Miguel Filipe Silva ^[1]Invited Assistant Professor at Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the Oporto University and Researcher at the Centre for African Studies of the University of Oporto.

Context

By the end of November of 2020, during a DevCo ^[2]Development Cooperation. class, in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the Oporto University, within the “European Interdisciplinary Master African Studies”, the students and I decided to co-create a class using music and poetry to work on critical concepts in the area of development.

We called it … Sounds of Development.

With the presence of a Syrian Jazz musician, Yamen Martini, whom I warmly call “Jazzterranean”, Lucas Novais aka Professor Phil read a poem, written by him especially for this occasion, with the improvised sound of Yamen’s trumpet.

Then we freed ourselves from the classroom concrete ties… and we danced.

Could Art be a way of education for resistance and freedom? I strongly think and feel so.

Thank you to all “my” students, Miguel.

“DevCo – Lucas Novais aka Professor Phill

I saw a white woman parading a black kid
This happened last year while I was browsing Instagram
The smile that she had was something to never hid
It looked like she just mined a lot of precious kilograms
The lady’s kinda right, she’s holding a black diamond
Who’s drinking cow’s milk but never see any almond
How’s the kid today?
So wonders my brain
What is left for her after NGOs go away?
A lot of other questions develop while this remain
What is this development?
To whom is the cooperation?
I ask with no resentment
It’s just a consideration
Is money going for nations or pockets of corporations?

It’s like DevCo
It’s like DevCo
Like a message encrypted and hidden in code
Dev’s arbitrary
Co’s necessary
In reality, the results may vary
It’s like DevCo
It’s like that code

Bill’s parachuting chickens
To children beaking their corns
While their fathers peak at corners
Checking how are the borders
The grass is always greener on that side of the valley
The kids who come from there, always have food inside their bellies
Men killing themselves cuz ethnicity is not the other
Technically there’s no another
Don’t we all have just one Father?
Well, some have just their mothers
Who go on a double-duty
Triple, some will accuse it
Others keep on abusing:
“Where were all the condoms?”
Bragging inside their condoes
Talking like they are in possession of all the answers
But I can see it clearly inside their hateful stares
They mad because we made it
For real and never faking
Contrary to those pretenders
Who faked until they made it

The poem above is intended to be a Rap somewhere in the future”