In Belize the term hip-hop may be used to just generally refer to rap music but worldwide it is a movement and a universal language for youth culture. And that language speaks clearly through a documentary on hip-hop in Cuba. It is called “Inventos – Hip Hop Cubano” – and it was produced by a pair of brothers from California, Eli and Khalil Jacobs- Fantauzzi. It premiered this evening in Belize City at 4 for high school students – and another showing is scheduled to start at 7 at the Bliss. Kahlil Jacobs-Fantauzzi told us what it’s about.
Kahlil Jacobs-Fantauzzi,
“The main idea behind the documentary, I was a young kid growing up in California and there’s not a lot of Puerto Ricans, I consider myself an Afro-Latino and so they were asking me if I was a black Mexican or where
my family is from or where it fits. So I started to study about my own culture and in studying my own culture I learnt the significance of the political movements in the Caribbean. I was highly inspired by Che Guevara and Fidel Castro and the work that they did to bring change and a revolution to the community and so that’s what expired me to go.
My hope is that this documentary kind of strikes a cord with the community here in Belize because this is also a place where you see the African Diaspora very strongly represented. This film is for young people to kind of get inspired.
What they are doing in Cuba they are not doing in any other part of the world. The young kids write their lyrics and the level and sense of education they have and their understanding of the world is completely evidence in this film and so I hope the young people here in Belize get inspired. I hope older folks come out and see that hip-hop is not just a negative thing, that the mainstream media tries to portray hip hop as. Definitely hip-hop has its negative elements – whether it is the drugs, the violence, the sex – but there is another side to that that young people are using hip-hop to express themselves and to show that they have a voice – that needs to be heard as well.”
The group’s next project is about hip hop in the West African country of Ghana.
