Blitz the Ambassador

Samuel Bazawule (born 19 April 1982), known professionally as Blitz Bazawule and Blitz the Ambassador, is a Ghanaian filmmaker, author and a visual artist. Quotes It's a vibrant place. Music was everywhere, big speakers blaring in the open field or live bands playing highlife and Afrobeat covers. Afro-centric hip-hop can make a comeback when the people are ready. I want to make positive change happen. It's about looking in the mirror and accepting who I am. Telling my story honestly with openness and vulnerability. First sight: Blitz the Ambassador,May 19 2011 I've always felt hip-hop as a culture hasn't really yet embraced its international roots. The more I traveled, the more I realized that there's a specific role that I need to be playing, and that role is about bridging gaps and expanding the culture that I've been so blessed enough to be a part of. That's why I went with the Ambassador. selling bootlegs, or graduating from medical school, or driving cabs. It's all these things that are part of our life and our culture as immigrants that need to be celebrated. I feel like more and more young Africans are beginning to assert themselves and speak about their experience the way they see it. This story really tells that transition from moving somewhere as an immigrant, kind of, not really knowing who you are, and finding yourself in that process. And then going from there to the world. It's the words African and cosmopolitan. That's who we are. Blitz The Ambassador: Fighting Against Invisibility,September 09 2013 I’m everywhere but nowhere at the same time. My personal evolution has evolved from making Ghanaian music, to making hip-hop based Ghanaian music in New York City. Then I toured the world after my first albums, and I gained a sense that hip-hop culture was a global phenomenon. Now, I’m gaining an urgency in my message. Because the world is shifting, and socio-political commentary is becoming more important than ever before. People need to find the connection to the global hip-hop diaspora. I’m not on a label, I wasn’t on a schedule, and I took my time to make the best record possible. Making the best record possible” was a two-year process. Blitz first conceived of Diasporadical as a three-video “trilogia,” chronicling everything from the nature of love and relationships in the universal African diaspora to the effects of gentrification in coastal Brazil. It’s unrealistic to churn out a bunch of material without sacrificing quality. For Diasporadical, I addressed this issue by creating material that could exist in multiple forms, to stretch out the life of the album as much as possible. I wanted people to get new things, including short films and various other experiential mediums. I’ve combined tech, music, and film together to create a way for people to consume the album within its own world, so to speak. I thought it was initially just a way for me to take elements from all over the African diaspora and make it into hip-hop. As I got closer to the idea of ‘diasporadical,’ it became about the sum total of how I could make the universe feel. It became less of a calculated attempt to get one cup of Latin America mixed with two cups of Brooklyn, because that doesn’t work. As I started to spend time with this record, I was also traveling. I spent time in nine countries. That totally threw my typical process out the window, and instead it became natural and organic. I’m from Bed-Stuy, and I’m from LA. I’m not territorial. I’m living, able to find the narrative in the privileged life of travel that I’ve been able to live. I create hip-hop that allows for critical discourse for shaping a better world across gender, race, and socioeconomic levels. I’ve also learned that you can create from militancy and anger about what’s happening in the world, but if you create from love and compassion and understanding, you can create a truly spiritual and beneficial conversation. Hip-hop can be said to extend all the way back to the slave-trade movement of people from Africa to the Caribbean as a conduit. And then there’s soundsystem culture, too. It’s ultimately a combination of American, African, and Caribbean cultures that allow hip-hop to exist as a culture that samples from all of those, and more. Africans have been listening to rap music, and have been influenced by hip-hop, since the beginning. Hip-hop came to Ghana when I was young. Public Enemy played a show there (in Accra) in 1992. To me, the influence of that concert, how it influenced a generation, is best described as a kind of ‘call-and-response’—which is a typical African communication element. The call came from the Bronx, and reached Accra, and in that response, African rappers have taken elements from our national roots which, when intersected with American culture, create the soundclash that amplifies not just my record, but so many albums [from African rappers in general]. Blitz the Ambassador Uses Hip-Hop to Make Crucial Global Connections, By Marcus K. Dowling , January 13, 2017 In Ghana, no one just tells a story; like, ‘I got up and I went to work and I came back home. There's always some wild thing that happens. I love that about us -- certainly continental Africans, and the ability to imagine on that level. I've kind of been medium agnostic in that sense, because it's just always about a story worth telling. [The book] is another medium to attempt to tell a story that, in