Know the Past, Interpret the Present, Shape the Future

BSMG, the collective of Black German hip-hop artists Megaloh, Ghanaian Stallion, Musa, and Amewu, explore the history, socio-politics, and culture of hip-hop in a workshop, panel discussion, and evening concert. Together with a number of guests—Afrob, Aisha Camara, Aisha Vibes, Albi X, Die P, and Mortel—they discuss the subculture that emerged in the 1970s from diverse influences in the Bronx in New York that has since influenced the whole world and conquered the biggest music markets.

The genesis of hip-hop can be seen as an expression of the freedom and self-determination of a group of people who have been marginalized for centuries, deeply rooted in the Black civil rights movement in the USA, against the backdrop of centuries of enslavement, and ongoing discrimination and violence. When this genesis of hip-hop faces the white German dominant society, which is barely aware of its colonial crimes on the African continent and its long history of migration, the question inevitably arises as to whether such a culture, imported to Germany, can be the same at all.

‘Fremd im eigenen Land,’ released in 1992 by Advanced Chemistry, is considered the birth of German hip-hop: a song that combines socially critical lyrics with a forceful beat and addresses the experiences of migrants in Germany. Torch, Linguist, and Toni-L, the three rappers from Advanced Chemistry, have Haitian, Ghanaian, and Italian roots. However, the first rappers to celebrate commercial success in Germany were white middle-class kids from Stuttgart. ‘Die da’ by Die Fantastischen Vier became a radio hit and took German rap to the charts for the first time. In the wider perception, this music is far  from the lives of marginalised and economically disadvantaged minorities who use hip-hop as an outlet to document their everyday lives and channel their frustrations.

Brothers Keepers, an initiative of Black artists in Germany founded in 2000 in response to the killing of Alberto Adriano, who was murdered by three neo-Nazis in Dessau, denounces anti-Black racism with music releases, concerts, and other actions. For the first time, it gained greater attention for Black protagonists, but was also met with rejection and a lack of understanding in society at large. It was only with the releases by the record label Aggro Berlin in the mid-2000s that street rap became commercially successful in Germany. Since then, more and more protagonists with Kurdish, Turkish, and Arabic roots have been present in German rap. They incorporate their cultural heritage and stories of migration and marginalization into the further development of the music. Successful Black artists, who are central protagonists of the scene in countries with a rich hip-hop culture such as France or England, tend to be the exception in German rap, even if the development of recent years seems comparatively positive in this respect, with successful artists such as Pajel, Luciano, and reezy.

In 2017, a collective of Black artists finally addressed the reappraisal of German colonial history in rap for the first time: BSMG’s album Platz an der Sonne replaces the white, Eurocentric interpretation with an African-diasporic narrative. BSMG do not see themselves as a protest movement, but as an alliance for self-interpretation and self-determination, for a connection between (West) African roots and the milieu in Germany, for their own localisation between the continents of Africa, Europe, and America and the associated search for identity, paired with a critical awareness and a well-founded examination of colonial history.

Platz an der Sonne with its unique perspective—an Afrocentric view of colonial developments from the German music scene—forms the basis of Know the Past, Interpret the Present, Shape the Future. Hip-Hop—Black Culture in Germany, part of the opening of the exhibition Forgive Us Our Trespasses / Vergib uns unsere Schuld, for which key protagonists from the history of German hip-hop come together to exchange ideas, share their insights and experiences, and celebrate this special musical culture together.