all right let's go ahead and get let's go ahead and get started welcome everyone to the fifth event in our series diversities uh and the start of five conversations through which we'll explore the language of change in collaboration between shared studios and planet word shared studios brings together global voices for transformative conversations in both immersive and digital environments planet word houses an array of word-based exhibits including the planet word portal where guests can step i
nside and talk to folks from 25 countries around the world as part of today's diversities event we bring you musicians from around the world who are using their voices both literally and figuratively to cha to challenge the status quo language through song is a unique and meaningful way to create change and today's event explores the power and limits of using art in this way i'm brandon ferder the director of global community for shared studios and i'll be moderating today's event i am joined by
rebecca roberts curator for programming for planet word a writer an editor a journalist a tour guide musician and all around word nerd rebecca is going to share a little bit more about planet word welcome rebecca to another one of our events in the diversity series i'm so excited to be here so planet word um which is a new museum of words and language in downtown washington dc housed in a historic schoolhouse that's it in my zoom background we are looking forward to having that physical portal
online where you can have small intimate conversations with other portals around the world but the wonderful thing about these virtual programs is that we can connect people from more than one place and hear how they connect to each other um songwriting is definitely one of the avenues of words in the sort of joy and wonder of words that we explore at planet word uh you can use songs to make someone fall in love with you you can make songs to express joy uh you can make songs to affect social ch
ange and i can't wait to hear from all these musicians um and artists who are working in that world so thank you all very much for being here thanks rebecca and as you pointed out these virtual events allow us the opportunity to engage people from several different places and we have folks from a number of different places joining us today from established activists and peace builders to up-and-coming rappers and musicians today's guests use art to address the challenges in their communities wit
h a specific focus on music as a tool for change i want to begin in uganda with cyrus kowalia a renowned musician visual development artist and strategist with a deep passion for using music film and photography for social change a mandala washington fellow and founder and former president of the yali uganda chapter cyrus co-founded film 256 a social advocacy creative platform that equips underserved ugandan communities with storytelling toolkits he is the creator of a countrywide campaign for p
eace during uganda's election dubbed i pledge peace campaign 2016 where he used the creative arts as a tool to deliver a message of peaceful electoral participation in uganda welcome cyrus moving from uganda to the united states we have anrei latille a musician producer and creative arts educator she is a manager of the hirschhorn museum and sculpture gardens teen programs and digital art studio art lab and co-founder of the black girl hand games project which we'll hear more about a grassroots
program dedicated to using childhood hand games to uplift uh joy and resiliency for black girls through hip-hop and education as an open society foundations fellow unreal founded the freedom futures collected to support the movement for all black lives her latest work includes the bl includes the black joy experience which she produced in conjunction with the national activist organization black youth project 100 welcome andre next up from the u.s to uh are you lucia are you in mexico or are you
in bogota no i'm in mexico city wonderful to mexico city we have uh lucia anaya did i say that correctly yes wonderful a cultural manager and director of and this is the one i'm going to struggle with lucia is it the raya cheetah the retired melted in spanish i think i'll do my best there a music collective that amplifies the work of underrepresented communities in mexico through music programming strategy creative direction and booking and management they have worked with some of mexico and la
tin america's most well-known artists and musicians including boiler room disco woman dean blunt hippos and tanks and many many more currently working from bogota colombia they co-founded a cultural center called uh the cine tonala all right focused on independent cinema music and performance thank you so much for joining us lucia no thanks for inviting and last but not least uh to sweden by way of iraq we have m.c anhar originally from iraq he now resides in sweden he's a rapper using music as
an activist tool to address challenges and dangers in the iraqi context anhar uses his m.c anhar platform on youtube a channel with over 275 000 subscribers as a space to give voice to the iraqis experiencing the effects of over a decade of political and social unrest thank you so much for joining us thank you all for coming together uh for this conversation i know that a lot of what we'll be talking about today is specifically related to music and each of you kind of has a connection to music i
n in a different way uh lucia kind of helping uh underrepresented artists uh i know cyrus you you started as a musician but you've certainly expanded your portfolio over the years and uh and i know also andre uh you you have your hands in a lot of different amazing baskets uh in the dc area and and around the around the u.s um but i guess i'd like to start by just asking each of you you all use music in some way to address specific challenges in your community and i wonder if for our attendees u
