In L’Aquila, hip hop has found a home within the walls of a former hospital, now transformed into a space of freedom and collective imagination.
On 13 March 2025, at Case Matte, the workshop “Hip-Hop: Beyond Borders” took place, the L’Aquila stage of the European project Soundroutes, which brings together emerging artists and professionals in a programme of training, music creation and social justice.
Case Matte is not just any place: it is a bastion of independent and self-managed culture, born after the earthquake as a grassroots response to the material and political reconstruction of the city. Here, the community meets to create, discuss and organise. In this context, the arrival of Soundroutes has perfectly intertwined art and activism.
The workshop, led by Keso a.k.a. Kid Kontrasto, offered an experience of writing, rhythm and improvisation as tools for social reflection and collective expression.
Through lyrics, freestyle and performance, participants told stories of identity, belonging, memory and everyday life in peripheral and inland areas.
Hip hop has become a language for naming wounds, but also for building new visions of community.
‘L’Aquila is a city that knows the word “reconstruction” well,’ they say at Case Matte. ‘But here, reconstruction is also political and cultural: passing the microphone means sharing space, care and voice.’
The workshop is part of a European network of Local Hubs coordinated by A Sud, which promotes training and youth activism in Italy, Spain, Belgium and Greece through urban culture.
Some of the participants will have the opportunity to fly to Soundroutes’ international bootcamps, collaborating with artists from all over Europe. The best tracks produced will be included in a collective European album, a mosaic of voices and languages that tells the story of the new generation of socially engaged hip hop.
With Case Matte, L’Aquila proves once again that grassroots culture not only resists, but transforms.
Because here, hip hop doesn’t just rebuild walls — it builds bonds.
