Growing up surrounded by a variety of social issues, caught up in a lot of racism, has meant that ‘second-and-a-half generation’ Luka Haralampou is a different kind; ‘cut from a different cloth’ is how he puts it.
In the Greek enclave in Brisbane where he was born, Luka and his brother had to fight racism on daily basis, whether it was racism they were victims of, or racism directed towards indigenous Australians or refugees by their Greek friends. As he explains, Greeks have short memories – forgetting that they too were once refugees and migrants. 
Unfortunate experiences have served as a milestone for Luka, for him to use them in creative way. Under the pseudonym as he is known today, Luka Lesson is using his words to ignite social change. Through spoken word and hip-hop, his poetry and performances, he believes his calling is with words and helping other people write what they can. 


Luka spent several years as Assistant Lecturer of Indigenous Studies at Monash University in Melbourne, and many more as a community activist, standing with communities of all backgrounds to establish a connection between social issues, poetry and self-empowerment. 


“To find voices where people feel choked up and silent, and for society to learn from each other, not from media. So my work is based on sharing what I have learned and affecting individuals that I work with one at a time, in positive ways, so they can do the same,” Luka tells Neos Kosmos.


He has been writing rap music for nine years, and soon after discovered Slam Poetry. A Slam competition, started in Chicago in the ’80s, involves poets performing for 3 minutes and being judged by audience members. After becoming the 2011 Australian Slam Poetry champion, he spent the next year touring festivals around the world. 


His latest hip-hop album Please Resist Me – a combination of both poetry and music – brings 17 tracks of love, social change, ancestral pathways and internal ruminations.
Although he often dislikes the way the word ‘poet’ is used, it still describes him the best. Through words, he is sharing his observations and reflections of the world; he is being honest about his faults and the issues of the world. Sometimes he shares these in tiny classrooms in the Bronx, New York, or in university classrooms in China. 
At the moment, Luka Lesson is sharing his thoughts through hip-hop songs on stage in Greece, touring with a conscious hip-hop group ‘Active Member’, the first of its type in Greece, and now more than 20-years-old. 


“As a Greek-Australian, I have the right to choose what it is I believe to be a healthy part of my culture and leave behind those things that I think are unhealthy and toxic. Cultures are never perfect, nor are they ever static. Cultures are fluid and it is our choices that make them change. I have often had to shrink from my affiliation or affection with my culture. To get a job, to be part of the hip-hop community, and to speak openly about prejudice. I tell them to go and read Herodotus ‘The Histories’ or anything by Kazantzakis; they tell me, because I was interested in Buddhism, I was no longer Greek. To me, Greeks are meant to question, enquire, make mistakes, learn from all cultures, be philosophical as well as physical, faithful, warriors, lovers and friends. Eksipni anthropi. Close mindedness is not a prerequisite for Greekness… it has just crept in somehow over the years,” he says.


With a first hand experience of the Greece of today, after two months spent there, Luka recently expressed his opinion on Golden Dawn in Greek newspapers. 


“I can’t comprehend how Greeks can vote neo-Nazi,” he said in an interview with Eleftherotypia.


“Greece is in trouble. Most of the people with an opportunity to leave have left. Some of those who left resort to blaming migrants and refugees for the problems; some whinge 24/7; others, a small minority, are finding solutions without engaging in politics. My grandmother’s brother was killed by Nazi’s who invaded Aigio and Kalavryta; now, there are neo-Nazi offices in both Aigio, Kalavryta and every other town you can think of. It is incredible and disgusting,” he tells us.


In terms of whether his other homeland, Australia, accepts migrants easily, the young rapper responds with a simple ‘no’. And what he can’t comprehend is why so many of us have joined in that fear and prejudice.


“I think the government in Australia has kept the history of Australia so silent that I just had an urge to make sure I knew what they were hiding. It is absolutely crazy to think that the original people in Australia were literally, by law, considered to be animals and not humans. That is a hard truth. But that doesn’t mean I should shy away from saying it or learning more about it. These types of histories underpin the problems we have in Australia today, our foundations are shaky to say the least, and people deserve more than that.”


“Subconsciously, white Australia believes all people to be the same. So just like they came and plundered, murdered and stole, they think the boats that arrive now are trying to do the same. And the problem is not migrants – more migrants come via plane every year by far than refugees. The problem is colour and acceptance of difference. They do it with every new wave of migrants, they even used us Greeks to win and lose elections when it was our turn,” Luka explains.
It is Luka’s poems and hip-hop songs that go past the boundaries of modern society – unleashing the anger and frustration.
To follow the work of Luka Lesson, visit http://lukalesson.org