h if you could briefly describe some of those challenges to provide some context for for attendees who may not be familiar with the various challenges in the communities that that you're from and then uh just briefly how you're using music or art to address those challenges i know that's a big question um but uh if we could kind of summarize if you had to uh what those would be and and we'll start with you lucia what are some of the challenges that folks are facing in in the context of mexico an
d how is music addressing those challenges well uh first of all i uh when i started in music working in music and i was not really my goal was not really like to to to represent under represent artists or to be in that area or anything it's just a matter of this need for your own community you know and and precisely like uh some like seven years or ten years ago uh a lot of uh collectives and and and and friends we started gathering and and creating spaces where they were needed you know uh i ru
n this collective called tracion which is a collective mainly for lgbt artists from music and performance so i mean we decided to to create this space uh uh with music obviously and and it just became something supernatural that young people or fellows started following no and at the same time i have always have this uh opportunity to work with artists like mario partensia which is a rapper from oaxaca uh which is was looking for for a platform or someone that could represent her and bring her u
h like in another level and know her message so basically there's two ways that that people is starting also like to get acknowledged or it's starting to to get to to get to know their own space or where they belong no um in the recent years also uh for example cases like marie uh she's been working a lot with uh with organizations against uh with organizations uh to prevent violence against women no uh and and and these kind of spaces that are created by the the community in oaxaca and all this
and all the women movement was have allowed money also like to embrace the message and also to connect with younger generations so i mean music at the end is it's a kind of like a prevention or a message where are and a tool where you can afford this reality and open spaces for for for people that really feels connected within so i feel like this this kind of uh platforms and activism and also collectiveness has uh embraced and opened other opportunities for people no and all and mostly young p
eople know they get like inspiration they get motivated to really to really get in in that path and and connect with other subjects too so in that way for me it's been really more like a need to to to create these spaces no in in collectiveness yeah and and speaking of that that need to to to create these spaces uh andre i want to turn to you and and uh lucy was also speaking about the collective and with the freedom futures collective uh you two are doing something similar in bringing together
a group of all sorts of diverse voices focusing in on uh celebrating and fighting for for all black lives and and i'm wondering if you could speak a little bit about kind of uh you know the the challenges your community faces um and and how this collective is working to address some of those challenges yes and thanks for having me um i would actually like to know where everyone is listening from if you don't mind dropping it in the chat but for those of you who are listening in from the u.s ther
e has been this ongoing campaign um that has been amplified um from black lives matter the black lives matter movement and the movement for black lives in which we are calling for the defunding of police so you might see hashtag defund the police and for those of you who are wondering what that is about we are asking for is for the money the millions and billions of dollars that are going into um police stations and police departments for those for that money to be decreased and for it to go int
o resources to support the community the washington post actually i think at the beginning of this year put out an article talking about a project that they have basically been undergoing in which they have been looking into the murders um that have been taken place by police officers how many people have been shot and killed by police since 2015 and from what they have found they have found that black people compared to their their white counterparts are 2.5 times more likely to be shot and kil
led by police officers there was a lot of things that happened over the summer in 2020 um particularly in regards to police murders and police terror and so i've been i have gained a reputation for creating music that addresses these issues centering police terror and oppressive systems um and to uplift black lives and to uplift any type of campaigns that are centering those messages and so um when the murder of george floyd and brianna taylor kind of got sensationalized and just kind of hit eve
rybody's timeline on social media um i was able to receive funding from an organization or foundation called the open society foundation who was familiar with my work and um that allowed for me to put together a team of 13 artist activists and we call ourselves the freedom futures collective we are a multimedia group of artist activists using music film and education um as brandon said to support the movement for black lives and so what we did was put together um oh my gosh a it might have been
23 videos um in which we were basically uplifting um what it meant to reimagine public safety what does it mean to be in a world in which black people are not being killed by police a world in which we are taking care of ourselves a world where we possibly don't have law enforcement or police officers the presence of police officers what does that world look like and feel like to us what is what does this world look like feel like and sound like in which we are taking care of ourselves the commu
nity is challenged to take care of themselves um and so we put together a project called we keep us safe and it particularly addresses um the issues centering police terror and police violence in washington dc but i mean as we know you know black people have been murdered by police for you know since i can remember um and so and this has been taking place not not just in dc but beyond and so our project is so powerful because it addresses issues that don't that are not exclusive to dc um but ext
