Originally published at ABC Arts Online, September 2014
Chuck D of Public Enemy once famously said, during the
group's 80s pomp, that rap was the "CNN of the ghetto". His words
were a reference to his pioneering crew's music, and that of others, being both
a voice and a source of cultural context for the alienated and disadvantaged in
black communities in America and beyond. This can also be interpreted as a
damning indictment of mainstream news, preoccupied with both economic power and
frivolity, and unconcerned with minorities and injustice and, therefore some
might say, the reality of western, capitalist society. Hip-hop had to be the
CNN of the ghetto, as the actual CNN and its ilk were remote and disinterested.
The team behind Melbourne-based Juice Rap News is far
removed from Public Enemy in countless ways, but they too recognise that
mainstream news has become an intellectually moribund, dumbed-down expression
of corporate interests and conservatism, peddled in a fragmented way and reduced
to fit within a soundbite culture and the demands of advertising.
Juice Rap News, a collaboration between historian and author
Giordano Nanni and spoken word poet Hugo Farrant, is a series of monthly
YouTube videos, each tackling a particular current affair, where the 'news' is
rapped. Dripping with satire and an anarchic, gleeful sense of irreverence, the
show is a comic enterprise designed to stimulate and challenge in a way the
majority of news outlets cannot, through a medium that offers a unique energy
and conciseness. Episodes are rarely longer than seven minutes.
"If you look at a political musician like Bob
Dylan," says rapper Farrant, "the amount of information he gets
across in 'Hurricane' for example takes him about eight minutes. In a rap song
that would be done in three minutes and it would kick way more ass."
Nanni, of Italian origin, and Farrant, who grew up in
Dorset, UK met in 2008, with the first episode appearing in October 2009.
Nanni, a part-time academic at the University of Melbourne, had been pondering
such a project for some time in the wake of being wowed by the potential of
YouTube.
"By 2007 it was evident that the internet had lived up
to and exceeded all expectations in terms of revolutionising the way we learn
and share information," says Nanni. "For me, this was a process of
revelations of almost biblical proportions. It became apparent that the next
step was to contribute to it by taking part and creating and uploading
meaningful content. I'd always wanted to do a kind of journalistic endeavour
and comment on current affairs, but not in a traditional way."
"It wasn't until I met Hugo that I saw there was huge
potential there because he's such a master of words and rhyme, so the idea
became plausible from a practical perspective. I had a lot of ideas relating to
content and it was Hugo who brought the talent in terms of form."
Farrant adds, "We have a shared love of comedy,
especially with a political bent, so we bonded over people like George Carlin
and Bill Hicks, the greats of conscious humour."
To say that Nanni is the project's conscience and Farrant
its face and voice is probably reductive: Nanni portrays one of the show's most
entertaining characters in Australian 'bogan' Ken Oathcarn, while Farrant is
just as dedicated to the Rap News philosophy, and is engaged and erudite in
conversation. But it's true that each partner provides certain ingredients,
with Nanni generally responsible for establishing the show's mission and tone,
and Farrant an accomplished wordsmith and skilful performer.
As well as Oathcarn, Juice Rap
News features characters Terence Moonseed, the resident eccentric conspiracy
theorist; General Baxter, the crude warmonger representing military and oil
interests, and Brian Washington, a withering take on the typical news anchor of
major news corporations.
The show's anchor is one Robert
Foster (played by Farrant), the show's often-bemused moral centre designed to
represent the 'everyman' perspective. He introduces each episode and topic, and
gives an impassioned summary in conclusion in a more earnest and sincere style,
which the pair refers to as 'the juice'.
The show's guiding ideology, as
often expressed by Foster, is directed by two main priorities, according to
Nanni. The first is a desire to put news in historical, holistic context and
acknowledge the binding forces that draw seemingly disparate events together,
as well as the potential consequences surrounding today's most contentious
issues, according to historical precedent.
"'History is happening' is
the show's tagline," Nanni says. "Robert Foster seeks to raise our
consciousness about our present moment in order to remind us that we are making
history right now."
"How valuable would it be if
the news, instead of telling us all these seemingly disjointed soundbites of
information about climate change, some protest or some distant war, was more
far-reaching historically, giving us a more universal outlook on the human
project, joining all these dots together and reminding us where we are heading.
Because we can plot where we're heading based on our historical track
record."
The other vital component in the
show's philosophy is one close to Nanni's heart. As the author of two books, The Colonisation of Time: Ritual and
Resistance in the British Empire, and Coranderrk:
We Will Show the Country, he ensures the show is strong on indigenous
issues and colonialism, both in Australia ("the frontlines of the colonial
project") and beyond. "A lot of the issues that affect this country
cannot be understood without taking it back to when the First Fleet arrived.
