Ghetto Proverbs - The Documentary

Ghetto Proverbs

  
The general cultural climate of the early 90’s was as important in fostering the early development of "conscious" hip hop in South Africa as the events did also usher in the advent of our democratic dispensation.

Art collectives, musical cliques and groupies began sprouting everywhere, street corners became chapels where politically attuned groups were established to voice minority viewpoints and an alternative language of resistance. The youth were voicing concerns, and their vocabulary became increasingly sophisticated and politicalised. And here is a record of music as a tool of struggle, Hip Hop a metaphor for resistance; in the way which various generations of African Freedom fighters took responsibility for guiding their people to freedom.

“The plight of ignorance will only be conquered through conscious music we talk!” Zulu Boy exclaims.

Ghetto Proverbs is a documentary that depicts the myth of retellings that is the heart of Hip Hop in South Africa, a compilation of voices that are counterintuitive to pop stardom. An illustrious piece of work, which represents the black youth’s ability to critique, to analyse and provide commentary on society’s ills. It is a chronicle of the undying spirit of the un-exploitable activist hip hop, recording utterances by those who write independent thoughts about police brutality, self-hate and sexism .

With most academic credentials obsessed with intellectualising the global hip hop culture, this medley of creative minds is those few who have mastered what Adomas calls “The Trick of the Trade!” 
“The trick of the trade is to not be a slave…” he surmises in an interview, further confirming that the hip hop movement in SA is beyond consumerist strangleholds and has formulated a pedagogy of resistance that helped resist the "dehumanizing project” on black folks.

A variety of views around poverty, sexualisation of the media, corruption in the political domain are what propels the narrative pace of the film towards that bopping side-stepping tempo which seems like an expose of an uncommon world. With beats and impromptu videos giving us reliefs, we are left to digest the proverbial messages of a disgruntled populace of the young, with the story guided by poised inquisitiveness of Nosisi. The discoveries about pertinent issues for Africans are tackled in a concrete intellectual engagement that proposes solutions for problems of aggrieved Africans. This sets the film apart from many that explored the music itself, as opposed to the politics expressed by the music. Notable commentators such as The Hymphatic Thabs, Tumi, Proverb to name but a few, give this film the academic  panache of an anthropological analysis of “a culture in transition”, music at the cross-roads of evolution; when commercialism and the monopolist capitalist machines are assimilating all forms of independent expression.
 

Robo The Technician cautions the new generation of hip Hoppers against the syndrome of “Reliance” on government and other social structures and more especially western patterns of culture. He is one of the Hip Hoppers who employ past voices and images of freedom fighters and political figures and events in their music, to keep the message of our ancestors relevant in contemporary social narrative. This film has collected a formidable ensemble of MC’s to posit arguments for carrying on the tradition of self-determination and knowledge dissemination. It is a metaphysical discourse on issues of the contemporary man assailed by a plethora of conflicting trends and ideas of identity, told through beat and rhyme and the chaos that is JUST LIFE.