end itself beyond um dc throughout the nation even throughout the world yeah i think one of the important things that you touch on there one of many important things i think you touch on there is the way that this extends outside of the borders of not just washington dc but the u.s particularly as it relates to state violence and state violence against particular types of bodies uh and uh cyrus i'd like to go to you i know that you you know you're very well known for your i pledge peace campaign
but there's a lot of additional work that you've done uh to help ugandan youth uh to to kind of rise up and tell their own stories with with storytelling kids etc i i wonder if you could share uh the kind of ugandan context with with our attendees um and talk a little bit about the work that you're doing to to engage the challenges faced specifically by folks in uganda thank you it's nice to be with all of you and kind of be able to express myself on different issues that have been involved in
um being for example a few years ago when i was still working in the music industry one of the things why i feel i joined music was to be able to express myself to have some form of you know freedom of expression just to be able to tell my story where i grew up from the challenges that i was facing and i think music became like a porthole to be able to express it but um the challenges that i faced was that i come from a country like uganda where there was no strong music you know industry no inf
rastructure so it became a little bit too hard to survive you know and somehow you know you have to meet demands you have to pay bills and it's just so much pressure that comes from your family your community and growing up in uganda many people didn't believe that your music could get you anywhere and they kind of saw you as a person who was actually going to lose out so i then uh evolved a little bit and moved into film and photography because there was a space to be able to again express myse
lf but then also be able to create an income for me to survive and long story short through that whole process i involved you know and got a scholarship and you know got a chance to come to the united states under the yali program and then i came back to uganda and from that point i kind of felt that i wanted to find a new step so i actually started the young african leaders initiative the uganda chapter and did a couple of leadership projects engage with different people still you know just hel
ping people express themselves train them on leadership issues you know share stories and so forth and then i had to go back to my roots where i came from and that was actually the music industry but now i was already in a space that i was working in the film industry so we started film 256 and brought um you know practitioners together to be able to contribute to their communities and i think one of the first projects we had was so amazing because nobody knew what the turnout would be like peop
le didn't realize the power they hold as as you know as artists as filmmakers as producers as writers as you know until we did our first workshop and then i think it just dawned on them that wow we have so much power to be able to empower people and let them express themselves by teaching them the tools that we have and of course during that time we also were getting close to our elections in 2016 and i think that was the first election that seemed to have the possibility of a lot of violence an
d then we kind of designed um we kind of designed um he designed them that i pledged this campaign and then i remembered that my roots was in music and who would be the most powerful influencers that we could actually bring to to make this campaign big so i went out to many of the musicians that had met many of the actors radio producers comedians and then we built this campaign that really became very successful and when we started out we didn't know how big it was going to get but what's also
very amazing is that when i look back at the video that we did and the tone of one of the current musicians that has actually been the biggest run-up for the current presidential elections i should have kind of noticed then that this guy was actually going to become big now when i listen to the video i feel the tone with which he's expressing himself boss is a musician and now he's become one of the biggest opposition parties in uganda that's just just an example of the arts and b or how much th
ey can influence society and so some of uh that i pledge peace projects they make me really proud and some of the film work that they've done with underprivileged communities to help them express themselves the challenge with these communities is they're not educated so if you put them in front of a panel they'll not be able to speak but if you teach them how to write a script produce and edit they will tell you the story many of the short movies they produced actually were a powerful depiction
of the challenges that they were facing in their communities and then this becomes much easier to sell because it's not like i come as an activist and i'm fighting for some people and you know maybe saying that i'm putting words in their mouth or taking them in a certain direction i just show you their movies and i tell you this is what they expressed and this is what's happening in their communities so it's given me an insight to realize how powerful the arts it's been one of the most amazing j
ourneys yeah thank you sarah and i think a lot of what you were you were saying speaks back to what lucia was saying about uh you know just identifying the need in this case it's just the need for folks to be able to tell their stories uh you don't have to guide them to a particular type of activism uh that activism comes out in when we actually hear uh from their perspectives because we're not hearing those those stories um and i think this is a good segue to you anhar um can you tell uh our at
