Hip-hop and graffiti revolution: a video manifesto

Reproduced from Venezuelanalysis.com


EPATU Manifesto

EPATU stands for Popular School for the Arts and Urban Traditions, but it is also Spanish for ‘Hey you’. The schools, developed jointly with the Venezuelan Ministry for Communes, are non-formal spaces for youth to learn rap, break dancing, graffiti, and DJ, and are an alternative to the consumerism, violence, and criminal life that young people are often exposed to. Instead, the schools focus on developing cultural, social, and collective awareness.



Translation:

Group: We are a School
Male 1: We take on militancy and we learn to be rebels
Male 2: Always inventing
Male 3: From the grassroots
Male 4: Because we base our knowledge on experience and invention
Male 5: Producing
Male 6: And generating a space for thought and discussion
Female 1: Aiming for the inside (of ourselves)
Male 7: And aiming for the endogenous
Male 8: Inviting our people to investigate
Male 9: To discuss, to activate, and to collectivise
Male 10: Making art
Female 2: Inclusive
Female 3: Born from the people
Male 11: What you don’t see in museums
Male 12: Something you want to show.
Male 13: The art of creating and of the collective with the word
Male 14: Painting!
Female 4: With the body, sound, and spirit
Male 15: Accompanying traditions
Male 16: Because rage is our ancestor
Child 1: Blacks!
Child 2: Indigenous!
Child 3: Llaneros (inhabitants of the plains)
Child 4: Gave rise to our arts
Male 17: And they integrated them into one single movement
Male 18: An inheritance transmitted through drums and
Male 19: Decima poetry
Male 20: The beats of Joropo (a Venezuelan dance)
Female 5: And the feet of a dancer
Male 21: That are based on urban expressions
Male 22: That encourage respect for the original (inhabitants)
Female6: For the social
Male 23: For our roots, for the appropriation of spaces that belong to us
Male 24: To achieve the demolishment of the system
Male 25: That oppresses us
Male 26: Making revolution
Male 27: Communicating an alternative for advancing and constructing
Male 28: We do it through communicating
Child 5: (through) the people
Female 7: (through) rebellion
Male 29: (through) what isn’t sold.


Transcription and notes by Tamara Pearson for Venezuelanalysis.com