wine, hip-hop and skateboarding
Skater mtrue had a conversation with mau from nowhere and nowisgood to discover the similarities between natural wines, hip-hop na skateboarding. Chukua kalamu tuingie daro.
bios
MAU FROM NOWHERE: I feel that this is the first time in my life I’ve engaged with a skateboarding scene. My skateboarding history was very isolated. A lot of skaters have started that way and found their community through that. I never really got to that stage but I think skateboarding is one of those things, similar to hip-hop, that has a culture that's universal. It’s a culture that has found its way to so many different pockets of the world. I got introduced to skateboarding through the pop culture around it, in cartoons and stuff which was very centered around this image of punkish white kids. I also met a lot of kids in college who skate and came across it online. I was low-key (high-key) into Odd Future . I remember watching this video of them at the berrics over and over again just because I thought it was so cool and funny. I thought it was so dope, all these niggas skating. I’d kind of follow everyone, like Sage and Nakel Smith, people who were skating as their main thing.
NOWISGOOD: I don’t know what the history of skateboarding is but I do think that the kinds of people who have taken up skateboarding in one form or the other for recreational or professional purposes have a kind of anti-establishmentism in them because it's quite a bold thing to do. Because of the people who are drawn to it, there is a form of anti- establishment or something very individualistic that can’t be copied or put in a box. I think that's very similar to hip-hop or any subculture that became a culture. When I was doing my research for my thesis (Two Grapes in a Pod: The Cultural Similarities Between the Natural Wine and Hip-Hop Movements) a lot of the books were speaking about the subculture of hip-hop and how it was anti-establishment, and how it would bring people to be very individualistic and express themselves, and to kind of defy rules for whatever set boxes they were in.
In my thesis I do compare hip-hop to skateboarding. Hip-hop in its prime as a subculture was MCing, DJing, graffiti, and breakdancing. These were the four elements of hip-hop. The fifth element was the community and the pro blackness that came out of hip-hop. If you think about skateboarding, it's not just about skating. You have this instrument, this deck that is yours. On this deck, at the bottom, people do art, sometimes there's graffiti on it. Sometimes when I’m sited up at The Mall, all the boards on the ground sound a little different. Each skateboard sounds different. Which I think is cool. The elements of skateboarding would then be the deck, how you designed the deck, how you dress. People dress functionally, but in that functionality there's style. That's the same way people dressed when they needed to breakdance. Like there was functionality but there was also style. At some point graffiti was so illegal. New York spent so much money chasing kids who were doing graffiti. The government would paint over the art and pay The New York Times to write about how evil graffiti was. They spent so much energy trying to erase this thing. They had to give up. It was quite anti-black and graffiti was a form of rebellion. The graffiti artists also had to dress in a functional way, like with their hoodies and shoes, so that they could run away from the police. There's different variables, and also things going on in the environment that influence how people dress. They all culminate together to form this street style of hip-hop that's also been translated into skateboarding.
SKATER MTRUE: Halifu Osumare from her book The Africanist Aesthetic in Global Hip-Hop claims that hip-hop originated from Africa. Hip-hop was here through chants, songs, prayers which is the proclamation, energy and intent of the spoken word. Rappers really manifest the life that they want by speaking about it and that's a practice which originated from here. Like rapping about a rich life when you’re not living it is a way of manifesting it. These bars also serve as affirmations to ourselves.
MAU FROM NOWHERE It's self actualising. Rappers use this tool to create a reality and a way of being in the world. The defiance of people who have been marginalised and don’t have a space designated for them in society creates this avenue where they use whatever avenue they can to do their thing. That’s why skaters are so creative using whatever architecture they can find to take up space. Similar to hip-hop, rappers put words where they’re not meant to be and change how words sound. If rappers were too fixated on speaking English in the proper colonial way, they wouldn’t be able to make hip-hop. When you try to write in a way that uses no contractions or no slurring, you create limitations in your flow. It’s gonna sound forced.
NOWISGOOD: One of the foundations of wine is the environment, they call it terroir in France. It's how the land and winemaker speak to each other. If the winemaker is not speaking to the land, treating it well, then the land is not talking back to the winemaker. The expression of the terroir is not going to be shown in the wine. Like the bananas of Uganda and Kenya are not the same. Whatever is in that Ugandan banana is Uganda's Terroir, whatever is in Kenya’s bananas is Kenya's terroir.