tendees a little bit about uh you know i think a lot of folks think they have a fairly good understanding of the context of iraq um and i i don't necessarily always think that's actually the case um and so you don't have to give us the the history of of what's been happening in in your country but if you could talk about you know some of the major challenges faced particularly by young iraqis uh and how your uh how you're using your music and your platform to address some of those challenges uh
i don't know how to begin actually it's a very big thing uh how can i start the challenges is that we can just not say anything that we want we have no no right to to tell anyone what we what we feel what we we want because you will get killed by the end if you say anything this is the the way it's work in my country and [Music] as i said as i'm using my rap music to to be the voice for the young people for for everyone and i'm focusing a lot of the up for for those who are on the 13 14 age usin
g my uh rap songs to educate them because the school uh the schools in iraq there's no benefits uh you you don't learn anything from from the school and and as cyrus told you we have to educate people we have uh to to show them the way uh to start to speak uh we have actually a revolution uh on october the last year and there were a lot uh more than 800 young guys who got killed only because they they talked louder and this is the way uh this is the the stage situation in my country and uh and t
he challenge is that i have to be the voice for those who cannot talk who cannot talk louder and i have to think about everything that is happening in iraq and the the media there in iraq they just no uh don't tell the truth about what is in uh what is happening and people are just afraid of seeing anything because i as i said they will get killed by the end and what can i say more than that yeah i uh thank you for for providing that that context on her i think uh you know one thing that you jus
t said and i wanna i wanna go to you again uh andre and in kind of in response is uh and even uh lucia and cyrus as well but uh it's this idea that you know we're only getting one version of of the truth uh i think in in the u.s context uh andre this is the the events of this last year are are not new uh these are things that have been happening as you said for as long as you can remember um and we have we have documented this in history but that history doesn't necessarily get told and we only
get one side of that truth uh and so i'm wondering if you could speak a little bit to like even the work you do with the black girl hand games um it seems that you're you're you you're helping to cultivate or amplify a different version of what the reality has been painted i don't know if that's if i'm touching on anything i'll let you take it from here but i'm i'm just wondering if you could speak a little bit to that kind of countering and amplifying yeah no you're doing a great job um yeah so
something i didn't really get to mention a bit earlier number one it's just so excellent to hear about everyone's stories and the and um they're fight for liberation complete liberation um brianna taylor is i think she was 20 she might have been 25 years old um there was a police raid that happened at her house and you know she was shot in the middle of the night murdered and those officers have sold to this they have not been held accountable for the murder of brianna taylor and so that's one
name that has been circulating um the news and circulating social media for over the last year and so in response to that what i wanted to do was to be able to paint a different picture um for to basically um amplify the efforts that were taking place on the ground a lot of times you know we'll see you know these large-scale demonstrations and see people you know yelling and shouting and chanting i wanted to be able to give those you know from around the world a inside look um onto what's happen
ing on the ground and who were running these these super intimate grassroots demonstrations who were behind these these um you know these efforts to defund the police to hold police accountable for these murders i mean so i started to go out and to actually videotape to film um what was happening at these demonstrations and in rallies and while i was there i would take a moment to just kind of take in everything um for those who have attended demonstrations i'm sure you know it's pretty tough it
can be tough for some um if you're not in the space and leading you're you're participating and you can you know go through just like this roller coaster ride of emotions and that's what would happen to me i'd go and you know see myself in a briana taylor or anyone else who may have been murdered by police who was a black person um and it was hard and so i started to go in and giving myself a mission to accomplish when i would go to these demonstrations um and so i started to film uh you know t
hese rallies and people at these demonstrations and um record like i would literally just pull my iphone out and record the chance and record the individuals that may have been on you know the large mic or the blowhorn um the pa system talking about what it meant um to fight for black people's freedom and i would later go home and take that audio content and remix it into trap songs um and then lay that underneath the the video content and what i recognized is what it was helping was not only to
tell the story of what was taking place on the ground but also to off um to archive our history um and you know i didn't realize that it was going to take off and and you know become as helpful to my comrades as it as it you know as it was but i also understand the power of contemporary music being able to put a fire you know contemporary beat um under something that is uh that people are so passionate about something that is so nostalgic like you go to this demonstration and you're in you're c
