There is a large Filipino community in the Bay Area that organizes and fights for better workers’ rights and educating youth of color. There are groups within this community that address these issues through hip-hop.
Kiwi Illafonte, 40, is a Bay Area political rapper who talks about social issues in his music.
“Social change is at the center of my universe,” Illafonte said.
In 2020 Noname, a Chicago rapper, activist, and poet, released the single titled "Song 33" to address racism in America and the Black Lives Matter movement. She specifically raps about the killings of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter activist Oluwatoyin Salau, singing, "A baby just 19/I know I dream all black/I seen her everything immortalized in tweets, all caps/They say they found her dead," she raps.
Can’t say she didn’t warn us: As per her Instagram message last week, Cowboy Carter, the Act II sequel to 2022’s Renaissance, is a Beyoncé album, not a country album.
Brisbane, Australia — The flash mob descended on Brisbane’s city square, wearing double denim and blond wigs in the style of a legendary Australian singer as they danced with wild abandon to one of his 1980s hits.
It was a long time coming - but it was worth the wait.
Nearly two years ago, more than a dozen of Mexico’s biggest performing artists came together in a mega-event aimed at saving Wirikuta, one of the country’s most sacred sites, from devastation at the hands of Canadian gold and silver mining operations.
Actionplay, a theatre company dedicated to providing autistic, neurodivergent, and disabled teens and young adults equal access to the theatre-making process, is pleased to announce their next production, the new musical comedy The Surface (or, That One Time Atlantis Washed Up On the Beach).
Savages are an all-female post-punk band that attempt to motivate people to be informed and take part in politics. They "try to give people a platform to express their own ideas" as Fay Milton of the band explains.
The following is the manifesto Savages wrote for their 2016 album, Adore Life:
On April 30th NYU in conjunction with Free University held liberation lab in Washington Square Park from 11 30 Am until roughly 5 or 6pm. The day was very festive and full of amazing talks, performances, installations and discussions. I even got to participate in this day via our final project in the creative activist course.
China's underground hiphop became an art movement since early 2000s. With characteristics of self-expression, localization and social criticism, Chinese hip hop music quickly gained popularity among students and working-class Chinese. Some notable music groups from Beijing include Yin Ts'ang (隐藏) and In3er (阴三儿).
On Nov 24, 2013, more than 10 Chinese feminist activists sang the feminist song "Do You Hear Women Sing" in the cabin of Beijing Metro Line 13 (adapted from the famous song "Do You Hear the People Sing" in the musical "Les Miserables". Beijing has the most stringent control on society.
Ultra-Red is a collective founded by two AIDS activists in 1994 to explore the intersection of the political and aesthetic through "militant sound investigations".
A technological feat has emerged amid the Chilean protests. A video of protestors bringing down a police drone has gone viral on social media sites. These protestors didn't use any physical or gun force to bring the drone down. Instead, they used another form of technology: lasers. A lot of bright green laser beams were pointed in unison at the drone, which can be seen moving erratically, before quickly falling down to Earth.
"Send It On" is a song recorded by American recording artists Miley Cyrus, Jonas Brothers, Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez from charity project Disney's Friends for Change. The track's producers Adam Anders and Peer Åström co-wrote it with Nikki Hassman. The song was released on August 11, 2009 by Walt Disney and Hollywood Records as a charity single in order to benefit international environmental associations.
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have released a pair of live albums to benefit relief efforts in response to devastating wildfires in their native Australia.
Jay-Z rapped alongside side Bono, the Edge and Rihanna; Coldplay's Chris Martin moonlighted as Beyoncé's piano player; Justin Timberlake covered Leonard Cohen — and those performances, from January 22nd's multinetwork, $66 million-grossing telethon for Haitian earthquake victims, were just the most visible of musicians' efforts to raise funds.
Kids Helping Kids is a youth hip-hop program run by two NGOs, Hip Hip Saves Lives and Negusworld. Together, these organizations work with middle school and high school students to make conscious hip hop influenced by activist work happening worldwide.
Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls is a non-profit music and mentoring program that empowers girls and women through music education, volunteerism, and activities that foster self-respect, leadership skills, creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration.
When dancer Sheen Jamaal saw a video of protestors doing the Cupid Shuffle in New Jersey, inspiration struck to do something similar in New York. He immediately called his friend and collaborator Allison “Buttons” Bedell, and the seed for the Dance For George protest was planted.
The origin of the Soviet disco tradition, one that lasts to this day in the DJ-laden nightlife of Moscow and St. Petersburg, lay in the Stalinist era. Western culture – modernism, cubism, rock and roll, all that good stuff – was “decadent,” perhaps even a plot by Trotskyists or the Western intelligentsia to dull the steely nerves of the Soviet people. But dancing – this was a-OK.
The rise of rock and roll in the late 1980 was largely associated with the student movements taking place at the same time. Cui Jian, considered by many to be the godfather of Chinese rock, even performed for the students on hunger strike in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
An exercise that used drama/and audio visuals to engage with with all election partners, especially the political parties especially the political parties and their candidates/leaders, Electoral Commission, Musicians Association of Ghana, etc to push for a free, fair and peaceful Presidential and Parliamentary election and hand over of power to who ever won the elections peacefully.
Released as a single on 23 December 1966, Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth became the short-lived but talent-packed band’s biggest hit, reaching No.7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the spring of 1967.
“I performed at Tiananmen Square in 1989, 15 days before the crackdown. I sang A Piece of Red Cloth (一块红布), a tune about alienation. I covered my eyes with a red cloth to symbolize my feelings. The students were heroes. They needed me, and I needed them. After Tiananmen, however, authorities banned concerts. We performed instead at “parties,” unofficial shows in hotels and restaurants”.
Late last year, the New York Times published an op-ed short film written and narrated by Jay Z. The clip was called “The War on Drugs Is an Epic Fail,” and that kind of title was explicit enough for everyone to grasp the entertainment mogul’s general argument, whether they knew anything about drug war or not.