The Born From Culture videos pair traditional dance, clothing and landscapes with one of hip-hop’s most recognizable songs. I started watching because of the music. I stayed because I realized I was learning something.
I don’t remember which one I saw first.
That’s the problem with scrolling. Something comes across your phone, you stop for a second, maybe watch it twice, and then you’re on to whatever the algorithm has decided you need next.
Except I kept seeing these.
Beautifully shot people in traditional clothing. Mountains. Horses. Ancient buildings. Faces. Jewelry. Food. Dancers moving in ways I had never seen before.
And underneath all of it:
Future.
More specifically, “Mask Off.”
Which is not where I expected this story to go.
The first time you see one of the videos, the combination almost shouldn’t work.
Traditional Georgian dance set to Future?
Okay.
But it does.
Then Armenia.
Kazakhstan.
Uzbekistan.
Mongolia.
Samoa.
Māori culture in New Zealand.
Sakha, or Yakutia, in Russia’s Far East.
And suddenly I wasn’t watching a TikTok trend anymore.
I was traveling.
Wait. Where Is That?
That’s the thing that got me.
I know almost nothing about some of these places.
I can find Armenia on a map. I know some of its history. Georgia, too.
But ask me what traditional Armenian dance looks like?
Nope.
What does somebody from Kazakhstan wear for a traditional celebration?
Couldn’t tell you.
What does Sakha culture look like?
I didn’t even know enough to know what I didn’t know.
And I think that’s why these videos are so good.
They don’t begin by trying to teach you anything.
Nobody is standing in front of the camera saying, “Today we’re going to learn about the traditional culture of Kazakhstan.”
I’d probably keep scrolling.
Instead, you hear something you know.
That flute comes in.
If you know “Mask Off,” you know exactly what’s about to happen.
But what appears on the screen isn’t Atlanta.
It’s somebody else’s world.
And now I’m curious.
That’s a pretty remarkable trick.
The music is familiar enough to make you stop. Everything else makes you stay.
Born From Culture
The videos are part of a project and now a much larger social media movement called Born From Culture.
Australian choreographer and director James Fenwick began creating cinematic films combining traditional cultural expression with contemporary music. His work with Samoan culture and later Georgia helped establish the visual language that other filmmakers around the world began adapting for their own communities.
And they are not casual dance videos.
They are gorgeous.
The Georgian film helped push the idea internationally. Soon filmmakers and dancers elsewhere began creating their own interpretations: Armenia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, Sakha and others.
The basic structure stays recognizable.
Traditional movement.
Traditional clothing.
Places that matter.
People who belong there.
Modern cinematography.
And hip-hop.
Often the same Future record.
But each time, the result feels completely different because the culture is different.
That’s what makes this more interesting than another viral challenge.
The participants aren’t really copying each other.
They’re answering each other.
This is who we are.
Now show us who you are.
And Somehow Future Is the Tour Guide
There is something wonderfully absurd about Future being the connective tissue in all of this.
A song released nearly a decade ago by a Black rapper from Atlanta is now accompanying traditional dancers across Central Asia, the Caucasus and other parts of the world.
Think about that.
Not because Future intended it.
Not because somebody at a tourism bureau commissioned an international campaign.
Not because UNESCO decided hip-hop was the best way to introduce traditional cultures to younger audiences.
The internet just did what the internet occasionally does when it isn’t making us all insane.
It connected some people.
And there’s a larger Black story hiding in there.
We talk a lot about the influence of Black culture.
Usually the conversation is about how far it travels.
Hip-hop went global.
Our language went global.
Our fashion went global.
Our dances went global.
Our music went global.
And all of that is true.
But watching Born From Culture made me think about the exchange differently.
Maybe the interesting thing isn’t just how far Black culture travels.
Maybe it’s where Black culture can take us.
Hip-hop isn’t the destination here. It’s the doorway.
Future isn’t replacing Armenian culture.
He’s introducing me to it.
Armenia Made Me Understand It
The Armenian version might be the one that finally made the whole thing click for me.
Director and cinematographer Avo Harutyunyan and the Black Flight team created their version with dancers from Sardaryan Studio and traditional-inspired costumes from Armat Photostudio. They filmed against historic Armenian locations and incorporated dance, architecture, landscape and other cultural elements.
It is stunning.
And apparently I’m not the only person who thought so.
The film spread well beyond Armenian social media, appearing on international visual and creative platforms. More interestingly, people in the comments started asking about Armenia itself — the locations, the culture and the possibility of visiting.
There it is.
That’s the whole thing.
A person who had no intention of learning anything about Armenia five minutes ago is suddenly Googling Armenia.
That’s cultural discovery.
Not because somebody demanded our attention.
Because they earned our curiosity.
Of Course Somebody Got Mad
Because this is the internet, there is also an argument.
Some people don’t like the use of contemporary American music with traditional dance.
When a Sakha dance ensemble joined the trend, some viewers questioned why traditional music wasn’t being used instead. Others saw the exact same thing and loved that one song was encouraging cultures around the world to show themselves to one another.
I understand the criticism.
Traditional music matters too.
Context matters.
Preservation matters.
But I also think that argument misses what makes this particular thing work.
If every video used only its own traditional music, we’d have a collection of beautiful cultural films.
That’s worthwhile.
But the shared music creates the conversation.
It’s the thread.
You hear the same beat and wonder:
Okay. Who’s next?
And then somebody you’ve never met, from somewhere you’ve never been, gets about a minute to answer.
We Need More of This
I spend my life thinking about culture.
Black culture, certainly.
But increasingly I’ve been thinking about what BLAC should actually do with the privilege of having people’s attention.
There are enough places on the internet telling us what happened today.
There are enough places telling us what to be angry about.
There are certainly enough places trying to sell us something.
I think there should still be places that simply show us something worth seeing.
Something beautiful.
Something interesting.
Something that makes you say:
Damn. I didn’t know that.
Born From Culture did that for me.
I started with Future.
Then I wanted to know about Georgian dance.
Then Armenia.
Then Kazakhstan.
Then the clothing.
Then the horses.
Then the buildings.
Then the landscapes.
Then the people.
That’s how curiosity works.
One thing leads to another.
And maybe that’s one of the things we’ve forgotten about this giant, weird internet we’ve built.
It doesn’t only have to reinforce what we already know.
It can introduce us to each other.
There are billions of people walking around this planet carrying languages, food, dances, music, rituals, clothes, jokes, histories and ways of seeing the world that most of us will never experience firsthand.
We should probably be a little more curious about them.
And if Future is what gets us through the door?
Turn it up.
BONUS VIDEO (just because I love it) featuring Kendrick Lamar
Filed under