When talking about the urban, there are many tales to be told. There are tales of grandeur, told by the architects and planners. There are tales of historical roots and development, told by history buffs. There are tales of progress, told by politicians. And, let’s not forget, there are the stories of the many, many people who spend their daily life in the urban. Telling stories keeps communities together but the tighter the community, the more closed it is to the outside world. It is hardly surprising that the diversity of the city also means fragmentation.
Perhaps unknown to the general public, there is an entirely different range of story-tellers: that of the young and (sometimes) angry, to whom the city is much more than just a backdrop for music and lifestyle. Now, I’m very well aware that much contemporary art is categorized as ‘urban’ (to the extent that it includes contradictory scenes such as skating and R&B) but I had not expected that to be very literal in the sense that the urban defined the music. I often assumed that the urban was used as a header for the art that was generated by people living in the city. While is true, it is also true that a specific locality acts as the main source of inspiration. Evidence of this can be traced back to e.g. the early hip hop from the 1980s but I was surprised to see it popping up in my own town and being more than just copying Bronx-like postures and statements.
The fact that I was surprised is because politicians of a certain disposition, and policy makers with them, tend to portray the young as the source of everything threatening the city: being lazy, noisy, uneducated and even perhaps criminal. Such images appear to be powerful and convincing to a lot of people, especially when applied to young migrants or children with a non-Dutch ethnic background. Many assert that those people ‘don’t care about society and the place they live’.
Rubbish. They care as much about the place as anyone else but in different terms and from different experiences. They tell different tales. It may not resonate with the older (and white) population but that is part of the diversity of a city. Their tales are as legitimate as others. In fact, in some cases they are surprisingly similar in their messages as are older people (e.g. in dissing Amsterdam in the continuous 010 vs. 020 fight) even though the medium is completely different. So, without much further theorizing, I present you a collection of YouTube clips made by young people about their life in the urban. I invite you to watch some, even if you don’t like the music or don’t agree with the things being portrayed. Watch the picture, listen to the lyrics. And note the real power behind their stories.
(Originally published at Lasse’s weblog)
