Bomani Armah

 

The best artists share a desire to break down boundaries between "high" and "low" art-to make urgent, truth-telling work that reflects the lives, loves, histories, hopes, and fears of their generation. Hip-hop is about rebellion, yes, but it’s also about transformation.

At the core of hip-hop is the notion of something called the "cipher".  Partly for competition and partly for community, the cipher is the circle of participants and onlookers that closes around battling rappers or dancers as they improvise for each other.  If you have the guts to step into the cipher and tell your story and, above all, demonstrate your uniqueness, you might be accepted into the community.  Here is where reputations are made and risked and stylistic change is fostered.  That this communitarian honoring of merit—whether it’s called "style", "hotness", or whatever the latest slang for it is—can transcend geography, culture, and even skin color remains hip-hop's central promise.

But one thing about hip-hop has remained consistent across cultures: a vital progressive agenda that challenges the status quo.  Thousands of organizers from Cape Town to Paris use hip-hop in their communities to address environmental justice, policing and prisons, media justice, and education.  In Gothenburg, Sweden, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) incorporate graffiti and dance to engage disaffected immigrant and working-class youths.  And indigenous young people in places as disparate as Chile, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Norway use hip-hop to push their generation’s views into the local conversation.

Elliot Farmer of eMedia5 and Zamforia Industries, had a chance to talk with one of these artists from Washington D.C.  His name is Bomani Armah and he has been causing ruckus around the country with his song “Read-A-Book” which is a satire with a promising message but a delivery that bangs on the door of the social conscience.  He has fought big names like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton on CNN but has been praised by a huge following around the country, especially on YouTube.

This is the exclusive interview from 'the poet with a hip-hop style' Bomani Armah.

 

Introduction | Bomani Armah Interview Part 1 | Bomani Armah Interview Part 2