Raphael Olympio

Raphael Olympio, aka Olympio, is an immensely talented rapper and spoken word artist from Cork who was born in Togo, West Africa. He grew up in a Direct Provision Centre and feels inspired to motivate others who come from different parts of Africa and other countries across the world – and is a youth mentor with the Cork Migrant Centre. 

Olympio has performed at UBUNTU: Local is Global (a CIPHER Hip Hop Interpellation) featured on RTE’s Change Makers, and he’s been part of numerous collaborations and performances at  Indiependence, Electric Picnic, Other Voices, and more. 

He’s released several spoken word/hip hop music videos – and the latest one called EPG (Exploitation, Power Greed) is absolutely brilliant, go and check it out. 

He wrote a beautiful piece especially for this episode which you can listen to here:

We talk about social and racial anxiety, the richness of Africa, his creative process, and how his work as a mentor inspires and motivates him.

The creative work he does with the young people in the Cork Migrant Centre is something we look at more in the next episode – when I meet the young people at his workshop. So make you sure you tune in for that next week.

Thanks so much to Raphael Olympio for all the great – and valuable – work he’s doing  – and thanks to the Arts Council for their support.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Bairbre Flood: Hi, and welcome. Hope you’re all doing okay. I’m so delighted to bring you my guest today, Raphael Olympio, aka Olympio, a rapper and spoken word artist from Cork, who was born in Togo, west Africa. He’s released several spoken word hiphop music videos, and the latest one called E P G. Exploitation Power Greed, is absolutely brilliant.

Please go and check it out on YouTube. That’s EPG. 

He wrote a beautiful piece, especially for this episode, and I’m delighted to bring you my guest today, Raphael Olympia.

[MUSIC]

Raphael Olympio: Hi, yes, my name’s Raphael Olympio, and I’m a musician and spoken word artist. 

Bairbre Flood: Okay. Nice to meet you. 

Raphael Olympio: Nice to meet you. 

Bairbre Flood: you’ve got some great stuff up online. Yeah. 

Raphael Olympio: Thank you. Thank you. 

Bairbre Flood: Yeah, so do you wanna read the piece first? 

Raphael Olympio: Yeah. So the piece is called ‘after we came’. So I guess it’s about migration from where I’m from to the western world.

And it’s kind of questioning, I guess. Questioning that.

[MUSIC]

Wander wander wander 

I wonder as I wander aimlessly into a future 

I have somewhat planned. 

One that exists from the footprints that I have laid on this land. 

One that I hope for myself in conjunction with one that society has designed.

To plan is to think, to think is to imagine. 

My thoughts are always swaying as my imagination, although nonchalant, is obstructed by constructs – 

Some religious, some western, some cultural and some from my inherent lack of self esteem  and/or self worth. 

I work, I work, I work then wander into a wilderness that becomes estranged from the cultivation of deep affection where roses grow without petals, where the seas are so dried up, there’s not enough depth to see our pebbles ripple.

I wander, hungry for peace, and longing for nourished souls desiring to replace our resistant forsaken soil with ardent tenderness, 

Every so often I have travelled the blue marble for survival, dissociating when it gets too stressful,

I take flight to the upper echelon of my encephalon as I feel too frail to confront or fight,

Just to encounter rivals with nature contrary to revival.

I ponder, then wander, then wonder 

Non stop pacing,  

A vicious cycle of romanticising what could be, what if 

I didn’t come. 

[MUSIC]

I feel Irish. I am here over 20 years and I came and I was about five years old. So I do feel like I’ve immersed myself in the culture and I do feel like I’m a Corian. So when we first came we were in the first air provision center in Ireland in Monster. Anyway, from what I know. And we’re one of the first black people that lived in, I guess.

The, the south side of, of Cork when we first arrived. And it was a bit scary cuz I didn’t have like any other black neighbors. I didn’t know any other black, I didn’t have any other black friends or peers especially my own age. So you felt different immediately. You knew that you were the only one of your kind around.

And then there was a lot of, I guess racism. I guess lack of knowledge, lack of education. It was something new. They treated us almost like like dolls almost. Like it’s can we touch your hair? Can you make these type of like, monkey faces and just silly things, you know? But it has changed a lot where racism in the past was more kind of in your face, more kind of, you get targeted, you’d even get chased or beaten up or asked to do just crazy things.

Whereas now it’s, I guess it’s, it’s a lot of people I guess, have more. Knowledge of, I guess, black culture, who black people are. But I still think there are kind of those microaggressions within the community where people still to a certain extent don’t actually actually realize that they’re being, I guess racist or there’s just that kind of ignorance around other cultures.

So microaggressions would be like, just generally, I guess, those kind of. It’s, it’s basically in the word, you know, it’s just the small kind of aggressions towards you based off your difference. It could be a remark that somebody makes. It could be. Even somebody mimicking your accent or could be a discussion about like, your food, your hair, something that makes you feel very uncomfortable and shouldn’t make you feel uncomfortable because it’s a part of you, but people are judging you based off the difference.

