Rap and Revolution: Hip-Hop Comes to Cuba
Olavarria, Margot
Half an hour's drive east of Havana is the suburb of Alamar, home to 300,000 Cubans. Built in the early 1970s, it is one of the largest housing projects in the world, made up of massive,...
...Cubans always laugh at themselves, at what is funny and at what is unfortunate," says Martinez...
...This bridge between the Cuban and U.S...
...Their articulate rhymes flow at machine-gun pace, fusing words with Afro-Cuban rhythms to make Cuban hip-hop a distinct art form...
...Cuban rappers are cultivating a sense of blackness through their music, but they are doing it in a way that is specific to their own racialized context...
...inner cities did not fit the Cuban reality, so Abiodun began working with organizations in the United States to bring progressive U.S...
...hat Cuba is not a bastion of racial equality became crystal clear to me during my first trip in 2000...
...11-12, pp...
...2 On the island, the hip-hop movement found support in the mid 1990s from Grupo Uno, a collective from an East Havana cultural center, and rock promoter Rodolfo Renzoli, who set out to launch the festivals in 1995.3 They allied with the Asociaci6n Hermanos Sa(z (AHS), an organization that promotes young artists and is linked to the Communist Youth Organization, and got official endorsement for the festivals...
...not for being black, but for making music that originated in the United States and for being women who rap...
...Interview with author, Havana, October 2000...
...rappers to perform in Cuba...
...cities than the police harassment they experience...
...Despite Cuban rap artists' dissatisfaction with the hardships of everyday life and their frustration with lacking the resources and technological equipment necessary to make their music, they appreciate the gains of the revolution and criticize Cuba's rising individualism...
...Once they found out I was here and that I was part of a movement, they began to ask me questions about the Black Panther Party, Malcolm X, what happened to Angela Davis...
...6 In a country where some official documents consider mulattos white, and many mestizos self-identify as white, Herrera's response is like dropping a bomb...
...Cuban hip-hop artists have had help in dissipating some of that smoke, clearing the way toward gaining a certain amount of legitimacy...
...4. Talk by Fernandez at "Lenguas Libres" event at Mixta Gallery, East Harlem, NY, October 13, 2001...
...El Caimdn Barbudo website, <http://www.caimanbarbudo.cu/caiman303/page /rap.htm 7. Eugene Godfried, "Reflections on Race and the Status of People of African Descent in Revolutionary Cuba," in AfroCubaWeb, <http://www.afrocubaweb.com/eugenegodfried/reflec tionsonrace.htm> Pedro Juan Gutierrez, "Razas Diferentes Pero Iguales," Bohemia, January 17, 1997, Vol...
...10 Another example of satire is a song by Alto y Bajo that says, "This is the most beautiful island that Cubans have ever seen/I am the Cuban hiphop, the international one...
...30 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Rap and Revolution: Hip-hop Comes to Cuba 1. Interview with author, Havana, October 2000...
...6. Alessandra Basso Ortiz, "Rap: Por el amor al arte...
...I am Cuban-I am black, very black but my grandmother was Phillipine and my grandfather was Catalin...
...Since then, Mos Def, dead prez, Black Star, Common and other U.S...
...Further, there were no black newscasters and few blacks in general on television...
...Today there are some 200 hip-hop groups in Havana, and 500 throughout the island...
...The lyrical depth of this music, evidence of the benefits of Cuba's educational system, speaks to the many ways in which race, gender, class and national identity intersect and are in constant flux...
...At a party welcoming back to Cuba the delegation of groups that visited New York, Coquino from An6nimo Consejo confirmed others' belief that "African-Americans have had it worse than us...
...Cuban rap can now be heard on a weekly radio show, "Esquina de Rap," and seen on television Saturday afternoons...
...At a presentation in an art gallery in East Harlem, Magia L6pez of Obseci6n introduced a song about racism: "It is an undeclared racism...
...While competing to be part of the 2000 festival, for example, the group Free Hole Negro was asked to explain their name on television...
