Spent last night in a YouTube rabbit hole listening to ⁦ @DuleRocker⁩, a Dalit rapper who’s from the same district as my family, and raps about migrant workers’ rights and other issues. Best Sambalpuri rapper I’ve heard, and he’s got a great presence. https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/dalit-rapper-from-odisha-is-making-waves-with-song-about-migrant-workers-woes-in-lockdown-2753403.html

My favorite is one of his earliest, which only has like 20 views, and is a tinny beat on laptop speakers, but goes hard as hell. (Unfortunately there are no captions; YouTube doesn’t support our language even though 45 million people speak if.)

His production values have gone up with each successive video; just a few weeks later he released this track about farmers’ rights (“Hashtag farmer!”) and it’s got hundreds of thousands of views now.

One of the key issues Dule gives voice to are the migrant brick kiln workers whose situation has only gotten even more precarious during the COVID lockdown. https://twitter.com/parinetwork/status/1255018110374907905

Migrant workers who agree to work in the brickworks often end up in debt due to extortionate advances from the kiln owners. Women (who make up the vast majority of the workers) make about 15 US cents per day of work; men get about 18 cents. https://twitter.com/parinetwork/status/1280449966264086529

A great story on Dule from a more American perspective. https://twitter.com/vmingoa/status/1348317988663947266