"But extending that is the
idea of what it means to be indigenous, and at some point so-called
non-indigenous people need to reclaim some sense of indigeneity if we want to
avoid acting like aliens on this planet. We are behaving like aliens rather
than natives, doing the kinds of things to this planet we picture aliens doing
to foreign planets: ravaging, destroying and trashing them before moving on to
a new planet – as we are already planning to do."
Though every episode contains excoriating lampooning and
lambasting of a variety of figures and institutions, some are more spectacular
than others. Memorably, Farrant provides an extraordinary turn as Hillary
Clinton in episode six, on the subject of 'Cablegate', while Nanni's
performance as Oathcarn in episode 11, about Australia Day, sees him lead a
performance of the wickedly not-so-absurd song, 'Australia Yeah C***'.
But one episode that aired in 2013 attracted mainstream,
international attention for Juice Rap News. Prior to the Australian federal
election, a video appeared that depicted Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd and Tony
Abbott as mad despots in a violent Game
Of Thrones-style grab for power. Not only that, with Julian Assange running
for the Victorian Senate with the Wikileaks Party, Nanni and Farrant managed to
persuade him to don a singlet and wig, and perform a re-written version of John
Farnham's 'You’re The Voice'. The appearance came about by Nanni visiting
Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and undertaking a 13-hour shoot
that went on until 3am, in the back of the embassy in a room with a green
screen set up for Assange's interviews. "He's a perfect Rap News
candidate: he's a serious guy with a serious mission, but give him a chance to
poke fun at himself and show his human side and he'll pull it off really
well," says Nanni.
The video's breathtaking audacity is still striking a year
on, but Assange's cameo was not received well by some major media outlets. One
in particular in Australia mistook Assange's performance, which was widely
reproduced without the context of the rest of the episode, as a campaign video
for his Senate run, and took special offence at how Abbott was depicted (in
Speedos, and declaring some less than complimentary impressions of the
Australian public, to put it mildly).
"All we'd done was exaggerate certain misogynist
comments," says Farrant, "which he's well-known for making in his
political career, in fact you could say our portrayal was rather complimentary,
since we gave Tony the requisite intelligence to construct a joke and sound
funny. But we were accused of putting out misogynist content, which was a bit
of a cheap shot since we were satirising the misogyny of the man himself."
"Its being reported as a campaign video got picked up
in Latin America, and it got re-reported there in the Spanish language press,
which led to the Ecuadorian government sending a chastising letter to Julian
telling him to stop using Ecuadorian property to insult Australian politicians
in campaign videos."
Another groundbreaking episode for the pair came in April of
this year when, after a long period of gathering experience, information and
courage, Juice Rap News covered the Israel-Palestine conflict. Nanni and Farrant
enlisted Palestinian rap group DAM to provide a remarkable contribution, as
well as American author and intellectual Norman Finkelstein. Nanni and Farrant
deliberately weighted the episode towards Palestinian sympathies, in response
to the perceived saturation of pro-Israel coverage in the mainstream media.
Episode 24 also features many of the show's most cutting satirical lines,
including, "Palestinian suicide homes are ramming themselves into peaceful
Israeli bulldozers, " as spoken by anchor Brian Washington.
"Everyone is hearing the Israel lobby-approved version
of this conflict in the nightly news," says Nanni, "so we weren't
going to waste time giving it more air time. Our episode might appear
one-sided, but the dominant narrative is so one-sided already, that we felt it
was our role to mirror it.
"We didn’t touch the Israel-Palestine conflict for a
number of years because we first wanted to establish ourselves and work out a
way of pulling it off well. The last thing we wanted to do was muck it up and
make things worse by not doing justice to this sensitive and little-understood
topic. I really wanted this episode to be bulletproof, and was happy with how
it turned out. "
It should be said that while Farrant and Nanni are
responsible for the vast majority of Juice Rap News' writing and production, a
loyal team is crucial to the project's output, with helpers based in Australia
and overseas assisting with design, animation, props, voiceovers, acting,
make-up and of course the music and beats themselves. Juice Rap News has also
been translated into more than 25 languages by a group of volunteer translators
around the world, leading Farrant to claim, "I believe Robert Foster is
one of the most translated rappers in the history of the genre."
The next stage in their evolution is to reproduce the show
live. After a successful performance at Woodford Folk Festival in 2012/13,
Juice Rap News has three scheduled performances for early next year in
Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne, where Farrant and Nanni will be joined by other
illustrious Melbourne rappers Mantra and Grey Ghost.
The natural home for Juice Rap News remains the internet,
however. And to adapt a phrase from arguably one of the godfathers of political
hip-hop, Gil Scott-Heron, the revolution may not be televised, but its seeds
may yet be found on YouTube.
For more information
about Juice Rap News and to watch episodes, visit https://thejuicemedia.com/.
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