Dead Prez! It's Bigger than Hip Hop

I've been exploring the outskirts of my comfort zone. I've been hanging with the youth lately,
Last week we accompanied 21 Mendocino high school students including our daughter to Yosemite for Alternative Education week. It was intense and exquisite. I thought we were going on vacation, but this was get up at 630AM followed by a Highly disciplined schedule of exercise and education. I'm still sore. The kids, however, seemed supernatural.
On top of all their physical activities they were determined to have a campfire and enjoy smores as a integral part of their experience in the woods. But with ten feet of snow on the ground, (the basketball hoop was the only an inch or two above the snow) the site manager at Crane Flats did not encourage them. He cautioned them to be realistic. He didn't know who he was dealing with. That would be mendo.
So after four days during which the kids hiked up to the top of Yosemite Falls, crawled through spider caves, snow shoed 3 miles to the giant sequoias and cross country skied 6 young men and four young women picked up their shovels and dug. The night before we left Crane Flat we had a fire pit that was ten feet deep and twenty feet in diameter complete with snow benches and we all enjoyed a nice fire, puffy white marshmallows toasted to perfection squeezed between some chocolate and two graham crackers. The students were proud, so proud and I had a new respect for them and also the desire to spend more time with the kids

So this weekend I attended a production of Hip Hop artists Dead Prez at Crown Hall.
Peace Love and Light Productions offered the concert as an all ages show. I would say we were 13 to 65 years old as I saw a very nice showing of my peers there to get jiggy wit it. The vibe was beautiful and safe. Saturday was a bit like an initiation. An invitation to our youth to step up energetically, politically, artfully. to Make a stand because we have to. There is too much injustice in the world and the authorities/politician tell us we don't have the power to have the lives we dream of while they run off with the gold. The politicians say we can't have smores.

I first heard dead Prez in 2006. their Album Let's Get Free was the kind of Hip Hop that made sense to me. The voices of the oppressed rising up with a raging beat. I sure had a good time dancing my kids and their crew Saturday night. DJ Noah and Facillitator one (Johanna Schulz) rocked the house and Crown hall was overflowing with hoodies and thongs, the fruity scents of Fructis shampoo and ganja. Noyo Roots Crew, Cafe Gratitude. It was a benefit for the MEC and the Noyo food Forest. So in essence Benefiting the whole community and the earth.
M1 and Stic man the rappers from Dead Prez from LA had a lot to say, and a lot of it I couldn't understand, but what I did understand was this. These young men are dazzling performers, one is clean and sober two years and he is totally into fitness and good health and prescribes meditation instead of medication.

They sang out for the workers rights saying "I worked had all my life and I got nothing to show for it". Or the declaration that "too many black men are in cages". Confirmed by Michelle Alexander author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, told an audience at the Pasadena Branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, "More African-American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began." That's what turned me on to Dead Prez is the way they tell it.
their message is so relevant to us all, especially today

tax day when once again the people being shook down
for money to pay for the things we don't want
The corporations getting off scot free
and the bill comes down to you and to me
GE, Exxon, B of A
how many billions did you make today
While my peeps got to work and slave everyday
we won't work for your wage
how bout we do some trade
That's my rap
You could understand what I'm saying more easily than you might understand Dead Prez, but we can listen better, can we not. Listen to the voices that are kids are listening to. I know I get a huge kick when I Find Bob Dylan,The who, or Pink floyd on my daughter's playlist. I'm glad she has the appreciation of the classics and it is my job to tune into her.

Let us not underestimate the truth and our youth, let us take a journey with them and discover who they are. Let them show us through their strength, resistance, humor, hunger, awkwardness, willingness and grace what the future holds. And may the voices of the oppressed make it to the radio waves and crash against the shore of apathy. And may the youth who enjoy the privileges of life dedicate some time to the less fortunate among us. Pick up a shovel, a hammer and drive that nail. Like Dead Prez says, "let's get free"