This section features links to music and podcasts relevant to studies of culture and cultural diversity.
Featured
Playing for Change – global music
A global multimedia movement created to inspire, connect, and bring peace to the world through music. The idea for this project arose from a common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. A mobile recording studio enables simultaneous collaboration for global musical harmony.
Listen to Playing For Change.
Sierra Leone Refugee All Stars
Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars started playing music together in West African refugee camps while their homeland was being racked by years of bloody warfare. Since then, audiences around the world have embraced the band and their utterly extraordinary story. On their current album, Rise & Shine, the All Stars’ sound, as well as their biography, evolves further.
Listen to the Refugee All Stars.
Song List for Social Justice
The idea for the Social Justice Song Index grew out of a discussion on the edChange website ‘Critical Multicultural Education’ e-community discussion forum about finding practical, effective ways to initiate discussions about issues such as racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia in the classroom. When several people suggested the use of popular music, others followed by compiling lists of potential songs, providing the initial content for this resource. Hundreds of songs are now listed and categorised by themes, such as Race & Racism, and Class & Poverty.
Find songs for social justice.
Hip Hop Projections (ICE)
Up-coming emcees wrote and recorded their own beats and rhymes as a part of MEGAPHONIC SLAM – ICE’s Urban Cultures Project with young people in Western Sydney. The tracks went on to be performed at Hip Hop Projections 6 at Switch in Parramatta in April 2011.
For more information on this project go to the ICE website, or to listen to tracks from Megaphonic Slam.
“Slingshot Hip Hop” – music & film doc.
Braids together the stories of young Palestinians living in Gaza, the West Bank and inside Israel as they discover Hip Hop and employ music as a tool to surmount divisions imposed by occupation and poverty. From internal checkpoints and Separation Walls, to gender norms and generational differences, this is the story of young people crossing the borders that separate them…through the power of Hip Hop.
Learn about Palestinian Hip Hop.
Information & Cultural Exchange “SoundCloud”
ICE (Information & Cultural Exchange – Sydney) is a community development organisation focussed on arts and media production, based in Sydney’s diverse western suburbs. Thier “Sound Cloud” page contains 14 different tracks produced by young hip-hop artists that speak of the refugee and immigrant experience in urban Australia.
Listen to ICE’s SoundCloud.