison . Around the tim e of the second national elections in 1 9 9 9 , I heard some young people sayin g, ‘I’m not going to vote because Mandela didn’t do this and that and he promised he wou ld .’I had a serious talk with t h e m :‘W h at did you say?You ’re living in towns and attending multiracial schools.T here was a time when your parents and grandparents were being taught under a tree and that is something you cannot forget.’ M iriam: I’d like to ask you a question,Thandisw a. I’m on a committee to try to find w ays of improving HIV/AIDS education. How can w e get the message of prevention to sink into the minds of this generation? Thandiswa: I don’t know, M ama. People know about the disease, people know people who are dying because of it, but the message isn’t clicking. People are having sex at such a young age. T h e highest infection rate is among wom en between the ages of 15 and 25. At 1 5, girls can’t m ake rational decisions about using a condom, or not going with a lot of boys… T his is why many of the Aids campaigns are Th a n d i sw a: Yah definitely! We would like to become an international band. M iriam: I hope it happens because one day the M ama M akebas will be gone.D uring a U K music festival in Ap ril, another major kwaito grou p,T K Z ee, was singing outside while I was playing indoors. It ’s nice to see the different generations together… It shows we’re not standing still. ■ Rebel without a pause? ◗ Jeroen de Kloet boy’ Cui Jian, Chi na’s first long-haired rock icon, has pulled off another musical coup ‘ Badby becoming the first artist to adapt hip-hop to the mainland. His hoarse voice has long signified anger, confusion and pain, especially during the 1989 student revolt when his hit single, “ Nothing to my Name” ,became a veritable anthem.Despite the government’s attempts to silence his voice by routinely banning his concerts, Cui Jian carries on with the rapper’s staccato precision. Cui Jian fired the first hip-hop salvo with the single “ Get Over That Day” , which appeared on a compilation album entitled Born on the First of July featuring rock bands from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China reflecting on the handover of Hong Kong to Chinese rule in 1997.While other groups celebrated “ Chineseness” ,Cui Jian questioned the wisdom of the state and its people:“ If love suddenly blossoms between my sister [Hong Kong] and me [Chinese youth],how are you [the mother] going to deal with it?” Clearly put,what if mainland youth falls for Hong Kong’s capitalist culture and rejects the political status quo? M usi ci ans, record companies, journalists and academics often construct rap as the countercultural sound of the 1990s. Of course, this aura of rebellion neatly hides the sexism and materialism so often displayed in the music.But in the case of Cui Jian,rap works. His most recent album, an eclectic mix of rap and rock that has sold over 400,000 copies (not including pirated versions),questions the nationalism and materialist Zeitgeist of post-1989 China. To interpret Cui Jian as a political rebel fits in a little too neatly with the West ’s prevalent view of China as an overtly politicized space.The desire to see dominant ideologies subverted indirectly celebrates liberal Western society. How ever, perhaps Cui Jian has become more of a rebel against the people than for the people.As China’s new generation starts feasting on the fruits of economic ref orms, Cui Jian confid es:“ This is a time when people don’t believe in anything.The new generation just wants to have fun, to be cool, to have good [sex] and to have money … ” Will Cui Jian be upstaged in the “ New China” , where people care more about economics than politics? No mat t er, the rebel raps on: We are so focused on making money that everything will be forgotten (…) Ha! If you ask me what the next generation will be like; I’ll give you a straight answer: why should I care?* * “ Idiots” from the album, The Power of the Powerless, 1998 ◗ Ph.D. student at the Amsterdam School of Social Science Research July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 37 The rap cartel and other tales from Colombia ◗ Timothy Pratt In Cali, hip-hop represents a search for identity among those who have no voice N o sooner did I suggest a spot for taking photos of the 15 rappers and breakdancers we went to meet in Aguablanca (Colombia) than trouble began. In the cab ride to the interview, I passed a neighbourhood barbershop with a poster of slain U .S. rapper Tupac Shakur in the window and some funny haircuts painted on the glass—and thought of suggesting it as a backdrop. But on broaching the idea, a guy called “M aligno” got in my face and said, “I ain’t down with [agreeing to] the bit about the barbers. Some people be sayin ’t h at the barbers be down with hiphop ‘cause they be doin’ the razor cuts [popular among m ale rappers] , but that ain’t necessarily so.” T he com plaints continued, once we reached the shop, as four of the rappers pointed to the name, “N ew American Power”. Lalo, the photographer, and I quickly suggested looking for another site. Walking down a side street, I began explaining t h at readers in other parts of the world would like to see where they live.“ Yeah , you wanna see how poor we are, right?”announced Puto, a young man with his hair braided in the dreadlocks of a Rastafarian. “H ere you go,” he said pointing to a shack at the end of a dirt road.“I bet you wanna take a picture of us in front of that shack, right?” T his went on for an hour. At the end, Lalo, a well-t r aveled C olombian photogr ap h er , was sweating, and not because of the heat. “T hese kids are tough to work with,” he said with understatement. Demanding precision ◗ Freelance journalist based in Cali (Colombia). For more information,email: [email protected] 38 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 And I began to realise what hip-hop in C olombia is all about—a search for identity among those who have no other voice.T hese kids wanted Lalo’s photos to show exactly who they we r e ,d own to the last detail.T hey speak the “language of the world’s ghettos”,as 23-year-old rapper and producer C arlos Andrés Pacheco explained lat er —but in their own urban, South American, C olombian version. T his can m ean including C ali’s particular salsa cadence in a tune or even rapping about the narcotics trade wreaking havoc in C olombian society. In what were once wetlands on the southern edge of Cali (the country’s second city), Aguablanca is one of Latin Am erica’s largest “ invasions”—areas on the ou tskirts of cities where people seek refuge from ru ral violence and povert y. About 400,000 people of colour from the Pacific coast have settled here over the last few decades, often finding m ore violence and poverty in an urban form . Since 1994, the Aguablanca Cultural Network has been trying to help, for example, b y su p p orting about 25 of the area’s dozens of rap and breakdance grou p s. T his support includes practical help like givin g the groups a gath ering place—a big help in light of the fact that many of these kids live in single-floor houses with up to eight siblings crammed into a few room s, while few institutions open their doors to bands of teen agers with dreadlocks and baggy jeans. One of the n et works’lead ers is Robinson Ruiz, who also belongs to BS, a rap trio with a video—a status symbol of sorts in C olombia’s rap scene, barely a decade old. “ Throw ing consciousness out there” Ruiz has called a meeting to discuss upcoming even ts, including the first anniversary of a weekly radio sh ow dedicated partially to rap called “T he Zone”. C ali, with four radio stations now programming rap, leads the nat io n ;Bo go t á , the capital, has two. T he 15 rappers and breakers dwelled on the same issue raised by the photos: id en tity.T hey talked about whom to thank at the ceremony and why—m ean in g who is really part of the scene and who isn’t .T h e y also talked about money, questioning whether some groups are paying for airp lay on the radio. A few days lat er , rapper Carlos Andrés Pach eco highlights another aspect of the local hip-hop cult u r e. Until recently, C arlos Andrés belonged to the Bogotá gr o u p, Gotas de Rap, or D rops of Rap—one of the few to have two produced C D s and to have performed in Europe on three tours. Pacheco told the story of the Colombia Rap Cart el, a “trade gr o u p ”t h at he founded with members of five other groups around the country three years ago to help up-and-coming rappers get instru m en t s,st udio time, and so on. He spoke of “ p rob lem s” with this effort , including “different ways of thinking” am on g m em b ers. “ M any of the groups think that when they make a demo tape and play a few concert s, th ey’re going to get rich quick,” said Pach eco. “T hey think t h ey’re going to ride in a Cadillac. T hey aren’t conscious of what rap is really about.” For Pa c h e c o, hip-hop is aimed at “ t h r owin g consciousness out there” to the public, in clu d in g rapping about the complex relations between Washington and Bogotá as reflected in the war against d ru gs. “T he way I see it,” said the rapper, “ we sell co ca in e, just like the United States sells arm s— Yout h’s sonic forces Aguablanca’s rap community may speak the “ language of the w orld’s ghettos” but they w ant no borrow ed images and labels. They treat me as a traitor when I speak of silence’s defeat Silence is of gold, but I’ve chosen the beat A wave, a cyclone, w here’s the weather gonna blow? Whoever sows the wind reaps the tempo M C Solaar, French rapper (1 9 6 9 - ) which also kill people. Both are part of the economy, and it’s pretty hard for people in the countrysid e here to survive on anything else.” T hrough his lyrics,he tries to highlight positive options for kids in Colom bia’s cities who “ a lways have that door open to gangs,drugs,prison…” Finally, he admitted that it isn’t easy to raise such topics in a violent c o u n t ry like C olombia. “ You have to be careful about how you get the message across and make it almost subliminal,” he warned. For most of the rappers and breakers, there are two kinds of messages worth communicat in g:p rot est s or proposals. M aria Eugenia Barquero, whose five-girl grou p, Impacto Latino, is one of a growing number in C olom bia’s hip-hop scene. “We’re telling other kids to take up culture, instead of violence and dru gs.To feel proud to be Colom bian. T his is our proposal,” sh e said before explaining that some groups focus on protesting against the stat e, the rich , or the U nited St at es. As for the gangsta image put across by m any U.S. rap p ers, she and most others view it as a commercial development of little interest. C u rious about her sense of identity as a person of colour and how this might relate to her “ p rop osals” , I asked which black Colombians she admired. “ M y fat h er,” she said, “for all he’s done to raise us.”W h en pressed for m ore names, she asked “D o they have to be black?” As for “people in general,” she m entioned U.S. female rappers T LC and Salt n’ Pep p a. As for being a young female rapper in a country where m ost beer ads are ador ned by bu xo m blondes in bikinis, Barquero said, “ you feel that the other groups and the public are all saying, ‘can she do it?’And then we show that we can.” T he braided 18-year-old Barquero sees herself as a potential ambassador of sort s. In about five years, she hopes to take her hip-hop message of non-violence around this country mired in civil war. But she h asn ’t figured out how to overcome a major barrier— m on ey. While discussing hip-hop’s m eagre fin a n c ia l r ewa r d s, Luis F elipe Jaram illo of D iscos F uentes recounted two experiences he had recording rap groups in 1998. T he company didn’t agree with the groups’lyrics “attacking the U nited States and the Spanish conquistadors.” S o, they released the records under another name: Factory Records. Political demands vs. commercial dividends “ We did the project basically to help the gr o u p s,” said Ja r a m illo. Only 1,000 copies we r e p rin t e d , but “ ve ry few of them sold.” So D iscos Fuentes is not embarking on any major rap adventures for now, aside from one group , Latinos en la casa, or Latins in the H ouse—who rap about subjects like Juan Pablo M ontoya, the young C olombian driver who recently won the U. S . car race, Indianapolis 500. About 1,500 copies of the albu m will be produced. E ven Gotas de Rap has neve r pressed more than 5,000 compact discs. Orlando Cajamarca, a director who brought theatre to 150,000 of Agu ab lan ca’s kids over the last 14 yea rs, questions rap’s future in Colombia for cultural reasons rather than money. He sees rap as part of globalisat io n , tracing it to cable T V’s arrival in Colombia over the last decade, explaining that “ even the poorest slum s here have television.” H e wo nd ers if rap isn’t just a passing fad and says leaders are lacking in the C olombian hip-hop comm unity. Patricia Ariza, producer of the group Gotas de Rap, d isagrees. H ip-hop is a “ valuable cultural altern ative for marginal sectors of this society,” said Ariza,b efore expressing faith in its financial future. “T he bu sin ess world always takes a long time to recognise the underground world , but eventually it does.” ■ July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 39 M apping the meanings of dance music ◗ Caspar Melville By adapting global music trends, are young people dancing on the graves of their cultures or building new hybrid identities? I ◗ Visting lecturer in Media and Communications at Goldsmiths College (London),freelance music journalist and,when time permits, a club and radio DJ specialising in jazz-dance and funk. 40 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 n the black townsh ips around Jo h a n n e sbu r g, South Africa , a new music culture is taking hold among youth. In the small clubs and storefront shebeens of these impoverished dormitory towns, young people are eschewing the govern m en t - sa n ctioned “ a u t h e n t ic ” m usic of Afro-jazz bands in favour of recorded sound. Just as Jamaican sound system operat o rs back in the 1950s or South Bronx hip-hop D Js in the m id-1970 s discove r e d , t wo t u rn t a b le s, a mixer and a m icrophone (made in Jap an ) , a supply of vinyl records (pressed in Europe or the U.S.) and a com petent D J are all that is required to get the party rockin’until dawn. Local eruptions of globalised “club culture” fru st r ate simplistic notions of authenticity (shouldn ’t Africans listen to African music?) or attempts to wrest a defin it ive m eaning from youth culture (linked so often to music).T he township kids have punctured and deflated the over -sim p lified analysis often surrounding Afro-diasporic music. In many c a se s, p aths are traced from African origin —t h e m u sic’s “authentic roots”— through to its re-art icu lation (“whitening”) or comm odific ation (“sell out”) by greedy corporations based in the modern West ern metropolis. T h at argum ent falls apart in places like the town sh ip s, where youth adopt music with Afr o -d iasp o ric roots (house music was born in the black-latino urban gay clubs of the U.S.) bu t routed through the cities of northern Europe. For these young people, it represents a highly va lu ed link to the West—much as their heavily logoed jeans and baseball caps function as status sym bols. But is their rejection of Afro-jazz for Euro-house a subtle form of reverse appropriation (whereby kids have adopted the m usic as their own) or merely bad fait h (a rejection of their culture)? M usic scenes like these are far too soph isticated to fit into the cramped confines of binary (either/or) analysis. Instead of delivering easy answers, these music scenes raise critical questions: is globalisation a sign of the world ’s unification or cultural imperialism? Is this em b ryonic youth culture just another example of on e-way globalisat ion —vinyl singles being export ed from the F irst World to the T hird along with Coca- C ola, designer jeans and other markers of conspicuous con su m p t ion , in the endless cycle of seduction and exp loit ation? Or is this the story of creat ive adaptation—youth as cultural bricoleur, mixing and matching symbols of prestige to create their own ,au t o n o m o u s subculture? Township D Js play house records at around 90 beats per minute (bpm), far slower than the 130 bpm pace preferred by the European audience. T he reduced speed turns the propulsive, h ect ic “ b an gin g” into a glutinous and out-of-focus funkd u b , more in keeping with the drinking culture of South Africa than the drug-induced speed of European scen es. With a flick of a pitch control, black youth resignify and re-claim a Europeanised form of “ b lack” ( Afro-Am erican) music. Replacing rock Are these young South Africans building new hyb rid identities or dancing at the funeral of their own cultural traditions? As Jeff C hang notes in his assessm ent of hip-hop (see p. 2 3 ) , it is never clear whether youth music cultures “ reflect a hyb rid you t h rebellion or capitulation to global capitalism .” T herein lies the gr e at promise, as well as the central dilemma, for academic analyses of youthmusic cultures, particularly “dance” or electronic music (house music and its derivatives),which has arguably replaced rock as the most globally significant popular form.Whether it is D etroit techno in Birmingham, trance in G oa (see p.51) or funk in Rio de Janeiro, there is no single theory to explain the meaning of dance music scenes.We simply cannot resolve the youth rebellion/comm ercial co-optation couplet once and for all. Yout h’s sonic forces life of its own,continually splitting and reforming, spreading and folding back on itself. S h o rt - live d sub-genres are constantly spreading: n eu r o - fu n k, acid jazz, t e c h - st e p, happy hardcore, t rip - h o p, “nosebleed”and the list goes on As electronic m usic spreads—through traditional circulation loops like im port record networks, via radio airwave s, and through the Intern e t —it fuses with other musical forms and local styles like fla m e n c o, dancehall reggae and M iddle Eastern p op. It revitalizes itself through this profane contact, and new genres emerge which feedback to the centres of production.T he twin forces of youthful disrespect for ort h od oxy and the ever-present threat of c o - o p t ation by the content-hungr y global entertainment complex virtually guarantees change. The politics of the dancefloor Concentrating on the local beat in South Africa and beyond. C aribbean social theorist Stuart H all reminds us (taking as a given the unequal distribution of wealt h in a world “ st ructured in dom inance”) that the basic principle of popular culture is contradiction, and that there can be no guarantee that the “ m eanin gs” encoded into cultural products (T V ads or records) will be those “decoded” by the audience. N othing can be taken for granted in the terrain of p opular culture, especially that associated with socially marginal groups. T he “ m e a n in g” of scenes organised around exactly the same m usic can be markedly different in different circumstances.T he politics of buying yo u r way into the “ d a n cefloor comm unity” at one of the globally branded and meticulously policed “ su p erclubs” is significantly different than that of illegal r aves in N ort h e rn Ireland or Sarajevo where “dancefloor communitarianism” takes on a more co nvincing tone in the light of fierce religious or ethnic antagonism s that may be over co m e, h owever briefly, on the dancefloor. T he rebellious genre of today can becom e t o m o rr ow’s m ainstream music and the day after t o m o rr ow’s darling of nostalgia (see the strange r e vival of old rock ’n’r o ll) . C ounter-culture can become over-the-counter culture. D id I say “can becom e…”? I m eant “ will b eco m e” . For this is one of the only reliable features of popular music: it will change. Acco r d in g to som e technologically minded theorist s,d igit a lly produced dance music is like an alien virus with a But is this global mixing and matching evidence of the increased hyb rid isation of aesthetic form s ,o r of the cannibalistic appetites of First World capital? Are genres like Asian dance music—pioneered in Britain by Asian D ub Fou n d ation (see p.4 7 ) —sign s t h at the West is finally coming to term s with its postcolonial responsibilites, or another déjà vu phase of Said ’s Orientalism (fetishism for the exotic)? T he challenge for the analyst is to disentangle these processes. To ensure that this incredible am ount of creat ive (and frequently underr e warded) cultural labour is given its due, wh ile simultaneously ensuring that “ c e le b r at io n s” o f youthful creativity and hedonism are not merely laying the groundwork and supplying the justification for the dealers and profiteers—whether they are peddling Ectsasy drug tablets, clothing brands or fizzy drin ks. C o rp o r ate capital needs no m ore cheerleaders. D ance music continues to grow and mutate,to focus anxieties associated with youth—namely dru g use and hedonism—to acquire associations with local politics, to offer opportunities for fun, work, cr eativity and corp o r ate exploitat io n . Like any cultural form , dance music is always related to a sociopolitical context. It m ay embody global aspirat io n s but it always has a local m anifestat io n : d a n c in g takes place som ewhere, with particular kinds of people present, in a particular socio-historic a l m o m e n t . T he m usic has no m eaning outside of these concrete, but difficult to discern , r elat io n s; and even then its meanings are never complete or resolved.As Yale professor Paul G ilroy reminds us, “ c o m m u n ic at ive gestures”, like