TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — On the roof of a concrete building in an impoverished Tunis neighborhood, hip hop beats pound out from a PC hooked up to cheap speakers.
Under graffiti-daubed cloth, young men in sweatpants and baseball caps breakdance, popping and locking robotically to the rhythm thumping around them. Rappers from local hip hop group Zone 5 snarl back and forth lines they've just written about police, poverty and smoking pot.
Zone 5 rapper Mohamed Ayari and other Tunisian youth are getting out their message of rage about life on the fringes in post-revolution Tunisia through a perhaps surprising channel: hip hop.
"You see what the system does? We write a graffiti message up on the wall and they call it 'provocation' and the police come after us. But why do they call it provocation?" the 23-year-old said during a break in rehearsals for an upcoming show. "It's because we're pointing out their faults, their weaknesses. No one wants to hear about their weaknesses."
Since overthrowing its long-ruling dictator in 2011, Tunisia has had a string of elections and is being hailed as "the success story" of the region. But the new men in charge look very much like the old ones, with an 88-year-old president and ministers that all cut their teeth in previous administrations. Despite spearheading the revolution, Tunisia's youth are still feeling sidelined, and one of the few ways they are getting their voices heard is through rap — shouting to anyone who will listen that all is not well in Tunisia.
An attack on the national museum on March 18 by two young Tunisians from working-class neighborhoods that killed 22 people, mostly tourists, has once more sounded the alarm about the future of young people in the country.
Tunisia's parliamentary elections last fall saw reasonably high voting rates. But the youth turnout was abysmal, with over 80 percent of Tunisians between 18 and 25 boycotting the ballot. Unemployment, already high at 15.5 percent, soars to 42.3 percent for young people, according to Eurostat figures from 2011.
The most sinister indication of youth disillusion with the system: the 3,000 Tunisians, nearly all in their 20s, who the Interior Ministry says have left to fight with the Islamic State in Syria, Iraq and lately, Libya.
tourists, has once more sounded the alarm about the future of young people in the country.
Tunisia's parliamentary elections last fall saw reasonably high voting rates. But the youth turnout was abysmal, with over 80 percent of Tunisians between 18 and 25 boycotting the ballot. Unemployment, already high at 15.5 percent, soars to 42.3 percent for young people, according to Eurostat figures from 2011.
The most sinister indication of youth disillusion with the system: the 3,000 Tunisians, nearly all in their 20s, who the Interior Ministry says have left to fight with the Islamic State in Syria, Iraq and lately, Libya.
Nakasaki Dali, a member of Zone 5, said in his neighborhood, youths either become rappers or take refuge in ultra-conservative Islam.
Just down the hill from Tunis' seat of government, where young people rallied for change four years ago, is the rundown neighborhood of rapper Ahmed Ben Ahmed, known as Klay BBJ. His lyrics of resistance and rage are hummed by kids walking through streets choked with mopeds and garbage.
In his raps — which jump nimbly between literary Arabic and Tunisian street dialect — Ben Ahmed talks about the issues that concern young people the most: police oppression, the lack of jobs and being scapegoated by the wealthy for the country's ills.
Tunisia's Neglected Youth Find Their Voice In Hip Hop