User:Varo28/sandbox

Graffiti in Senegal
In the 1980's, the youth of Dakar felt the need to create murals and other forms of public art due to an "ethical crisis", where some were said to be urinating "in the streets and throwing garbage all over". This movement was known as the Set-Setal movement, which means "be clean-make clean" in Wolof. "'Here in Senegal you see that religious personalities have a really huge influence on the population. . . . At a certain moment, we had a real problem with people’s mentality. People would piss in the street and throw garbage all over . . . and when someone would ask them to explain themselves, they would tell you the street doesn’t belong to anybody, so I have the right to make it dirty. And then you’d see this same Senegalese before a religious guide being like an exemplary person. . . . So [the participants of Set-Setal] decided to go and represent religious personalities on the walls and people didn’t have the courage to go and piss in front of those religious figures. . . . It was after this aha! moment that we saw the first generation of graffeurs here, through the Big Keys, the Doctas and others.'"Early graffeurs were mostly inspired by by the large hip-hop movement that came from the U.S., more specifically CD albums of American rappers. Senegalese graffeurs are motivated by the effects of their actions, similar to the Western graffeurs, but instead of tagging as a political statement, those of Dakar work as a sense of duty to inspire their community for signs on cleanliness and public health.