Uprising: Hip Hop & The LA Riots

Who has seen our lectures knows that Design as Politics is -just as Reyner Banham and Charles Jencks- fascinated by Los Angeles. The movies, the glamour, its rap culture and of course the Riots.

Now 20 years after the violent uprising that was triggered by the savage beating of Rodney King, filmmaker and former CNN staffer Mark Ford (known from his doc about N.W.A.) released the movie Uprising: Hip Hop & the LA Riots. The film –narrated by the one and only Snoop Dogg- revisits the riots in gripping detail and documents how hip hop forecasted –some say ignited– the worst civil unrest of the 20th century. It contains interviews with rappers, musicians, police officers and victims who lived through the 1992 riots and shows never-before-heard stories from Rodney King, John Singleton, Too Short, Big Boy, Sir Jinx, and even the L.A. Four. Check the trailer, but careful, it’s shocking.

Ill Manors

“I genuinely want to change things. This is just the first step. Let me make my point first and raise the issue, if anybody wants to talk to me about how I think we can change these things I’m ready.”

With this statement the British rapper Plan B released his latest track ill manors, persuading the audience that this is not about commerce. This is the real thing! For the guardian reason to honor it with the title ‘greatest British protest song in years’. For lovers of political music -like us- almost to good to be true.

The track, basted on Peter Fox’s Alles Neu, reflects the raging unease around the London riots of last summer, life on a council estate, the closure of community centers and the adverse impact of the 2012 Olympics on London’s poor. It has much in common with Public Enemy or the Clash. Music that addresses a riot and sound like a riot. How Plan B said: The song needs to get under people’s skin. Just like those horrible pictures we see on cigarette packets that are designed to shock us into being aware of our actions.”

The song is part of a bigger project. An album and film, both called Ill Manors, are set to follow, along with plans for social activism. Oi!

It’s procrastinate-o-clock again! This time, the most glamorous riot of them all: the Rodney King riots. Los Angeles, 1992. Lots of anger. Lots of guns. Lots of helicopters and cameras. And gangster rap.

Ah, Los Angeles. Design as Politics loves it, admittedly because Reyner Banham does too. His book about the city is amazing, but this is even better: watching Banham himself cruise through town for about an hour is indeed an hour well spent. But that’s enough reality for now: more than anything Los Angeles is a place of myth and media and fiction. The city of course stars in about half a million movies – this one is great because it has Al Pacino, Robert de Niro and lots of violence. Else, try Blade Runner. Interestingly, Hollywood has also produced quite a few movies in which Los Angeles gets destroyed completely.

Then, the riots. This is what started it. Then this happened – for about a week. Naturally, there is an incredible amount of footage from the riots: do pay attention to the awesomeness of 90′s fashion and hair styles. Only in LA do looters care about their appearance. Also, this oddity of a documentary is an interesting watch if you can sit through the horrific starting credits.

Lastly, there is music. Lots of it. And a white, British reporter talking about LA’s gang culture in 2008.

Note for those who want to attend the lecture: tomorrow’s and next week’s lecture will be held at 10:45, in lecture hall C!

Yes! Another lecture! And more tips on how to waste time on the youtubes! This week: the 1985 Broadwater Farm riot in London. Extra interesting because of the recent London riots – about which much, much more very soon. For now, lots of grainy VHS-format fun below.

The first half of the 80′s were somewhat of a riotous period in the UK: the Broadwater Farm incidents were part of a larger series of uprisings. See for instance John Akomfrah’s Handsworth Songs (part 1,2,3,4), documenting racial tensions leading up to a series of riots in Handsworth, Birmingham (Wouter Vanstiphout’s favourite reggae band published an album about Handsworth, by the way). Also, Tom Cordell made a beautiful documentary on London and its planning history, but it is rather hard to find – here’s the trailer. For even more on London’s cityscape, we kindly refer you to Johnny Rotten.

But in Broadwater Farm, a police officer was murdered by the mob – something that hadn’t happened in more than a century. Everybody’s favourite documentary manufacturer – the BBC – reconstructed the how, where and who (or, in this case, who not) twice: click here and here (watchable in the UK only, unfortunately). Also, Broadwater Farm itself also has a devoted reggae track from the 80′s – and a number of, ehm, more contemporary beat poets, too. For more on the estate itself, see the BF Community Centre website.

For a comparison between 1985 and 2011, see this article in the Telegraph.

Picture by Cromacom

This post accompanies part two of the Blame the Architect lecture series. This week we’ll discuss the 1967 Race Riots in Detroit; extra material for those who are interested or otherwise unoccupied can be found below.

Firstly, please watch this before you do anything else Detroit-related: it’s made by Julien Temple and it’s an absolutely brilliant (8.0 says IMDB)  portrait of present-day Detroit. Yes, that’s a dodgy looking Russian website we refer you to, but unfortunately the documentary is pretty hard to find (or buy, for that matter). For those who like their documentaries sponsored by a shoe brand and featuring celebrities-through-self-mutilation, Palladium had Johnny Knoxville walk around some ruins actually make a very interesting portrait of the city. And this looks interesting too.

Then there is this gem of public broadcasting: Detroit on the Move has mayor Jerome Cavanagh paint a bright and prosperous future for the city of Detroit, just two years before the riots would tear the city apart.

On a lighter note though, besides urban decline and violence Detroit also means cars and music of course. And more music. And even more music. And some more cars (caution: Australian accents). O, and great songs too. The Supremes were born here, by the way –  and Eddie Murphy’s claymation series the PJ’s was set there as well.

If you ever feel misunderstood by a brother from the west or east side then maybe this will help.

Although age (and marrying an established Der Spiegel-heiress perhaps) did slightly mellow down former Sex Pistols frontman Johnny Rotten, he’s still frustrated and engaged enough to verbally assault London’s modern architecture from the top of a tourist bus. Wielding a microphone (always his weapon of choice) and wearing something he himself  thinks is even worse than most of the glass office blocks he encounters on his tour, he manages to do what he has been doing for a very long time: delivering a surprisingly interesting message in between curse words, biting cynicism and a lot of cigarettes: “every social unrest really is down to an architect.”

And then , suddenly, his Wikipedia entry: “since leaving the Sex Pistols he has made his private fortune through property development.” Fascinating. He himself denies it, though…