The Freedom Warriors Kollective:radical Music shaking forms of power

Amongst the drudgery of popular music, between radio stations hypnotizing you into liking a song, “cos everyone likes its and its top of the charts.” After the music has faded, but it still echoes in your mind, the lyrics linger on your tongue but the words and the culture its represents just don’t sit right. After all this comes, Soundz of the South (SOS) bringing you the Freedom Warriors Kollective music so radical, so conscious it speaks to the third eye, zoning in on society, it unmasks the disparities that is the face of reality.
Reality is not mass culture; mass culture sits on the periphery between the pages of books, newspapers and magazines, within our TV sets, films and radio stations. Its breaths influence pertaining the prejudices, myths and stereotypes of dominant culture, fostering fears it maintains the divisions within society. Mass culture is the tool of the ruling class, maintaining its power over the masses. It enforces wants, idealising luxury, nothing will ever be enough, creating a society of eternal consumers.





The hip hop in the Freedom Warriors comes as a refreshing challenge to dominant culture. It refigures the true potential of hip hop to develop critical thinking, embracing knowledge of self and freedom of expression. Sharing the experience of oppression and resistance, it critically engages with South Africa’s political reality. Drawing on the cultural resistance work of the movement, SOS, this CD shakes all old forms, cultivating and recreating, reclaiming the people’s power and culture.


The Freedom Warriors Kollective speaks directly to the undertakings of the movement this year. As facilitators of a monthly hip hop and poetry forums in Khayelitsha, they have created a learning space, opening critical analysis and dialogue between members of the community, raising consciousness. The CD is a direct result of in-depth writing and conversational circles held between member of SOS, spanning topics such as neo-liberalism and its effects on people’s lives, SA’s political economy and the alternatives. Driven towards change, these circles drew together the force of fifteen artist-activists in to producing the CD. It falls within the universal space of radical, revolutionary music, uniting with all independent artist-activists and emcees.