Zum Film: Author:

http://www.lai.fu-berlin.de/homepages/john/Dissertationsprojekt/index.html

camera & editing: Thomas John, concept: Slajem Kóp & Thomas John, music: Slajem Kóp

---

Zum Thema

This Hip Hop video was produced by Thomas John while doing fieldwork on indigenous media and art practices in Chiapas (Mexico). It is an attempt to engage oneself while doing research as an anthropologist in the projects of local people and to contribute to a collaborative applied visual anthropology.

 The hip hop band Slajem Kóp mixes traditional melodies and local topics with Hip Hop. Usually the rap only in Tzotzil. Whereas the elders of their village have been previously suspicious about mixing modern "western" music genres with "traditional" culture and local sacred melodies, they did finally accept the band and even appreciate it as a cultural bearer.  

Location is Chiapas. Chiapas is the southern most state of Mexico, location of several contemporary Mayan groups and other so-called 'indigenous' societies.
Broader research interest have been indigenous artists & media-producers, and their role of establishing and articulating own modernities and young indigenous contemporaneities.

You can download the movie. Please click the right mouse button and choose “save file as”.