hanting what side are you on my people what side are you on we on the freedom side and then to hear a trap beat underneath it like you know it's something that everybody you know can relate to um it is a message that i think we all are are pushing forth um and so it was just my duty as an artist as nina simone says um the great nina simone um civil rights activist musician singer-songwriter um it is our duty as artists to reflect the times and i knew that it was my duty to be able to go in to su
pport the movement to support black people and black bodies um by reflecting the times through my music and to be able to just to to paint again paint the picture in a way that was coming from this authentic authentic place but also coming from someone who is actually on the ground doing the work right right anhar de ju i see you you put up your little digital hand did you want to add something yeah actually uh i have the same feelings when i got a video from iraq by the iraqi protesters they ju
st turned on my uh song and everyone yelled shut up for everyone who killed this this my song and my song's name it's shut up okay for those who killed us and it is repeating repeating repeating and this feeling when i i'm hearing about three ten thousands they are singing my song and they they have the energy and when i say shut up everyone yelling shut up it's just made me proud actually that that i i have i could influence and close some of those to get and protest against the government and
uh i just wanted to add that actually yeah i i'm i'm really glad that you did uh because i think that something that both of you are getting at here is the way that music captures a collective spirit and energy um or in your case andre uh going out and collecting the spirit and energy of that chant and then amplifying that by giving it a beat that more people can really can really get under and and let it take off i think it it speaks a lot about the power of music and the power of music to brin
g together the the collective um lucia i know i i want to ask you a little bit about some of the you know you mentioned a couple of different artists specifically artists who are are uh composing in uh for lgbtq rights um but also uh violence against women and i i know that there's there's been several uh instances of violence against women in mexico and i'm wondering even with lgbtq folks what is the are there certain dangers that you know like with women speaking out as an artist um or you as
a woman uh you know kind of bringing these voices up are there certain dangers that you face and how how are you balancing that that providing a voice but but managing the the danger that comes with that yeah i mean in terms of danger uh the danger in mexico is all the people that is trying to prevent the danger no like we have all these journalists cases uh disappearing people that we don't know where they are within the lgbt community yes like violence no i mean in my experience at least uh wh
en i started to work actually with marie advertencia this rapper uh i i was i didn't acknowledge that we have uh more than 80 000 disappearing people in mexico no like she's very involved in that uh and what we're trying to do is uh to build uh this network with other omg's that we could just put together all these rappers and all these messages to put them out and speak about these situations but in terms of in day of danger like uh like if mario or even me we have been in literally in this dan
ger i've never been so close to that maybe once but it was more like uh like a gangster that rented a venue and kind of like kidnapped us because he wanted more money but me personally i've never gone through that but uh the stories i've heard through mate of all the families looking for their songs that suddenly disappeared the stories of of uh of yes like all these women that are killed every day i mean it's uh it's a cons it's a constant uh uh struggle uh to also fight against the government
you know it's not just the danger that you if someone kidnaps you it's also the government that doesn't uh really reacts or does anything about it so yes i mean i mean the danger it's it's very sensitive in mexico because you really don't have a backup your backup is really like the the auto or the out organizations you know like to find disappearing people like the own family had to organize to to find the methods on how you can find uh disappearing people you know like all around the country o
r how you can do certain things like to to to ask the government in terms of law how they can solve those kind of cases so i mean we have 50 percent of the investigations in feminism are not solved right so at the end we go back again that all this collectiveness and communities they have to organize to find the solutions and it's dangerous also for them uh because i mean they're alone you know they don't have like like any any protection or sustain so i feel that's the danger you know like uh l
ike you really don't have uh like a protection from your own government so in mexico it's that's that's the delicate thing like you don't really have a support but only your own community and and collective so yeah so that that yeah i think all of you are really speaking to you know we didn't we didn't start the conversation with with this kind of focus on on state violence necessarily but it's clearly something that that keeps peaking peaking up in in uh you know government systems that are are
meant to be there to protect us are often than not are often the systems that actually oppress us as opposed to protect us and i'm thinking you know cyrus i know that you're that your campaign um the i pledge peace campaign was in 2016 and i know that uganda recently had elections and you don't need to talk about the i know that there are still sensitive issues around the elections there but um as you said uh the primary opposition candidate uh was a musician and i'm wondering if you could just