all honesty, is part of the thread of all the stories I've been telling thus far. To tell a straight story is the most boring way, in my opinion. Some people are doing that very well – and kudos to them – but I couldn't do that. I [need to] make it intriguing for you to wonder what you missed and what you’ve got to get back to later. It’s also, for me, important to really trust that audiences are smart. As much as we have created a world of oversimplification, I think that we do ourselves a disservice by not allowing the audiences to do their own journey, and find their own puzzle. I wouldn't touch anything that I couldn't make mine. Imagination, in my opinion, is truly a pivotal element in survival. And certainly for Celie and her story, she couldn't have survived without an imagination. That's the only place you can go when you are dealing with trauma and dealing with challenges. It's part of why the African American narrative and journey is so fertile and so brilliant, because of the levels of suppression and the ability to imagine; it’s where jazz is born, where hip hop is born, that's where R&B is born, that's where gospel is born. You assume that having a picture that's in the tens of millions [of dollars] will be easy, but money is funny. No matter how much you have, there's always a reason for it not to be enough. It’s no longer six or seven people on stage, it's a couple hundred, but they’ve all still got to play in tune; they’ve got to play in harmony. The way I work with my bassist and my drummer is the same way I work with my DP and my gaffer, is the same way I work with my editor for my book, is the same way I work with my producers for my music. It's all the same. I believe in waves. Individual efforts certainly do leave their marks, but they're inconsistent. And for a continent that has had so little consistency in narrative, it's important that as many of us as possible are always in the conversation. That also helps the very false notion there's one kind of Africa; there's a multitude, there are multiplicities of us. And the more of us that get a chance to shine in whatever mediums we do, the more complex of a narrative we build, but also the more consistent of a narrative we create, which makes it easier for those coming up to mine that. The African Writers Series made it possible for lots of us who are young African writers now. A lot of it was termed Africa Writes Back, like, we'd been absorbing Western literature forever, and it was the first time that, at least as a clique and a crew, there was a real identity. I've always believed that if it happens in a wave, then the shift is seismic. If it happens as an individual, it's very easy to erase and it's also very easy to be marked as exceptionalism, which I fight greatly against. There's so many of us who are brilliant, who just don't have opportunities. So our job is always to kick in doors, open more doors, and the more of us that do it, the more secure all our positions become. I 've never really thought about creating like that. I'm very present. I'm always in the moment. And when I have an idea my job is simply to sit down and filter it through my abilities. My mommy always said, ‘Use all your talents. The Ever-Expanding Imagination of Blitz Bazawule, October 7 2022 Before I ever knew of any mediums, of any art forms, I drew and painted as a kid. To make a film you gotta know how to write. You gotta know how to photograph or paint or frame. You gotta know music. You gotta know how to score and have cadence. It's a multi-disciplinary art and it's perfect for anyone who oscillates between mediums, so this is something that I always had in mind. Did I have one of the greatest titles of all time and the greatest producers of all time in mind? No I didn't have the experience. I had made a $40,000 independent movie in Ghana. I went back and I read Alice Walker's book again, just trying to figure out if I had a way in. I found what I was looking for on the first page, first line. Anyone who is writing letters to God must have an imagination. If there's one thing I know, it's imagination...Once I figured that out I thought, 'I think that's it. I can truly, confidently say I will be contributing something new to Alice Walker's brilliant canon The cast is everything. They are ultimately the heartbeat of this narrative. Fantasia was doubtful about participating in this film. She didn't want to do it. It was very hard for her to do it on Broadway and she felt like she would be revisiting a dark past in her life. I was persistent and I showed her the version we were going to make, which was a sprawling imagination for Celie and she jumped at it. She could relate to what it felt like to be in a dark place and have to imagine her way out of the darkness. Her rebirth is more startling than we could have ever imagined. Danielle Brooks, who had played it on Broadway as well, came with such incredible vigor. Taraji, who was doubtful that she could sing, embraced the challenge and, to me, gives some of the biggest and most show-stopping performances in this movie. Blitz Bazawule (‘The Color Purple’ director) on ‘contributing something new to Alice Walker’s brilliant canon’ [Exclusive Video Interview], By Denton Davidson,December 13, 2023 External links Category:Living people Category:Authors from Ghana Category:Artists from Ghana Category:1982 births Category:1980s Category:Film directors from Ghana