Second, it is not as welcoming to queer or female bodies. First, skateboarding is a straight male dominated activity. One should however ask the question ‘which lives’ as they interrogate the emancipatory nature of skateboarding which should not be overemphasized. Hence for people like Caesar skating almost kills but it saves lives. His research articulates certain characters that stopped skating and started using hard drugs or resorted to crime. The caption corresponds with Berner’s assertion that skating is also a way for skaters to stay out of trouble. We had to put it down for the riders and the culture’. I now attend to the caption on Caesar’s Youtube video in which he writes ‘Skating almost killed us…but truly saved us. Skateboarding also offers a sweet escape for the black skater. As one famous skating quote goes ‘courage is facing your fears’. As one navigates the scary city, they dare it. Such a declaration corresponds well with Berner’s assertion that some skaters feel safer travelling across Johannesburg on a skateboard than on feet. In Caesar’s song, the affective viciousness of the city is contrasted to the bravery of the skater who declares, ‘Concrete jungle I’m a gorilla!’. I liken this act to the aesthetics of skating in which one moves from the ground up and back again and so forth. For Marley one has to pick themselves ‘ from off the ground, yeah In this here concrete jungle (la la-la)’. For Caesar, the skateboard signifies mobility and greatness a minute version of a truck which roves bravely and resiliently across the urban space’s concrete. This discourse of the concrete jungle as a personified monster to be faced also comes out in Ben Caesar’s new hip hop song titled ‘Big Trucks’. Yet almost everywhere in the song, Marley challenges the city asking it ‘I say, what do you got for me, now? Concrete jungle (la la-la) Oh, why won’t you let me be, now? (concrete jungle). The entire song laments the captivity that the city brings to the black subject.
Oh, why won’t you let me be, now? (concrete jungle) I’ve got to pick myself (sweet life) from off the ground, yeah (somewhere, somewhere for me) Won’t someone help me ’cause I (sweet life) It speaks to how the black man experiences the city. Bob Marley’s song titled ‘concrete jungle’ came up. Out of curiosity, I google searched ‘concrete jungle’ to see if anything relevant had been written previously on the subject. Jamming to the song, what stood out to me was the idea of the ‘concrete jungle’ in the chorus. If anything it shows that skate culture is alive in SA.’ ‘What a great coincidence!’ I thought.
#CONCRETE JUNGLE BOB MARLEY MEANING PRO#
Young black people are using skateboarding to familiarize themselves with the scary and dangerous city to tame the city so to speak!Ī few days before the seminar, I had received an email from Ben Caesar a hip-hop artist who in response to the seminar invitation stated that, ’It’s crazy that I’m receiving this mail now because we just dropped a song celebrating skateboarding and the culture featuring Durban pro skater Khule Ngubane. We shot it in Cape Town. ‘We start to see how young people transgress urban spaces, including their very architectures’ he said. Berner emphasized how through skateboarding some urban dwellers move from being victims of the city to reimagining possibilities in the city. Of particular interest was his mention of skateboarding as a means through which some black South Africans turn the concrete urban space into a play space. The presenter Hans Berner shared his ongoing Phd research titled ‘Skateboarding and social inequality in Cape Town and Johannesburg’. I attended a roundtable seminar yesterday. In this piece, I make use of the idea of the concrete jungle and reflect on how skateboarding has become a tool for the (re)imagination and (re) navigation of the urban space. Colonialism and apartheid involved the dispossession of blacks along with their transition from the ‘uncivilized jungle’ to the so called civilized ‘concrete jungle’. These urban spaces are sites of struggle for underprivileged blacks who often have to compete for resources. According to Chibba 64% of South Africans live in the urban areas. South Africa is a highly urbanized space in that ‘the proportion of the total national population living in areas classed as urban’ is higher than those living in areas classed as rural.
I also draw on Ben Caesar’s 2018 song ‘Big Trucks (Feat Cool Air) and Bob Marley’s ‘Concrete Jungle’ accessible on For gangs such as the 20sk8 Gang, skating is a platform for interactions, community development and relationships of potential social change. This article owes much to the ongoing Phd research by Hans Berner (Research fellow and lecturer, Urban Sociology Institute, University of Dortmund) titled ‘Skateboarding and social inequality in Johannesburg and Cape Town’.
0 kommentar(er)
