"China’s Uighur minority, who hail from Xinjiang Autonomous Region,
have struggled to retain their traditional culture in the face of
widespread assimilation from the country’s Han majority. As Beijing has
developed its western frontier through resettlement programs, many
Uighurs feel they have become strangers in their own land; for instance,
in Urumqi, the region’s sprawling capital, Uighurs now represent just
12 percent of the city’s population.
But in the city’s poorest districts, some Uighur youth have turned to
a non-traditional outlet for maintaining cultural pride: hip-hop.
Since 2006, this home-grown rap and dance scene has drawn together
thousands of Uighur fans across Xinjiang, and has even managed a feat
the founders didn’t expect to achieve: attracting Han Chinese fans.
Ekrem, aka Zanjir, was the first Uighur rapper and a co-founder of
Six City, Urumqi’s most popular rap collective, for which he now serves
as producer and business manager. It’s a part-time gig. In his spare
time, he moonlights as a software developer, while other members of the
collective drive hospital shuttles or work in traditional Uighur dance
shows to make ends meet."
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