We will regularly be presenting a featured artist, writer or performer who is exploring questions of identity and personal narrative through their medium of expression.

The map is your representation. No rigid lines, no defined routes. You direct it on your own account.

I’m always conflicted when it comes to so-called “conscious rap”. Labels serve a purpose, yet at the same time they are confining and often times misleading. Immortal Technique is a “conscious rapper”, yet one can find countless homophobic and misogynistic lines throughout his albums. Cam’ron is a “gangsta/crack rapper”, and yet his classic tracks “D.R.U.G.S.” and “Sports, Drugs, & Entertainment” both astute commentaries that even Nancy Reagan could have championed in her “Just Say No” crusade. Another problem I have with the “conscious” label is that it immediately strips the music of its aesthetics and style. It removes the craft and art from the music. All to frequently, we as the listener tend to conflate “good message” with “good music”. Fortunately for us all, there exist emcees such as Narcy [The Narcicyst], an Iraqi emcee raised in Canada, who effortlessly weaves aesthetics and message together. It is music whose both form and content leave one feeling enlightened.

Entering the home studio that Yassin Kassem and Mohammed Turek of the rap duo Invincible Voice (I-Voice) have built in the Palestinian Refugee Camp of Bourj el Barajneh gives do-it-yourself (DIY) a whole new meaning. A small bedroom - which on this day was subject to enduring electricity outages - is converted into a base for mixing, producing, songwriting and entertaining the journalists that have started to take an increasing interest in these boys’ story. We enter the dark studio, leaving the door open to let the outside daylight in. Grey sponge sounds-proofs the walls of the ground-floor converted bedroom, and Tupac paraphernalia decorates them. This is one of the first “production houses” inside the camps of Lebanon, and is playing a big role in spreading the rap bug in refugee camps across the country.

One of the first things a (good) transnational activist learns is the practical meaning of solidarity — which, as the latest issue of New York Times Magazine illustrates, is a concept not easily grasped by even the worldliest and most committed of advocates. This week’s installment of the NYT Magazine manages (for the most part) to thoughtfully and contextually explore the plights of Third World women, while examining some of the the hard realities of transnational activism. Nevertheless, the clear subtext of the articles belies the contributors’ apparent commitment to building real and lasting solidarity movements. As journalist Edwin Okong’o points out, the lead feature paints a rather two-dimensional (albeit compassionate) portrait of life in the brutal third world, but shies away from covering the efforts of impactful Third World activists and movements in favor of spotlighting the high-dollar (emphasis on the $) development projects of western nonprofit organizations.

I am too young to have lived through the period where coups and dictatorships were common in Latin America but many of the elders in my community are not and it is their very real and personal stories that have motivated me to do everything I can to support the resistance against the coup.

“Lebanon is beautiful, it is my home… but here, I cannot be free. My view from here is blocked and the Lebanese are asleep to all the beautiful things they have to see.”

My appreciation of Lebanon begins with recognizing its style, its ability to meld renegade culture and art, the behind the scenes political discussions, the sporadic displays of cosmopolitanism amidst mental and physical rubble, and even the excesses of the luxurious jet set that lend to its enduring cool. But there are things about Lebanon that are tainted and easily eclipse the joie de vivre the Lebanese purport to specialize in. The things about this country that frustrate are not simply disruptions to my personal comforts – daily electricity outages, ubiquitously slow Internet, dismal public transport, heavy noise pollution and sticky smog. The things that create more discomfort about Lebanon’s mentality as a society is the blatant segregtion of outsiders.

For those who are not especially politically inclined, there is the enormous, rambunctious Carnaval that is Independence Day. Cars, streets and houses sprout dark green flags. Fairy lights that belie the national power crisis hang in ropes off monuments and shopping plazas. Young men (always men, mind you), high-spirited gaggles, swathes and hordes of them, pile into cars and onto motorbikes and careen down main thoroughfares. It’s a much-needed release.

The idea of leaving this place fills with such sadness. I cannot
imagine trading the sounds of chirping birds for the honking and dust of Dehra Dun. Being here has been such an amazing experience, and in many ways what my idealized version of India was before arriving.

Graffiti in bathroom stalls is usually an exhibit of messy jargon and crude comments and not the most obvious site for serious discussion and advice seeking. In Lebanon, however, stalls in female bathrooms are emerging as the centre for conversation on issues that are too personal for the home, too intimate for friends and too reserved for magazine advice columns. Despite the centrality of the family in Lebanese culture and the importance of peers and a large social network, bathroom stalls seems to be a prominent space for young women to anonymously open up about sexuality, body image and tradition.

We will regularly be presenting a featured artist, writer or performer who is exploring questions of identity and personal narrative through their medium of expression.

The map is your representation. No rigid lines, no defined routes. You direct it on your own account.