The Sonic Activist
welcome
to the mind of a young black
african king diceboro man from original
skin
born to a lost world but he’s destined
to win let it begin
dawn full of thoughts and the knowledge
they bring acknowledging things that
make us unique
if you get knocked down bounce back to
your feet
and if you ever get lost just follow the
beat
let’s talk let the poetry speak and when
you’re looking at the stars
i hope you’re noticing me my story is
deep i’m hoping you’re digging
the glory that i seek is barely just a
figment of my
imagination i’m trying to make it happen
i’m trying to change the nation
really hold it down like isaac newton’s
equation they don’t understand the
gravity of my situation
i had a dream when i was eight years old
i was climbing up an endless ladder in
the middle of the darkest nights
i don’t know what i was doing that i
just found myself climbing this ladder
so i kept going and going and going
over time my fragile body began
demanding some rest but i tried to push
through
unfortunately my body gave way and i
decided to catch my breath
it was at that moment that i realized
the whole time i was going towards my
heavenly destination but not once did i
look down to see
my origins of where i came from it was
at that moment when i decided to take a
look down
the ladder the most scary and inspiring
thing
happened to me i saw a sea
of people climbing up with me
now a million questions began running
through my mind
and the first one and most important
question was where the hell are we going
actually even more important than that
was why was an eight-year-old boy
the one that’s up here
before i could collect my thoughts and
really make sense of it
i figured i must be up here for a reason
and we must be going somewhere so i
can’t stop
and with that decision that mental shift
i got myself back together put my little
body
back on the ladder and started climbing
and climbing and climbing
and sure enough everybody began climbing
again
and then i woke up so i actually never
got to find out where we were going
see that was just a normal dream for an
eight-year-old but 17 years later
reflecting upon it and analyzing it
i realized was actually a vision and a
premonition of the direction my life
would eventually take
and that moment actually plan to the
seeds of the idea that i’m standing up
here to share with you today
but before i get to that idea i have a
refugee story for you
see i was born in the middle of a war
in the middle of a jungle in the middle
of a famine
and on top of that my family had just
been walking for two months straight
trying to get from ethiopia to the next
refugee camp
i was not supposed to live but somehow i
did
and even more lucky
my family made it to kakuma refugee camp
you see kakuma refugee camp
was a unhcr camp that was
initially built for 90 000 people by the
time we got there
in the mid 90s the numbers have
fluctuated up to 200 000 refugees from
more than 10 different countries
in that refugee camp i ended up spending
the next seven years of my life
so i went there when i was two months
old i left when i was seven years old
i saw the most bizarre inspiring
scariest things in that place i saw
humanity at his highest and its lowest
now one thing i remember vividly was
seeing so many people
suffer from preventable diseases
and due to lack of access to medical
resources
and doctors and that initially fueled my
first dream of wanting to be a doctor a
neurosurgeon
see i had an uncle before the war who
studied in khartoum
and relocated to norway to become
one of the biggest orthopedic surgeons
in norway so
i always had a role model someone to
look up to
and um i’m going to channel my inner
nelson mandela right now to remind every
single one of you guys here
who are mostly students and everybody
gets message visas
education is still the fastest way out
of poverty
when you’re a eight-year-old boy in the
biggest refugee camp in the world
and you have the biggest dreams
education was the only
way up so i used to take my academic
studies that my life depended on it
because it really did fast forward
seven years later we got smuggled out of
the refugee camp
smuggled by my incredible mother
who to this point i i’m trying to figure
out if she really is
wonder woman or not
you see i almost died on that journey it
was a 24
24-hour journey outside the refugee camp
but that’s a story for another time
the next three years we went and lived
in a small
village in kenya for three years and
that was the most normal
phase of my life to that point when i
was aged 10 years old we got accepted to
come to australia
under the humanitarian visa program
you see we’d applied to go to america
to go to canada to go to norway so when
you’re a refugee you just want to get
out of where you’re at
people don’t realize that it’s not
nothing special about yo i want to go to
australia
you just go to where you think you can
