Lost in Translation

Talk: with Susanne Stemmler and Kathrin Schätzle
Cipher: with Noureddine Ben Rejeb (Haus der Kulturen der Welt), Kathrin Schätzle, (Goethe Institut, München), Malikah (MC, Beirut), OG Sacred (MC, Manila), Diana Avella (MC, Bogotá), MC Kah (MC, Nairobi), Mad Maxamom (MC, Hamburg)
Hosts: Björn Döring (Berlin Music Week, Berlin), Stephan Szillus (Juice, Berlin)

A cypher with freestyle reports from the workshops of Translating Hip Hop: what kind of stories lie behind the translations of the lyrics? What was taken over by the MCs, what did change and why? What obstacles had to be overcome during translation, what common ground did they find? The MCs speak and rap about their first meetings in Bogotá, Beirut, Manila and Nairobi.

Participants

Diana Avella has been a leading member of the Colombian hip hop scene for eleven years now. She is currently promoting her latest CD “Naci Mujer”, which is the result of an international project with artists from the Netherlands and Argentina.

Björn Döring has been working as a freelance music journalist and event project manager since 1996.

Mad Max (a.k.a. Mad Maxamom) is a musician and actor. He has been living and working as a designer in Hamburg since 2000. Due to his aversion to digital recording, he dislikes writing lyrics, preferring instead to improvise live.

Malikah first hit the Lebanese Hip Hop scene at the age of 16, when she was signed to EMI Arabia after winning a hip hop competition and appearing on the Lebanese television show “Zaven”. Malikah raps in Arabic, English, and French, and has honed her skills as an RnB and dance vocalist over the last 5 years.

In 2001 Mcee Kah launched his solo career and started working on his debut album simultaneously working for a community project in Dandora. He calls his work edutainment, where rap is entertaining poetry which makes you think and open up the issues that blanket our small world.

OG Sacred The rapper from Manila is part of the group Tondo Tribe.

Noureddine Ben Redjeb works as coordinator for concerts for the Haus der Kulturen der Welt.

Susanne Stemmler holds a PhD in literature. She was Fellow of the German Research Foundation at the Center for Metropolitan Studies in Berlin/New York and worked on “Hip-hop. The transcultural aesthetics of performance” for which she conducted fieldwork in the Bronx and Harlem.

Kathrin Schätzle studied sociology in Munich. She has been part of the music division of the Goethe-Institut since 2009, where she is in charge of “popular music” – from Jazz to Techno. She lives and works in Munich.

Stephan Szillus has studied law and is now in the music business for 10 years. He was appointed editor-in-chief of JUICE MAGAZINE and wrote for SPEX MAGAZINE.