dance, “are not exp r essive of an essence that exists outside the acts that perform them.” Academics, journalists and others interested in what youth are up to have the task of tracking these dancing bodies and mapping these “social movements”. As in all cultural production, the dialectic between resistance and exploitat io n plays out across its surfaces, refusing to resolve itself into a transcendent either/or, always in the process of becoming. ■ Music is your own experience, your t hought s, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your h o rn . Charlie Parker, U.S. jazzm an (1 9 2 0 - 1 9 5 5 ) July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 41 Growing pains in Byron Bay ◗ Sebastian Chan Environmental and techno groups unite in the Aust ralian bush to mix alternative politics and artistic expression. Yet tourism may spoil the scene T wo and a half hour’s drive through Au st ralia’s dense bush north of Sydney, coloured lights pulse on the crest of a hill as the low rum ble of bass creeps across the immense forest. At the height of summer, the bush surrounding Byron Bay is alive with underground techno even t s. A far cry from the regimented and often alienating world of clubs that electronic music in Sydney and other m ajor cities h ave become captive to, these events offer an escape alliances with local environmental groups to highlight issues such as indigenous land rights,the loss of public space to private interests, and nuclear disa rm a m e n t . Electronic m usic was integr ated into e ve r ything from comm unity festivals to p art yaligned protest events such as “Reclaim T h e S t r e e t s” in Sydney: m ultiple soundsystems we r e wheeled out at major road intersections, drawing thousands of spontaneous revellers to highlight the “ Doof,” the sound of muffled bass, gives its name to Australia’s home-grow n bush raves. ◗ Journalist,academic and organizer of electronic music events with the Sub Bass Snarl sound system. For more information:http:www.snarl.org 42 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 from city life and a dose of social politics.T he open space seemingly provides the freedom needed for a creat ive mix of artistic and political action. But the flow of foreign tourists may arrest the scene’s develo p m en t . To some extent, t o u rism is at the origin of the local techno scene. Building on the history of gay dance parties which thrived in Sydney from the early 1 9 8 0 s, British tourists began brin ging new m usic and ideas in 1989 on the back of the UK rave explosion .T hey organised underground events using the sam e tactics to evade police at home: low-key advertising and venues announced by phone number on the night. T hey also began setting up import record stores and became leading DJs. But by 1991-2, locals had taken over. E very weeken d , four or m ore even t s could each draw several thousand people. M eanwhile,T he Vibe Tribe—a loose group of fo rmer punks, sq u at t ers and community activists— began holding free parties in Sydney’s public spaces to blend grassroots community activism with the energy and futurism of rave culture. T hey also began setting up fundraisers for va rious progr essive comm unity organizations while forgin g environmental effects of the automobile industry. But by 1995, r ep r essive regulations and police raids forced the raves off the streets and into the controlled confines of clubs. T he Vibe Tribe disbanded and some leading mem bers like Kol D iamond wen t to Byron Bay, where environmental alliances had been forged by other collectives like Electric T ip i.“ O ver the last twenty years or so Byron has become very much the nerve centre of ‘alternative lifestyling’‚ in this count ry,” explains D iamond. “T he various feral subcultures and capitalist Greenies mix freely with New Age gu ru s.T hey sit lazily in Bohemian cafes discussing the politics of making money and genetically m odified soya beans whilst surfing the days away… T he local council is Green [part y], the local newspaper is heavily anti-development and critical of large corp o r at e bu sin esses, and it seems like the whole town and surrounding areas have in common a desire to keep the Big Mac out of town and keep low-d en sity, low-im pact d evelopment as the m ain strat egy, largely because Byron Bay is totally dependent on tourism .” D iam ond helped to cultivate the cultural landscape by setting up recording studios and a local record la b e l,O r ga n a r c hy. T he small raves of the 1990s are Yout h’s sonic forces n ow regular even t s, with the largest pitched overseas through the Intern et , while drawing hundreds from Sydney and Melbourn e. “T he parties are very popular, very loud and thus very controversial,” says Diam on d . C h ris G ibson, a lecturer in geogr a p hy at the U n ive rsity of N ew South Wales and avid rave r , spent six months in Byron Bay to map the music scen e’s internal politics and its position in a network of global music exchange. “T here is an ongoing debate in Byron about whether to tap into the backpacker market or remain locally focused,” says G ibson.“T he issue here is whether local political imperatives are necessarily compatible with a less p o lit ic a lly- sp e c ific global trance music mentality associated with backpacker tourism.” Take the case of local D Js fundraising for a forest blockade. Are backpackers really interested in the forest or just attracted by the “ a lt e rn at ive ” nature of the event? Will local events become overshadowed by larger, purely musical ones with the drawcard of D Js from the global trance scene? D iamond is less concern ed .“ M aybe this was the risk four years ago when a very tight crew of [intern ational] trance DJs and promoters hit this area very suddenly and in a rather calculated move,” he says. “T hey were looking for a new foothold with which to exploit their corporate agendas. Byron quickly became very fashionable to visit but it was always very expensive to live in compared to T hailand and India, so only those who actually did desire a more altern ative ecofriendly way stayed .” T he debate over tourism is now spilling beyo n d the music community to fuel a conflict with local a u t h o rit ie s. Tensions er up ted over plans for a techno Millennium Eve. According to D iam ond, “three techno parties were threatening to at t r a ct more people and more attention than the town ’s official celebrations.” Tourist dollars To begin with, the local council does n ot m a ke a ny m oney from the free-spirited bush part ie s. S e c o n d , these brin g- yo u r - own-booze events tend to draw large crowds away from bars and ve n u e s in town . T he rave crackdown in Sydney (1995) was largely due to pressure from the alcohol industr y. So it was not a total surp rise to find “police harassment at the parties all throughout the night,” a s D iam ond describ es, “from set-up to dawn leading to the confiscation of equip m ent and charges being laid.” For D iam ond, the crackdown represented the council’s decision “to put the tourist dollar b efore the artistic desires of the local comm u n it y.” With the party season quieting down over the colder m onths, Byron crews are waiting to see how the political climate develops. M eanwhile,Organa r chy is working to release m ore music from Byron locals to reinforce ar tistic and political independ e n c e . “All struggle is local,” says D iamond, “ glo b a l- a nything [m usic industry, t o u rism , e t c. ] reeks straight away of something to be consum ed in large doses…”. ■ Music is our witness, and our ally. The beat is the confession which recognises, changes and conquers time. Then, history becomes a garment we can wear and share, and not a cloak in which to hide; and time becomes a f riend. James Baldwin, U.S. w rit er (1 9 2 4 - 1 9 8 7 ) Belgrade’s free elect rons ◗ Dragan Ambrozic Young Serbs create a parallel universe with music, building on anarchist dreams of a free culture “T ◗ Journalist with the independent radio station B2-92 and concert promoter une in and drop out!” T he old slogan rings globally as teenagers, t we n t ysomethings and adolescent-thirties plug into music to disconnect from the worries of their worlds. But in Belgrade, bands of young techno fans are “dropping out” of society with a vehemence which reflects more than mere defiance of authority. In the Serbian context of rampant n ationalism and corru p t io n , their apoliticism reflects a hardcore political statement as they create a parallel universe whose members flow like free electrons through the circuits of clubs, underground parties and pirate music networks. Outside of the Balkans, the act of “ d rop p in g ou t ” usually means ignoring social pressures and parental pleas to “plan for the future” by studying or working hard to achieve social status and fin ancial success. In Belgrad e, youth are not just rejecting parental expectations but the probable future of the majorit y: d ep rivat ion . O nly the elite stand a chance of economic escape in this country where five per cent of the population owns 80 per cent of the national wealt h . In the last ten years, an estim ated 250,000 teenagers and young adults have left the country, m ostly heading West to countries like Germ any, Au st ria and the N etherlands. “ We w on’t be fooled again!” Only a surrealist could plan for the future in a fed eration that no longer exists. One m inute you ’re high on the spirit of invading the streets with a united opposition and the next moment the m ovem ent implodes under the searing haze of police tear gas. “ We won ’t be fooled again!” cry the techno trib es, who have learned to m istrust virt u ally everyone over thirty on either side of the political d ivid e. N o tolerance for the petty bickering of July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 43 opposition “ lead ers” and no respect for the establishment—neither of which offer a clue on how to heal the wounds of growing poverty and crim in alisation of the stat e. T his is not a resurrection of the generic youth rebellion:“N o future!” By creating a parallel universe via music, these techno tribes seem to be building on the Temporary Autonomous Zone (T AZ)1 of philosopher H akim Bey, the anarchist guru based in N ew York. Imagine “pirate utopias” or “mini-societies living consciously outside of the law and determined to keep it up,” writes Bey, “even if only for a short but merr y life.” For Bey, a head-on collision with the state amounts to “futile martyrdom”. Instead of wasting time in the dogm a-eats-dogm a world of revo lu t io n (wherein one ideology is replaced by another), consider the joys of uprising.“T he TAZ is like an uprising which does not engage directly with the State,a guerrilla operation which liberates an area (of land, of time, of imagination) and then dissolves itself to re-form elsewhere/elsewhen, before the State can crush it.” Veritable temples for the alienated Belgrade offers the ideal terrain for the TAZ . T he omnipresent State is riddled with cracks for the tribes to disappear in. In fa ct , the techno scene literally developed undergr o u n d : in the basement of the State unive rsit y’s Faculty of Arts in 1992 (the apex of the form er Yu go slavia ’s bloody dism e m b e rm e n t ) . T he basem ent club Ad a d e m ija staged a m usic coup, replacing the old revo lu t io na ry avant-garde of rock ’n’ roll bands with the gadget wizardry of techno disc jockeys.T ribes or bands of teenagers and twenty-som ethings form e d around a common goal: to escape wa r - t o rn reality for the futurism of techno. T he undergr o u n d events were like temples for the alienat ed : by pulsating to a collective vibe, adherents silently swo r e a llegiance to the positive yet ephemeral life on the d a n c e flo o r. Slowly they built a parallel universe by alm ost b o rr owing a page from Bey’s book: t u rn the negat ive into positive. Reject politics not by apat hy but by cr eating altern at ive netwo r ks. Reject the capitalist notion of work, not by laziness, but through the black econ omy. And so the techno tribes re-claimed space in clubs and abandoned wareh ou ses. Without cash for equipment, they stealthily borr owed , b a rt er ed for and recycled old turntables and speakers. W it hout access to a record or CD fact ory, they smuggled p irate recordings from Bulgaria. It’s as if they followed Bey’s words to the letter, and yet most have probably never even heard of the anarchist.Ask them about their motivation to find vague talk of “positive change”and club culture as “the only sane way of surviving” and fighting the system.T he lack of eloquence can be forgiven, for 1. The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Autonomedia,Anticopyright, 1985,1991. 44 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 Instead of follow ing the leader s, techno tribes in Belgrade march to their ow n beat in 1996. these are doers ,l e aving philosophy for thinkers like Bey. T hey don’t bother with what “ wa s” or “ will be”—instead they raid the status quo. For exam ple, in 1996/7, the opposition held three m onths of d em o n st r ations after the government tried to annul their victory in local elections. Instead of following the leaders,the techno tribes staged their own carnivalesque events. D u ring the N AT O bombing campaign against B e lgr a d e , hundreds of reve lle rs m et for techno p a rt i e s , organ ised by two 20 -year olds, M a r k o N astic and D ejan M ilicevic, kn own as the Teen a ge Techno Punks.T he uprising flo ated with the sense of utopia which, as Bey writ e s,“ e nvisions an intensificat ion of eve ryd ay life, or as the Sur r e a lis t s might have said, life ’s penetration by the M arve llo u s.” Attacking the State’s nostalgia for the past “ S t rike at the structures of control!” e xh o rt s Bey. And so the techno tribes file past the police and take aim at the real source of government cont r o l:id e a s. D evoted to the futurism associated with m u sic, they attack the Stat e ’s nostalgia for past “glory”,while trampling on the notion that money can pave the way to a better future as the State’s printing machines churn out the bills of hyperinflation.By “dropping out”,the tribes won’t topple the government or change their society. But that was never their goal.As the underground leaders, Teenage Techno P unks, exp la in , “ I t ’s not easy to be a drop-out, but,then again, it’s not easy to stay put under the circumstances.T his was the only way we knew to bring about positive change.” ■ +… www.v2.nl/FreeZone/ZoneText/Diversions/Broadsheets/TAZcon tents.html We never ask ourselves Too many questions Too much truth in int rospect ion Maintain the regiment at ion And avoid selfdegradat ion We act out all the st ereot ypes Try to use them as decoy And we become shining examples Of the system w e set out to destroy. “ Famous and Dandy (Like Am os ‘n’ A n d y) ” ,f rom the U.S. group The Disposable Heroes of HipHoprisy Yout h’s sonic forces The club DJ: a brief history of a cultural icon ◗ Kai Fikent scher The rise of the disc jockey from record-spinner to music producer begins in the historical world capital of disco, New York City D ◗ Ethnomusicologist,music producer, author of “ ‘YOU BETTER WORK! ’ Underground Dance Music in New York City” (Wesleyan University Press, 2000) isc jockeys have been spinning records for absorbed the social changes transforming Am erican decades. But when in the 30-year history of society at large. M ost import a n t ly, young urbanelectronic dance music did they rise to it e s—p a rticularly ethnic m inorit ie s, wom en and become highly influential cultural icons? N ot only gays—who had been (or felt) pushed to the margin s h ave club D Js becom e gat e ke e p e rs with in local of Am e rican society, became increasingly vo c a l. music industries;some are now cast as highly paid T hese groups included anti-establishm ent premusical ambassadors, t r aveling around the globe Woodstock hippies, st ruggling poets, m u sic ia n s, to spread the latest musical trends. act ors, and other art ist s, as well as a mix of workin gIs this because club D Js know best how to cast class C aucasians,African Americans and Latinos. a spell on a danceflo o r ,h ow to “ wo r k” a record in a T hough they did mingle to som e extent, t h e y way that makes it seem at once familiar and excit- tended to frequent separate dance establishments, ingly new, how to bring a crowd to a peak not just based mainly on their sexual orientation. once during an evening, but several times? Or is it H eterosexual crowds gathered at clubs like sim ply because D Js are finally being paid hand- E le c t ric C ircus or Zodiac, where D Js played an somely and enjoying the celebrity status that comes eclectic repertoire of rock, rhythm & blues (R&B) with money and media exposure? and early forms of what is now marketed as world T he answer p robably is “all of the above ” o r m u sic. In contrast, young gay m en and wo m e n “somewhere in the middle.” T he place to go look- socialised at neighbourhood clubs or bars, eit h er ing for the roots of D J culture are the urban centres legal or unlicensed, generally in ethnically homo long known as hotbeds of geneous areas like H arlem , musical creativity. Places like H ispanic barrios of Many lesbians and gays Hthearlem N ew York City. E ven a brie f or the U pper We st began to see social h ist o ry of club deejaying must S id e . While the m usic b e gin here, in the pre-disco dancing not simply as a pumped from either a juke era of the late 1960s and early b ox or a D J set, older m en pastime but also as a 1 9 7 0 s, at the crossroads of (som etimes in drag) often powerful means of African Am erican expressive acted as initiat ors and at times culture and collectively realp r o t e c t o rs of younger gays building a sense of ized gay sensibilities which into “the Life” (a socially and communal identity. together form the core of consexually active , yet often temporary social dance culture. secret,life).Some of these local gay bars were regD ance music culture, whether associated with ularly raided by police, a practice which ended with disco, club,or house music, has its roots in the Big the legendary Stonewall Riots of G reenwich VilAp p le. N ew York became the disco capital of the lage on June 28, 1 9 6 9 .T h er e, for the first tim e, gays world by the mid-1970s, thanks to a vibrant under- fought police harassment collectively and successground dance culture with local African American fully, to the extent that after Stonewall, many lesand Latino gay m en at the helm . T he city’s leg- bians and gays began to see social dancing not simendary discotheques,such as Sanctuar y,T he Loft, ply as a pastime but also as a powerful means of Better D ays, Paradise G arage, am ong others, building a sense of communal identity. emerged from the fusion of three distinct types of While the first gay disco in N ew York State was social dance environments prevalent in the 1960s, probably in Cherry G rove on Fire Island, the first which featured recorded music with or without a urban venue that made disco notorio u s,fo r b id d en , D J. T he first precursor was based on the French and at t ract ive all at once was the Sanctuary on M and isco t h eq u e,exem p lified in Manhattan by exclusive h at t an ’s West 43rd Street, which in 1970 became establishments such as Le C lub, and later Arthur the model for later underground gay discos. T h e and C heetah.T heir design and clientele reflected San ct u ary also gave birth to the first club D J as pop the post-war idea of a disco as an exclusive wat erin g st ar. D an cers and groupies alike flocked to see and hole for a jet-set clientele. hear D J Francis (Grasso), who had m astered a new T his elitest conception changed, h owever , in in stru m en t, consisting of two turntables and a mixer, the late 1960s and early 70s as the discotheque and a new stage: the D J booth with its controls of July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 45 sound and light to fire non-stop, wall-t o -wall dancing on the adjacent flo o r. By 1973, national magazines such as Billboard and Rolling Stone and N YC radio stations began featuring “disco” hits and programmes. Fans who co u ld n ’t hear enough of the music on the radio and in clubs began buying records in num bers th at forced recording com panies to pay attention to m usic they’d been ignorin g. Like their forebears on radio in the 1950s, club D Js becam e influ e n t ia l enough to “break”or introduce new records to the p u b lic. T his rising status enabled them to have direct input into the records them selves. For examp le, N ew York D J D avid Todd introduced R&B producer Van McCoy to a Latin dance called the H ust le , leading to the production of an eponym o u s record which became a big hit for M cC oy while Todd went on to develop the disco department at a major company, RC A Records. Fighting off “ the death of vinyl” Bet ween 1975 and 1985, the lines between studio producers, e n gin e e rs, so n gwrit ers and D Js becam e increasingly fuzzy. Instead of just spinning records at clubs, D Js ventured into the recording st u d io s,b rin ging the same workplace concepts and techniques of mixing m usic, cr eating new sounds and re-mixing songs. As remixers, they used the techn ological tools in ways their designers never dreamed of. For example, a simple synthesizer/sequencer, t h e Roland T B-3 0 3 , marketed in 1983 for rock m usicians looking to emulate a bass guitar, became the staple of the acid house sound. D Js didn’t just use the little box but “ p layed ” its pitch, accen t , r eso n an ce DJ democracy: made in Japan ◗ Kenji Gamon n the past decade, comput er-operated musical devices have been replacing the human musician, while hard-drives and portable