By Donna Bryson
Feb 9 (Reuters) – Musician Nathan Nzanga has marched in Portland, Chicago and his hometown Seattle.
The rapper has also written songs that reflect why he is protesting, compositions that call for change and tell his story as an African American and as an American born to immigrant parents from the Congo.
A film starring Nzanga with his music, released online in January, adds his artistic perspective to the social justice movement.
“I feel like God gave me the gift of being able to tell stories,” Nzanga told Reuters, speaking via Zoom from his Seattle room decorated with posters of such figures as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela. “I’m trying to find ways to make sure that we see the human being in the other,” he added.
Nzanga’s 13-minute film with director Caleb Slain, titled “Enough,” opens with the song “Truce.” Nzanga, now 22, wrote it as a teenager at summer camp in 2016.
Nzanga followed the news between camp activities and learned of Alton Sterling’s death on July 5, 2016, after police shot him dead at a store in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
On July 6, a police shooting at a Minnesota traffic stop killed Philando Castile. On July 7, a gunman killed five officers during a rally against police brutality in Dallas before being killed after a clash with police.
“It seems like every day we add a few more names to the list,” Nzanga wrote in “Truce” adding: “I’m afraid of being the next one to get hit.”
Vanderbilt professor Michael Eric Dyson, whose book “Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America” was also inspired by those July events, told Reuters that Nzanga’s art “forces us to think and reflect in a way. would be”.
The film is named after and includes another of Nzanga’s songs that he wrote following the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, who died after a white police officer pinned him to the ground in a position that made him beg for air until he stopped responding.
“Every time something like this happens, we see ourselves as the person that the police have decided not to treat as a human,” Nzanga said.
(Reporting by Donna Bryson. Edited in Spanish by Lucila Sigal)
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