talk a little bit about has his music still played a role in in his uh in his opposition in his campaign um what do you think the role of his music is in his rise uh and and in his continued efforts to challenge the the kind of status quo in uganda no um what's very interesting is that when he started out as an opposition member and planned to become mp and then decided that he wanted to run for president the first thing that the government did is they burnt all these shows like they just stopp
ed him from performing and that became that even made it kind of worse because when he tried to do one of the concerts i think it was it was one of the craziest things i ever saw it was packed to to the brim everybody who showed up showed up in colors of his party that snoop and i think also when they've tried to censor him in any way people have just continued to play his music in different places as a form of you know reminder to the people who they hope to vote for so the censorship kind of j
ust made it worse but being an artist that he had music that was already out in circulation it just kind of gave it more momentum you know everybody wants to play songs they want to play them everywhere you know the little sharks on the mobile discords on radio and so it is a good number of people i don't think initially were actually listening to much of what his content was about now it has just you know knocked them off and you realize but this guy has been talking about you know these things
way before it's not something new he's already mentioned the issues we have in our country he's already mentioned the challenges he's already mentioned a number of things so censoring him has just brought more sharp focus on to what he's trying to achieve and because he's an artist he seems he just can't you know he can't die out as just any other opposition member that's that's really interesting to think about the way that uh you know when we think about why why music has the kind of power it
does as an as an activist tool i think one thing you you mentioned here cyrus that's really interesting is that because music doesn't die um that that once you record something it continues to live on uh and so even if you don't want it to have a life of its own it it will and it takes off and people uh and people will continue to use it you know uh andre you mentioned nina simone uh and just thinking about the ways that that uh her music might be taken up now the way uh as an activist instrume
nt people maybe not even recognizing it as such in in the time when when she was singing it i'm thinking about all the ways that that music lives on as as a tool um i want to uh i have some more questions but i just want to remind our attendees uh and i put it in the chat but um we are open to taking questions from all of you please feel free to put your questions into uh the chat um and i'll do my best to to kind of sift through them and and give them to our panelists to answer um and then i ju
st want to go i want to go back speaking of of uh music uh and and this idea of danger uh on her i don't wanna i don't wanna focus specifically on danger but i know that you you are now in sweden uh and so you have some uh some additional freedom to to to speak and provide a voice uh for folks who are still in iraq but i know you've you've talked to me that you still face some challenges communicating your your music in in sweden particularly in the community your family lives in i'm wondering i
f you could talk a little bit about some of those challenges uh that you're facing even outside of iraq as an iraqi artist as i told you but i i did not tell the other i just cannot tell my location here ever ever in sweden because there are a lot of fantastical groups that that they have that still have contacts with other groups in iraq and it is still be dangerous for me telling where where i'm living or making parties or to to get more people to know where i'm living and my family still afra
id actually and they are just begging me to to delete all my songs but i'm telling my father that he made us to live in fear and and we were afraid all of our during all the life okay i don't want to to feel the same feeling anymore i want to talk even here in sweden i don't want to to feel that i that that i can get killed at any moment this is the end for me and but we are just only talking about sweden and if i will get to iraq it is very very dangerous it is super dangerous for me actually i
cannot get there and i don't i i don't know if i will at the future but uh as long that we have the same government as we have now okay we i can't the the problem is that i'm not living in my country and i can't i cannot get to my country it is and that is who is making me very sad actually because yeah yeah yeah i and i think uh and it's so it's so inspiring to hear that while you're unable to be there it sounds like your music is is inspiring a whole you know a whole group of people uh in in
iraq so i think that well you may not physically be there again music it lives on and your music is is living in iraq with the people who who are still there um protesting and and fighting so i i think uh your your spirit is your spirit is still there uh for sure um i just uh andre i wanna uh come back to you and then i'm gonna have a question for for the entire group um i wanted to uh one of the one of your other projects is specifically about um the use of uh of hand games and so as we talk ab
out language i'm thinking about you know you've incorporated chants and freedom songs into your work uh i'm thinking about it you know that the hand game uh the child's hand game i'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about that as as a tool for kind of getting people to you know to amplify voices into uplift communities yeah um so something that i understand has sustained um black people um african-american people through generations of trauma is black joy it is a form of resistance black j
oy is a form of self-preservation um and so typically when we talk about black people we talk about you know oppression um state-sanctioned violence and you know we we typically bring up the trauma and that's really what we you know we find ourselves resting in right but um i try to make a point to uplift black joy um and so part of that comes the black girls hand games project is a project that i founded about two or three years ago um and the whole point of it is for me to be able to offer bla