digital recording gear are making tape-based recordings obsolet e.These increasingly affordable digital tools are reaching a new breed of musicians who previously had little or no chance of breaking into the mainstream music industry. With Japanese companies like Akai, Roland and Yamaha churning out the latest in DJ gadgetry, there is no better place to witness the revolutionary changes in digital music than Tokyo. The “ Made in Japan” l abel ,w hich was hitherto seen only engraved on the back of these electronic i nst rum ent s, is now proving to be a market abl e cultural export product as well. In fact, Japan is enjoying a sort of pop-culture renaissance as DJs l i ke Ken Ishii, Tsu yo sh i , Fumiya Tanaka and DJ I ◗ Freelance music journalist based in Tokyo 46 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 and frequency controls, sim ilar to the way they “ p laye d ”r e c o r d s. By adding sequencers and dru m m ach in es, they not only increased and diversified their own club repert oires, but produced new tracks and versions to be sold to the public. In the process, disco became house music. As this transfer of technologies and aesthetics b et ween the recording studio and the D J booth in creased , so did dance m usic’s profit ab ilit y. Sin ce the rise of tapes and compact discs, DJs have been the main economic force in fighting off the “ d eath of vinyl” ( record s) . T he main institutions of the dance music industry—the independent label, the record pool (companies distributing promotional records to D Js who in return issue feedback sheets), the underground club, the specialty retail store—tend to be staffed by D Js who base their activities on an everexpanding concept of their art and skills as musicians and perform ers. T he increase in status from recordspinner to remixer and record producer has transformed the club DJ from cult figure to cultural icon. Dance music is now a global phenomenon, t ravelin g with a set of D Js who have spun their own version of the worldwide web : the “ In t ernet of dance music” is made up of axes linking local dance cultures. For NewYork DJs, the first major axis ran through other U.S. cities with vibrant or emerging local dance cu lt u res. From N ew Yo r k,D a n ny Tenaglia moved to Miami where he spent his form at ive years as a DJ before returning to M anhattan where he is now one of the most in-demand remixers (creating new versions of old tracks by other artists). Another NewYork D J, F rankie Knuckles, m oved to C hicago, followin g an invit ation to become the resident D J at the Wareh o u se, a gay black club. N o t ewo rt hy is that both Krush find success in the European and Ameri can music market s. Ken Ishii, 30, is the most famous of these rising st ars.About ten years ago, Ishii sent a demo tape to the Belgian techno label R&S, which immediately signed him on with a contract, not only shining an international spotlight on the young maestro but also enabling him to gain recognition in his own country for the first time. How ever, Ishi i ’s now blossoming career (currently fuelled by the pow erful marketing muscle of Sony Records in Japan) represents only one side of the cyberpunk artist-turned-Cinderella story. In the quiet urban sprawl of Tokyo’s Komaba dist rict , Kisei Irie, 28, and Takashi Saito, 24, are trying to follow in the footsteps of their rising techno gods. In Irie’s one-bedroom apartment,the duo are cranking out a fervent mix of techno grooves under the name A / F+ BAD KARMA. These two bedroom DJs cashed in years’ worth of savings (about $2,000) to press 300 vinyl copies of their four new tracks at a Czech record plant. But producing the music is only one step in the struggle. Distribution is a veritable battle as the growing number of “ bedroom DJs” com pet e to get local record stores to purchase and display their vinyl creations. “ Sure Japan has profitable stars like Ishii, but that doesn’t mean the i n du st ry, record stores or clubs are trying to cult i vate new talent,” says Irie. “ Guys like us have to start at the bottom.” M ean w h i l e, the skyrocketing number of DJs has yet to trigger an explosion in creativity. “ Everybody sounds t he same,” says Zatiochi Nakano, 35,a studio engineer and digital instrument expert. “ But that’s the case everyw here because kids want to create ‘cool’ sounds to please as wide an audience as possible.” Fo r Nakano, the new digital instruments are revolutionary because they allow the musically untrained to create their own material. How ever, the personal pleasures of creativity should not be confused with talent. As Nakano concludes, “ Good music requires good creators and that’s as old as the hills.” ■ Yout h’s sonic forces Tenaglia and Knuckles continuously traveled back and forth to N ew York, b rin ging back new sounds while stocking up on local records. T hey also have since returned to the Big Apple to live and work as DJs and remixers. New tradew inds T he second axis leads across the Atlantic, from C hicago through N ew York to London. Ar o u n d 1 9 8 6 /7 , after the initial buzz surrounding house music in C hicago , it became clear that the major recording companies and media institutions were reluctant to market this music, associated with gay African Americans,on a mainstream level. H ouse artists turned to Europe, chiefly London but also cities such as Am st e r d a m , B e r lin , M a n c h e st e r , M ilan,Zurich,and Tel Aviv. T he rest is the history of what became rave culture, a European yo u t h dance phenomenon which is still going strong. A third axis leads to Japan where,since the late 1 9 8 0 s, NewYork club D Js have had the opport u n it y to play guest-spots to audiences who are as much r e m oved geographically and culturally from African\American and gay sensibilities as are their European counterparts. Still, local dance cultures fo rmed and continue to expand in To kyo and other m ajor Japanese cities. At the turn of the millennium, the tradewinds of the D J are reaching new d e st in at io n s, like Sao Pa o lo, M exico C ity and African capitals like D ar Es Salaam.T here, a new generation is enriching a tradition which so far has no textbook or manual, nor has it received comp r e h e n sive documentat io n . R at h e r , it is car rie d fo rth orally, by D Js who learned from those who came before them.Keep on! ■ Asian Overground The contradictions of Europe’s rage for ethnic exoticism take centre stage in an interview w ith Pandit G of Asian Dub Foundat ion, a UK band serving up a searing mix of jungle rhythms, rap and ‘t raditional’ sounds steeped in social justice The global music industry makes a fortune by mixing various strands of music, often tradit ional, w it h genres like hip-hop or techno. Is this a replay of classic capitalist exploitation— extract raw materials, package and sell them back to the “ nat ives” ? People have always mixed music from elsewhere and turned it into their own style. For example, bhangra [now very fashionably sampled] is really an indigenous form of Punjabi folk music created in Britain (see p.49). T he early migrants from the Asian subcontinent largely came to Britain to work in cotton and textile mills after the war, particularly in the mid-to-late 50s. M any came from Punjab, which straddles the border with Pakistan. So a generation coming right up to the late 60s was listening to Punjabi folk music but mixing it with the dominant music form of the time, rock.T hat meant using electric guitars, drum kits as well as traditional instruments. What used to be a big musical troupe could be replaced with technology and just three or four member s. But on the opposite pole, you always find people out to exploit ethnicity or exoticism. In Britain, why do musicians like Kula Shaker [a neo-hippie rock band] need to go to India to find inspiration or symbolism? Why couldn’t they have gone to places like Southall [an Asian neighbourhood] on their doorstep in London? What do you think of “Asian Kool”— or the current rage for Indian-inspired music and fashion? We could be talking about Asian Kool, C a ribbean Kool or African Am e rican Kool. T h e people pushing this kind of thing have recognised t h at there is no strong white West ern notion of cool July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 47 This context of struggle and being a warrior and being a struggler has been forced on me by oppression. Otherwise I would be a sculpt or, or a gardener, carpent er— you know, I would be free to be so much more... “Committed to Life”, Asian Dub Foundat ion Inspiration on the doorstep in London’s East End. amongst youth.Largely black identity is mixed up with being anti-establishment. Exoticism m akes this idea sell a bit but it’ll only be forgotten in a few years’time. In the U K, you’ll see people in the streets wearing their little bindis on their foreheads and thinking they’ve made an anti-racist statement. But they wouldn’t talk with Asian people working in a cornershop. By focusing on the exoticism, people can say, “T hese Indians don’t mind being poor because they’re spiritual.” What do you think of the “ New Asian Underground”— a tag often attached to Asian Dub Foundation (ADF)? It ’s an easy sound-bite to market the music. Bu t we have to take a British persp ect ive because of the history of colonialism.White society in the UK largely sees the Asian community as being homogeneous.Yet the handful of musicians that m ake up this “ Asia n U nderground” can be Muslim, H in d u ,C h ristian ,Sikh or Buddhist and [originally] come from a geograp h ic area three times bigger than the UK. “ We ain’t ethnic, exotic or eclectic. The only ‘e’ w e use is electric,” rhymes a line from an ADF song . Do you ever feel the burden of representing an ethnic community? We only represent ourselves. T here is a line precisely on that from our album, Rafi’s Revenge: “C ulture is always on the move.T here is no fixed 48 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 point.” We can also hold this up to white society, which imagines an ideal time when there was some pure British society—which never was. Just like there was never a pure Indian society. We wo n ’t accept any pigeonholes. T he tag that gets used most to describe us is:political band.We get journalists sayin g, “O nce you get through the p olit ics, the album isn’t bad.” We believe that everything is political. F ive Asians gettin’ on stage, p layin ’ guitar and sampler,is political. You’ve said that ADF has never been directly censored because of its strong anti-racist political platform* , but how can the mainstream media and music industry indirectly stifle a group’s message? A backlash is slowly set up. First the media presents radical music as something new. Even though what’s new is that the political platform is reaching a wider audience. But by reaching more people, you upset the status quo, which doesn’t sell advertising copy. So what does the press do? T hey set you up as celebrities, isolate you and then try to crush you. It wouldn’t be direct censorship from the record company—you’d just find that your record isn’t available in the shops. You don’t get any tour support. T here’s many ways of stopping a band from reaching a broad audience. ■ Interview by Amy Otchet, UNESCO Courier journalist *Among its many anti-racist activities,AD F has spearheaded the international campaign to free British citizen Satpal Ram,who many believe has been unjustly imprisoned for defending himself against a racially motivated attack by six men in Birmingham in 1986. For more inform at ion : www.asian d u b fou n d ation .com Yout h’s sonic forces Grannie doesn’t skip a bhangra beat ◗ Sudhanva Deshpande A lighthearted look at how elite youth “ dig” their roots through expatriate relat ions T he hi-fi is playing Bruce Springsteen, who is belting out his “Born in the U SA” number. Someone has turned the bass way up, so that the room seem s like a giant pulsing heart .C o u p le s are dancing, swayin g. “ I t ’s pa a a a rt ieeee t im e !” screeches a slightly inebriated young woman to no one in part icu lar. And no one in particular pays any at t en t ion . I am in the midst of students who are celeb r at in g.M aybe the end of term . Or is it someone’s birthday? Who cares—it’s paaaartieeee time. T he scene is a fairly well-to-do neighbourhood in south D elhi, the time approaching midnight, an d the party is picking up. So far only English numbers h ave been playe d —M a d o n n a , M ichael Ja c kso n , even Pink Floyd,and a host of other stuff I neither recognise nor am keen to. T hen,someone decides it ’s tim e to party in earn e st . T h e m usic stops. A fresh cassette is inserted and when the first strains of the new number are heard, the room explodes in a collective roar. I t ’s D aler M ehndi, the dancing Sikh,the undisputed king of bhangra pop. Finally, the adrenalin is flowing and there’s not a soul who’s not on the dance floor. F or a few hours, it’s a long list of Indipop singers,mostly bhangra. T his is new. T hrough the 1980s, and even in the early 90s, it was infra-dig [beneath your dignity] to admit in public that one listened to even H indi stuff, let alone Punjabi. G urdas M ann, the original bhangra star of the 80s, who is currently en joying a minor revival, was only heard by Punjabi kids at the working-class Khalsa College, b o r e d shopkeepers and truck drivers. If you went to the elite St. Stephens C ollege, you played the likes of M ichael Jackson. No more. T he 13-to-23 generat ion , which the music companies spend millions on wooin g, h as t u rned pat riot ic. “I am proud of this music,” declares an avid bhangra fan , “it makes me feel so India n.” T his world -weary, b een -t h ere-d on e-t h at 23year-old of today was 13 when the Indian stat e embarked upon the drive to liberalise the economy. In the decade since, five govern m en t s, b asically accounting for the full range of Indian political opinion , h ave ru led . With the exception of the relatively weak left component, they have all displayed an amazing level of unanimity on globalisat ion . Big bu sin ess, backed by large sections of the liberal intelligen t sia, has pushed the liberalisation agenda Adrenalin flow ing at a w arehouse party in Bombay. ◗ Stage actor, director and member of the New Delhi-based Jana Natya Manch, best known for its radical street theatre July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 49 relentlessly ahead. As a result, the landscape of A Punjabi friend passionate about his music prourban India has been transformed beyond belief. vides a different explanation .“ It’s all a question of idenLarge tracts of rural India also show signs of change, tification ,” he says. “ Bh an gra has become associat ed especially in the agricu lt u re-rich Punjab. in the popular mind with the culture of Punjab.T h is Ravaged by the partition of India in 1947, P u n jab has happened because of H indi film s, which have saw the greatest mass migration in history. Millions of used bhangra more than any other Punjabi folk form . H indus and Sikhs crossed over to the Indian side, an d People now think that bhangra is all there is to Punmillions of Muslims to Pakist an . For a generation or jabi music. Much of what we hear today is nowh ere m ore, the Punjabis have worked industriou sly, an d near bhangra, but it all gets called that because of the m any have moved up the economic ladder, thanks to use of the dhol [a percussion instrument slung on the the green revolu t ion . In addition to a massive migra- shoulder and played on both sides with sticks]. Anytion notably to the UK after partition , a huge number thing on the dhol and with som e balle balle [a generic of young Punjabis are continuing to migrate to the cry expressing happiness] or kudiye [Punjabi for girl] C om m on wealth and other distant lands. Some of is just assumed to be bhangra.” So what is it? “Most of the money being earned abroad is repat riated back to it is kitsch.You know, just taken from here and there In d ia. Cities are full of fast cars, h i-fi home enter- and mixed together.Whatever works, works.T hen we tainment systems, M cD on ald ’s and ubiquitous satel- get to hear a million variations of that .T ill something lite antennae in rich as well as poor neighbourhoods. else clicks.” In the meanwhile, of course, music comE ven villages now have AT Ms (cash distribu t ers) , panies have made millions. and eve ryone seems to be Would you believe it, then— wearing Nike shoes, Ray-Ban m uch of what we think is Created by the hardy sunglasses or Benetton shirts— b h an gra is not bhangra at all! there are m ore fakes going “Who cares?”, says an 18-year Punjabi peasant to around than the genuine stuff, o ld .“ I t ’s Indian, and we undercelebrate harvests, but who cares? All of this sta nd it . N ot like the English h a s also been accompanied songs where you underst an d marriages and other b y heightened polarisat io n only one line.” Really? W h at joyous occasions, bhangra about the king of bhangra-pop, b et ween the rich and the poor within the country, bu t , again , D aler M ehndi, I ask. H ow was exported by his who cares? Its pa a a a rtieeee tim e. m a ny people know what he expatriate grandson So there you have it, t h e sings in between his o n e-lin e p arad ox of bhangra: its emerrefrains? “T hat’s because people to the West . gence as an India n form in pred on ’t listen carefully,” she says. cisely the decade when its lis“Some of his songs are beaut en ers have become more integrated into the world t ifu l. T hey are really philosophica l.” P h ilo so p h ical? market and its patterns of consumption.Talk to the 13- “Yeeees.You know, there’s one where he talks about love to-23 high-consuming set and the refrain heard most being like spinning yarn on a wheel…” She quotes the is:“ It ’s our m u sic.”T he pride that accompanies stories Punjabi lines.Yes, I admit, the lines are beautiful. Bu t of Indian musical success in W h it em an slan d , U K — the language is far from simple to understan d .“ Yeah. Apache Indian, Bally Sagoo, et c.—is real. “ We are no It ’s tra ditiona l. M y grandmother explained it to m e,” longer only consumers of other people’s cultures—now con fides my young frien d . N ow that ’s interesting. we produce the music that the world wants to listen And what did grannie think about it? “ O h , she is just t o.” But wasn ’t the bhangra boom born in the West , am u sed . She could never have im agined that such and hasn’t it too been imported to India? “Yes, but it’s songs could be played in discos and parties.” Isn ’t she India n, d on ’t you understand? It’s our guys there who offended? “N ot really. She says we live in times when are making the m usic.” the dollar ru les.T hey will sell their mothers if they can But why bhangra, I ask. “Bhangra’s got the beat .It ’s make some money.” But is she happy with the fact? “ I very danceable,” I am inform ed .I sn ’t all folk music, I d u n n o. I guess she’s not too worked up about it, sin ce ask. “I guess.” Silen ce. “Remember dandiya?” asks an I get to learn some Punjabi that way. I’ve never been older listener, referring to the form of folk music and in Punjab. . .” dance from the western Indian state of Gujarat which So bhangra has come full circle. C reated by the was all the rage in the 80s. “ T h at was danceable.” So hardy Punjabi peasant to celebrate harvest s, m arwhy has it been deposed by bhangr a , I ask him. riages and other joyous occasions, it was exported by “ Sim p le,” he says. “ E arlier, the Gujjus [Gujarat is] his expat riate grandson to the west . T here it was were the single largest expat[riate] populat ion .N ow, the rem ixed with techno, rap and reggae of black neighPunjus [Punjabis] have taken over. And so has their b ou rh ood s, and with H indi film music as well.R einm usic.”Yeah,that issim ple. Toosim ple,m aybe? But why vented thus, it gets exported back to India by large don’t we hear gidda? It’s from Punjab and as danceable music corporations who make enormous profits in the as bhangr a. “ S im p le,” I am told again. “G idda is p rocess. And here in India, it helps rich kids of an wom en ’s song. H ow can men sing or dance to it?” Bu t increasingly anglicized elite rediscover their own ru ral isn ’t bhangra too masculine? It’s sung by men. “Yeah,” h erit age. In completing this loop, of course,b h a n gr a he says. “T hat’s the point. Bh an gra is men’s so n g.S o loses all links with the material life of the peasants who everybody can dance to it.”Yeah, simple again, I guess. created it. But who cares? It’s pa a a a rtieeee t im e. ■ 50 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 There’s nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is to hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself. Johann Sebastian Bach, Germ an composer (1685-1750) Yout h’s sonic forces 3 Defusing the alarm Fear and loat hing in Goa ◗ Arun Saldanha ‘Sex drugs and rock ’n’ roll’ is the traditional source of moral panic for parents and police. But in Goa, parents fear that their youth will be corrupted by cultural imperialism existing uneasily in traditional coastal villages. T hese reactions lead back to a general G oan patriotism, “tested” by the perceived cultural threat of t o u rism , esp ecially in th e nort h e r n village of An ju n a . In the early 1990s, hippie tourism gave way to one of the world’s most famous rave scenes with G oa trance m usic, which not only at t r a c t s hordes of travelling rave rs and package tourist s from the U K, Israel, G ermany, France, Japan and other countries, but many local youths as well. Panic about young people succumbing to supposedly “ foreign ”p leasu res: does this sound fam iliar? Youth culture is, by defin it ion ,d evian t . It subverts the m eanings adults give to decency and health, resp