A taste of Inquilab via hip hop and poetry (part 1)

As Sundari blogged about a few days ago, we just had an exciting weekend of Sikh youth art and activism in the NY/NJ area.  I was lucky enough to sit in on the Sikh Coalition’s “Inquilab: Raising Our Voices” hip hop workshop for a few hours on Saturday and then ride the bus to New Jersey with the youth to attend Lahir 2011: Move the Movement.

I managed to get some video footage of both events, so I will keep my own words to a minimum.  Today I am posting a brief montage from the Inquilab workshop, and on Wednesday I’ll post some highlights from Lahir.

I walked into the workshop on Saturday in the basement of South Asian Youth Action in Elmhurst, Queens while the group was in the midst of a writing activity.  Many of the young people of diverse backgrounds (mostly South Asian and many Sikh) ended up putting their newly honed writing skills to the stage — a pretty large stage — at Lahir that night.  Their pieces were honest, real, accessible and courageous.  I was truly inspired.  And found myself wondering what my teenage years would have been like had something like this (both the workshop at Lahir) had existed.

YouTube Preview Image

bookmark bookmark bookmark bookmark bookmark bookmark bookmark bookmark bookmark bookmark bookmark bookmark
tabs-top


3 Responses to “A taste of Inquilab via hip hop and poetry (part 1)”

  1. Harinder Singh says:

    This looks like an amazing initiative! It's great to see that Sikh organizations are engaging with youth at their level. Our community has done a great job in incorporating Sikhi forms of expression (kirtan, gatka, gurbani, vichaar) into Gurdwaras, but has failed to bring Sikhi into mainstream culture. This is a great bridge for youth to excel in both.

    Congrats to all who were involved in making this happen. I hope to see more of this in the future.

  2. Vi hip hop and poetry 😮 It sounds really amazing. Thank you for sharing the post!
    twitter viewer