SKATER MTRUE: Ugandan skaters have their own terroir. Their environment makes them skate differently. They have super steep ramps and thats what they adapted to. That could look different for another African country. Kenyan’s skate more street because that’s how the culture was formed especially during Uhuru Park days. The environment enables street skating to thrive. Street skating definitely depends on the development of a country’s infrastructure. Environment also includes the people and how they view skateboarding. People are more chill to skateboarders now than before.
MAU FROM NOWHERE: The culture you are from and the musical landscape influences style. In the U.S, East Coast and West Coast rap had very different styles. The West Coast was more gangster rap whereas East Coast didn’t have the same landscape. And in New York rap, the main thing was style. Like Jay-Z was rapping about style and how fresh he was. West Coast stuff like Snoop Dog is bouncy and cruisey, you’re in a city where you’re driving everywhere and your rap style ends up flowing like that. I’ve noticed this for Ghanaian rappers. Ghana is a hectic country and I think it's also Twi, the language, its speed and syllable structure that influence the flow of Ghanaian rappers. I feel like Kiswahili speaking countries are predisposed to music making because of the language. Swahili is poetic, melodic, phonetic. Majority of the words end with a vowel. It’s so much better for rhyming. It's so much more flexible and creative. You can have fun with it.
NOWISGOOD: Since independence we’ve been a very pro free market, pro capitalist, pro driving the economy forward through work and education. As a result we’ve been able to grow fast as a country and have access to a lot of influences and information from outside through accessibility. We got access to the Internet quite fast and quite easily. We are also super entrepreneurial through things like mpesa and people setting up small businesses. Also due to the failure of government and the lack of money and lack of ways to support yourself, people need some extra hustle money to keep afloat. We’ve been a very entrepreneurial country and I think that also manifests in how creatively things have panned out because there haven’t been many opportunities to do work creatively at a professional level. Maybe with skateboarding for example, the way Zamani that was able to create an agreement to have space to skate at The Mall rooftop is part of the entrepreneurial nature of Kenya. You kind of have to find other creative avenues to do your work. That wouldn’t have happened if skateboarding was considered in the urban infrastructure of town. I think Kenyans are quite smart. Sometimes it's also like, we shouldn’t have to be busting our asses but the way that spaces and communities have been created and art has been made has been born out of lack of a lack of infrastructure and a lack of government support. The more that we’re growing as a country and growing at the same pace as the whole world is growing, it's interesting to see how things have manifested.
MAU FROM NOWHERE: Skateboarding is one of the ways to just be without it costing you. The Mall has quite a bit of idle space and individuals are often there seeking community and a way to express themselves in a very organic way. When I was in uni, I knew there were certain parks that were less popular and that's where you’d find the skaters, or people chilling or rapping, it was a space for people looking to find themselves. In Nairobi there's a pressure cooker of thoughts and talent and expression in young people that is now finding its own outlets because there’s been little paths set in place on where to go forward if you have an interest in skateboarding or in music. These scenes have had to manifest organically because there's no other way.
SKATER MTRUE: Skateboarding is young. The innovators are still alive and that's the same with hip-hop. Its influence is felt in such a wide way despite them being young. The future of these things is somehow unimaginable. In the next 500 years it could change radically. The skate industry is still very male and white dominated, which is an unfortunate symptom of its youth, but it’s starting to give more space to people of colour and women. The skate scenes in Africa are really young and there are not so many avenues and industries that exist to support the people who want to do these things and we may be among the first generation to maybe try to figure that out.
