Nov13Written by:Web Admin
11/13/2008 10:42 PM 
New Forms of Oromo Popular Culture on the Internet
Qeerransoo Biyyaa
American Chronicle
November 13, 2008
This topic was conceived after a few email exchanges with editors of Ogina, an online Oromo arts magazine. When the editors asked me to contribute an essay for their issue of Ogina magazine on how the Internet has been used to spread Oromo poetry and hip hop, I was surprised and amused and emailed them back saying, "I´m happy to contribute an article…, but I am not sure if Oromo hip hop or spoken word art exists as a genre".
For a decade now, I have been following up almost every Oromo-related issues online and offline, except not paying attention to hip hop and freestyle art forms. Maybe that is because I have not been in the Diaspora for too long as these forms of Oromo arts are newly emerging in the transnational Oromo public sphere. In my leisure, I sometimes plug in some online video and social networking sites such as You Tube and MySpace to tune into some Oromo songs, films, and clips that can be accessed for free. I do this not just for entertainment, but also to try to understand what is going on in Oromo cyberspaces. There are plenty of traditional forms of music of secular and spiritual types. But I was ignorant on the hip hop and free style forms before Ogina editors sent me a follow up email with links to some really fascinating hi