onsibility and tastefulness, night and day. It ’s not very su rp rising that adult disapproval results in hyst erical media repor ts and often in restrictions or police action aimed at subverting the subversio n s. A turning point in the 1980s Tw o w orlds collide at a flea market in Anjuna. I ◗ Centre for Media Sociology, Free University of Brussels n a letter addressed to the then prime minister, Rajiv G andhi,the G oan activist group C itizens C o n c e rned About To u rism (C C AT ) wrote in 1990: “ O ver the last ten ye a rs , hippies and sim ilar backpack tourists have virtually taken over (…) T hey live here without visas or passports. … T hey lie around nude on our beaches and practice and p r o p a gate free love and free sex. D rugs are an integral part of their relaxed way of life.T hey are parasites who thrive by sucking the life-blood of our nation—OU R YOU T H .” While doing field work for my Ph.D. on tourism problems in Goa, a former Po rtuguese colony in southern India,I’ve encountered many such emotional reactions to the white traveler/hippie culture T hough sociologists have studied how generational aspects of m oral panic are connected with class, gender, ethnic and sexual dimensions, there h a sn ’t been m uch attention on the in tercu ltu ra l issu e. In G oa, moral panic becomes a N ort h -S o u t h issu e, one of insidious “cultural imperia lism ” .S o m e local youth—boys, not girls who generally stay at hom e in India—are though t to prefer We st e rn m u sic, d rugs and sexual habits to “traditional VALUES like honesty, hard wo r k,d iscip lin e, good m oral b eh aviour and pat rio t ism ”( C C AT ) . For many parents, journalists and activists,white foreigners are forcing their culture in a colonial way upon the helpless kids of G oa. T he reality is more complex.In the 1970s, the hippies lay naked and stoned on drugs, listening to their music, while the locals worked for a living. Two radically different worlds co-existed within the same village, but there were never problems to speak of. In the 1980s, the party crowds grew to the thousands, the music became electronic (thus louder),and the drug market better organised. July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 51 G oa trance parties traditionally happen at full t o u rism ,d rug traffickin g, corru p t ion , and stereotypm o o n , C h ristmas and N ew Yea r , on the beaches, ical imaging of Goa/India all feed on the inequality in forests and on hills.T hey are normally free, goin g existing in the world between North and South, wh ite on till late morn in g, keeping the village awake with and brown , rich and poor. But deducing that Goa’s the throbbing kick dru m . G oa trance music is a youth has been sucked into a “ foreign ” hedonism and fa st , hypnotic kind of techno, with flu c t u at in g m aterialism is a totally different mat t er. stream s of bleeps, squelches and soundscapes C an we conclude that moral panic isn’t justified vaguely reminiscent of Eastern harm on ics. An ju n a’s in G oa? Well, moral panic is never justified, as it’s hippie past is reflected in fluorescent paintings and a lways based on exaggeration and misinterp r et aperformances to match the music’s heavy psyche- t io n .W h at is justifia b le , is putting things in perdelic thrust, further enhanced by the use of illegal spective and in concrete terms. M any G oans make drugs like LSD, Ecstasy and hashish—this music good money during winter by virtue of the trance isn ’t called tra n ce for nothing. T he psychotropic parties. Busting the events,as the government and atmosphere and im agery is simulated on the Inter- police seem eager to do lately, will hurt these poor net and at psy-trance parties around the wo r ld , locals much sooner than the big hotel owners and from Slovenia to Sydney, T hailand to Tel Aviv. d rug dealers.T he repressive climate reinforces corM a ny G oans also take part by selling ch a i ruption and prevents open debat e. And the tourist s (Indian tea), snacks and cigarettes or by drivin g will only head someplace else. t a xis, renting out room s, b ikes, p a rty spaces and L ikewise, m a ny local young men and Indian sound equipment. T hey also sell booze, c lo t h e s, lower-class tourists enjoy dancing to the music.W h o d ru gs , fo o d , cassettes and parapher n a lia , fr o m are intellectuals and parents to argue that this fun is chillums (traditional Indian hash pipes) to incense. not “ real” but induced by foreigners? H ow do they And because loud music after 10 p.m. is illegal in kn ow that the “ frien d sh ip s”b et ween locals and forG oa, cops and corrupt politicians can earn piles of eign ers are purely utilitarian? Labeling Goa trance as rupees by routinely charging ba ksheesh ( b ribes) for “ n o n -G o an ” and “ co lo n ialist ” denies intercultural the parties and fishing for drug possession. In short , dialogue and possible solutions to the problem s. Anjuna’s party scene is as much of interest to for- Iron ically, the middle-class C atholic parent culture eign freaks and dealers as it is to G oans. forced upon Goan you n gst ers is more clearly a result Yet this economic dim enof aggr essive colonialism (of sion is ignored by the media Po rt u ga l) , than the Goa Goa trance music and activists. Instead they trance subculture they’re flirtdem onise the scene as one ing with. For it is nothing is a fast, hypnotic kind which cat ers to foreign pleamore than flirt in g: after the of techno, with fluct uat ing t ou rist season, it ’s back to sures while corrupting G oa’s st reams of bleeps, governm ent and seducing its Indian village or sm all-town yo u t h . T his is moral panic, life again. In the eyes of dancsquelches and a rt ic u lated along a postcoloing Goans and foreigners, soundscapes vaguely n ia l, intercultural dimension. Goa trance is Goan. reminiscent of Eastern M o r al, because there’s always N ow let’s accept that a puritan and pat riotic underGoa trance is part of G oa. harmonics. t on e. Pan ic, because the effects D oes that resolve all of the of Goa trance are exaggerat ed . problems? Of course not. PolMoral panic then gets in the way of admitting that lution is part of Goa and it’s not okay. M any problems m any Goan boys and men genuinely enjoy the par- in Goa (like pollution and corruption) are connected ties without the drugs (too expensive) and without to rave tourism , but we cannot just blame the tourist sex (contrary to widespread belief in the area, on e in d u st ry and foreigners. F irst , we need to identify the d o esn ’t copulate at a rave ) .W h at ’s more, gr owin g p rob lem s. A Goan boy decides to pierce his nose in n u m b ers of much richer youth from Mumbai (for- keeping with trance fash ion . Is that a problem ? Or m erly Bombay) are discovering the rave M ecca in should we be more concerned that cops pay to be their own country.Weekends and holidays are spent posted at the coast to collect ba ksheesh? Let’s deal with basking in the festive glory, although they are careful the second first .L et ’s not judge, like many Goan cityto throw away their hippie clothes before returning to folk do, from wild second-hand stories of the malign D ad , M um and their yuppie jobs. lu n atics of Anjuna or from inconsistent pat rio t ic I’m not saying Goans, Indian tourist s, M u m b ai denials of intercultural exchange. yu p s, white package tourist s,b ackp ackers and tranceI sense the reader frown in g. Listen to this Euroheads all happily dance together in pluralist commu- pean wise-guy spilling big words about other peon ion . I’m only saying that the audience is extremely p le’s problem s, calling them naïve and on top of diverse, far more so than in the West.T he starkly ad hoc that getting credit for it… same old N orth/South manner of organising these parties makes it difficult to d o m in ation but now on a university level. But concall the phenomenon a planned strategy of narcotics sider another possibility. Instead of hiding behind m afia, m u lt in ational capital, or wacko India-im itathe façade of detached social science, why not try to t ors intent on turning the young Indian generat ion st im u late debate on how to solve Goa’s rave into equally wacko West -im it at o rs. I t ’s true that tourism problems? ■ 52 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 Those who cannot dance say the music is no good. Jamaican proverb Yout h’s sonic forces The highly controversial Puff Daddy accepts the Rap Artist of the Year aw ard from Billboard magazine in 1997,three years before he w as implicated in a nightclub shooting in New York. A convenient scapegoat ◗ Davey D Who is to blame for the violence associated with hip-hop? Media sensat ionalism, money and stereotypical readings of this pop culture’s complexity J ◗ Hip-hop historian,journalist and community activist based in California. For more information: www.daveyd.com anuary 14, 2000, Oakland, C alifornia. It was with eager anticipation that more then 12,000 people descended upon the Oakland Coliseum to see rap superstar Juvenile and his C ash M oney C lick.T he musicians were at the top of the charts, while their songs and videos were being played on radio and T V stations across the country. Earlier in the day, they made a jovial appearance at KM EL, the area’s leading music radio station. Joking with fan s, they prom ised to give the performance of a lifetime.Little did we know what was in store. Around 11 o’clock that night, local T V shows were interrupted by frantic reports of mayhem at Oakland C oliseum . H o rrific pictures seem ingly depicting groups of thuggish young men beating up helpless concert -goers plastered T V screens as more than 100 police officers in riot gear swooped on the C o liseu m . T he show was halted and the sold-out cr owd told to go home, without refunds for their $50-tickets. A fight had broken out, involving about a dozen men. T he aftermath was swift and damaging. Local club owners pointed to the C oliseum fiasco as an excuse not to host sim ilar even t s. For exam ple, t h e p rest igious Gavin Music Convention was scheduled to take place in the Bay Area the following month. Plans were well underway to organise several large hip-hop showcases.T hey were all uncerem oniously cancelled. In fact, the hype surrounding the C oliseum event spread well beyond Californ ia .C o n c e rt venue owners from across the country called Oakland police officials to gauge whether or not they should host similar concerts. Yet many people saw the C oliseum management as being ill prepared. T hey were understaffed and therefore slow to let people into the venue (which raises tensions) and, more import an t ly, slow to respond once the trouble broke out. T his criticism was barely considered, h owever, in the public hearings subsequently organised on a possible moratorium on rap concerts. The backlash resulting from isolated events Making mat t ers worse, the incident occurred at a rough time for rap because some of its superst ars, including Puff D addy and Jay-Z , had been involved in extremely violent incidents. Puff made intern at ion al headlines when he fled a shooting in a NewYork City July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 53 n igh t clu b. Police later found an unregistered gun anced coverage and the maligning of a culture. inside his car and arrested him in late December last Another major issue to consider is the violent year.T he bad news came on the heels of another dra- im agery often promoted by the rappers themselves. m atic arrest:G ram my award winner Jay-Z was accused A cottage industry has blossomed over the past ten of stabbing fellow record execu tive Lance “ U n ”Rivera years as record companies and artists make a killing for supposedly bootlegging his mat erial. by selling a “thugged out”, m iso gyn ist ic, ga n gst a Incidents like these have m ade the issue of hip- im age.T here is no denying that some of these art ist s hop violence a main staple for media com mentat ors. actually adopt the attitudes their songs and videos Should we ban the concerts? How concerned should p r o ject . H owever, there are other ways of reading we be about the lyrics and imagery promoted by these coded lyrics and images. To begin with, som e some of the acts? rap p ers use the violent metaphors as part of a long S erious discussion requires proper persp ect ive. tradition of toasting or bragging about their musical Yes, there are violent incidents associated with hip- p rowess. As African Am erican author and professor hop, but they do not define the mindset of the cul- Robin D.G. Kelley points out, by exaggerating and t u r e .B e ware of the trap of stereotyping.T he alleged boasting about imagin a ry criminal acts, r a p p ers illegal actions of superstars like Puff and Jay-Z are engage in “ verbal duels over who is the ‘b ad d est ’.” an embarrassment, but they do not represent the Kelley also shows how the narratives operate on two music and culture. levels. In sid ers can appreciate the irony of the duels For exam ple, violent incidents abound at soccer while outsiders—namely white m iddle-class kids— m atches around the world but they don’t defin e are enthralled by a literal reading. Judgements aside, the sport or a particular comm unity. In many cases gangsta rappers take this audience on a fantasy tour law enforcement and civic officials understand that of “the ghetto”—a forbidden zone of cop-killers and the cost of doing business is a likelihood of vio- wh o r es. T he rappers are sim ply playing up on the le n c e . H ence fences are built to keep rival fa n s appeal of the evil fan t asies. a p a rt , while special security units patrol the stands. N ow you may not approve of this panderin g.Bu t H ip-hop has never been afforded such treatment. r em em b er , the artists are just a small cog in the I am not suggesting that we tur n concerts into machine of the multi-billion-dollar (per year) music police zones.Yet obviously large gat h erings require bu sin ess. Radio stat ion s,D Js, video outlets, prom otion special precautions. We must also recognise that the people and record labels must also shoulder the media have an interest in hyping mayh em .T hese sto- b lam e. T hese money-makers aren’t just cat ering to ries sell. For example, nobody was killed, let alone popular demand.T hey are cultivating the market. tram pled , at the concert I described .T he violence was M ajor radio stations are literally flooded with huncon fined to a small area and involved less then 20 peo- dreds of pieces of m usic every day. Who is more ple out of the more than 12,000 who at t en d ed . Not a responsible for influencing the public: the radio station single arrest was made, despite the presence of about with a m illion listeners or the artist that the stat ion 100 police officers. N evert h echooses to play? If an artist like less,T V stations saw fit to interSnoop D og or D r D re (both Who is more responsible associated with violence) come rupt their regular program m ing to inform the public about the for influencing the public: in for an interview, the journ alfigh t s. C ompare that sort of is not obliged to focus excluthe radio station with a sistively urgent coverage to the la ck o f on the negat ive side of million listeners or the attention given to the crowd their “ghetto upbrin gin gs” . violence that occurs regularly T hey could ask about positive artist that the station at Bay Area football games. projects the artist might be purchooses to play? T he violence surrou n d in g su in g.Yet it’s more profitable to the “Big Game” between Stanplay up the negative stereotypes ford U niversity and rival University of California in t h at people have of rappers and black people in gen1997 made the Coliseum concert look like a picnic. eral. One could argue that the artist should challenge T he entire field, including the goal posts, was the unbalanced questioning. But it’s crucial to realise d est royed by marauding fans who trampled innocent t h at the problem of violence is bigger then the art ist . b yst an d ers. Police officers were even at t acked . Yet T he violence associated with hip-hop must be there were no T V highlights on the evening news.T h e seen in proper persp ect ive.We can condemn the vion ewspapers wrote rave reviews of the game and barely lent acts of certain individuals without maligning a mentioned the figh t s. Ap p aren t ly, no-one would dare cu lt u re.We can read between the lines of masculine t arnish the reputations of two very prestigious uni- joustings via the microphone.We can also recognise versit ies. T he following year, the fans went berserk the mainstream cultural obsession with violence: ju st a ga in , despite the presence of 200 police officers. check out the ticket sales to H ollywo o d ’s gangster O nce again, no news coverage. films or T V program m es. In short , we have to recogI mention these incidents to highlight a much nise the complexity of hip-hop. R ap p ers offer more larger point. H ip -hop is a convenient scapegoat than just a m irror of the violence in their own combecause its com munities don’t have the political munities—their work reflects that of society as a p ower or money to control the type of media images wh ole. In short , hip-hop will remain as violent as we projected wo r ld wid e. T his has resulted in unbal- allow it to be. It won ’t change until we do. ■ 54 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 An installation by the German artist Robert Lippok, using the Cubase music production computer programme. Data is converted into electricity to pow er drilling machines, w hich in turn drive the turntables. Yout h’s sonic forces Excess for all ◗ Micz Flor T ◗ Based in Berlin and Vienna,Flor is training director at the Center for Advanced Media in Prague. Among his many media development projects, he founded and co-edits the online/tabloid publication Crash Media, and set up Berlin’s content provider art –bag.net. For more information on his awardwinning projects: http://mi.cz he Internet has provided a playground for young rebels to hit the music industry where it hurts: stealing their intellectual property. Breaching copyright laws has long been seen as good conduct. Back in the 70s,punk record labels used slogans such as “H ome taping is killing the music industry, keep up the good work.” H owever, the threat to established publishing houses has always been limited, as pirating on ordinary tapes made distribution technically complicated.T hroughout the 70s and 80s some independent mail ordering systems were set up, creating a network amongst pirate radio stations. But they never hurt anyone. To d ay, yo u n g, su b ve rsive elements have the Internet at their fingertips,and the cultural industries on their knees. T he audio format M P3 allows us to compress audio C D s into small files which can be made accessible on the Internet. Just click, download and listen.All you need is a modem, a phone line and a mediocre computer. Surely, having access to exactly the same distribution channels as the multinationals dissolves established power structures. And with out any financial pressure, no additional costs other than the phone bill (mostly paid by parents), youthful enthusiasm combined with a complete lack of respect for legislative regulations opens the floodgates for piracy. Of course,“young people on the Internet” are not all about stealing intellectual property. In fact, the real opportunity lies in becoming part of a global cultural exchange—without depending on the old-fashioned music industr y. Instead of producing and selling products, alternative models of work are taking shape. For example, an originally anarcho-communist concept—the gift economy—is alive and well. T he philosophy is simple: trade what you have, and Young rebels are not only attacking the music industry but also creating new circuits of solidarity via the Int ernet who needs money anyway? Pilot FM , a Viennabased M P3 label, which has grown out of the crossover between independent Internet Service Providers and electronic sound artists, states on its website: “T hough we won’t charge you for the downloads, we are thankful for donations of any kind such as hardwa r e , so ft wa r e , t r ave lle r ’s cheques, canned tomato soup, instant coffee or any other device,which you think makes life more pleasurable.” 1 Sound artists have also learned from the I n t ern et ’s Open Source develop m en t . In a nutsh ell: the more beta-testers and develop ers workin g on a product, the better it is. T his has been proven time again with software develop m en t , which is far too complicated for a single individual to manage. Tu rning to the cultural field , artists are rolling over the old notion of copyrigh t . G ive away your bu ilding blocks (ideas), see what others make of them and this will help your own develop m en t . So we find sample banks and archives for storing sound and music files available all over the Intern et . An avant-garde hip-hop musician with a taste for squeaks may find the sound of her dreams in an arch ive. She m ay in turn transform that squeak and so the bank grows richer… T he archives also enable net radios to enlarge their playlist s. One of m any examples is the Budapest based D J net.radio st ation Pararad io 2 , running a tight schedule of DJs and sound art ist s. D aniel M olnar, one of the spirits behind the project, exp lain s: “ We don’t even need to rely on produced sam ple discs, we have online sample stores and free archives. (...) If you feel real, join the new folkat eers.” 3 Liberating information But the subversion goes beyond attacking the m usic industr y to the political sphere. With the em ergence of a digital equivalent to the public sp h er e, issues of civil disobedience and revo lu t io na ry spirit have shifted into the electronic netwo r ks. T hroughout the 1980s hackers took the symbolic role of the militant opposition. “ I n fo rm ation wan t s 1. Pilot FM (2000); http://pilot.fm 2. Pararadio (1997-2000); http://www.pararadio.hu/ 3. D aniel M olnar: “Join T he N ew Folkateers”in C rash M edia Issue 1 (1998); http://www.yourserver.co.uk/crashmedia/utn/2.htm 4. For a detailed description of the myth surrounding hackers, see Bruce Sterling: The Hacker Crackdown, (1993), M ass M arket Paperback. July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 55 to be free”, they claim ed while pulling confid en t ia l s p a c e ”involving techniques like co-streaming. As files out in the open.4 Raitis Smits, the stat io n ’s director, has explained, Tod ay the streets ofVienna offer a cogent example “Each broadcaster takes another’s live stream [of of youth seizing the Internet to organise resistance. so u n d ] , re-encodes it and forwards it to the next Since the new right-wing government took power, p a rt ic ip a n t .” 