find life and opportunities for your
family
fortunately australia accepted me to
come here under the humanitarian visa
program
so real quick shout out to australia for
that man otherwise i won’t be here right
now
[Applause]
after after i got here i quickly
realized two things
this land provided me endless
opportunities
safety shelter
but one thing was now in my mind
[Music]
i realized i entered the second phase of
my lifetime
survival part two
except this time i didn’t have the
support network
of a strong community like i did back in
the camp
as a matter of fact the predominantly
white society i’d find myself in were
the ones placing the barriers
in front of me that i had to overcome
but it’s all good survival was all ever
known
and i could figure it out
i had to learn really quickly what
racism was i didn’t know what racism is
i had to learn really quickly that
having this smooth
dark chocolate beautiful skin
was a problem in this country
i had to then learn that this country
didn’t have a good track record
against the idea of blackness i studied
the indigenous experience
i studied laws like terenulus policies
like the white australian policy
which was so effective that inspired
apartheid in south africa we were so
good at racism in australia other copies
started copying us
other countries started copying us
because we’re that good at it let that
sink in
first survival to our learn music
second one sports sports was always
special to us
because even one of those camps
we call it a cheap vacation any of us
can make a soccer ball
and for that two hours one hour you’re
running around
you forgot that you’re hungry you forget
that you’re in pain you even forget that
was an escape for us but i found out
here in australia if i play sports i can
make friends and connect and bond with
people
human connection is the most precious
thing we can use in this world
so that covered that
and it also made me realize why some of
the
young guys i grew up with some of my
relatives people like aware mobile
thomas deng ended up choosing sports
specifically soccer
and actually went on to become
professional footballers and they
actually represent
soccer rouge right now the second tool
that i picked up
and the most important one was music
see i got introduced to music through
rhythm and poetry
i realized when i came to this country
the second thing i needed to do was
learn how to express myself i hate being
misunderstood
so i had to learn the language i forget
how to hack
if i can use poetry learning one word
will inspire me to go then
feel the need to learn three more so i
can find things to rhyme with
and surely enough within six months to a
year i figured out
english and then through that
i got introduced to hip-hop culture
now that was a critical part because
i’m in australia now but i don’t have a
cultural reference to be able to relate
my experience to
so hip-hop gave me a global platform
which transcended
race religion or even political beliefs
see hip-hop was founded in 1970s by dj
kuhr
afrika bambaataa and pioneers like
grandmaster flash
rhythm and poetry has been around for
tens of thousands of years
hundreds see in our culture i come from
the monjung people from the south of
sudan
on the river now from the cradle of
human civilization and we call it why
see our people been doing this for so
long that it’s entrenched as a part of
us
and there’s no one that’s not limited to
it anyone can make music
i realized that that global culture was
so close to my own identity and i
gravitated to hippo
i also found out the power of the beat
the drum beat see studies have shown
that a drum b pattern can influence the
olympic system the medulla
oblongata and actually if you get a
group of people in one location and play
the same beat for them long enough
their hearts will actually begin to be
in rhythm
and then the power of poetry added to
that
music becomes an unstoppable force and
then now i had a global culture to
attach it to
so my mind began wondering how i can
piece them all together
i think i figured it out i call it sonic
activism
and as a sonic activist it’s my job to
introduce what sonic activism is
to you guys and the rest of the world
you see sonic activism
is the use of sound that force that i
was telling you about before that’s so
powerful
to explore interact with and reconstruct
the world around us to become a better
version of itself
the sonic is the vessel which we use
to carry the inspiration and the message
the activist
activism is the manifestation
of that message into progressive action
tupac
sonic activist malcolm x sonic activist
john lennon sonic activist
maya angelou sonic activist muhammad ali
sonic activist
you you you can be a sonic activist you
don’t have to make music
sound travels even when i’m talking
introducing a friend to a new idea they
didn’t know before that’s sonic activism
