Can a song be a revolution? Gaddar is a poet, singer, performer, intellectual, a creative mind associated with people’s resistance movements in India and most importantly he is a revolutionary! But to many peoples movement he is a revolution, a cultural revolution. In the exercise of telling the story of this revolution, we came to ask a question, can a song be a revolution? This is a love letter or actually a letter of love to that song… to that revolution! An experimental storytelling piece that brings Gaddar’s songs and responds to them in jazz and hip-hop genres for the American audience. This piece will talk about caste, art and cultural revolution.
“Can a Song Be a Revolution?” is a part of the 2024 Line Breaks Hip Hop Theater Festival. Line Breaks brings the top new aesthetics in contemporary hip hop and interdisciplinary performance art to the UW–Madison campus and the surrounding community. It has evolved into a space for the investigation of contemporary American culture through the lens of hip hop performance. Line Breaks is now one of the largest hip hop-centered performance festivals in the Midwest and continues to be a space for the cultivation and presentation of independent and collaborative work by OMAI artists.