ck girls the space to be able to experience their childhood um in its fullest complete authenticity black girls unfortunately combat with what's called adultification bias in which they are seen as being older than what they truly are and therefore treated as such um so their punishment is is a little harsh or much harsher than their white counterparts um um and they're just they're treated very differently um and just seen as being less innocent um as their white counterparts um and so what i'v
e done is i've i've combated that by creating the black girls hand games project where i bring um girls into the space to learn skills in music production but most importantly for us to be able to activate hand games so when you know you may ask what is a hand game so when you think back to um you know when you were on the at recess on the playground um and playing games with a friend and and possibly a game such as a miss mary mac mac mac all dressed in black black black right or down down baby
down by the roller coaster sweet sweet you know rockin robin gigolo um i take those hand games the tradition of those hand games and i remix them into hip hop and soul songs but also i use them as a um is a form of um as an education tool um to teach girls things such as music production but also things such as safe touch um what it means to to um to collaborate with one another in a very safe i space like to say that what we do is we bring hip hop and hand games to the playground um and so it'
s a really super dope project and you know i've unders i've found that it what it does is it is it it creates this very intergenerational experience because while you may have someone who is seven-year-old seven years old that knows how to play a miss mary mac my grandmother who is over 70 years old remembers miss mary mack and and has played with me i've talked with her about the project and she's like girl miss mary mac i remember that game and it's so nostalgic um which i think is what makes
everything when we when we talk about music like the nostalgia of it the familiarity of it the way that it helps to capture moments in time and bring you back to moments um whether they were you know moments of or somber moments um or joyful moments um that's really the the mission of the project um and so yeah it's super dope look what's up black girls hand games project yeah i uh you know speaking to the nostalgia as as soon as i as i saw the project i immediately was taken back to the playgro
und um and exactly trying desperately to figure out how to do it and never being coordinated enough to get it done but let our girls let our girls be girls allow them to experience their childhood in the way that they deserve i i really want to and and i think that you lead us right into kind of a closing question here um because i want to take that that call that you just made to focus on joy instead of trauma um and i'm just wondering as we close for all of you um what what is the what are you
r hopes for your music and your work um what sort of joy are you seeking to produce in the world um i want to focus on the hope as we look towards the future what are the bright things that we see um that uh your music and the and the artists that you that you represent and the folks that you're bringing in to collect a coalition um you know what is what is what are your hopes for of joy for the future um cyrus i'll put you on the spot first okay when i see and um you know listen to people like
fun and i feel like these these um the world is slowly changing and you can't um i can't deny this especially you know with you know digital communications you know we're able to have chats like this we listen to different stories from different people we get inspired it makes me feel like you know you're not alone in what you're trying to do there's a good number of people that are involved in the process for creating a better world so i have a lot of hope that things um will take a different d
irection because one also so many tools are becoming available that give people new possibilities you know to do things differently to communicate to challenge governments to to to like tackle the issues that we actually face so i'm really very hopeful for that and um the more i meet you know different you know change makers and i it kind of just inspires me to keep you know doing what i'm doing and know that i can reach different people for support that's i i think you you know uh are one of ou
r missions with these these conversations and and at shared studios and in general is is to bring various voices together to to to see these these messages of hope and so uh through the use of digital communication so i'm uh i i think that uh you're right the the world is changing and and and uh you know while a lot of communication digital communication tools have been used to divide uh i think that there are lots of ways that we can use them to continue to bring folks together um i'm wondering
if for you what are your hopes for for for you for your music and for uh the iraqis who you're you're making music for i just hope the the situation that the iraqi people are living in right now it will change at uh and i hope that it will change quickly and we find just people who respect us as we as people and for the for my music i just hope that we will get more early audience for the rap music because the the rap music is not famous yet in my country and we are trying well i'm fighting act
ually every day to to get more people that is knowing about that we have something that is called rap or hip-hop music in my country uh this is one thing and this the third thing i just hope that there are a lot of uh of audience that they think i'm singing just to be famous and i have a lot of people that i'm talking instead of them and i want to to talk instead of them they they are against me right now because they just think that i'm singing to to get benefits of money or anything uh else i