NOWISGOOD: Hip-hop is so mainstream right now it’s not even funny. It’s the most listened to genre in the world. There's so much money in hip-hop. This culture that was once a voice and source of community for black people and marginalised people of the world is run by white people in boardrooms. Even in fashion, like supreme taking street fashion and making it expensive and inaccessible, are they skater mtrue? I remember speaking to Marcus J. Moore who wrote the autobiography of Kendrick, The Butterfly Effect. We discussed the commercialisation of hip-hop and he said how he knows a lot of rappers, not necessarily big stage rappers, but rappers who are on the precipice of growing up. They used to do small shows and as they'd keep growing, they'd reach a point where they'd go to a venue or an event, look up and see mainly white people in the crowd. There's something quite counter cultural about skateboarding. We’re living in a capitalist world where things are co-opted to make money and are taken to be cool and given off to the masses, and the masses take up this thing and start doing it, not for their sake but for the clout. A skater mtrue is someone who will not wait for those reasons to skate and still show that skateboarding still attracts people with some sort of defiance to the system. Post thesis and being in the UK where there’s a lot of wine and a lot of natural wine bars, I have been noticing that within this subculture of natural wine that the idea and aesthetic of natural wines and minimal intervention wine has started to be co- opted for capitalist and aesthetic reasons. You’ll find natural wine bars taking on this persona of authenticity but the wines they’re serving are really expensive even if they’re promoting “accessibility”. They look trendy and cool but their spaces are not very friendly which is the opposite of my actual experience at an authentic natural wine bar. I guess its because of capitalism. There is something interesting about Jaba juice and its community. There's Kerby’s juice and Midl East's juice. Both taste very different but they do the same thing. They’re very natural tasting, packaged in glass and are quite sustainable but their aesthetics are quite different in their bottle designs and social media presence. They both do music events. Kerby has Zama sessions with nice live music, art, fashion and guys hanging out. Nod factor is a different experience and vibe but both are centered around Jaba and hip-hop.
SKATER MTRUE: It’s a bit interesting where that intersection between hip-hop and skateboarding happened. Black people started skateboarding in their own way, for their own expression. Most skaters that were pushing the boundaries of skateboarding ended up crossing paths with the evolution of music. Like some Zoo York guys were doing things with Wu Tang. That's when hip-hop and skateboarding merged. As the black skaters increased in numbers, they were able to infiltrate that white boy image of skateboarding. I think it's black people skating that introduced the elements of hip-hop to skateboarding's style. Right now in Nairobi, music and skateboarding are very intertwined. Like we’re mostly skating at The Mall and in the basement is Santuri and The Mist.
The intersection happens because of the counterculture and also because skateboarding attracts certain people who are artistic and like to express themselves. A lot of skaters in the scene are also artists. It's hard to find an artist who doesn’t enjoy different types of expression. The people who don’t resonate with skateboarding must be very conservative.
There have been so many hip-hop music videos that have included skateboarders. Some artists feel authentic with their connection and desire to feature skateboarders in their work, but some others don’t feel very authentic, mostly because we can’t find them within those cultural spots of intersection between skateboarding and the arts.
Collaborations with inauthentic artists also give skaters little to no creative space. Skater’s are often asked to do the bare minimum and the aesthetic of the skateboard and the skateboarder is valued far above what the skater is capable of doing. Even in the editing process, things like cutting the shot before the make. Someone working as a collaborator should want a skater's input and want to learn about the culture rather than assuming that they know how skaters do their things.
In the Refuse Refuge music video there was a certain understanding. Mau was standing on the mkokoteni, engaging with this skate sculpture. The editing was also good, you could see Elijah Kitaka do his trick. Even using two directors, and one of them being Adam Yawe who is a skater to direct the skate scenes must have contributed a lot.
MAU FROM NOWHERE: That’s one of the risks of doing cool shit, that people want to engage with it in some way. Wanting to engage with it isn’t a bad thing because it leads to cool collaborations. It was Marion's idea for the Refuse Refuge video and it made sense to include skateboarders in it. I had spoken to Adam and he does dope work that I wanted to learn more about. Before we made the video we spent four days talking and hanging out. Learning about his process and how he got into skating. To me that's the whole point of why these cultures get attracted to each other–so you can have an exchange.
Ultimately there's also the risk of things getting appropriated by the mainstream where people are only seeing the stylistic element and consuming it. It's a double edged sword, on one hand you want people to get their bag but you also want this culture to grow.
Adam directed the entire skate scene section. It was very much a loose idea, and I felt it would be weird to just add skaters for aesthetic value. The skate scene was a concept based on the song and it's also what the song means, and I feel like it resonates to a degree with part of the ethos of Zamani. Adam had some ideas and I gave him the space to do that. Collaboration only exists when there's mutual input and a respectful dialogue. We both learnt about each other's crafts. He was super open to that and super patient. Before we even got into the nitty gritty of what the scene is going to look like, we just wanted to understand each other and see if it could even work. Sometimes you can go into a cool scene or meet a cool artist but if it doesn’t feel genuine maybe it isn’t the right time. The video came out a year later than it was supposed to but it was much better for it.