1 2 youth groups like Volkstanz organised via the Intern et Such transnational projects generate a new weekly street parades with live D Js throughout the mode of com m unication am ongst young practicap it al, while toying with the govern m en t ’s helpless t io n e rs. N ot only is there a need to work collecattempts to control them by proudly stating on their t ively within their own grou p, but they must also latweb sit e: “All insults are welcom e: we are the hedo- erally exchange knowle d ge , content and theor y. nistic Intern et -gen er at io n , t h e T hey share an acoustic space, yet dance floor wing of the resistance they m ay never m eet in “ r e a l m ovem en t . (…) We want to figh t sp ace.” And so they leave the old through the medium of political artistic concepts of communitystreet parties the territ orialisat ion based work behind and enter a of youth culture.” 5 new digital environ m en t : the colBelgrade based Radio B 2-92 lective is dead,long live the col( formerly B92) is another examlective. ple of subversive youth culture via H owever, this digital network Internet. As they announce on © All rights reserved cannot truly serve as a source for their virtual JukeBox: “By playin g d em ocratic part icip ation and free music with a subtle but unmisspeech without solid gr o u n d in g takable political and social mesin the “access for all” p arad igm . sage, Radio B92 confronted the O b viou sly, access to the Intern et aesthetic that had been imposed means more than a phone line, a on the “silent majorit y” , one that com puter and technical knowfailed to foster liberal attitudes in h ow. In terms of cultural producthe country during the disintet ion ,“ access”gen erates two probgration of former Yugoslavia.” 6 lem zones. F irst , it is generally With their on-air frequency under Transnational outreach:the w ebsites of assum ed that the Internet allows constant threat of closure by the Crash M edia,an on-line publication from m a r ginal groups to make their M anchester, UK and of Belgrade’s B2-92 govern m en t , F ree B92—the web- radio. voices heard, yet the question is site—has become a meeting place, rarely raised as to who is speaking d rawing audiences far beyond the on behalf of such grou p s. b ord ers of form er Yu goslavia. Second, the idea of access for all is normally underFrom early on,radio aficionados were quick to stood as a one-way process, meaning everyone should seize the cyberworld’s audio formats to link virtual have access to all inform ation. But by reading this parspace with the streets. London based irational.org adigm in reverse, all inform ation should be accessiis no exception. Besides the pirate radio handbook7, ble to all. In the case of youth culture, danger arises they also feature the net.radio guide 8 which has as a more homogenised MT V youth style is increasbeen developed by va rious producers across ingly made available in standardised form ats on-line. Europe. H ere the clever youth can find technical So despite the little islands of resistance to “ M cD ondetails on how to connect on-line broadcasting with ald’s-style” culture nuggets, we might face yet another low-power FM transmitters. p r o b lem , not unknown in the West ern wo r ld —cu lBut building bridges to the street via net radio tural assimilat ion . Is this the price to pay? Substitute is just one line of attack. M edia collectives across access with excess and you’ll hear that sam e old song Europe had spent the final yea rs of the last century of homogenized culture. Re-wind or fast -forward ?■ le a rning to transgress national borders via new m odes of shared broadcasting and artistic creat io n . T he Berlin-based—and recently deceased—collective convex tv. came to the conclusion: “T here are a few simple reasons for doing things collec- 5. Volkstanz.N et (2000);http://www.volkstanz.net tively: technologically and economically speaking 6. FreeB92 JukeBox (2000); http://www.freeb92.net/music/english/index.html the collective is the only space where you can be 7. Irational Radio: “ H ow to be a Radio Pirat e”( 2 0 0 0 ) ; m a r ginally successful and successfully margin a l.” 9 http://www.irational.org/sic/radio/ . Their mission stat em en t T he aim isn’t to reach a bigger or mass audi- r e a d s:“ To promote neighbourhood, political and open-access ence but rather to connect pockets of creat ivit y radio stat ion s, to demystify the art of broadcast electronics”. 8. N et.Radio G uide (1999); and resistance via new m odes of shared broad- http://www.irational.org/radio/radio_guide/ cast in g. In their avant-garde experim en t at io n ,t ech- 9. convex tv.:“M aking Alias” (1999); n o lo gical possibilities and ar tistic expression are http://www.art-bag.net/convextv/pro/alias.htm 10.Radio Ozone, Riga;http://ozone.re-lab.net in d ist in gu ish a b le . For exam ple, in 1 997 Riga’s 11.Xchange mailinglist; http://xchange.re-lab.net net.radio station O zone1 0 set up a m ailing list 12.Raitis Smits:“X-Open C hannel”(1999); ( X ch a n ge1 1 ) to develop the concept of “ a co u st ic http://xchange.re-lab.net/i/ 56 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 ET H I CS EMBARGO AGAINST IRAQ: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT ◗ Sophie Boukhari Concern is mounting about the suffering of the Iraqi people, and the ethics and legality of the international sanctions weighing on them are being hotly debated In a leather workshop in Baghdad. ■ Should the econom ic em bargo imposed on Iraq a decade ago be numbered among the crimes that have made the 20th century one of the darkest in h ist ory? C an the intern ational community, led by the United States and Brit ain , keep on invoking the U nited Nations C harter to prolong indefin it ely, and with impunity, t h e su fferings of a people? W hy does the media make a fuss about some humanitarian disast ers and not about the dozens of Iraqi children who die each day? William Bourdon,secretary-general of the Intern ational F e d e r ation of H um an Rights Leagues (F ID H ), hints at an answer ◗ UNESCO Courier journalist to the last question:“It would be easier to mobilise public opinion behind this wo rt hy cause if the Iraqi dictatorship was not one of the world’s worst,” he says. A recent resolution of the U N H uman Rights C om m ission, on 18 Ap ril 20 00, “strongly condemns,” inter alia, “the systematic, widespread and extremely grave vio lations of hum an righ t s ” in Iraq, “resulting in an all-perva sive repression and opp ression.” It also condem ns the “ s u m m a r y an d arbitrary exe c u t io n s , including political killings,” and “ wid espread,systematic torture.” T he subject of the Iraqi embargo may be a trap, just as the Iraqi people are trapped. To talk about it might be to play into the hands of Iraqi President Saddam H ussein’s regim e. To keep quiet might be tantamount to failure to help a people in distress. But the wall of silence is star ting to crack after repor ts from UN bodies that the sanctions may have killed m ore than half a m illion children u nder five , a n d because of the despair of hum anitaria n o r ga n izations and the revolt of U N officials who have resigned from their jobs in I r a q . E ven the U. S . S t ate D epar t m e n t ’s we b sit e , long silent about reports of the plight of civilians, has posted remarks by C ongressman Tony P. H all, who returned from Iraq at the end of April 2000. “I fear that no matter how quickly sanctions are lifted, the future of most of the July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 57 ET H I CS people I met in Iraq will be bleak,” he writ es. “ T h at is because its children are in bad sh ap e, with a quarter of them underweigh t and one in ten wasting away because of hunger and disease. T he leading cause of childhood deat h ,d iarrh oea, is 11 times more prevalent in Iraq than elsewhere—while polio has been wiped out throughout the M ideast, it has returned to plague Iraq’s people. Schools and water system s—the infrastru cture any nat ion ’s future depends upon—are decrepit and hospitals lack basic medicine and equipm ent. O r d in a ry civilians have exhausted their resources and their health t rying to survive on $2 to $6 per m onth. . . . It will take Iraqi people a generation to recover from their present situat ion .” “ Or di nary civilians have exhausted their resources and their health t rying to survive on $2 to $6 per month.” T he tough est econom ic blockade in recent tim es, voted by the UN Securit y C ouncil in August 1990, four days after Iraqi troops invaded Ku wa it , o rigin a lly aimed to prevent Iraq rearming and to neutralize its regim e. F ive yea rs lat er , on 14 Ap ril 1995, the so-called “oil for food” r esolution gave the Iraqi regime permission to sell a limited amount of the country’s oil and to use 53 per cent of the proceeds1 to buy food , medicine and basic necessities. But the sanctions committee, which has to approve the purchases, can block som e item s (ranging from lead pencils to chlorine to vaccines) if it thinks they could be used to m ake weapons of mass destru c t io n .M e a nwh ile, a UN special commission, U N SC O M , was sent to Iraq to monitor the disarmament process. When the commission was disbanded at the end of 1998, all of Iraq’s nuclear, ch emical and biological weapons progr a m m es had been dismantled or destroyed and the threat from them reduced to “zero, none,” said the Am e rican form er chief of the U N SC O M inspection team, Scott Ritter, in a recent BBC documentary which attacked those responsible for m aintaining the embargo.2 But the U N Security C ouncil set up a new arms control commission in its resolution 1284 of 17 D ecember 1999. “T he aim is to check that nothing nuclear has been rebuilt and to see what the situation is c o n c e r ning chem ical and biologic a l we a p o n s,” says the F rench foreign minist ry. “After that we can move towards lifting sanctions if Iraq co-operates.” France, along with C hina and Russia, nevertheless abstained in the vote to approve resolution 1284, saying the wording did not describe “in completely good fa it h ”t h e procedure for suspending the embargo.T h e Iraqi regime is refusing to co-operate. So the people of Iraq are still hostages. “ W h at was an acceptable situation in 1991 no longer is,” says Germ a ny’s H ans vo n Sponeck, the latest U N humanitarian coordinator in Iraq to have resigned his post, in March 2000.T he embargo, decided upon in full compliance with the U N C harter,is n ow “a clear violation of hum an righ t s,” he says. Even worse, states former French During a July 1997 demonstration in front of the United Nations in New York calling for an end to sanctions. Caspian Sea TURKEY SYRIA IRAQ Baghdad IRAN SAUDI ARABIA Persian Gulf foreign minister C laude C heysson, it is a crime against humanity, “as defined by the U N itself” 3 (see box). In the United States some people agree, including former At t orney-General Ramsey Clark and Francis Boyle, professor of intern ational law at the University of Illinois.Von Sp on eck’s predecessor, Irishman Denis Hallid ay, who resigned in September 1998, h as also joined the opponents of the embargo. “ I’ve been using the term ‘gen ocid e,’ b ecau se this is a deliberate policy to destroy the people of Iraq,” he recently stated . Some legal experts are sceptical about or even against using such t erm in ology. “ People who talk like that don’t kn ow anything about law,” r et o rts M ario Bettati, who invented the notion of “the righ t of humanitarian interven tion ”. “T he embargo has certainly affected the Iraqi people badly, but that ’s not at all a crime against humanity or genocide.” FID H secretary-general Bourdon says “one of the key elements of a crim e against humanity and of genocide is intent. T h e em bargo wa s n ’t im posed b ecause the U nited States and Britain wanted children to die. If you think so, you have to prove it.” But what about today, when the whole world knows Iraqi children are dying because of the sanctions? “ L eaving in place a measure which yo u kn ow is killing people isn’t the same as applying measures deliberately calculated and planned to cause the maximum number of people to die,” he says. Pat rick Baudouin, F I D H ’s president, is less sure. He says he “ h esit at es” to call the embargo a crime against humanity. “As a lawye r ,I ’d say it wasn ’t . But its open-ended 1.T he rest was to go to victims of the war with Kuwait (30 per cent),to the Kurdish lands in northern Iraq not under Baghdad’s control (13 per cent) and to fund the operation of the embargo, including the cost of maintaining U N troops. 2. Killing the Children of Iraq:a price worth paying?, by John Pilger (M arch 2000). 3. In Irak,la faute, by Alain Gresh, C erf, Paris, 1999. 58 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 ET H I CS TIM ELINE 2 August 1990: Iraqi forces invade Kuwait. 6 August 1990: UN resolution 661 is adopted, imposing economic sanctions on Iraq. ● 16-17 January 1991: U.S.-led coalition forces launch the Operation Desert Storm air attack, with the approval of the Security Council. ● 27 February 1991: Iraqi forces retreat from Kuwait. ● 30 June 1991: The newly-created UN Special Commission (UNSCOM), begins its first inspection. ● 15 August 1991: Iraq rejects resolution 706 authorising it to sell oil to finance the purchase of humanitarian supplies. ● 14 April 1995: An “ oil-for-food” agreement between the UN and Iraq is reached. ● 16 December 1998: UNSCOM withdraws from Iraq. The U.S. and UK launch the Operation Desert Fox air campaign, without UN approval. Bombing takes place on a close to daily basis. ● 17 December 1999: The Security Council adopts resolution 1284 replacing UNSCOM by a new monitoring, verifi cation and inspection commission known as UNMOVIC. ● ● DEFINITIONS The Statute of the International Criminal Court defines “ crimes against humanity” as acts “committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack,” including “ inhumane acts . . . intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.” ● Genocide includes acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, et h n i cal, racial or religious group,” including “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group” and “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or inpart.” ■ ● extension does raise serious questions.” All these law ye rs agr e e , h owe ve r , t h at the em bargo violates basic hum an righ t s , starting with the right to life. T here is also a lot of argument about who is responsible for the hum anitaria n disaster in Iraq. T he U. S . S t ate D epartment, which does not even accept U N IC EF an d W H O figu r e s , p uts the blam e on Saddam H ussein. Samuel Berger, of the U. S . N ational Security C ouncil, said in M ay 2000 that “by obstructing U N relief, refusing to order nutritional supplements, e ven selling food and m edicine to bu ild p a la c e s, M r. Saddam has aggr avated his p eo p le’s suffering and used the spectacle to seek the removal of sanctions.” Von Sponeck spends most of his time r ebutting these arguments. “T he UN publishes a monthly stock report that shows wh at has arrived in Iraq, wh at has been distributed, what is stored away and wh y. T he picture that emerges for food is perfect. (...) Tr a n sp o rt is a problem, but people are receiving their food baskets every month and wareh ouses are em pty the day after distribution,” he says. When Washington accuses Baghdad of not distributing about a quarter of the medical supplies, he notes that “W H O recommends that a country should have 25 per cent of its drugs in stock to prepare and be prepared for an epidem ic. Iraq said it could not afford this, but keeps 15 per cent in stock. T he drugs all undergo quality control tests, which 5.8 per cent of them have failed .T h en you have medical components that are unusable because they can only be used in combin ation with others.” H allid ay points out that the sanctions committee “ would deliberately approve nine [item s] but block the t en t h , kn owing full well that without the tenth item, the other nine were of no use . . . It ’s a deliberate ploy.” Reforming the UN Charter U nease over the Iraqi em bargo h as reopened debate about the use of embargoes as a we a p o n . Article 41 of the U N C h a r ter says the Security C ouncil can enforce its decisions by applying measures t h at include “the com plete or partial interruption of economic relations and of . . . means of communication.” T his trend has increased in recent years. Sin ce 1990, the Un ited N ations has imposed sanctions on Yu go slavia ,S o m a lia , Sierra Leone, L ib ya ,L ib eria ,H a it i,An go la ’s U nita rebels and Iraq. Su p p ort ers of sanctions say it is often the only way to punish countries that threaten p e a c e . T hey cost little at a tim e when West ern public opinion frowns on the huge expense and loss of human life involved in m ilit a r y interven t io n s. T he opponents of sanctions stress the serious effects on the civilian population while the targeted r e gim es becom e m ore en tren ched and manage to smuggle in supplies regardless. T he Iraqi example confirms their argum en t .T he people have been bled dry.T h ere is abundant proof that the ruling clique is becom ing wealthier and that oil is being sm uggled out. At the end of Jan u ary 2000, the British H ouse of Com mons issued a rep ort admitting the embargo had failed and expressing the hope that no other country would ever be subm itted to such an ordeal. “N early all embargoes penalize civilians and boost the power of the political le a d e rs they aim to bring dow n ,” s ays Bo u r d o n , who nevertheless adds that “ o n e can perhaps say that developments in South Africa were the result of intern ational sanctions against apartheid.” Along with others , he points to the e xc e s s ive weight of the U nited Stat e s , b acked by its British ally, in Securit y C ouncil decisions. H e thinks the U N C h a rter should be amended and UN decision-making procedures changed. In particular, victims of human rights violations should be represented by a consultat ive committee attached to the Security Council. “ It ’s unacceptable that the future of a whole people should be in the hands of two states,” he says. “We can no longer allow states to pursue cynically their regional or international interests,as is the case in Iraq.” M any analysts,including H alliday and von Sponeck, think the embargo is being prolonged so as to maintain the status quo in the M iddle East.According to them, its protagonists are in favour of a weak Iraq, without necessarily getting rid of a regime that prevents the country splitting apart. T hese analysts say the break-up of Iraq, with a Kurdish government in the nort h and a Shiite authority in the south, could destabilize a region that provides the bulk of the oil needed by the major world powers The opponents of sanctions stress the serious effects on the civilian population while the targeted regimes become more entrenched and manage to smuggle in supplies regardless. and would threaten key U .S.allies such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel. Furtherm o r e, says H alliday, maintaining tension in the region has enabled U .S. arms man ufacturers to sell about $100 billion worth of weaponry to Baghdad’s enemies. But with the We st e rn media increasingly outraged at the embargo and three m e m b e r s of the U N Secur ity C ou ncil ( F r an ce, Russia and China) openly against continuing it, von Sponeck sees a glimm er of hope. “I don’t think the sanctions will be extend ed far into 200 1,” he says , “ bu t think of all the children who’ll die in the m e a n t im e .” ■ July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 59 ET H I CS EMBARGO GENERATION ◗ Josette Tagher Roche Children are the fi rst victims of the international sanctions against Iraq. More and more of them are living on the street in a country that has reverted to under-development According to UNICEF, 83 per cent of the country’s primary schools are in need of repair as a result of the embargo. ■ Two sm all children are standing hand in hand on the m ain street of the sou t h ern Iraqi port of Basra. E ven in g is drawing in and the traders are starting to pull down the m etal screens in front of their shops. T he sm iling yo u n gst ers, less than eight years old, are trying to sell to p assersby their sole possessions—a couple of red and white striped plastic bags. “ We won ’t quit the street until we’ve earn ed some money,” they say, as we are joined by 40-odd other street children who have no wares left to sell. T hey all talk at once.T hey left school, they say, because they failed their studies. T hey don’t live at home because their parents are “divorced or out of work”and “they have to live on their wits”. As the last shopkeepers switch off their electricity generators, the street darkens. T he youngest of the group, a boy hardly six yea rs old, steps forward and says he “wants to go to school”. H ow long will it be before the world realises the dramatic effects the international embargo is having on the people of ◗ Editor of Enfants du monde, magazine of the French section of UNICEF 60 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 Iraq and especially on their children? Iraq and the Iraqis have been ruined by two wars1, but damaged even more by the international sanctions imposed nearly a decade ago after Iraqi r uler Saddam H ussein’s troops invaded Kuwait. Every month, malnutrition kills more than 4,500 Iraqi children under five, according to estimates of a U N IC EF survey released in August 1999.H ow many more deaths must there be before people realise what is going on? T here were hardly any street children a decade ago, when all youngsters went to school. Today their numbers are growing. In Iraq, it is illegal to work or beg under the age of 15, and street kids are punished for committing these offences. When they are arrested, they are usually sent to detention centres where conditions are very harsh. Some then m anage to get to El Rahm a ( “ M e r cy” ) , B a gh d a d ’s only reception centre for street children, where conditions are better but carers are few.2 1.T he war with Iran between 1980 and 1988 and the G ulf War in 1990-1991. 