standing up for someone who doesn’t have
a voice
that’s sonic activism so now that you
know what it is
i’m challenging to see how many sonic
activists by the time this talk is over
i can produce
now i found a culture i could belong in
i found a concept i can attach myself to
what was next i learned how to survive
in this country
now it’s my turn to thrive i created a
superhero
and gave an alter ego and called him
diceboro
that’s my stage name when i make music
and i present up here
if she dies poorer does not care what
you think about it
that’s boris on a certain mission matter
of fact the word
daespuro comes from the english word
diaspora which comes from the greek word
test
which means people disperse from their
homeland people forced to live outside
their homelands
literally personifying my life journey
so far
and as a sonic as a sonic activist and
now using the dice for
superpowers i realized that i came to
this country when i was 10 years old
and 13 years later without a single word
of english 13 years later became
the best artist in south australia using
those superpowers
i managed to partner up with my brother
with my bill and his foundation
barefooted boots
to be able to build a recording studio
on the same refugee camp that we grew up
in
giving opportunities to these kids who
might not have had it
with these superpowers i managed to link
up
with the tmp foundation and become an
ambassador for them
and right now we’re helping put more
than 1400 kids through school back in
south sudan
with an aim to try and get that number
to 5000 in the next couple years
with those superpowers i created a label
called playback gateway to give a voice
to those that we silence with those
superpowers
i managed to create a voice for myself
to be able to stand up
against the media when they decide to
bully my community
and with those superpowers you have no
idea what i’m about to do next
my scope right now is on racism
that’s my next target you see racism is
a cancer of humanity
it is literally the biggest distraction
for no damn reason that keeps us apart
from actually unifying and doing the
things we can actually achieve as a
human race
we need to take this as serious as we
take poverty or climate change
racism is the cancer for humanity
remember that
einstein said it seems to be a good uh
brain when einstein says things so
remember he actually did say that
there’s a generation that i’m here to
represent
of new australians as you call them
who’ve been
living on the fringes of your society
for so long
and all they’ve ever wanted to do was
contribute to the society
a generation that we can tap into the
potential with minimal investment
and maximum outcome because all they
want to do
is belong and add to the narrative
i’m here to represent a generation of
new australians and i call them the
austro-aliens
they want to be australian but they get
treated like aliens so they stuck
somewhere in between
i’m talking about the kids i just want a
fair go when they rock up to school and
get bullied because of the color of
their skin
or the religion they worship or their
political ideas
the kids don’t want a fair go when they
show up to a job interview
but they don’t even stand a chance
because their names are not aussie
enough
the kids who want a fair go when they
get over police
and then end up in the justice system
and end up getting longer terms than any
average is trading
yet when they succeed in cold
australians
see i represent these kids or this
group of austral aliens because i am one
of them
when i succeed i am australian but when
i fail i’m african
what does that leave me with when it
comes to choosing my identity
when i succeed i’m australian when i
fail i’m african
i want you guys to remember those words
very closely because
they’re the summarization of my
experience for the last few years
but it’s all right i’m here now i’ve
lived here for the last 15 years
i’m as australian as i can get even
though i come from south sudan
i’ll be able to call out the problems we
have and said you know what we need to
fix this
so one thing i want to remind you is an
african proverb that i grew up on
a child who was not embraced by the
village will burn it down to feel its
warmth
so let’s embrace these children and
anybody that wants to be part of this
beautiful nation
and no more leading people on the
outskirts and i’m going to use my story
as an example
all my life all i’ve known is trials and
tribulations
i’ve managed to get those trials and
tribulations to help build up my
character that character
has helped me build unlimited hope
but i did not stop there i’ve been
cursed
enough to see what it’s like to be in a
refugee camp see kids suffer
for more than five years so
i’m hoping to turn that hope into
progressive action
and i’m hoping to inspire every single
one of you guys today
to start your journey on becoming a
sonic activist thank you