Last week, WU was invited to bring our Living Remix Project to TEDYouth. In the span of an hour, World Up’s Interactive Music Director, the amazing Spazecraft, and his team brought dozens of students from all over NYC together to create a musical narrative for the day. We asked students to tell and show us how TEDYouth inspired them through their words and beats. We had amazing young producers and beatsmiths, eloquent slam poets, verbal engineers (aka MCs), and rapturous singers. We had harmony, melody, and most of all some great bass. When they went back to hear more talks Spazecraft took all of that energy and excitement and edited together a beautiful little track the showcased all of that creativity and excitement. ( a challenge in itself given that so many amazing students contributed) Here it is:
After we were done we sent the track out to Young Guru who while on tour in Europe had some time to play around with it and come up with his own mix. You can listen to and download it here: tedtalks (the Young Guru Mix)
Look for more remixes from JBoogie, King Britt, and Rich Medina in the coming weeks.
World Up’s mission is making the world smaller through technology, education and hip hop. In our technology and arts workshops, we’re not just empowering young innovators to participate for a day, we’re teaching them to contribute to the emerging technology based global community. Our method, collaborating with artists, musicians, programmers and educators around the world, allows us to make technology education accessible to students of all stripes.
We’ve named our next endeavor W.U. School, a six-week, two-course Saturday school experience, where select students can enroll in either Hip Hop Hackers with our Technology Director Ari Joseph, or Living Remix, where our Music Director Spazecraft 1 teaches interactive music making and producing.
Technological literacy is the 21st century’s landmark educational imperative. It is estimated that over the next 10 years, there will be 123 million jobs available in the technology sector, but only 50 million Americans qualified to fill them.
We see technology education as a natural extension of hip hop culture, not an unrelated entity. Hip hop was founded by hackers: DJs who hacked their turntables and forever changed music, MCs who hacked language and created a lexicon that still drives youth culture, B-boys that hacked movement and seemingly gravity itself, and graffiti artists that hacked the visual landscape to bring awareness to issues in their community. Through their artistic innovation, hip hop pioneers put their community’s issues front and center in the global consciousness. By fusing hip hop, the arts and technology, we are empowering students to become stewards of their own destinies.
“We have incredible gratitude for World Up! Thanks for the energy, inspiration, and magic! Way to take these kids to a new dimension of learning and community change through music!”
—Danielle DiMare, Office of School and Youth Development, NYC Department of Education
“ Programs like World Up are able to draw students from diverse backgrounds together and use materials and techniques that engage their natural curiosity while exposing them to technology, arts, and collaborative skills not often seen in their classrooms.”
– Stefan Wietz, Director, Bing, Microsoft.
If you are a student who is passionate about Hip Hop and Technology this is for you. If you are a teacher and know of any exceptional students who could flourish in this type of learning environment please share this.
We are looking for 40 talented and driven students who love Hip Hop and and Technology
Interested? Have a student that should apply. Please read more HERE
Last summer we brought them into our classroom at the Refugee Summer Academy to work with our students and teach them the new dance the “Jacky Jacky”. Our students ended up taking the song and remixing the lyrics, adding their own rhymes, which became an exercise in cross-cultural exploration as they combined all of their languages into one song.
Now Bajah + The Dry Eye Crew are set to release their first international album in September, have a new website ( PLANET BAJAH ), and were even invited to perform with the Roots last weekend for the launch of OKAYAfrica.
Check out their new Video for “Jacky Jacky” where they went to the small seaside village of Tokeh, just south of Freetown, Sierra Leone, to spread the new dance craze. It was a big hit with the tribal elders (and the kids, and a few fishermen).
Taking Jay-Z’s “American Gangster” album and mashing it up with some ill Bollywood Beats into a fine spicy curry….We have tweeted and tweeted and shared and shared on Facebook but we can’t get over this album and have been bumping it nonstop. So go ahead, you owe it yourself…and its FREE!
