Recife to Ferguson
| Accessible Plain Text Transcript
[GCS] Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educator
and philosopher was born in Recife, where
we are right now.
[News Clip] Crowds gathered across
the United States over the weekend
for more protests in
the wake of George Floyd's killing
in police custody.
[AC] Reflect, act, and
change what is not
working.
[PF] What I want is a world
in which it is easier
for us to Love.
[SS] Critical Pedagogy
meaning another way,
an alternative,
a truly social, theoretical,
philosophical, intellectual,
public discourse on education.
[PF] I am a curious being.
[PF] ...in the struggle against injustice.
[PM]: critical consciousness—
[HG] As a way of getting kids to understand
themselves, their relationship to others,
and what it meant to actively change the world itself.
[PF] It's impossible to think of language
without thinking of ideology and power.
[PF] Here and now fighting for being.
[Protestors] Black Lives Matter!
[AC] Reflect, act, and change what is not working.
[PF] What I want is a world in which it is easier for us to Love.
[News Clip] From New York to Minneapolis, Atlanta to Seattle, healthcare workers take a knee for racial injustice. many crossing from the frontline of a pandemic to the forefront of a national protest.
[PF] Friendship, to be together, to help, to be helped.
[PM] Objects, subjects, questions.
[Protestors] Black Lives Matter!
[PF] Their way of speaking is as beautiful as our way. They have the right to speak like this.
[HG] What does it mean to create the tools where people can be not only critics but cultural producers?
[PF] in the struggle against injustice
[News Clip] Thousands of protesters in the streets
demanding real action on climate change.
[AC] Reflect, act, and change what is not working.
[PF] What I want is a world in which it is easier for us to Love.
[HG] It's impossible for education to be neutral.
There's no such thing as a neutral education.
All education is an introduction to the future.
It's a struggle over what kind of future
you want for young people.
[PF] Why am I here? With whom am I?
With whom I fight? Against whom I fight?
What is my dream?
[PF] Our greatest task
is to make the heaven here.
[SS] And he said that romantic Love
needed to truly be linked
with community
and social Love.
[SS] Radical Love.
[News Clip] A protracted standoff between a major oil company and northern Indigenous American tribes intensified today.
[AC] Reflect, act, and change what is not working.
[PF] What I want is a world in which it is easier for us to Love.
[PF] Know that I am curious.
I was a curious boy.
And I am a curious old man.
My curiosity never stop.
[samba music fades]
[PF] - Paulo Freire
[AC] - Ana Cruz
[SS] - Shirley R. Steinberg
[HG] - Henry Giroux
[PM] - Peter McLaren
Finding Freire through Hip Hop
conscientização – Portuguese, meaning critical consciousness
When I first read Pedagogy of the Oppressed, it changed me. Paulo Freire's (1970) words gave me a language to name the world I was witnessing—systemic racism, settler colonialism, hyper-capitalism—and what bell hooks calls imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Freire helped me see how oppression dehumanizes everyone, including those who benefit from it. That insight called me more deeply into the work of liberation: as a teacher, poet, and educational researcher. It also affirmed a truth I was just beginning to understand—that education is inherently political and deeply connected to our "ontological vocation to be more fully human" (Freire, 1970, p. 70).
Freire's concept of radical love, rooted in Catholic liberation theology (Gutiérrez, 1973), became a pedagogical ethos for me. With that grounding, I felt compelled to sample critical pedagogy, and remix it through the aesthetics and sensibilities of Hip Hop, a culture that influenced so much of my life as I grew up outside New York City. I didn't arrive at Freire through my academic journey as a graduate student. I came to critical pedagogy through Hip Hop. My first encounter with Freire was at Hip Hop in the Heartland, a summer teacher conference in Wisconsin, where a theater educator facilitated a Theater of the Oppressed (Boal, 1979) workshop. That experience inspired me to read as many critical theorists as possible, including scholars and public intellectuals like Henry Giroux, Peter McLaren, Shirley Steinberg, Ana Cruz, and Joe Kincheloe—all of whom are sampled here. These scholars helped shape my identity as a public-school teacher committed to education as a form of liberation.
Critical Literacy as Production and Performance
Paulo Freire and Donaldo Macedo (1987) insisted that "reading the world always precedes reading the word, and reading the word implies continually reading the world" (p. 23). When my students and I analyzed songs and poems like "The Message" (Grandmaster Flash), "U.N.I.T.Y." (Queen Latifah), or "List of Demands" (Saul Williams), we engaged in complex readings of the world that offered social commentary delivered through the poetics of the breakbeat (Coval et al., 2015). Inspired by Nuyorican poetry slam traditions (Algarín & Holman, 1994), we analyzed these texts, but also became critical producers of new texts as students composed their own performance poems for the stage. Our classroom became a site of participatory and performative literacy development that cultivated critical consciousness through the spoken word. It became a site of what Antwi A. Akom (2009) called Critical Hip Hop Pedagogy.
A Sonic Homage to Paulo Freire and the Sounds of Brasil
This track, "Recife to Ferguson," is my homage to Freire. I wanted to bring his voice into direct conversation with the sonic aesthetics of Hip Hop, situating him (literally and metaphorically) in dialogue with other critical scholars, protest chants, and contemporary global events. In the track, you'll hear samples from #BlackLivesMatter protests, the Dakota Access Pipeline resistance, and media coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. You'll also hear the voices of critical theorists layered over breakbeats and samba rhythms.
The music draws on a Brazilian palette of sounds and textures as a way to honor Freire's homeland. I made the beat using samba-influenced percussion and a lead melody sampled from a cavaquinho—a small, four-string instrument originating in Portugal. The hook features chopped up vocals from a Brazilian folksinger, reconfigured into a new musical sentence. These aesthetic choices are part of an intentional sonic methodology, a transnational homage, and an affirmation of Hip Hop's Afro-diasporic lineage.
The production itself was a praxis for me—
a praxis of critical music production /
a sonic Hip Hop praxis /
reminding me always to...
"Reflect, act, and change what is not working."
—Ana Cruz
