zimcity.com

I am Nickolson Tinashe Hlapo a.k.a Nicko Tee. I am a dancehall artist age 22. I started music at a tender age but i never knew that i can b a musican coz i always thought I am a better footballer. I wrote this song coz that's where I was born. It's the mocked place that produces, apart from tabloid headlines, most emperorz in all kinds of industries in Zimbabwe.

If you like check out http://www.hiphop-profile.com/zimtracs for more tracks and clips from Zim.
Contact: nickotee@zimcity.com

In case you don't know what "Mbare" is about:

Mbare is a high-density southern suburb of Harare, Zimbabwe. It is home to one of the country's largest soccer team, Dynamos, also known to its fans as "Dembare." It was the first high-density suburb (township), being established in 1907. At that time, it was located near the city cemetery, sewage works, and abattoir. It was originally called Harare (Hariri) Township, a name later on used for the capital city itself. Harare is a corruption of Haarari, meaning 'One who never sleeps'.

Mbare's most famous attraction is the large food and vegetable market, Zimbabwe's busiest bus station and a second-hand clothing market.

Significant portions of Mbare were destroyed during the operation Murambatsvina, locally nick-named "tsunami", in May 2005. Mbare's features include Rufaro stadium as well as Stodart hall, which houses bodies of state veterans ahead of burial.

a preston rolls video

The festival Of Arts (HIFA) in conjunction with the British Council saw the coming of Hakeem Onibudo’s UK based
hip-hop dance crew , who graced the streets of Mbare before the opening of the show to check out and educate
local talent.

The group, made up of five members of different cultures and backgrounds joint by their love and passion for hip-
hop, enjoyed watching the Zimcity Crew perform to cheers of the crowd.

Opening day of HIFA (26th of April) also saw the curtains rise at the Seven Arts Theatre as Hakeem and his crew
put up their first act in the festival, hip-hop as poetry which interprets, story-tells and inspires. It was a full house,
the group, as well as the act ‘Hip-hop Is In Me’, was well received with the crowd participating throughout the show.

The crew had two performances in the week long festival and after their second performance on Wednesday 27th of
April, they still had the time to host a short seminar at the National Ballet Company which was open to the public.
People learnt about hip-hop and also got to feel it through crumping and poping.

The ZimCity team invited Hakeem and his crew to ’The Basement’ where upcoming hip-hop crews battled and shared
their views on hip-hop dance. Unfortunate they had to leave Harare before the festival ended to go back to the UK. However, they did leave people in Mbare and elsewhere united in love, understanding and respect of hip-hop.
HIP-HOP IS IN ME TOO!!

Kimberly

Alex Sturrock’s show ‘No Comfort‘ at The New Gallery in Peckham. It’s finished now and went even better than expected. We chatted with him about what it was like to curate a photography exhibition whose exhibits were being beamed in live from mobile phones strewn across the world. Click through if you want to see Kabul’s skate scene, photos shot by children from Zimbabwe’s destitute townships and a Canadian man who tunnels in rubbish dumps for antique glass bottles.

Photo: Ben Depp; Port-Au-Prince, Haiti

VICE: Can you explain what the show was all about?
Alex Sturrock: Guy Gormley asked me if I wanted to do something for Brickhouse and I kept thinking of ways to include mobile phone photos, as I really like how little control you have over how they come out. They are very different to pictures you see in mainstream media, they don’t have that gloss that can make pictures seem so unreal. Guy and I chatted about making the exhibition “live” in someway and I thought it would be cool if it started as blank walls and the content came in as it went on.

How did you get in contact with all these people?
I just spent a long time emailing people. When I was chatting to a photographer who was involved named Preston Rolls in Zimbabwe, he told me he showed my emails and website to all the kids and they were really excited. After I heard that I couldn’t go back. Suddenly it felt like a responsibility and the main reason to get the show working was to give them somewhere to show their pictures.

Photo: Preston Rolls; Mufakose, Harare, Zimbabwe

How did it work, technically speaking?
They sent pictures from their phones, when they could – the internet coverage in some of these places isn’t great. The images then went to a computer in the ceiling of the gallery which had a rolling slideshow and when a new image came in it was added to the end of the show, so each story grew chronologically.

Photo: Leslie Knott; Kabul, Afghanistan


What were the main stories that came in?
Preston Rolls sent in images from Zimbabwe’s Mufakose township, where HIV is at 50 per cent, average life expectancy is around 35 years and 50 per cent of the children are orphans. We had Ben Depp in Port au Prince, Haiti, where an IDP [Internationally Displaced Person] Camp named CR5 is under threat of forced eviction: The landlord has armed men come threaten the camp residents. Hala Al Safadi in Gaza; Jake Simkin, Leslie Knott and Elliot Woods in Kabul; and Ian Willms in Don Valley, Toronto, Canada.

What was the story there?
A man called Don lives on an old garbage dump, To pay for food and supplies, he digs up antique bottles and sells them to collectors. The tunnels he digs go deep underground and according to Don there have been people buried alive in similar holes around the dump.

Photo: Ian Willms; Toronto, Canada


Grim…
Yeah, although I think those pictures were really beautiful actually. They showed that as long as your content’s good, you can shoot photos with anything.

What about the Kabul stories?
They offered something different. They’re images from places we see so much negative stuff written about, yet they are really warm stories, the skaters in Kabul are an amazing set and they look like they are having a great time in the face of a pretty fucked up situation. The images from Zimbabwe are really intimate, they’re shot by the kids and young people of the area. You can’t take pictures like that unless you are part of a community, I think its a rare insight.

Photo: Jake Simkin; Kabul, Afghanistan

Also I should say a big thanks to Nan Goldin, for a while it really looked like this was not going to happen, but when I explained it to Nan and she liked the idea, she basically stepped in and saved the whole thing.


by BRUNO BAYLEY taken from Viceland

slide show and article telegraph.co.uk

All 56 Mufakose slides here