2. Jointly run by the Iraqi government and the French N G O Enfants du monde. Adopting children is legal, unlike in other M uslim countries, but is not very common, says Jabir Aboud H amid, who runs the centre. H e sees only two ways of getting the children back into society: “Find the boys’ families and arrange marriages for the girls.” T he latter risk death if they return home after living in “rundown places” (the street). “But before I start looking for something for them,” says H amid, “I’ve got to find a new battery for the centre’s car so I can go and buy bread for the children.” In Iraq today, every sector has urgent n eed s, says a U N IC E F o fficial in Baghdad: “We’re doing the work the govern m en t can ’t do any longer because of the embargo, like building clinics, houses and schools, r ep airing drains, water treatment plants, p rinting presses and chalk fact o ries. I t ’s an en o rmous job and we have to work fast to save the children. Most of all, we’ve got to get them back into school so this ‘em b ar go gen er at io n ’ isn ’t lost to the country.” Every month, malnutrition kills more than 4,500 Iraqi children under fi ve O ver the past 10 years, the governm en t ’s education budget has shrunk by 90 per cent, from $230 million in 1991 to $23 million today. As many as 83 per cent of p rim ary schools need to be repaired. Som e h ave been totally destroyed , while others are working at “full capacity”. At Diala sch ool, on the road between Baghdad and Basra, the pupils take turns learning in four-hour shifts in classrooms with broken benches and desks, bare electrical wirin g, ceilings with holes and floors under wat er. D espair reigns in the public health department. “T hey say Iraq makes arms using anti-cancer medicine and chlorine needed for water purification,” exclaims Abdul Amir El T hamery. “D o we ha ve to stand and watch people die? M ust children fall ill because the water is undrinkable? And what’s going to happen in the summer heat when illness,death and malnutrition are already so common?” ■ SI G N S O F T H E T I M ES TOXINS AND THE TAJ ◗ T K Rajalakshmi India’s most celebrated monument continues to be threatened by pollution despite various court orders to close down harmful factories in Agra ■ “Pollution has managed to do what 350 years of wars, invasions and natural disasters have failed to do. It has begun to mar the magnificent walls of the Taj M ahal,” declared U .S. President Bill C linton during his visit to the 17th-centur y monument in the city of Agra earlier this year. O ver the past two decades, the fate of the country’s foremost tourist at t r act io n has repeatedly come into the spotlight. T ime and time again, exp erts have wa rn ed ◗ Delhi-based journalist with the Indian bi-weekly Frontline t h at environmental pollution is eat in g away at the monument and discolourin g its once translucent white marble. But the p r escription—to control pollution by relocating a number of industries around the Taj Trapezium Zone (T T Z), a 10,400 sq. km area around the monument—is pitting c o n se rvationists and envir o n m e n t a list s against business interests and unions. Besides the Taj M ahal, the zone includes t wo other world heritage monuments, t h e Agra Fo rt and Fatehpur Sikri. So what should take precedence—the m onument or the thousands of wo r kers employed by the fact o ries in the area? T he stakes are such that the case is being fought out in the country’s Supreme C ourt . T he culprits includ e the M at h u r a R e fin e ry, iron foundrie s, glass fa c t o rie s and brick kilns, not to mention the continuous flow of traffic along the highways skir ting th e city. O n repeated occasions, sulphur dioxide emissions from industries in the area have reached levels ten times ab ove the prescribed standard leve l.C o mbined with oxygen and moisture, su lp h u r d ioxide settles on the surface of the tom b and cor rodes the m arble, fo r min g a fu ngus that experts refer to as “ m a r b le can cer ” . Foundries in the protected zone around Agra are being urged to switch to more eco-friendly technologies. July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 61 SI G N S O F T H E T I M ES Quite a number of factories did nothing about relocating or switching to natural gas. Some claimed that the cost of these operations was prohibitive: according to one industry representative, the basic equipment runs between Rs30 to Rs40 lakhs ($7 5,00 0 and $10 0,000), almost a quarter of annual sales for a medium-sized company. Smaller fir m s say that the cost of applying for a gas connection, which includes a pre-payment, cuts into annual sales. Even if they did close down and sell their land, factory owners claim that this would not cover workers’ compensation. Foundry owners also claimed that finding skilled or even sem i-skilled replacem ents for specific tasks in the relocated areas would be difficult. Delay tactics Foundry workers burning an effi gy of their factory’s owner to protest relocation. Blam ing pollution and regulat o ry negligence for the Ta j’s decay, M a h e sh C handra Mehta, a prominent envir o n m ental lawyer , filed a case before the Supreme C o u rt of India in 1984. H e pointed out t h at the white m arble had blackened in p laces, while inside, the monum ent was being eaten by fungus, especially in the inner chamber, where the original gr aves of Emperor Shah Jahan and his beloved wife M umtaz Mahal lie. Mehta pleaded with the court to order the various indust ries to take anti-pollution measures or to clo se. H e also stressed that pollution was affecting the health of wo r kers and people living in Agr a ’s residential areas. Switch to gas It was not until 1996 that th e Supreme C ourt finally ruled that the industries in the area were actively contributing to air pollution and ordered major industrial units to install pollution control devices. “N ot even a one per cent chance can be taken when—human life apart—the preservation of a prestigious monument like the Taj is involved,” stated the court order. T he court ordered 292 coal-based industries to switch to natural gas or else to relocate outside the protected zone by April 30, 1997. C oke, the fuel commonly used in the cupola furnaces in foundries,is known to cause high levels of air pollution. Factories that opted for relocation would be obliged to re-employ workers under favourable terms and to 62 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 give them a one-year bonus. And if their plant were to close down, workers would be entitled to six years’ worth of wages in compensation. As a result, the oil refin ery and a number of Agr a ’s foundries installed expensive pollution control devices. Sterling M achine Tools (SM T ), the biggest fact o ry in Agr a , obtained a gas connection from the G as Au t h o rity of India. But according to a senior personnel m anager, it takes time for production to reach the same levels as before and for wo r kers to adjust to the new t ech n o lo gy. “T he gas furnace costs around Rs50 lakhs ($120,000). While we have the m o n ey, small units do not,” he said. MONUMENT TO ETERNAL LOVE T he Taj Mahal was built by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his wife Mumtaz Mahal. Built entirely in white marble, the Taj was constructed over a period of 22 years and was completed in 1647 A.D. It is situated in northern India on the southern bank of the Yamuna river in Agra, about 210 km from the capital, New Delhi. The mausoleum complex is hailed as the finest example of Mughal architecture, a blending of Indian, Persian, and Islamic styles. The Taj was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1983. ■ In August 1999, the Supreme C ourt struck again, ordering the closure of 53 iron foundries and 107 other factories in Agra that had not cleaned up their act. T he order has become a call to arms for fo u n d ry own e rs, wo r kers, trade union representatives and small-scale industry. H owever, industry is buying time: it filed a review petition through the U ttar Pradesh State government and obtained a reprieve on the court order’s implementation.T he matter comes again before the Supreme C ourt this summer . In the m eantim e, Agr a ’s Iron Founders’ Association are building up their case.T hey argue that 3,000 cottage and engin eering units depend on the foundries, and that about 300,000 workers are directly or indirectly employed by them. T hey hold that the technology for using natural gas in their industries is not yet ready. M ehta claims that this is a “ d elaying tactic”: in 1995, in d u st ry experts had said that gas could be used as industrial fuel. “If the technology was not available then, they should ha ve stated so at the time.” According to M ehta, the required technology has been developed by the N ational M etallurgical Laborator y and would help turn the hundreds of foundries in Agra into more efficient and less polluting units. While M ehta continues with his legal bat t le, his cru sa d e against industrial pollution earned him the 1996 G oldman Environmental Prize and the Ramon M agsaysay Award for Public Service in 1997. Although union leaders are firmly opposed to any relocation or factory closures, the battle has brought other concerns to the fore. According to a leader from the C entre for In d ian Tr a d e SI G N S O F T H E TI M ES U nions, the entire foundry industry is highly exploitative and the working con ditions hazardous. T he majority of workers are employed on a contract basis despite having worked for long periods in the foundries—which means they would receive no protection if factories were to close. And a lack of information appears to hang over the whole saga: Ram Sharan, a worker in his mid-thirties from Bihar, said that he had vaguely heard about foundries relocating and was quite certain that he would lose his job as a result. Workers at G T Iron Industries, a casting unit slated for closure, said that they had heard about the court order but didn’t know where they would go if the unit closed down. T hey had left their villages in U ttar Pradesh and other provinces many years ago and were living in rented accommodation in “ Marble cancer” caused by sulphur dioxide is yellowing the Taj’s once translucent surface. the city. But despite these conditions, workers state that it is better than being jobless. Industries aside, the Taj M ahal is an economic asset in and of itself: two million tourists visit the Taj every year, making it a major source of revenue and foreign exchange for the region. It keeps hotels, craftsmen and small businesses thriving. In M ay this year, the Supreme C ourt banned cars and parking within 500 metres of the Taj’s boundary walls. It ordered the shifting of about 70 shops from the precincts of the white marble m a u so le u m . While experts agree that some of these measures have helped to improve air around the Taj, pollution levels have not dropped to safer limits as none of the factories have actually been closed down. Air pollution, dust, lack of greenery, traffic and the presence of noisy diesel generators around Agra are all harming a prized tourist attraction. To date, politicians have tended to side with industry while the judiciary has backed the cause of the Taj. But in the meantime, the monum ent to eternal love continues to breathe in the fumes. ■ HISTORIC LIMA GETS A NEW HEART ◗ Luis Jaime Cisneros Although not a metropolis every urban planner would dream of, Lima no longer has the dubious title of one of Latin America’s dirtiest and most polluted cities ■ Nobody who strolled through the centre of Lima in the 1980s could have imagined that some day the Peruvian capital would be called a “garden city”. Air and noise p ollu t ion , lack of public services (public toilets, proper lighting), traffic chaos, van d alism and the invasion of the city centre by thousands of street ven d ors drove out not only t ou rists and private businesses but local residents who only ventured there to go to work. In June 1989, a group of urban planners, architects,historians,artists and art critics decided to set up the Lima Foundation, a p rivat e ,n o n - p o lit ic a l,n o n - p r o fit organization to save the old city centre. “ We all had jobs in the historic centre and could see h ow it was really going down h ill,” says journalist Augusto Elmore. T he Fo u n d at io n ’s first victory was getting the city centre onto U N ESC O ’s World H eritage List in 1991.T his enthused public opinion and spurred the city authorities to ◗ Lima-based freelance journalist embark on a far-reaching renovation programme in the mid-1990s with the Found at io n ’s help and support . “ H ist o ric city centres are places where culture, tourism and economics can rub shoulders, and their restoration must benefit all social classes and foster a spirit of unity,” says urban sociologist G ladys C havez. T hose in charge of the program me took this to heart and reckoned that revamping the centre would have a beneficial effect on the rest of the city, which is home to eight million people (a quarter of the country’s p o p u lat io n ) . T hey focused on renovat in g 1 16 blocks cove ring 123 hectares and includin g 57 0 m onum ents—baroque ch u r ch es, Renaissance mansions, u n iversities and conven t s, all of them examples of Spanish urban colonial architecture. T he programme borrowed ideas from earlier plans to restore H ava n a , M e xic o C ity and Quito—all of whose historic centres are World H eritage sites—and was a joint effort by local authorit ies, civil society and the private sector. “T he Fo u n d at io n drafted renovation projects and passed them on to government bodies—the city authorit ies, the N ational C ultural Institute and the urban investment fund—for execu t ion ,” says Juan Günther, the 63-year-old architect in charge of the Foundation’s projects. Traffi c control One of the first measures taken was to reorganise street trading. “ To get to the Plaza José de San M ar tin square, in the cen t r e, p ed est rians and m otorists had to weave their way through thousands of vendors,who either had stalls or laid out their wares and their knick-knacks on the pavement and in the road,” says Elmore.To d ay, you can get through the streets more easily, because only officially licensed street vendors are allowed into the centre and many of the others have been moved into shopping galleries outside the old city centre. Another prio rity was tackling air and noise pollution. “ Anyone who works in the July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 63 SI G N S O F TH E T I M ES centre suffers from it every day,” says Günther. “It gives me a sore throat and a lot of my colleagues get skin rashes.” So the traffic system in the centre was changed to limit the number of buses and taxis, which are now regulated and painted yellow. Restoration of the main public spaces, such as the Plaza M ayor, began in 1997, along with the renovation of churches, m onum ents and San M arcos U nive rs i t y, founded in 1551 and the oldest in Latin Am erica. “But it was more than just restoration.T hese places got used for new purposes,” says C havez. H e cites the example of the Lima Biennial Art Fest ival, wh ich holds exhibitions in large arist o cr atic mansio n s, as well as schem es to encourage local t ou rism such as the “ R et u rn to the Centre” campaign and the renovation of the Chinese quarter. M uch of the work was carried out with technical and financial assistan ce from U N E SC O and foreign govern m en t s, such as Spain, or with the help of C uba. But the Fo u n d ation also lobbied the private sector, and various banks and big firm s, such as the Sou t h ern mining company, the Backus and Johnson brewer y, Telefonica de Peru and C oca Cola, all of which gave money for the r e n ovation wo r k. An “Adopt a Balcony” cam paign to restore 300 colonial balconies in the centre (at a cost of about $5,000 each) was funded by private firms. Suggestions for fi ghting povert y In the past few yea rs, Lim a residents of all classes, especially young people, h ave begun to return to the centre. “We enjoy coming here now because it’s like being in a city within a city,” say Jimena and Kike, two students crossing the Plaza M ayor. Günther says the impression of neglect and alienation people used to feel when t h e y walked through the city centre is a t h in g of the past, but he fears the changes m ight not stick. Air and noise pollution h ave not gone away. “ Ab an cay Ave n u e ,o n e of the main thoroughfares, is a nightmare, with four times the maximum level of pollution set by the World Health Organizat ion ,” h e says. But the big problem, he continues, is “social pollution” caused by petty crime in the central area and the spread of poor housing, along with insanitary conditions and high in fant mort alit y. T he challenge for the next few years will be to draw this sector of the p op u lation back into society and into jobs. O ld mansions classified as historic a l monuments are occupied by between five and sometimes a dozen families who pay little or no rent. But the centre is not very densely populated becau se of the large number of official buildings,churches and public spaces. T he Fo u n d ation has suggested conve rting disused buildings into a p a rtments and knocking down those in very bad condition to replace them with about 90,000 new apartments. M oving more people into the old part of the city and improving living conditions there will also improve the quality of businesses and make the centre more at t r act ive for Lima’s citizens and for tourists. “T he first and most urgent task for Lima,” says G ü n t h e r , “is the economic, c o m m e r c ia l and cultural revival of the old city.” ■ The “ Adopt a Balcony” campaign funded by private fi rms has led to the restoration of 300 colonial balconies in Lima’s historic centre. 64 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 CO N N EX I O N S THE SOUTH GOES MOBILE ◗ Asbel Lopez Throughout the developing world, mobile phones are dramatically extending access to communications, but if they are to benefi t the poorest, bold government policies are still required ■ G roups of small farmers in remote areas of C ôte d’Ivoire share mobile telephones so they can follow hourly fluctuations in coffee and cocoa prices. T his means they can choose the moment to sell their crops when world prices are most advantageous to them. A few years ago, they could only have found out about market trends by applying to an office in the capital, Abidjan. T heir deal-making was based on information from buyers, and this was not always reliable. T hese coffee and cocoa growers are just a few of the econom ic players in poor countries who are today making shrewd use of the mobile phones,one of the star features of the information society. “C ommunication is a universal need, but comm unications technology can be used in a va riety of ways,” says U N E S C O c o m m u n ic ations specialist Babacar Fa ll. “Although a mobile phone may nominally belong to a single person, in some African cou n tries it is regarded as the property of the community, because there is a culture of sharing the tools of communication.” A dearth of fi xed lines Fall cites the case of Senegalese living in D akar or abroad who have bought their relatives a mobile phone to stay in touch. S o m e t im e s,se veral families living in places where the dream of getting a fixed phone line is unlikely to come true for at least 20 ye a rs share a m ob ile handset that they charge up from car bat t eries. C hildren ru n to neighbours to tell them that a relat ive will be calling back in a few minutes from N ew York or Rome. Huge billboard ads in Africa have made mobile phones as popular there as C ocaC ola. As one joke goes, “A man loses his m obile phone in a crowd and asks someone to call his number. A few seconds lat e r ,t h e ◗ UNESCO Courier journalist missing phone rings—in the pocket of the policeman who was helping to look for it.” M obiles are popular because of the d earth of fixed telephone lines in Afric a .I n 1998, Europe had 37 lines for every 100 people while Africa only had two. T h e D em o cr atic Republic of the C ongo (D RC) has one for every 2,500 people while M ali and N iger have fewer than two per 1,000. In Asia, the average is 7.34 lines for every 100 people, more than double the number in L atin Am erican countries like Cuba (3.21) and N icaragua (3.13). M obile phones have started to fill this com m u n ications gap. Although 80 per cent of them are cur rently found in r ic h c o u n t rie s , in the 1 99 0s the num ber of subscribers in poor countries grew faster than anywhere else. Afr ica had alm ost “Although a mobile phone may nominally belong to a single person, in some African countries it is regarded as the property of the community, because t here is a culture of sharing the tools of communicat ion.” 3 . 