By Corinne Love
By Corinne Love
Mark this on your calendar folks: the annual spoken word-underground hip hop event the “End-Dependence” tour is coming to the Riverside City College campus.
Also know as the Southwest Indigenous Hip Hop Tour, the tour will be presented courtesy of M.E.Ch.A. de RCC in conjunction with M.E.Ch. A. de UCR, at the Aguilar Patio on Oct. 26 from 3-5 p.m.
Some of the performers scheduled to appear are Olmeca, El Vuh, and Mark Gonzalez.
The tour, which is held every year, is an organization of performers who wish to showcase hip hop as a medium of expression with an emphasis on individual experience.
The chief organizer of this year’s “End-Dependence” tour is Olmeca, a seven year veteran of the underground hip hop scene in Los Angeles.
Olmeca’s bilingual rapping and focused lyrical content has developed critical praise as well as a steady fan base.
Underground hip hop group El Vuh has worked alongside 2Mex, Aztlan Nation and Quinto Sol.
El Vuh delivers knowledge and insight through language layered over hip hop flavored production.
A member of the original line up for the “End-Dependence” tour, Mark Gonzales is the co-founder of the Civil Writes Project and co-founder of the Non-Prophet Poets.
This tours focus is a different image than the media’s current and inaccurate portrayal of hip hop as a musical form devoted to product placement and a demeaning collective mind.
The “End-Dependence” tour hopes to challenge and to change at least some of the negative stereotypes, though, by visiting colleges and community venues.
The tours primary focus is to influence and redefine how hip hop is seen, heard, and felt.
The philosophy could be viewed as using art to change and break down a current art form, helping to change minds in the process.
“End-Dependence” was created by a multitude of artists with one common component: the desire to help eliminate the boundaries that exist between varying ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds and create new ways of looking at all cultures as one.
Past shows have included artists such as poet/activist Johnny Chavarria, writer and journalist Maya Chinchilla, Adriel Luis, Cesar A. Cruz, and Charles “Bomani” Watson.
The first “End-Dependence” tour visited eleven cities across California and spotlighted venues at UC Davis, UC Berkeley and Cal State Fullerton. This tour will do the same with expanded locations to expand horizons.
The tour shows promise of showing unity, awareness and diversity.
