Roskilde donated to hip hop centre in Gaza

The Roskilde Festival Charity Society supports young people in one of the world’s hot spots.
The Roskilde Festival Charity Society donates one million Danish kroner (approx. € 135,000) to establishing a hip hop centre in Gaza.

The Gaza Strip has been occupied in the past two years and poverty has escalated. Moreover, the area has recently been hit by a devastating war, and many young people have lost friends and relatives.

Music – and especially hip hop – has become a lifeline for the young people in Gaza. Music and the poetry that hip hop expresses work as a vent through which young people can give way to their frustrations, hopes and dreams in their everyday lives of constant repression and human rights violations.

Much-needed support for Gaza
The donation of one million Danish kroner (approx. € 135,000) is given to the Danish Centre for Culture and Development (DCCD) – an institution under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark whose purpose is to incorporate culture in the Danish development aid.

“With this donation we would like to mark a much-needed support to an area in one of the hot spots of the world, which needs all the help that we in the Western world are able to give. This is a cultural project directed at young people, and it corresponds perfectly with our objects clause while at the same time making a statement,” says Roskilde Festival’s managing director Henrik Rasmussen.

The Roskilde Festival Charity Society’s board chairman Dan Hacke is also pleased with the donation:

“The project is a great example of an initiative that can give young people of Gaza the strength and courage to participate in changing the society they live in,” Dan Hacke states.

Strengthening youth culture
”The hip hop centre will form the frame of a training course in the disciplines of hip hop – concerts, events etc. – and generally strengthen the youth culture in Gaza in a peaceful manner,” says project manager from DCCD, Morten Gøbel Poulsen.

He mentions several concrete initiatives in the hip hop house that are on the drawing board: recording studio, radio, library, practice room, mobile stage for the performers and a number of training courses in which Danish rappers will participate.

The culmination of these training courses will be a hip hop talent show which will follow the ’X-Factor model’ and be transmitted live and the winner will be selected by text voting. There will be two finals – one in Gaza and one on the West Bank – as people are not allowed to leave Gaza at the moment. A hip hop final in Gaza will be of great symbolic and political value.

“The construction of a hip hop centre in Gaza is not an easy task. The political environment is extremely fragile and concerts in public houses are often closed by the authorities. We must take certain safety precautions and we are therefore going to co-operate closely with the UN’s special programme for Palestinian refugees (UNWRA) and its office in Gaza which will secure a more stabile security situation,” Morten Gøbel Poulsen says.

The establishment of the hip hop centre will start autumn 2009.

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