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In Mali, they graffiti “50 Cent” on red-brown walls of concrete and tan-yellow huts of mud.  Children battle dance in court yards between water wells and wire-woven chairs, popping and locking, and walking in circles on their hands.  Markets sell t-shirts and pants with emblazoned faces of Biggie and ‘Pac.  Many Malians listen to American rap on cell phones and boom boxes and in glitzy dance clubs. This is, for the most part, Hot 97, BET Countdown-type rap music. The songs with the beats that make you wanna shake it.  Shaking it is fairly is universal.   But there is Malian rap too.

In my three months living in Mali in 2008, I heard as much homegrown rap (and rap from neighboring West African countries) as I heard of the former kind.  Malian rap tends to be more political.  It discusses homelessness, youth issues, government, AIDS, unemployment, and cultural pride.  Rappers call it an instrument for information. Education. A weapon to fight injustice.

And this is hip-hop in its truest form.  The best way to determine (or prove, some might argue) the essence of hip-hop, is to examine the ways in which it manifests in other countries.  Consistently, it works as a tool for change, just as it originally did for marginalized youth in New York City’s South Bronx.  It emerges from a need for said change.  And although this motivation for rap music may have relatively faded in the US, we can see it when we look at just about any other country with a bourgeoning hip-hop scene.

In France, immigrant rappers protest le racisme.

In Senegal, corrupt elections.

In Palestine, occupation.

In Morocco, rappers write songs to preserve their cultural history and to speak out against poverty and social ills.

In Brazil, hip-hoppers unite to combat racism, poverty, and street violence.

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Global Feminism in the News is a monthly column discussing recurring themes in international news stories concerning women. This month we will discuss rape in the news.

I decided over a month ago that September’s article would discuss rape in the news. In late July, three very different stories of rape emerged in the international news. In the United States, an eight year old Liberian girl living in Arizona was gang raped and consequently disowned by her parents. (This story was discussed in greater detail in fellow GAB author Emily’s July 27th post.) The quarterback of Pittsburgh’s professional football team, the Steeler’s, Ben Roethlisberger, was accused of raping an employee of a hotel where he stayed last year. The woman had not previously filed a police report, but was seeking damages in civil court. On a popular Australian radio show, a young girl mentioned, live on the air, that she had been raped at age 12. Her mother had called into the station to force her daughter to participate in the “Lie Detector” segment of the show in order to interrogate her about her sexual behavior.

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A women’s rights law, adopted by parliament in Mali last month, has just been blocked by the President in order to preserve national unity after major outcries.  The law, if enacted, would’ve given women in Mali monumental rights, including equal rights in marriage and better inheritance rights for women and children born out of wedlock.

Since it was introduced last month, the law has been protested by scads of people, including

If she were an "intellectual," would she demand more rights?

women, in this majority-Muslim nation.  They say the new rights work against the Koran and the traditional cultural norms in Mali.

What’s interesting about the objections on the bill — particularly the part that extended new rights to women in marriage, who under the current law must “obey” their husband — is the leading role that some women themselves took.  Read the rest of this entry →