Indigenous hip-hop artist Ziggy Ramo will perform this Friday at the Melbourne Recital Centre.
Ziggy, who released his debut album ‘Deadly Hearts: Walking Together’ made the ABC audience take note after being censored by the ABC. He corrected Q&A host Hamish Macdonald who issued Ziggy with a “please explain’ for his track ‘April 25th’ which the ABC would not let him perform. “Me sitting on this panel ticks off a box for the ABC which is cultural diversity,” Ziggy said. “If I am not able to express my perspective is it performative or is it actual cultural diversity? It is important that we have freedom of speech and freedom of expression. If we have seats at the table but we are not able to express our lived experience are we actually having cultural diversity or is it performative?
Hamish Macdonald chimed in “The lyrics include ‘I hate the ANZACs. There is a lot of context that we want to talk to you tonight and understand where that comes from but without context there may be issues”.
Ziggy explained the context was in the next line of his song. “After I say ‘I hate the ANZACs’ I say ‘how wrong is that’. And how wrong is it that we pick and choose our history, we rearrange the facts. We fought for a country that didn’t see us as humans. The reason I want to talk about this in my art is to celebrate the ANZACs. We just can’t pick part of our history that we want to recognize and bury the others. In World War 2 we fought against genocide but we don’t recognize genocide in our own country”
He said that indigenous Australians were asked to fight in wars but at the time weren’t even considered Australian citizens. Australia finally recognized Indigenous Australians in 1967.
Ziggy Ramo will perform Black Thoughts at the Melbourne Recital Centre on Friday 14 May.
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