30 days of Tanzanian hip hop: Day 20 – Graffiti in Block 41. In 2010. This was taken in Block 41, on the road behind Best Bite in Dar es Salaam. These graffiti tags are no longer there. Like in many cities, graffiti does not stay up for long unless the artist had permission. But an element of hip hop is graffiti, especially street graffiti. The purists say street graffiti is about doing a piece or a tag illegally, often using stolen supplies. This tradition is found all over the world where street graffiti artists often do pieces on buildings, trains, or other public places in the middle of the night. Many steal the spray to do the piece, reflecting the fact that in the inner city most young artists can’t afford to buy spray paint cans.
*30 days of TZ hip hop is to show some of what I experienced the past year in Tanzania.