by David Sasaki
Originally published on Rising Voices.
I know, it probably sounds a little cheesy – someone rapping about video-blogging – but the lyrics of Jorge Jurado’s song ‘ConVerGentes’ are not only poetic, they also reflect a truth a about participatory media in general: we create because we are compelled to, not because we are told to.
The most active members of ConVerGentes. Jorge Jurado is on the far right.
Jorge is one of about 20 young people in the peripheral working class community of San Javier La Loma who form the citizen media group “ConVerGentes.” They are one of three groups who make up the larger outreach project HiperBarrio. ConVerGentes is a play on words which combines the Spanish words for convergence, seeing, and people.
Jorge, who produced a short documentary about La Loma’s graffiti cultureand blogs at La Voz del Silencio, is also a talented graphic designer and hip-hop artist. His song “ConVerGentes”, which he performed live above in early January 2008, discusses the potential of using participatory media to rescue the forgotten history and culture of local communities. He also somehow manages to mention the title of every ConVerGentes weblog in a way that describes both its content and the person behind it. You too can visit each of their blogs by going to the ConVerGentes site and clicking on each of the links on the right-hand side beneath the header “Blogroll”.