And that happens. That could happen almost every day, even just by the way somebody looks at you. So yeah, I think it’s, it’s. It still exists racism of course in Ireland. But I think there is progress, but I think it needs to begin with education and it needs to start in the schools. Because growing up in Ireland, I think school was probably the most difficult place for me to be.

When I was younger, just because of the ignorance around them, who I was and where I was from. The misconception in particularly saying that, oh, Africa is dirty, it’s full of poverty. People from there are dirty. They smell, they like just ridiculous comments. But like, if you go anywhere in the world, there’s poverty.

And if you go anywhere in the world, there’s the, the wealthier sides. And in Africa there are very wealthy sides and there’s sides that look like, like in Togo for example, there’s beaches there and looks like The Bahamas. And of course, if you go into the village, you’re gonna see poverty. But if you’re in the town, in the cities, it looks amazing, you know?

But yeah, like everywhere else I think Africa has also progressed a lot. And I think people need to take that kind of just that kind of representation of Africa that they’ve accepted out of their minds and kind of educate themselves on what Africa actually is and listen to the people that come from there instead of just.

Listening to like random stuff on social media that isn’t true. So, yeah. 

Bairbre Flood: Do you think though, as well, there’s, there’s some element of it as it’s kind of suits to have that idea of African and of black people. It’s so that they can keep things pretty much the same? 

Raphael Olympio: Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s almost propaganda and there’s a narrative for Africans and based on Africa that kind of.

Keeps things the same like you’re saying stripping resources from Africa and just kind of. Stating that, oh, Africans are stupid. Oh they don’t know what to do with their own resources, which isn’t true because prior to colonization Africa, they were building kingdoms. There was libraries there, there were, there were educators there, there was so much there that wasn’t in the western world.

And the western world saw that. And they, they took that away. And it’s like, it’s like, Okay. There’s something in Africa that isn’t in the Western world. Fair enough. You can go there and collaborate with Africans and make a deal and take some stuff, but don’t take so much to the extent that you are literally putting Africans in a in a state of despair, in a state of severe poverty. And I think that’s the issue. There should be some form of collaboration. There should be some form of equity and equality when it comes to trade. There should be more fairness in these things, and I think. Yeah, just that propaganda and that kind of narrative of who Africans are kind of almost makes it easier for colonizers and the Westerners to do, continue doing what they’re doing.

Bairbre Flood: So, yeah, absolutely. And it, it helps people justify history more and, and, you know, yeah, yeah. Like that whole thing about, I’m sorry, like Irish slaves, like just, fuck off. Excuse my language, other than to rephrase that. So that thing about like there being Irish slaves, I mean, it’s just, it was totally manipulated by right wing whites in, in America to, to further like a racist agenda.

Raphael Olympio: And even on that, I, I don’t know much about it. I’ve read a bit about it and some elements may, there might be truth in it, there may not be. But it still doesn’t change the fact that, okay, there have been black slaves for hundreds of years. And there was something I I read on a while back and there was an argument online where people were, I guess discussing racism and ‘why are Africans still so distraught about slavery? It happened years ago.’ 

And then I thought of it as somebody said if you think about it in regards to, we’ll say an ex who cheated on you over and over again and then you dated somebody else and they cheated on you as well. So it’s like almost this comparison where white people are the ex and black people are the person that have been affected by, I guess, the cheating.

So it takes time to heal. And get, I guess not even get over it, but takes time to heal just generally to trust people again, because all you know in your past is that white people have done this and nobody has really done much to help black people. Black people almost had to help themselves get out of it.

Mm-hmm. 

And it’s the same similarly to somebody who’s dating an ex who continuously cheated for them to move on. And progress, I guess and continue dating is gonna be difficult for them cuz they’re gonna have trust issues. And I think it’s the same problem that we have today. It’s just those trust issues where we’re questioning, okay, this happened for so long, why hasn’t there been change?

And then again, it’s like we’re trying to almost move forward and work with white allies, but there’s still this racial anxiety almost within us, where we’re still questioning are they really there to help us? Is it the cool thing now to be black? Is it, why, what’s, what’s different now to back then?

And slavery still exists in different shapes and forms today. So it’s still that, that fear of. Are there enough white people really trying to help? Do we still need to help ourselves? Of course, we’re, we’re doing everything in our power to help ourselves, but there’s just, again, those that boundary, that trust issue where you don’t know what’s, what’s really actually going on y’all is questioning.

And that comes from history and I think history repeats itself as well. So there’s just that fear around that as well. So, Like in education, in schools and stuff. 

Mm-hmm. 

