Join The Public Square at IHC and the University of Hip Hop at the Southwest Youth Collaborative for a special mural dedication and discussion of youth liberation with the artists and the community!
Performers and presenters include:
The Deck Boyz come to you from 63rd & Albany in the Chicago Lawn neighborhood of southwest Chicago. Young mcees Jessie “Sin” Belton and Jenkins “Jinx” Cooper perform original music on the struggles of life in the hood and the global root causes of community issues including drugs, child neglect, poverty, and gentrification. They are also leaders of Generation Y, a youth activist organization out of the Southwest Youth Collaborative.
Gihad Ali is an accomplished spoken word artist who started performing at the first ever Cafe Intifada, co-sponsored by the Southwest Youth Collaborative & the Arab American Action Network in 2002. She has performed at the Chicago Cultural Center, Cafe Teatro Batey Urbano, HotHouse, DePaul and Columbia College. Ali’s poem, “Eye to Eye,” became the basis for a #1 hit single for European Hip-Hop/R&B group Outlandish, and they used the poem as the lyrics for the song “Look Into My Eyes,” which is about the Palestinian struggle. The daughter of Palestinian refugees, she is currently studying sociology and Spanish for her Masters degree at DePaul University where her work focuses on social inequities and civil liberties.
Mario Gonzalez, Jr. was born in Chicago’s Lincoln Park/Old Town neighborhood and was pushed out by gentrification at age of 11. He was then raised in Little Village studying murals in Pilsen/La Villita, painting graffiti along the Chicago Transit Authority Douglas Line, and studying architectural drawing at DeLaSalle High School. Gonzalez is a direct descendant of the subway movement of the 80s, received a scholarship to the School of the Art Institute, and studied the Chicano muralists of the 70s. Gonzalez began working with children from the late 80s until today helping the Chicago Urban Reniassance express themselves on a city-wide and national level.
Veteran rapper/producer Ang13 says “a lot of people still think girls can’t rap.” One of the city’s most respected MCs for the past decade, she has gone from break-dancer, to graffiti writer, to emcee/producer. She still keeps her hand in every aspect of hip-hop, but music is the area in which she is most creative. She’s received accolades in magazines such as The Source where she was named one of the underground’s “best kept secrets.”
This event is co-sponsored by the Southwest Youth Collaborative.
This event is part of The Public Square at the IHC’s Know More: Conversations That Matter series. The Know More series is designed to bridge the gap between the arts and social issues that are of current concern to Chicago’s Englewood and Humboldt Park communities. It is made possible by a grant from The Joyce Foundation. Programming for Know More has included visits from hip hop scholar Jeff Chang; Africana Studies scholar William Santiago-Valles; journalist Laura Washington; performer Will Power; and poet Elizabeth Alexander.
For more information, please call 312.422.5580.