The French midfielder turned a 16 -minute YouTube video for the Greek rap scene, speaking with three of its most famous and important artists
With parents from Ghana and raised in Greece, she goes on stage and rapes wearing the traditional costume of the Evzones. However, he still does not have Greek citizenship. This is Moria’s Negro. He started with the northern stars, now filling stadiums with 25,000 people shouting at each of his rhymes and his latest album is played up to the radios. This is the Lex. Co -founder of Ath Kids and Dalmatia, the one who is always in a neighborhood of Kypseli and tries to show what the real Athens is. This is Kareem Kalokoh.
Negro of Moria, Lex And Kareem, three different artists, in common with rap culture, speak on the French midfielder channel about what Greek rap music means. The 16 -minute video is divided into three sections, each dedicated to a brief conversation with each rapper, showing footage from Athens and their concerts. A video that recommends Trabetiko, Greece’s contradictions and explains what is different from Greek rap music.
Negro of Moria
Why should the rest of the world know Greek rap? “Why Greece exports culture“Says laughing at Moria’s Negro. “Because there is another side of the country that is very dark, very unfair and must be seen».
Moria’s Negro was born in Athens to Ghanaian parents, but he still has no Greek hedity. His musical project is an answer to this paradox and an ode to Afro-Greek identity. He is a master of the language, as the French medium described. His songs play with slang, as in “Bulimia”, which uses various expressions of the verb I eat, wanting to talk about a racist society: “Greece I love eats her children“, Lyrics of the song.
«It is very important to put elements of Greek culture in my pieces, because I live. That’s what I’m, that’s what I’m breathing, that’s what I’m talking about. I am not a trap, I am trampether».
Trabetiko is a combination of the old Greek sound with today. He was invented by Negro of Moria and Beatmaker Odydoze, who decided to combine the basics of music trap with the traditional melodies of rebetiko. Born in Greece around 1920, rebetiko is a mixture of Ottoman, Byzantine and Greek influences.
«The rebetes had their own dress code, their own beats. They caught the bouzoukaki and composed, they were talking in terms of slang, what we call Slang today” Moria’s Negro describes slang as a rich and very interesting language, as it shows the immediate connection that Greece has with French, Italian and Turkish culture. It is a language that reveals with how many cultures we have come into contact and that is a reason that a Greek is stupid to be a racist.
«What the Greek scene is significantly different is that socio -political songs, raps, touch its people more strongly, because the Greek hurts. There has always been pain in both rebetiko and folk. Whether with a happy beat or sad, there is».
Lex
The backdrop of the Lex studio and in the speakers of “Airmax”. The French media likens the music of the Lex to the Trojan Horse of Troy, talking about songs that stick to your mind and messages you can’t ignore.
«When I write a piece, my main goal is to respond to today, in its time. To capture what is happening now. I don’t think a revolution would start from rap. Its purpose is to catch the pulse. Rap is not in front of the world, but with it. Sometimes and behind him, to observe him».
«I prefer the designation of lyrical rap, because what I am trying to do is convey what I feel and think through pictures and rhymes».
Lex describes Trap music as more mainstream, with pieces made at a specific pace, to play in clubs, to have a musicality that makes them give energy and even listen to those who do not agree with the lyrics. As for rap music, he believes that he was strongly politicized after two major events: the death of Alexis Grigoropoulos (2008) and the murder of Paul Fyssa (2013).
Kaiseem Kalokoh
Tired of the tourist clichés connected to Greece, a group of friends consisting of rapper, video and Athenian graphic designers decided to show another side of the popular and multicultural capital. Kareem Kalokoh, one of the co -founders of KIDS and Dalmatia, talks about the rap and chaos of Athens, taking a stroll in Kypseli.
‘IWe are still showing what people exist, what characteristics exist in Athens, in a city that despite its chaos, has enough beauty».
Footage in the neighborhoods of Kypseli, with cement and dirty roads. “This is the Athens that the world does not show, these are its neighborhoods. Here we shot our first video for “New Flame”, here was the first studio I had with my childhood friends. Here, they all started».
For Kareem, his lyrics capture how children talk from Kypseli and the Afro-Greeks in Athens. Its purpose, to understand the world today that with unity and leaving behind stereotypes, a change can actually come.
«We want to highlight children from Patisia, from Kypseli, who were born here and have a worldwide culture. In the collective you will see children from Peru, from Seleks, from Sierra Leone. What unites us is the love for our city, for our neighborhoods, and that is what we want to show“, Kareem said in an interview with Athens Voice.
A French documentary on Greek rap
«It’s not the Lex you should be afraid, there are many with him, they are all the rap movement against you and cI bad luck our children grow up with this music“, Words heard by the actor and political Cleon Grigoriadis in the House, and are an excerpt from the documentary. The French media writes about the Greek rapper as those who defend a pluralistic Greek identity, those who bring to the forefront the true Greek daily life.
«I am proud to be Greek, Afro-Greek. I like to be from Greece and that I am from Ghana. Okay, the color I have reminded me every day where I come from, but every time I hear a jerk, I remember being in Greece (laughs)“, Says Negro of Moria and closes the video.
See the documentary:
Source: athensvoice.gr