The German Embassy in Dhaka, in association with Goethe-Institut Bangladesh, has invited three artists from the Berlin based Hip Hop Stützpunkt, an urban culture network, to run workshop programs and to connect with the local Hip Hop scene in Dhaka from 10 to 16 November 2015.

The main aim to call the cultural ambassadors of the Hip Hop Stützpunkt is to build new and long lasting connections with the local Hip Hop scene.  In recent years, they have toured China, Russia, India and Indonesia to promote Hip Hop culture there.

The Dhaka Berlin chapter is the first of its kind initiative in Bangladesh to build relations with local hip hop heads and promote the major elements of the sub-culture via workshops and jams.

The tour of the German hip hop team of three Berlin artists Akim Walta, Reese Schaaf, Soulrock Daniel F.S and two Indian artistes Dollar and Bhive started on 10 November as they featured in a local radio show, Planet Hip Hop (Colours FM 101.6) to spread the word about their week long programme and to invite enthusiastic Dhaka kids.

On the following day, the German artist Akim Walta gave a ‘Lecture’ to describe the development of Hip Hop culture in Germany with slides, short-video presentation on Wednesday evening (11 November) at Goethe-Institut (GI) auditorium. There was an open mic session afterwards and the local Emcee’s did their urban poetry and the dancers showed their moves.

Earlier on the same day, a two hours long workshop on ‘Beatboxing’ was held starting from 4:30pm at the same venue. In this workshop, the local beatboxers got to know about various techniques about Beatboxing from Soulrock (Beat boxer). Many beat boxers, rappers and dancers come down to Goethe-Institut to take part in an interactive session and beat box workshop by Soulrock.

The evening concluded with question-answer session, giving away goodies and a final rap-beat box, bboy -ing cypher with all the participants. The coming days will see more such activities including graffiti sketch workshop, and bboy- ing workshop/training session in different venues in Dhaka.

The German hip hop project is an initiative by ‘HipHop Stutzpunkt’ in collaboration with various international countries. It is basically a cultural exchange programme that facilitates interaction between artists from Germany and the host nation.