An SMS exchange with a friend recently on creating new communications strategies to promote peace prompted me to upload Brown Boogie Nation’s Lions and Tigers to Youtube.
Can one make an argument for a rap video on federalism?
Located at the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Groundviews is a citizen journalism website that uses a range of genres and media to highlight critical perspectives on governance, reconciliation, human rights, the arts and literature, democracy and other issues. The site has won two international awards, including the prestigious Manthan Award South Asia in 2009. The grand jury's evaluation of the site noted, "What no media dares to report, Groundviews publicly exposes. It's a new age media for a new Sri Lanka... Free media at it's very best!"
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Emphatically not.
Why not?
This may appeal to youth in Colombo and the diaspora who don’t read the articles on federalism. It won’t appeal to the “intellectual” types, but the message could be really useful in generating interest in the topic.
And why just federalism and rap? Can we think of art and culture more broadly?
Cool idea. But who can do this? Nobody I know tunes into YATV’s programs and maybe we need to go to some ad agency?
Perhaps all of us, including artists, will be richer, in a culture where the power of art to affect ideas depends on it NOT being an act of propaganda, but an expression of an artist’s genuine feelings.
Perhaps the argument should be not for a particular song or message, but for more freedom and spaces in which Sri Lankan artists can be “heard”. The Barefoot Gallery in Colombo: http://www.barefootgallery.com and the Noble Sage Gallery in London: http://www.thenoblesage.com, are examples.
My feeling is that societies and cultures tend to become impoverished when the artists are not able to express what they feel. This fact may have more to do with our present predicament than we suspect.