5 million mobile phone subscrib e rs in 1998.M ore than 70 per cent of them were in South Africa, where growth in this sector exceeded all expectat io n s, according to the I n t e rn ational Te le c o m m u n ic ation U nion (IT U ).In the same year, 17 per cent of all phone subscribers in Africa had mobiles. T he figure for Asia was 30 per cent. I n developing countries like the Philippines, Bo livia , Azerbaijan and Estonia, m o b iles h ave cau ght on m uch quicker than expected. “T he less infrastructure a country has, the more attractive it is to invest in mobile phones,” says N agib C allaos, who teaches at Sim on Bolivar Unive rsity in Caracas. “ T h er e’s no need to create a demand; it exists already. In Venezuela, for example, there’s no traditional phone infrastructure and mobile phones have spread much m ore quickly than in the U nited States.” Forty million people in the world are on waiting lists for a fixed-line telephon e, according to the IT U. In Venezuela,where the wait is nearly five years, a lucrat ive black market has set in, with people paying the equivalent of 10 times the minimum wage to get a line. N ow it is possible to sign a contract for a mobile phone and start using it the following day. T his delights some Ve n e zu e la n s,“ wh o use the time when they’re stuck in Caracas’ end less traffic jam s to catch up on the phone ca lls they’ve been m ean in g to m a k e ,” s ays C a llaos. H avin g a m obile phone is also useful from the point of view of safety. “M y daughter never goes out at night without her mobile. I can call her e ve r y hour or less to see if she’s O K ,” h e says. Exponential growth in war-torn countries A mobile phone network can be up and running much more quickly than a fixed o n e . In Rom ania, the fir m M obifon launched its service in 1996,just four and a half months after being granted a licence to operate. Since there is no need to dig trenches for cables, in stallation costs less and the investment is recuperated m ore rapidly. In Venezuela, profits began to roll in only three years after startup. M obile phones are also ideal for countries whose infrastructure is inadequate or has been seriously damaged by war. E xamples include Lebanon and especially Camb o d ia , where there are m ore mobile cellular subscrib ers than fixed telephones.T h e July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 65 CO N N EX I O N S In Kosovo, where the war partially destroyed communication infrastructures, an Albanian woman calls her son in Germany on a cell phone. only other country where the situation is comparable is Finland. T he IT U says the percentage of mobile versus fixed lines is proof of the vigour of the mobile phone industry in countries of the S o u t h . In C am bodia, m obile phones appeared in 1992. Within a year m obile subscribers exceeded the number of fixed telephones and today, they constitute 72 per cent of all subscribers. T he authorities have even questioned the need to expand the fixed network. Fierce competition between operators M obile phones will soon overtake fixed lines in Lebanon (now 45 per cent mobiles) and Paraguay (43 per cent). In the latter, m obile phone fir m s, mostly private and backed by foreign in vestment, have benefited from the ineffic ie n cy of the stat e owned fixed-line operat o r. (U nlike most of its neighbours, Paragu ay did not privatise its t eleco m m u n ication operator in the 1990s. ) M a ny users choose to take advantage of the rivalry between the four private mobile phone firms rather than remaining dependent on the bureaucratic state company. “T he state has done poorly where fixed lines are concern ed ,” says the IT U’s Michael M in ges. “Its role should be to open up the market and create an open environm ent for 66 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 foreign invest m en t .” Bu t , he says, the stat e still has an important role as a regulat o r ,“ t o facilit ate competition, to see that prices are fair and to establish interconnections b e t ween different system s, in c lu d in g b et ween mobile and fixed lines.” In the beginning, it was thought that m obile phones in poor countries wo u ld only be used by the wealthy, and govern- In 1998, t hree years after the first prepaid mobile phone scheme was launched, 40 million people had opted for it— about 13 per cent of the world’s mobile users. ments granted only one national m obile phone operating licence. But almost half the c o u n t ries with m obile phones now have issued at least two licences, and the fierce competition between operat o rs has helped to reduce rat e s. T his does not howe ve r explain the current gr owth of a m ass m ar ket , which is largely due to prepaid call schemes. The boom in prepaid cards T he standard way of paying for a mobile phone service is on the basis of a m inimum use of, say, two hours a month for a year. Potential customers have to provide proof of a regular incom e, sign a contract and h ave a bank accoun t and a perm a n e n t address. But because the vast majority of rural people in developing countries do not have any of these, operators are using the prepayment system. T his involves buying cards which provide phone time from five minutes to an h o u r. C u st o m ers can use the credit as they like over a period of weeks, and so keep control over th eir spending and enjoy a very cheap phone ser vice. Prepaid cards are widely available in local stores. T he potential market is huge.In 1998, three yea rs after the first prepaid m obile phone schem e was launched, 40 million people had opted for it—about 13 per cent of the world ’s m obile users. In South Africa, half of all subscribers chose prepayment, and more than half in Mexico. In Senegal in 1 9 9 9 , one operator for the first time offered a prepaid system as the only option. After two m onths, the firm had wo n CO N N EX I O N S 4,000 customer s. T his system has tripled and perhaps quadrupled the potential Lat in Am e rican m arket for m obile phones, according to a study by the Strat egis Group, an international telecommunications consultancy firm. T he prepaid system , which has been called the “perfect marria ge ”b e t ween technology and m arketing, has led to an enormous increase in the number of m obile p h o n e s, but their contribution to general d e velopm en t is still ve r y lim ited. I n L u bu m b a sh i, in southeastern D RC , fo r e xa m p le , the m obile phon es that som e m aize fa rm e rs have given their secur it y guards have proven an effective we a p o n against robbery and increased their yields. Taxis in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, are n ow more efficient because of them . An d d u ring the recent elections in Senegal, F M rad io repor t e rs used m ob iles to im p r ove their coverage (see box p. 6 8 ) . But the cost of these calls is still too high for poor people to benefit from this technology. T he mobile phone faces a big challenge if it is to help the poor break out of their isolation and to contribute to “the social and economic development of peop les” t h at the first African D evelo p m en t Forum called for in Addis Ababa last year. State initiatives T hese are not em pty wo r d s. T h e G rameen Bank project in Bangladesh has shown that it is possible to give very poor rural people access to mobile phones (see next article).N evertheless,“many governments still regard mobile phones as a luxury and won’t accept that they offer the best opportunity of bringing modern commun ic ations to the least developed areas,” says M ichael Stocks, ex- ch a irman of the G lobal System for M obile C om munications (G SM ) Association. T he role of the state is vital, not just to ensure competition between mobile phone operators but also to encourage ambitious p roject s.T he IT U suggests that , just as they subsidise water and electricit y, govern m en t s could help the poorest people to have access to mobile phones or distribute free prepaid m obile phone cards on a massive scale. Such steps would give a big boost to a revolution that has so far been the privy of those with money in pocket. ■ +… World Telecommunication Development Report 1999, International Telecommunication Union, Geneva. World Communication and Information Report 1999-2000, UNESCO. “ HELLO, I’M CALLING FROM PARULIA...” ◗ Farid Ahmed A micro-credit programme set up by Grameen Bank enables rural villagers to acquire cell phones. For many, it means a break with poverty and isolation ■ Once, it was hard for Fatema Begum and her day-labourer husband to provide three meals a day for their family, who lived in a thatched hut in a rem ote village called Pa rulia in Bangladesh’s N arshingdi district. But a mobile phone she bought as a means of earning money for her impoverished fam ily has changed her life. In a couple of years, she managed to acquire a brickbuilt house with electricity, an electric fan, a black and white television set and several other modern amenities. M obile phones have not only improved the lives of villagers like Fatema, but also brought remote villages like Parulia out of isolation. ◗ Journalist based in Dhaka, Bangladesh “Since my phone is the only one within three kilometres, m any people come here to use it,” Fatema says. She earns about 5,000 takas (U S$100) a month from her mobile p h o n e , after m eeting all the costs—four tim es the average p er capita m onthly in com e. Fatema adds, “ People in my village who have relat ives abroad often give m e gifts in addition to payment of their bills because I bring the phone to their houses when there are incoming calls for them.” M obile phones make up for a lack of services that the Stat e-owned phone company is hard-pressed to provid e. According to cu rrent stat ist ics, Bangladesh has one phone for every 380 inhabitants, compared with one for every 50 in neighbouring India. Fatema started her struggle for a better life ten years ago when she joined G rameen Bank,an internationally acclaimed microcredit institution, to obtain a small, shortt erm loan of 2,000 takas ($40). She start ed a sm all business hawking va rious essent ia ls, including ric e , door to door in villages. When F atema repaid that loan, she was granted another one of 5,000 takas ( $ 1 0 0 ) , which she also promptly paid back. In 19 97 , G ram een Te le c o m , a unit of G rameen Trust, one of the world’s largest organizations working for poverty alleviation , introduced village phones for Grameen Bank mem bers. Soon after, Fatema wa s a llowed to purchase a phone at a cost o f 19,500 takas ($ 39 0), r e im bu rs in g 4 0 0 takas ($8) every week in regular instalments. Like Fat e m a ,m a ny other poor villagers throughout Bangladesh have opened phone July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 67 CO N N EX I O N S shops in their homes to boost their income. Grameen Telecom has provided some 1,400 village telephones in rural areas across the country, serving tens of thousands of villagers. According to M ohammed Showkat Ali, a G rameen Telecom officer in N arsh in gd i, the programme was designed to help poor people in villages, especially women, who m ake up 94 p er cent of G ram een B a n k ’s borr owe rs , to ear n additional in co m e. As a result, the call-rate is cheaper than that of other existing telephone lines. Ap art from talking to relat ives,villa gers who gr ow crops or raise poultry or livestock now have a chance to speak with wh o lesalers in the capital or other big cities directly instead of selling their products at a cheaper price through a middleman. Som e 100 village phones are in operation in the district of N arshingdi,which is famous for fruits, especially bananas, as well as green vegetables and handmade fab rics. Jam iru nn esa, who runs a poultry farm in a fa rm in g village, bought a mobile phone on credit. Besides providing a service for her neighbours, the mother of four says, “there are bu ye rs wh o want to cheat m e. But they c a n ’t because I’ve got the phone, wh ic h comes in handy to know at what rate the chickens are selling in the markets.” Abdul Awal, a Bangladesh Railway ticket clerk at the train station in N arsh in gd i,keep s In Bangladesh, village women use their mobile phones to speak with wholesalers in the city. his village phone with him at wo r k, wh er e m any people come to use it. Awal charges six takas (eight cents) per minute for a local call and 100 takas ($2) per m inute for an overseas one. “I make a profit of 100 takas ($2) every day. Most of the people who come here are fa rm ers and textile weavers and they talk to the wholesalers in D haka, t h e c a p it a l, or other cities,” he said, a d d in g: “Because of the additional income, I can afford to send my children to school.” ■ A TOOL FOR TRANSPARENCY ◗ Abou Abel “W ithout mobile phones, violence would have been rampant in Senegal during the presidential election,” according to observer s who monitored the poll in February and March 2000. This may seem an excessive claim. And yet mobile phones had already won their spurs in the battle over the results of local elections in November 1996. Senegal’s interior minister was caught out when he admitted in a low voice near an open mobile phone that there had been fraud. As a result, President Abdou Diouf was forced to annul the election. In the presidential election in 2000, mobile phones forced the two candidates, President Diouf and Abdoulaye Wade, to accept the results that were announced almost instantaneously by private radio stations. The two main stations, Wal Fadjri FM and Sud FM, had sent reporters to cover polling stations all over the country. Equipped with mobile phones— a new work tool which is largely replacing the tape-recorder—they were able to announce the results as soon as the votes had been counted. The presence of reporters was boosted in key constituencies with a large number of voters or where there was a particularly hard-fought contest. This organized presence of journalists and the speed with which the results were announced facilitated the peaceful handover of power from Diouf to Wade. No fraud was possible. The outgoing president conceded defeat very quickly for an election in Africa. This defused the tension that had built up before the second round of the election and the much-feared clashes betw een supporters of the two political leaders were avoided. And, by the way, the Sud FM reporters had to buy their mobile phones on monthly credit. ■ ◗ Dakar-based journalist 68 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 I N T ER V I EW QUINO, ON THE FUNNY SIDE OF FREEDOM “ I don’t believe humour can alter anything, but sometimes it can be the little grain of sand that acts as a catalyst to change,” says Argentine car toonist Joaquín Salvador Lavado, better known as Quino, who has been hailed as “ the greatest Latin American car toonist of the centur y.” Born in M endoza in 1932, he never wanted to be anything but a cartoonist and has spent a lifetime at the drawing boar d. He w on an inter national reputation with his Mafalda series (see box), w hich shows the adult w orld as seen through the eyes of children. Its main charact er , an inquisitive girl who is always asking awkwar d questions and worries about world peace, has featured in ten books, which have been tran slated into over 20 languages and published in newspapers and magazines in many parts of the w orld. Burnt out by the pressure of having to come up with new ideas every week, Quino decided to stop drawing Mafalda in 1973, and spend more time on other projects that give free rein to the caustic humour that has always been his hallmark. M eticulously executed in black and white and packed with telling details, his d rawings focus on power relationships, social inequalities and environmental degradation. In shor t, on all kinds of issues that, as he readily admits, “ have nothing funny about them.” How would you defi ne your brand of humour? I don’t think my cartoons are the sort t h at make people laugh their heads off. I tend to use a scalpel rather than tickle the rib s. I don’t go out of my way to be humoro u s; it ’s just som ething that com es out of m e .I ’d like to be funnier, but as you get older you become less amusing and more incisive. Your books have been published to great acclaim in France, Greece, Italy, China and Portugal. Does this mean that humour is universal? I think so. Local connotations vary of course,above all in political humour. But a joke can be just as relevant to Franco’s Spain as to Fidel’s C uba or the military r e gim es of Latin Am e ric a . As for jokes about food, the kind of thin gs we say about meat in Argen tina can be transposed to rice in Japan. I’ve heard it said that a N orth American actor became so enamoured of a certain form of Japanese hum our that he decided to learn Ja p a nese and export it to the U n ited Stat e s. When a Japanese joke m en tion s cherr y p ie , he talks about pizza instead so that his aud ience can get the point. But the humour works the same. You have never managed to make a breakthrough in the English-speaking wor ld. Ar en’t you interested in that particular market ? F irst of all, I’ve never thought in market term s.T hings either happened or they didn’t. Years ago a book of my cartoons without word s, The World of Quino, came out in the United States. It was very well received by my N o rth Am erican counterp a rt s, in clu d in g Sch u lz1. Someone even said: “ at last a cartoonist who doesn’t draw couples reading 1. C harles M .Schulz (1922-2000).American cartoonist, creator of the Peanuts series,whose main hero is C harlie Brown with his dog Snoopy. M AFALDA AND HER FRIENDS I n 1969, the Italian semiologist Umberto Eco presented Mafalda to Europe with these words: “ Since our children are soon to become through our choice a multitude of Mafaldas, it would be rash not to treat Mafalda with the respect a real person deserves.” But who is this six-year-old girl whose name has been given to a square, who was on the verge of being named an Illustrious Citizen of Buenos Aires and was chosen as one of the 10 most influential Argentine women of the 20th century? “The important thing is not what I think of Mafalda, but what Mafalda thinks of me,” said the writer Julio Cortazar about this irreverent little girl who worships the Beatles, hates soup, and is concerned about the Cold War and the health of Planet Earth. Mafalda shares her concerns with her parents, who she never ceases to ply with impertinent questions (“ Have you tw o planned our education or are you just making it up as you go along?” ), and with her brother Guille, the personification of childish innocence. The gang is rounded off by the materialistic Manolito (son of the local shopkeeper who dreams about owning a chain of supermarkets), the timid romantic Felipe (who is always looking for excuses not to got to school), the narcissistic Miguelito, Susanita (who hopes to be a housewife and the mother of a large family), and Libertad, the smallest of them all. “ I drew her like that becau se freedom always seems small,” recalls Quino. ■ July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 69 I N T ER V I E W grounds in Argentina, I stopped handling the subject,and I still couldn’t deal with it t o d ay. I think it’s counterp r o d u c t ive to tackle issues as tragic as prisons and torture through humour, and though I’ve been criticized for it, I couldn’t bring myself to join in Am nesty Intern at io n a l’s campaigns. I don’t like tragedies such as earthquakes and natural catastrophes either, though I think this has more to do with a personal phobia that is not shared, for example, by Brazilian car t o o n ist s. Som e ye a rs ago a U ru gu ayan plane carrying a rugby team crashed in the An d es.T hose who ultim at ely survived had to eat the flesh of those who had died.A Brazilian humorous magazine d e voted an entire issue to this episode, which wa sn ’t in the least funny. But they managed to make it funny, t erribly dark bu t fu n ny. And not so long ago I saw an issue of a F rench we e kly, Le Canard Enchaîné I think it wa s, which featured a drawin g about rape in prison, a subject I would be incapable of tackling. the morning paper at the breakfast table.” But the book didn’t sell. I think the Englishspeaking public is used to a m uch quicker visual humour than mine. I focus on details, and a reader always has to ask why I included this or that particular feat u r e. If I draw a n ewspaper, I write things on it that form a sort of code for the readers. A lot of people don’t notice these details. As for Mafalda, the British thought she was “too Latin Am erican .” Would you say your humour is typically Argentine? T he M afalda series is, certain ly.T he environm ent in which the characters live is the Buenos Aires neighbourhood where I lived myself, and M afald a’s way of talking is also typically Ar gen t in e,even in the editions published in Spain and elsewhere in Latin Am erica. In the rest of my work feat u ring dialogue I try to use an idiom that is a bit m ore neutral. As for my other cartoons I wou ld n ’t know how to answer your question. My parents, my aunts and uncles and my grandparents were all Spanish. I spent my childhood surrou n d ed by immigran ts: the butcher was Spanish, an d so was the shopkeeper who sold us lentils.T he green grocer was Italian, and my parents’an d my gran d p aren t s’friends were from An d alusia. M y first real contact with Argentines was in prim a ry school. When I started there I spoke with such a strong Andalusian accent t h at my schoolm ates couldn’t underst a n d wh at I said. I found it hard to mix with them. Sometimes you use captions, sometimes you don’t. Do you think text is a crucial factor in humour? 