Here are a few more words for you from the Hindustani Gangster website: “In 2007, we fell in love with all things American Gangster: Ridley Scott’s Oscar nominated film, its soundtrack, and Jay-Z’s critically acclaimed album of the same name. Like all true Hov fans, we memorized every word of Jay’s vividly weaved tale of a hustler’s rise from the streets and his addiction to the lavish lifestyle accompanying his atypical success.
What was unique about our American Gangster experience were the unmistakable parallels we observed between the men Jay-Z and Denzel portrayed to the gangsters depicted in 1970s Bollywood films. One such movie, Don, with its story line, brilliant colors, and disco-era style of clothing was reminiscent of American Blaxploitation films (e.g., Superfly, Foxy Brown) of the 1970s. The more we watched and listened to American Gangster, and the more we revisited Bollywood classics like Don, the more inevitable fusing the stories of the American and Indian gangster themes became.
Wanting to experiment with the idea musically, we decided to take it to the studio. Our initial attempt was to create a mash-up project layering Jay’s vocals from his American Gangster album over Indian flavored beats, but as we began laying down the vocals, we found ourselves editing, rearranging and adding so many of our own elements, that we ended up working with completely original tracks. Pretty soon we were in the studio four nights per week.
Over six months of late-night studio sessions and gallons of pineapple-ginger juice later, we were ready to mix and master. By now we’d created eight original tracks of our own, had one crazy track from our boy ElekTro4, six mash-ups, and edits based on tracks from Dan The Automator, Batsauce, and a few other notable producers. We received ongoing feedback from listening sessions held for friends, producers and music industry tastemakers, until we finally felt ready for our good friend and engineering guru, dj.sae.one, to master it. He loved the project and blessed it with the gloss and low-end finish we were looking for.
Hindustani Gangster was born.
Being a concept record, we hope people listen to Hindustani Gangster from start to finish in succession as it’s meant to be heard. Try not to compare it to Jay’s album, but rather treat it as an original work with a familiar narrator.”
Today is mixtape madness!! We have been feeling this for a while and meant to drop a shout out before yesterdays FELABRATION…
The Messengers is a collaboration between JPeriod and K’naan that brings together the art and genius of Bob Marley, Boy Dylan, and Fela Kuti.
Download it here: http://www.jperiod.com/knaan/
Next Week’s CMJ Music Conference here in NYC will see the return of the GLOBAL HIP HOP THROWDOWN and its sure to blow some minds. Put on by our friends at Nomadic Wax and the Bloom Effect, The event will unite the talents of a creative and diverse group of lyricists, DJs and visual artists from The Netherlands, the Middle East, Canada, Europe, and North Africa.
“The CMJ Global Hip-Hop Throwdown has been the only event at CMJ to support international Hip-hop talent. It’s really a true honor to have artists like this fly in from all over the world and is testament to the fact that international hip-hop is becoming more accepted by the mainstream.” said Nomadic Wax founder Ben Herson.
This years event will be hosted by Blitz the Ambassador (Ghana) and will feature rising stars; Coolooloosh (Israel), La Melodia (Holland), Nomadic Massive (Canada/Haiti), At Versaris (Spain) and Alfaress (Morocco) as well as DJ Boo (Philippines/US) and DJ Phat Phillie (Croatia) who will be playing international hip-hop.
CRUDE premiered this past year at the Sundance Film Festival and is finally starting to be screened. Its a powerful look at the intersection of community (both local and global) and commodity. The film focuses on one of the most monumental environmental lawsuits in history–a 17 year battle between the indigenous people of Ecuador and the colossal Chevron Corporation. The 30,000 indigenous natives are charging Chevron with systematically contaminating a large section of the Amazon with toxic waste, resulting in devastating damage to the rainforest and its inhabitants.