Stop talking about it. Talk about Africans before colonization, before slavery. Talk about the good. Talk about who, who we’re proud to be instead of all the negativity around it.

And even using things like the n word and class just for educational purposes, when there’s one or two or three black children in the class who clearly are gonna feel uncomfortable. I think like the narrative needs to change and we need to continue having these conversations that we’re having even now.

Bairbre Flood: Mm-hmm. So yeah, like it definitely like music and, and film has done a lot Yeah to make like being black cool. Okay. That’s, that is, and, and there is an element of like, yeah. Is, is some of a kind of performative allyship and mm-hmm. Like how deep is it and when it, when it comes to it, like, people will change their Instagram thing, but like, will they go on a march or will they do anything to help uplift black voices or will they do, I dunno, there’s, I don’t know, in whatever field you’re in, say you’re a lawyer, I don’t know. Would you do something to actually… 

Raphael Olympio: make the change proactively and continuously? Not like just for, oh, there’s a bit of a trend going on. Let me hop in the trend and be anti-racist for the week and then just kinda.

Go about your life then for the rest of the week. Which is fair enough, but I think if, if you are saying you’re proactively anti-racist and you are an ally, then. Be be that person on a day-to-day basis cuz we’re fighting. It’s a daily fight for us on a day-to-day basis. And even within the black community, I think there’s, we all experience different forms of racism and depending on why you’re living in Ireland, even some people might mightn’t even experience it at all.

So it’s just, I guess just acknowledging where everybody’s at. And just because maybe one black person saying, oh, I don’t really experience it, doesn’t mean you should take that away from somebody else. And I’ve even had conversations with white people where they’ve said they have never seen racism. But I’m like, of course, if you’re not looking out for it, if you’re not experiencing it yourself, you’re not gonna see it.

And then on the other hand, when you were talking about being cool, I guess to hop on, like black trends or black culture’s kind of becoming a cool thing now. So I always ask people, it’s, I always tell people it’s like almost it’s like music. Like everybody wants the, the, how would I put it? Wants the rhythm, you know?

But they don’t want the blues. So that’s, that’s, that’s the way I look at it. You want the rhythm, you want the hip hop, the, the thing that kind of gives you that rhythm gets you moving. But when it comes to the blues – the sadness and the reality of it, of why people are even doing hip hop or create creative kind of outlets to express themselves when it gets deep.

A lot of people kind of wanna run away from that, or they’re like, oh no, that’s too deep now, that’s too much for me. So it’s like, if you do want the rhythm, you also should kind of be ready for the, the blues that we experience as well. So yeah, 

Bairbre Flood: that’s a really good way of putting that, actually. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s like as well, like I, we like with a lot of rap and hip hop, it’s like, well if, if you’re completely excluded from mainstream literature, which black people and people of color were. In America particularly, like I’m thinking historically, obviously you have to find other outlets, other, I guess, ways of educating yourself and expressing yourself.

Raphael Olympio: So, yeah. And then you just get the labels then jumping on it and, oh, we can make money from this. That’s, that’s good. Exploiting it. Yeah. And then even getting, I guess, black artists to almost labels and like even people above the labels that the machines that, like we don’t talk about the systems, we don’t really talk about.

Kind of, I guess, use hiphop even as propaganda, because if you get signed to a label, and it happens in the states all the time, they want you to talk about certain topics because it’s selling. And if you look at even the stats around that, it’s like, who’s buying these records more? It’s, it’s white people actually buying up more than black people themselves.

It’s white people listening to hiphop more than black people and enjoying it more, especially when. They’re using the N word or talking about gangster or I guess the stereotypes associated with hiphop. So that’s been pushed almost for artists to do when they get signed. And a lot of artists who aren’t signed would talk more about maybe racism or talk more about oppression or talk more about mental health or things that they actually, that actually matter to them as opposed to talking about, I guess the surface level stuff that we heard and.

I guess mainstream hip hop, underground hip hop has a lot more to say than mainstream hip hop, but mainstream hip hop gets pushed, I guess, to fulfill a narrative. 

Bairbre Flood: Mm-hmm. So, yeah. Yeah. And your own work, I mean, what, what inspires you or what, what kind of keeps you going in your own work? 

Raphael Olympio: Well, so I struggle a bit with, I guess social anxiety, racial anxiety.

I’m kind of. Introverted sometimes, and sometimes I’m extroverted depending on, I guess, the environment and what’s happening. But this kind of stemmed from, I guess, when I first came to Ireland and I was isolated in their provision and I didn’t speak much because guess you’re all, you all felt oppressed and you just, I just kept to myself and I felt like my voice didn’t matter and English was kind of, was my first language coming into the country.

So it’s just quite difficult to express myself. But the only people I think I saw on tele back in the day were I guess black artists and maybe sportsmen or comedians and actors, and I mimic them a lot. And I, I learned, I guess, how to express myself true hip hop. And I used to, I started off writing poetry mimicking 50 cent, Eminem, Tupac, and all the old school rappers from the nineties.