just hope that they will change they their things or their thoughts about me and let me ex express their feelings and my songs well i think one thing i can say is that i think anybody who's attending today can feel the joy uh in in your voice and the work that you're doing and the passion that you have for it i just uh realized that my chat was covering my my q a function and i want to make sure that we get uh one of the audience questions in quickly before we go um uh one of our our attendees w
rote that uh i'm an educator and i came here by way of my professional organization i'm interested to hear your thoughts on how music and the arts can be used in an everyday classroom to provide a voice for students especially in regards to using education as a way to encourage liberation um i know cyrus you you do uh you have storytelling kits i don't know if you want to share a bit about that and henry i know that you specifically have this kind of hip-hop education i don't know if either of y
ou wants to to speak to this question alex lara go cyrus go first if you'd like okay yeah you go first okay you go i'm muting myself okay cyrus it looks like you're going first so um like i i mentioned earlier that um there are communities that are actually not educated and they find a lot of difficulties in actually expressing themselves and because we've been able to go to these communities and you know teach them the art of storytelling and that means you know you get script writers you get p
roducers you get editors and you get directors we are able to um give them a new form of expression basically i feel like they get educated and processed across um they learn a new skill which obviously they can use to survive and express themselves one of the communities who worked in later on actually reached out to me and asked me to to kind of get them a camera that they could you know keep within their communities but be able to tell the different stories that are actually happening because
so many things in their communities happen so fast these underprivileged you know communities and slums have quite a number of huge challenges you know that happen all the time but they feel that they they want to be able to document that and you know you know put it out there for people to know i feel that's a powerful form of expression but it's also a way of you know educating other people about what's happening in those communities because it's interesting sometimes you might be just next t
o a community and you actually don't know what actually happens in it so our tools are literally designed to just help them express themselves that's a formal education yeah just giving just giving uh folks the the tools that allow them to tell their own stories um in ways that that people will listen um uh andrei uh quickly if you want to answer this question and then we're we're coming to the end i just uh but i want to make sure that we answer um the question here yeah i think um i think it w
as justin that asked the question um the most important thing is for you to just number one be able to open space um for there to be a level of transparency in the classroom i think that's extremely important for young people to know that they have um just they they have the authority um and the entitlement to be able to speak on these issues in a very vulnerable way um so being being able to establish those relationships with them so that they feel comfortable to be able to be transparent about
how they're feeling and for you to be transparent i'm about that as well for them to discuss social issues in the classroom but one example i will give you is something that i like to do in the classroom is to examine negro spirituals and then giving the young people a chance to collaborate and being able to transform that into a contemporary version it really has come in handy it's really fun a great way to bring in just like a contemporary beat hip-hop beat into the classroom and then to allo
w them to be get creative and remixing that negro spiritual or even to create their own um i think it's a is a great lesson that you could potentially implement but i'm happy to chat more about it this is that is all that my work is centered around so feel free to hit me up thank you and thank you for uh you know i think any kind of practical application that that we can uh any of us who have tools at our disposal that we've that we've worked to come up with that we can share to to help other co
mmunities continue to uplift the folks in in their communities um is always beneficial i i feel like we could uh continue to talk for at least another uh another hour if not if not more and i just want to thank all of you for coming together and joining us today to share your expertise uh to talk about the power of music as a form of social activism and justice uh for bringing voice to a lot of issues that i think many folks around the world need to hear but also need to know the ways in which a
ll of those struggles are intimately connected to one another uh and if we're going to address one struggle uh we need to address all of them i just want to kind of summarize a bit of the the themes that came out today music as a form of self-expression music as an educational tool a way of archiving history and providing us with a historical voice that we may not have had in the past music is a way to reflect the current times to build networks to create a familiarity a witness and nostalgia an
d i think one of the things that at least i'll take most from this is music as a form of collective awakening thank you all so much please for our attendees we put links to everyone's work in the chat um you are also free to reach out to info sharedstudios.com if you want additional information we can uh we can send you into the direction of all of these wonderful panelists uh anahar cyrus lucia andre thank you all so very much for joining us today thank you thanks bye
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