Magee McIlvaine

Magee McIlvaine was born in Canada and grew up between East Africa and Washington, DC. While in high school, Magee won a grant to film a political documentary on Swaziland. Successfully interviewing the head of the opposition parties and the King himself, later voted as one of the top 20 worst dictators in the world, this film was Magee’s first and it set him on a path of political and cultural exploration throughout the world with film as his medium. Since then, Magee has increasingly focused his work on international politics and the use of music, particularly hip hop, as a political tool. In college he produced a documentary entitled ‘Getting’ A Bad Rap: Conversations about hip hop from NYC to CT’ and his senior thesis film entitled “Nyama: the Modern Manifestation of Griot Culture and Tradition in the US Through Hip Hop,’ a film exploring the links between West African griot culture and modern American hip hop. Magee co-founded Sol Productions, a non-profit film production company, and filmed the Presidential Elections in Venezuela, Senegal, and France. He also co-founded, together with Nomadic Wax and Trinity College, the first ever International Hip Hop Festival and Conference of its size in the US, and is currently working on a film about this groundbreaking event.