Taken from the CRUDE website: “Three years in the making, this cinéma-vérité feature from acclaimed filmmaker Joe Berlinger is the epic story of one of the largest and most controversial legal cases on the planet. An inside look at the infamous $27 billion Amazon Chernobyl case, CRUDE is a real-life high stakes legal drama set against a backdrop of the environmental movement, global politics, celebrity activism, human rights advocacy, the media, multinational corporate power, and rapidly-disappearing indigenous cultures. Presenting a complex situation from multiple viewpoints, the film subverts the conventions of advocacy filmmaking as it examines a complicated situation from all angles while bringing an important story of environmental peril and human suffering into focus.”
Today is the annual Black August Benefit Concert here in NYC. This annual show raises money and awareness for the Black August Hip Hop Project and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement.
9pm at BB Kings in Times Square:
BLITZ THE AMBASSADOR
SADAT X
SHADIA MANSOUR
DJ REBORN
DIVINE OF THE DEY
REBEL DIAZ
BOBBITO GARCIA
BEVERLY BOND
TONI BLACKMON
THE A-ALIKES
BAZAAR ROYALE
DJ BRINA PAYNE
+ SURPRISE GUESTS
tickets: $20
Taken from their website
“The Black August Hip Hop Project strives to promote human rights though supporting and influencing the global development of Hip Hop culture. By facilitating exchanges between international communities where Hip Hop is a vital part of youth culture, we promote awareness about the social and political issues that affect our global communities.
Our vision is to bring culture and politics together and to allow them to naturally evolve into a unique Hip Hop consciousness that informs our collective struggle for a more just, equitable and human world.
Since August of 1998, Black August has held annual New York City events at Tramps, Bowery Ballroom, Synod Hall, BBKings, New Age Caberet, and the Brooklyn Café —selling out eight shows! The project has featured artists such as Erykah Badu, David Banner, Common, dead prez, Fat Joe, the Roots, Jean Grae, Les Nubians, Chuck D, Gil Scott-Heron, Dave Chapelle, Tony Touch, Black Thought, The Roots, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, La Bruha, Imani Uzuri, Jeru and the Coup.
Internationally, Black August has facilitated 8 international delegations of artists and activists to Cuba (1998, 1999, 2000, and 2003), South Africa (2001), Tanzania (2005), Brazil (2004, 2006) and Venezuela (2007).
In addition to the shows, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement has held political education workshops with the participating artists and anyone interested in learning about the cultural and political issues at the core of Black August. The annual cultural events coupled with the political education workshops and international exchanges have helped reinvigorate the Black August tradition.”
Globalists. This song began in a van ride to Hartford CT in ’06. All of these guys have been on it for a minute and Regime Change just released their album. We are big fans and old friends and its amazing to see them breaking through like this.
To commemorate our 5th year anniversary: Welcome to World Up 2.0 website!!
This is a work in progress…. the new layout and design is phase 1 please be patient as we work it all out and get things where they need to be. The official launch will be 09/14/09.
After months of sleepless hours under the sickly glow of halogen lights and pumping our bodies full of caffeine we are ready to unveil the first phase of the new World Up 2.0. We have crossed the globe and have literally have a crew of people in different countries busy at work developing and tweaking the site.
Back Story:
Last summer we spent 6 weeks collaborating with a variety of amazing artists from around the globe to teach a class to 60 refugee youth as part of the International Rescue Committees summer school program.
During that process we discovered that our students and the artists involved were craving a more interactive learning experience from World Up. This is the first phase of that.
First, we have reached out far and wide to ask all of our friends and neighbors to collaborate on a global hip hop community blog. We are exploring urban culture around the world and how art, music, politics and community intersect. What is affecting people on a local level and how they are processing it through community action, art, and music.
Second, we are busting it up on a new radio show and we want your tracks to get them out there what is happening out there!! The radio show will be an hour long and available for anyone to listen to via a downloadable podcast. stay tuned for more information.
Third, we are partnering with new global digital distributor ONErpm.
…..more details forthcoming.
