One of South Africa’s leading Hip-Hop artists, Hip Hop Pantsula (HHP), is traveling to DC this month thanks to an invitation from DC non-profit and arts venue, BloomBars (read more about BloomBars in this issue’s “In The Spotlight”). When John R. Chambers, owner of BloomBars in Columbia Heights, heard HHP’s music and his message for change, he invited him to do a two-week “Artist-in-Bloom” residency, hoping to build a bridge between Hip-Hop communities in South Africa and here in the United States. HHP, winner of the 2009 MTV Africa Music Award for Best Video, will be speaking to youth about HIV/AIDS awareness, arts education initiatives, and other issues that both his country and the U.S. are facing, as well as performing at BloomBars at 8 p.m. on Sunday, January 17. On Tap caught up with HHP while he was still in South Africa preparing for his visit.
 
OT: You mention in one of the BloomBars videos on YouTube that you were inspired by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the US rap and Hip-Hop scene when you were younger. In what ways can our country’s music scene be inspired by South African rap and Hip-Hop?  
 
HHP: Hip-Hop as a culture is only starting to be fully understood in our country. Before, people were quite naïve to what exactly is Hip-Hop. It was associated with baggy jeans, foul language, fake American accents, gun violence and substance abuse. It’s only now that people, including myself, are starting to understand the true nature of the art. How it’s broken up into deejaying, graffiti, emceeing, break dancing, etc.
I, together with a few others, took the aspects we like about the art and excluded those that culturally don’t make sense to us. The way I use RAP (rhythm and poko or praise) is to uplift, to commentate on social issues that affect us all and to show Praise to my heritage, culture and background. What I do specifically is called Motswako, which literally means a mixture. We mix elements of genres we like (R&B, jazz, indigenous afro sounds, Hip-Hop, alternative, scathamiya — that Ladysmith Black Mambazo sound — and African traditional gospel) and make one solid sound out of it. Maybe we could teach that to the masses with this cultural exchange.
 
OT: As an “Artist-In-Bloom,” BloomBars has identified you as an artist “who will represent and advance the belief that art and artists have the power to transform people, communities, and the world.” What motivates you to use your art to make changes in the world?     
HHP: The devil in us tells us we can change the world all at once. That’s impossible and frustrating to whoever is on that mission. The God in us tells us it takes one person to inspire another, and another, and another. Eventually, we’ll be inspiring the world. I want to be one of the many that inspire just one listener out there to inspire many. It’s a war out there and my art is my AK47.
 
OT: Why do you think music is such an effective medium to bring about change?   
 
HHP:  I have seen how music dismantled Apartheid. I have seen how music played a vital role during the Civil Rights Movement in America. Music is like water: a very powerful and unstoppable element. It can reach the thinnest cracks and sink the largest ships. If used incorrectly, it can have damaging effects (for example, the loss of my favorite brother in rap, Biggy). I believe in self-prophecy and what you say/sing over and over again has the power of materializing. Why not use it to better ourselves?
 
OT: While you’re here you plan to speak at high schools and juvenile detention centers.  What is the message you’ll be delivering to these young people?
 
HHP: I’ll be letting them know that there’s more to Africa than just adopting a hungry child and reading of genocides and diseases. Yes, all those are a reality, but there’s more. The Africa that’s been presented to the world is only 0.07%. They need to start knowing more.
 
OT: When you return to South Africa, what do you hope to be able to tell people back in your country about the visit?
 
HHP: I hope to tell them that “what you see on TV is nothing but a mirage.” We all have ideas of what America and Americans are like, but just from meeting brother John, I [have learned] how we are all the same with similar issues and problems. I’ll probably let my brothers and sisters in Africa know that America is thirsty for genuine African knowledge and how it is high time we decolonize our minds and start embracing our own cultures instead of trying to please the world and changing to fit [in].

Hip Hop Pantsula performs at BloomBars on Sunday, January 17. The show is free, but $5-$10 donations are suggested. BloomBars: 3222 11th St. NW, DC; www.bloombars.com