And then I, I got more confident, I guess, and to expressing myself, my mental health got better and I, I became more social and I felt like I was able to, Talk about what I was going through in third person, or if it was, I felt it was too deep, or I was also just able to express what was happening in community.

And that just helped me a lot, feel kind of liberated to say what I wanna say without feeling like attacked or true conversation. It’s like, okay, this is how I feel. I’m gonna let leave it out for the world. And If people like it, they like it. If they don’t, it is what it is. But I’ve said my truth and I 100% believe that people should speak their truth and back it up obviously with evidence.

But expression has been key for me, and music has helped me my mental health and helped me express myself. And now I’m doing workshops with young people to do the same, so, yeah. Yeah, they’re great. Like I was just saying before we started, like they’re, they’re amazing kids. Like they teenagers, they’re amazing.

They’re, and they motivate me to continue the work I’m doing, I guess. So, yeah. Yeah. But the talents like, I mean, it’s, it’s like you. Even if somebody’s a little bit shy or is a little bit unsure of themselves, it’s, it’s, it’s all there. Yeah. Like inside of us. Yeah. Yeah. And I believe if, if you’re speaking, you’re true, no matter how shy or reserved you are, if you feel you are wholeheartedly saying or stating something you 100% believe in, it gets easier.

And if you have the confidence to continue doing that, that shyness and that kind of timidness or social anxiety kinda. Regresses, you know, and you feel more in your element and once you’re confident to back up your truth, it’s so powerful. So, so powerful. So I think that that’s, if I’m gonna say anything to anybody is just speak your truth.

And then there’s, I mean, if you’re speaking your truth, then you don’t question it. You know, you’re not you’re not gonna back away in a corner. You’re gonna. Feel comfortable, and I think everybody has a truth that they want to share. So I believe share it. And if you can’t do a true conversation due to a form of art.

Yeah. 

Bairbre Flood: So, yeah, and I mean, it doesn’t have to be professional. It just, people have this idea that art is this thing that has to be perfect. Like you can do something not that well and it’s still good, like, it’s still fun. 

Raphael Olympio: That’s it. And it could be abstract or even like the songs I’ve written are poetry.

I’ve written just for myself and I’m, I’m like, I’m not releasing this to the world, but I’ve released it for myself. You know? And that, that’s helped me. 

Bairbre Flood: So, yeah, actually that’s a good point. I mean, I’d say 50% of stuff. A lot of people write it just never sees the light of day. 

Raphael Olympio: No, no, no!

Bairbre Flood: Just as well. Yeah. 

[laughter]

Bairbre Flood: But just a little bit about the the work with the, with the teenagers.

Mm-hmm. What do you feel like you’ve learned from them in terms of teaching and facilitating? 

Raphael Olympio: I think you know, I take for granted I guess how I started as a young person myself. And I think one thing I’m learning from them is, That it doesn’t matter at what stage you begin a creative art form, if you continue doing it true repetition, true practice, you could become an amazing artist no matter what you do.

And I think that’s what I’ve learned from them the most. Cause sometimes I myself feel like, I’m at a stalemate almost? Am I, can I get better? Can I improve on my craft? And. By seeing them, I 100% believe that I can improve and I have improved based off working with them and applying, I guess the, the tools I use with them on myself.

And I think even as a music educator I think I take that for granted, you know, the basics that kind of help improve songwriting skills or help improve, express yourself or just overall, I guess creativity. 

I’ve become more creative and I think there’s young learning how to become creative. From the young people is very important because sometimes you feel like there’s only so much as a, as a person that, you know, and it just kind of gives you that kind of refreshment, that kind of energy that you kind of lose, tend to lose as you get older, you know?

But the young people are so energetic that it kind of livens up your spirit, and then that translates into my own music today. So, yeah.

Bairbre Flood: Thank you so much. Mm-hmm. 

Raphael Olympio: And thank you for having me and it’s been a pleasure. And yeah, I hope you work in the future again, cheers. Thank you.

[MUSIC]

Bairbre Flood: A huge thanks to Raphael Olympio for talking to me and for such a beautiful piece that he wrote for this podcast. 

As with all the pieces, you can find them on the website@bairbreflood.org, and I’ll put up links to Olympia’s videos as well. Like I said, at the start, at least go and have a listen to E P G – Exploitation, Power, Greed –  on YouTube. It’s really brilliant. 

The creative work he does with the young people in the Cork Migrant Center is something we look at more in the next episode when I meet young people at his workshop. So make sure you tune in for that next week. Again, thanks so much to Raphael Olympio for all the great and valuable work he’s doing, and go watch the video.

Thank you so much for listening. And thanks to the Arts Council of Ireland for their funding support. See you next week. Bye for now.