70 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 I would prefer to do without wo r d s. Bu t som e ideas would be incom prehensible without text. H umour is like cinema in this r esp ect .C h ap lin , for instance, n ever needed wo r d s. N either did Jacques Tat i. But Wo o d y Alle n , who doesn’t use visual gags, st o p s being funny the moment he stops talking. What are your favourite subjects? I don’t think I have any, though over time I see certain themes crop up again and again. W h at you find m ost often in my work is hum our about the weak and the powerfu l, about the relations between power and ordin ary people. I grew up in a highly politicized fam ily.T he Spanish civil war and the rise of fascism were the dram as that m arked my ch ild h o o d . T hey gave m e a political vision of life, one which I like to express in all my d rawin gs. I think power relationships exist in all situat io n s, whether a person is faced with a government official, who is always the p owerful one, or a waiter or a doctor. I ’m fascin ated by relationships based on depend en ce. Other subjects I deal with include life and deat h , with death as the powerful figu re and the living as the weak. I worry about losing my freedom in old age—I’m terrified by the idea of having to depend on other people for the most basic things. So I draw cart oon s of 84-year-olds who want a glass of wine against their gran d ch ild ren ’s wishes. Are there any taboo subjects? When I start e d , I m ade jokes about p riso n e rs. P riso n ers and the shipwrecked are the staples of world humour. But when people were im prisoned on political Your most recent book, Cuanta Bondad, is full of drawings that poke fun at modern technology: the fax, the computer, the mobile phone. Do you really dislike these things? I hate mobile phones, and the stupid way they are used gets on my nerves. I can understand that a doctor, an electrician or a plumber might need a mobile phone. Not long ago in Ast u rias a man saved himself from being mauled by wolves because he called for help on his mobile. But I can’t stand being in a doct or’s waiting room listening to people call to say that the doctor’s late with his appointments or to ask if they need to stop by the grocer’s. I think the Internet is very useful in some circu m stan ces. In the field of medicine, for examp le, it ’s wonderful that a small- town doctor can consult a leading authority in the United St ates or Switzerland. But it’s another thing entirely to get hooked to the Internet and look for a partner or spouse by computer search. I I N T ERV I EW kn ow an old wom an , an Italian psychologist , who communicates with T ibetan monks via the Internet though I’m sure she never bothers to say hello to her neighbours. A lot of comm u n ication means people isolate themselves from the people around them. Football also features in some of your pieces. Do you like the game? I don’t know as much about football as I would like, but it interests me above all from a social viewpoint. It’s the only sport that leads its spectat ors into crim e. I’ve seen violence between ice hockey teams, including the death of a player who was hit in his sternum and left for dead. But in football it’s the public itself t h at hits out, attacks and kills. An Am erican author who studied the phenomenon of hooliganism in England came to the conclusion t h at what makes football fru st rating is spending 90 minutes waiting for a goal to be scored. In basketball, or even in hockey, the scoreline is changing continually, but in football 30 or 40 minutes can go by without a goal. As a result fru st ration builds up among the spect at ors and it has to express itself somehow. I’m more interested in football from that angle than as a sport, though I admit there are players whom it’s a pleasure to wat ch . W h en Johann C ruyff was on the field , it was like watching Rudolf Nureyev on a stage. God often appears in your cartoons. Why is that? I don’t believe in God, but I read the Bible a lot because it’s a fantastic source of ideas. And if God doesn’t exist, h e’s a very good su b ject .H e’s a figure about whom it’s impossible to be indifferent: everyone either loves him or hates him. And he keeps on popping up in my cartoons because in a way he’s a character you can identify with. When you d raw you create things with a pencil, and you can construct on paper all the different world s t h at come to your mind. H e may not exist, but as Borges said, it’s enough to have a word t h at designates something for that thing to come to life. F u rt h erm ore,religion is like sex or dru gs: it always sparks reactions and letters from readers, and I love that . What is your worst professional memory? W h at has most annoyed me, without a sh ad ow of a doubt, has been the use of my cartoons for purposes poles apart from those t h at inspired me to draw them. I get part icularly angry when my cartoons are used in right-wing political cam paigns. Once I was sent from Spain a sticker showing Guille, M a fa ld a ’s brother, ca rrying a pro-F ranco flag.T hat was a terrible blow, since I was born in a family that had lost the Spanish civil war, and films about that period still make me cry. My com ic strips were also used in a political cam paign by an Argentine military officer who had been chief of police in Buenos Aires p rovin ce. I wonder if those people have read my work and totally misunderstood it, o r whether they understood it all too well and wanted to twist its meaning.T hese are things t h at I simply can’t figure out. I gather that M afalda has been used in Venezuela in an election campaign, but I’m not going to hire a lawyer in Caracas because if I did things would drag on for ever. Have you always been totally free to draw as you please? It seems paradoxical, but under the ru le of Argentine m ilitary govern m en t s—wh ich is the same as saying almost all of them, sin ce I’ve only known four democratically elected presidents since I was born—there has never been any official censorship bu reau . In con- my friends had disappeared, and when I wen t to deliver a cartoon to a magazine that published my work, I would find that a bomb had just gone off there or that the building had been machine-gunned the night before.W it h work like mine, which can be done on a hotel table in any place you like, it would have been stupid to stay. Bet ween 1976 and 1979 I lived in Italy. T hen I started to go back to see how things were, and today I live for eight months of the year in Buenos Aires and the rest of the time in Milan, which is my European base. I also spend a lot of time in Spain and France. Outside Argentina, have you had to make any concessions to ensure your books get published? A few, yes, but usually for anecdotal not to say comic reasons. Some 15 years ago I found out by chance that Mafalda was very well known in C hina. A little C hinese girl [These fresh winds blowing are so healthy. Too bad they’re fi lled with this dreadful smell of naphtaline.] Drawing © Quino/Ediciones de la Flor, Buenos Aires trast to Brazil, where there was a body to which all cartoonists had to submit their d rawings before they could be published, in Argentina it was the editors who tried to talk you round. T he problem was that you never knew what or who the problem was, so you st a rted to censor your own wo r k. When I arrived in Buenos Aires with a file full of cartoons I realized straightaway that neither the Church nor the military could be targets, th at sex was a subject you had to handle with kid gloves, and there was no question of talking about homosexuality. Since I was young and wanted to be published, I buckled down to the approved subjects. But even today, wh en anything goes, I still find it very hard to get out of the habit of self-censorsh ip. You lived in exile during the militar y dictatorship 2. Were you forced to leave the country? I left when the situation was really bad.A lot of 2. 1976-1983 told m e this when she asked me to autograph an album at a Buenos Aires book fair. Until then I had no idea that my books had been published in C hina, so I was very in t rigu ed . T hrough a friend I managed to find out that the pirated editions had been produced in Taiwan , and that the editor, like all good pirat es, was English. My agent managed to get these pirate editions withd rawn , and regular editions have recently st arted to be published in mainland C hina. I was there a few months ago, and I asked h ow they had translated all the strips in which Mafalda talks about the yellow peril. When I wrote those strips we had just found out that C hina had the atomic bomb, a revelation that caused gr ave concern in the West . T hey told me that everything about China had been cut, since they thought that I didn’t know enough about C hina to give an opinion—a wonderful piece of reasonin g, I thought. I also found out that S u sa n it a , M a fa ld a ’s friend who dream s about having a big fam ily, is regarded as a July/August 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 71 I N T ER V I E W that existed in 1973 when I stopped producing the strip has not disappeared; perhaps it’s even got worse.T hough it flatters me to know that M afalda is still being read, it ’s also sad to think that the social injustice she denounced remains in place. Why did you stop drawing Mafalda, against your readers’ wishes? H umour and art in general wear themse lves out. I admired Schulz a lot, and I loved Peanuts. I read the strips with great enthusiasm for 10 or 15 years. But I would h ave liked to have seen that special brand of humour reflected in other things. I feel the sam e about the C olom bian painter Fe rnando Botero: I just don’t think he should keep on painting fat figures all his life.As for myse lf, after ten ye a rs of M afa ld a , I st a rted to suffer each tim e I drew a new instalment, and I found it extremely hard not to repeat myself. When I started drawing, I learnt that if you conceal from someone the last drawing in a strip and that person still knows how it’s going to end, then your story isn’t up to scratch.Even though the books continue to sell ve r y well and people ask me for more, I think that I made the right decision when I stopped doing M afalda,and I don’t miss her at all. AN ABRIDGED BIBLIOGRAPHY virtual subversive due to C hina’s fa m ily planning policy. Your Mafalda series has been compared to Schulz’s Peanuts. Mafalda is anything but politically correct. Has this ever caused you any problems? N at u r a lly. I started the M afalda strip after being com m issioned to adve rtise a brand of domestic appliances for which I was specifically asked to do something of the same kind. I bought all the books by Schulz that I could find in Buenos Air es, studied them and then tried to do something similar but adapted to our situation. T he cam paign never got off the gr o u n d because the magazine that was going to publish the cartoons realized it was closet a d ve rt isin g. So I put my drawings away until a year later, in 1964, when I rescued them for the magazine Primera Plana. I still recall a case involving C uba, a cou n t ry I’ve visited seven or eight times and where I have good frien d s.T h ere’s a Cuban edition of M afalda and an animated film series based on the strip cartoon was made t h ere. But whenever I go to Cuba, som eon e asks me to explain the strip in which Mafald a is sitting in front of a plate of soup—the dish she hates more than anything—and wo nd ers why Fidel Castro doesn’t sing the praises of soup so that it can be banned in Argen tin a. It ’s certainly true that back then anything to do with Cuba was suspect in Ar gen t in a .Bu t wh at M afalda actually says is: “ W hy doesn’t ‘t h at idiot’ F idel C astro. . . ?” T he Spanish newspaper El Pa is has censored some of my d rawings on the grounds that they are too “ grim ” , to which I reply that I may be grim , but I’m never as grim as real life. 72 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 2000 Why do you think Mafalda is still being published and read almost 30 years after you stopped producing it? I suppose it’s because part of the message is still relevant.T he human race still has a lot of issues to address. T he world of which M afalda was so crit ic a l, the wo r ld None of Quino’s books have been published in English. But for Spanish speakers or those simply content to enjoy the drawings, here is a selective bibliography: A mí no me grite (1999) Cuánta bondad (1999) Mundo Quino (1998) ¡Qué mala es la gente! (1996) Cuentecillos y otras alteraciones (text by Jorge Timossi and illustrations by Quino, 1995) Yo no fui (1994) Humano se nace (1991) Potentes, prepotentes e impotentes (1989) Sí cariño (1987) Gente en su sitio (1986) Quinoterapia (1985) Déjenme inventar (1983) Ni arte ni parte (1981) A la buena mesa (1980) Bien gracias, ¿y usted? (1976) All published by Ediciones La Flor in Argentina and by Lumen in Spain. For more information: http://www.quino.com.ar I N T ERV I EW Nevertheless, you have drawn her again . . . . Ye s. UN IC EF com missioned som e d r awings for the tenth anniversa ry of the C o nvention on the Rights of the Child, an d I was delighted to do them.I also drew her again for the fifth anniversary of President Raul Alfonsín’s democratic government in Argentina, and I’ve allowed her to be used in public health campaigns and on behalf of causes that I think worthwhile. N ow I use her when I want to protest against somet h in g—sh e’s the spokeswoman for my rage. But I never have agreed and never will agree to her being used in advertising campaigns, nor will I allow any adaptation for the theatre or the cinema. T he only concession I have made was for an animated film because drawings were used in it. What do you tell your readers, especially children, who ask you to draw Mafalda again? I t ’s easy to answer children. I drew M afalda for 10 years,so I always tell them the same thing.I say:imagine having to do the same thing every morning from the day you were born until today. Would you like t h at? T hey always say no. F ifteen- or sixteen-year-olds are harder to convince,and I don’t think I manage to do so. Certain pseudo-scientifi c studies circulate on the Internet arguing that Latin American children who read Mafalda tend to hate soup. Some girls have actually been named after her. A magazine even chose her as one of the 10 most infl uential Argentine women of the 20th centur y. Isn’t this a heavy responsibility? Ab solu t ely. But the real responsibility for m e is facing a blank page each week on which I can say what ever I please. Som eon e ✂ [I’ve made up my mind to face reality. Just let me know when it turns beautiful again.] once told me that hundreds of people wou ld love to have their own weekly page to say wh atever they liked. Becoming aware of that responsibility made me feel dizzy, but as for the rest, it ’s none of my bu sin ess. Do you identify with any of your characters? I identify to some extent with all of them. I believe that all the characters who appear in my drawings are relevan t. I learnt this from an in t erview with the Am erican film director Frank Capra, who was talking about the im p ortance of extras. When he filmed street scenes he would speak to each of the extras and carefully describe their role.You ,m ad am , are an anxious woman going to the pharm acy to buy m edicine because your husband is sick.Yo u ,sir , are a decorator going to paint an ap artment and you ’re lat e. E very character who appeared in Capra’s film s, even in the b ackgrou n d , had a story. L ikewise, when I d r aw a restaurant, I im agine that the man seated at the table behind works in a bank and has a brother-in-law who has gone to live in Ven ezu ela. I love doing that . You once said that human beings are the cancer of the planet. Is there no hope? I’ll give you just one example: it has always been said that the Amazon region constitutes the lungs of our planet, but that doesn ’t stop people from continuing to destroy it. 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Occupation: Your first issue will be sent to you as soon as your subscription has been processed.This normally takes around two weeks. The list of themes already covered in the UNESCOCOURIER is available on request. (Teachers and students) Special field: Age: Level: Tel.: Please send this form with your remittance, in French francs only, made payable to THE UNESCO COURIER Subscription Services: 31, rue François-Bonvin 75732 Paris CEDEX 15 (France) Tel.: (33) (0) 1 45 68 45 91, Fax: (33) (0) 1 45 68 57 45, e-mail: [email protected] For payments in other currencies, please contact one of the subscription agents whose addresses are given on the back of this orderJuly/August form. 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 73 I N T ER V I E W It ’s as if someone with lung cancer did nothing to prevent it, still less to cure it. Since so m any people are worried about the destru ction of the Am a zo n ,why doesn’t the United N at ion s, say, buy it and protect it? But no. Humans are like that .T hey keep on smoking in spite of lung cancer. As I see it, hope lies in cu lt ivating a certain historical optimism . I strongly agree with the Portuguese Nobel liter ature laureate José Saramago, who has always m aintained that socialism and the left will one day regain their lost prestige. I think h e’s righ t . I always compare politics to aviat io n . O ver the centuries many people died while trying to fly. But before they could fly in hang gliders or ultralight aircraft, they first had to invent the internal combustion engin e, which is extremely heavy. If Leonardo da Vinci had known of the lightweight materials t h at we have today, people could have been flying since the fifteenth century. It’s a bit like visiting the Christian catacombs in Rome. W h at men! T hree centuries in hiding! W h at political group today could stand three cent u ries without being infilt r ated? And 2000 years lat er, they are still around, though it’s true that they’ve become the exact opposite of wh at they claimed to be. Do you always draw in black and white? Yes, with a few exceptions. T he French edition of M afalda is in colour because the publisher thinks that if it’s not in colour, it won ’t sell in France. I agreed but I’m not very happy about it. M afalda as I see it is in black and white, and in general I prefer comics in black and white except when colour really adds som ething. Of course when you see Akira Ku r o sawa ’s film s, you realize that colour does add something. I use it very spar- in gly, only when there’s blood or when it’s ju st ified . I once did a drawing in which you see a child left alone at home paint a line ru nning all through the house, from the staircase to the hall to the bedrooms. When his par- ents come home, he greets them by sayin g, “ I bet you don’t know the colour of freedom.” What colour was it? 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TUNISIA : Commission Nationale Tunisienne auprès de l’UNESCO, 22, rue de l’Angleterre, 1000RP Tunis. Fax: 33 10 14 UNITED KINGDOM : The Stationery Office Publications Ctre., 51 Nine Elms Lane, London SW8 5DR. Fax: 873 84 63. UNITED STATES: Bernan Associates, 4611-F Assembly Drive, Lanham MD 20706-4391. Fax: 459-0056. URUGUAY: Ediciones Trecho SA, Periodicals Account, Maldonado 1090, Montevideo. Fax: 90 59 83. VENEZUELA: Distriplumes, Apartado 49232, Colinas Bello Monte, 1042 A Caracas. Fax: (58 2) 9798360 UNESCO/ CRESALC, Edif. Asovincar, Av Los Chorros, Cruce C/C Acueducto, Altos de Sebucan, Caracas. Fax: (58 2) 2860326. History of Civilizations of Central Asia In six volumes The heartland of Eurasia, from the Caspian Sea to the borders of China. Cultures that flourished and vanished from the dawn of civilization to the present time. AVA I L A B L E: VO LUM E I: The Dawn of Civilization: Earliest Times to 700 B.C. Edited by A.H. Dani and V.M. Masson 535 pp VO LU M E II: The Development of Sedentary and Nomadic Civilizations: 700 B.C. to A.D. 250 Edited by János Harmatta 573 pp. VO LUM E III: The Crossroads of Civilizations: A.D. 250 to 750 Edited by B. Litvinsky 569 pp. The Age of Achievement A.D. 750 to the end of the Fifteenth Century Edited by M.S. Asimov and C.E. Bosworth PA RT I: The Historical, Social and Economic Setting 485 pp. PA RT II: The Achievements 700 pp. VO LU M E IV: VO LUMES V AND VI forthcoming in 2001 Hardback, 24.6 x 17 cm, photos, maps U N ESC O Each volume 300 FF / 45.73 Publ i shi ng 7, place de Fontenoy 75352 Paris 07 SP, France Fax: +33 1 45 68 57 37 Internet: www.unesco.org/ publishing E-mail: [email protected] In the next issue: Published in 27 languages m a n y v o i c e s o n e w o r l d Fo cu s: Gl o b a l i sa t i o n : the opposition fi res back ■ The rise of a new NGO nexus ■ Changing the rules of world trade ■ The tale of two systems: corporat ions and citizens fight for the upper hand ■ Local struggles over global issues: flashpoint s in Burkina Faso, Ecuador, India, the Philippines and the United States ■ Sketches for a new world order Fe a t u res include ■ Photo reportage: refuge in a Colombian dance school ■ China’s migrant children find their way to school ■ Sports medicine on trial ■ Digital documents: safe in storage? 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