...Young, mostly black Cuban men adopted the genre, first by imitating it and eventually infusing it with their own roots and reality, transforming it into a space for self-expression that both reflects and constitutes their identity...
...We defend our right to do rap, but we do it sensually," Janet Didz told me...
...9. Presentation by Obseci6n at "Lenguas Libres" event at Mixta Gallery, East Harlem, NY, October 13, 2001...
...They said that besides being an obvious pun (free hole=frijol=black bean), it was calling for a space where all black people could be free...
...8 Instinto feel they have been dis- Hip-hop fans at La Piscina, Alamar's sw criminated against hop venue on Friday nights...
...By comparing it to the Nueva Trova of the 1960s, Ariel Ferndndez of AHS sees the Cuban hip-hop movement as a revolution within the revolution...
...It was certainly a struggle to bring this music out of the underground during the 1980s and early 1990s, when hip-hop concerts and partiesseen as carriers of capitalist, anti-social influenceswere closed down by police, to a time when the movement has the attention of the local and international media...
...The Orishas, for example, rap about being unable to "stop the blood of love and homeland [patria] that runs through my veins" over the Buena Vista Social Club's "Chan Chan...
...The aggressive, mysoginist lyrics about the violence of U.S...
...But they must also be understood as coming from an awareness of Cuba's marginalization within that global order and the conscioussness that they represent Cuba in the cosmopolitan youth culture they also strive to be part of...
...In "Afro-Cuban," the accent is on the Cuban...
...Given the lack of public discourse on race and racism, and the continuing resonance of Jos6 Marti's "more than black and more than white, we are Cubans," it is not surprising that there is not a strong sense of belonging to an African diaspora among rappers...
...9 The song speaks to racial codes that use notions of "decency" to exclude blacks...
...5. Poster published by Grupo Identidad de la Mujer, Santo Domingo, DR...
...The reluctance to talk about race and racism is slowly wearing away, however, with youth taking the lead...
...hiphop communities continues to strengthen, despite the U.S.-imposed embargo...
...18-47...
...What made it exciting for me was that there were a number of brothers with X's carved into their hair...
...gangsta rap...
...Those are the best four days of the year for us," Julio Cdrdenas and Yohan Linares of RCA (Rapperos Crazy de Alamar) told me in October 2000 as they showed me the amphiteater where the festivals are held...
...Cuban rap often voices its criticism with satire, or with dispersed and double meanings...
...4 The government began sponsoring the festivals and listening to what the rappers were saying and to sponsor the festivals...
...For example, hip-hop producer Pablo Herrera was asked in the Cuban press VOL XXXV, No 6 MAY/JUNE 2002 29REPORT ON RACE AND IDENTITY whether there were any white rappers...
...While renting a room from a white couple, I overheard the husband complaining about a co-worker, whom he described as "one of those with bad hair...
...To trivialize it as anything else would be to deny art's political potential...
...This got a little too close to the sensitive issue of racism in a context where revolutionary discourse has declared it to be a non-issue [See de la Fuente, "The Resurgence of Racism in Cuba," NACLA May/June, 2001 p. 29...
...Free Hole Negro was not part of the line-up of artists featured in the festival that year...
...In Cuba, hip-hop is a movement whereby black youth can celebrate and express themselves...
...Black Liberation Army activist in political exile in Cuba, began her involvement with Cuban rappers after arriving on the island in 1990...
...These strong expressions of cubanidad could be interpreted as attempts to placate government paranoia that Cuba is losing its youth to globalized consumer culture...
...Other groups performing denounced their exclusion and Free Hole Negro got to perform the following year...
...I found it very comforting and exciting after eight years living underground and even more than that struggling against racism back home...
...hip-hop arrived on the island...
...All over Latin America, marginalized urban youth are taking hip-hop and reshaping it to express their own reality...
...Lester Martinez of Free Hole Negro says that the use of satire is more than just about getting around censorship...
...Now the government even promotes NAC8LA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Margot Olavarria is associate editor of NACLA and a PhD candidate in political science at The New School for Social Research...
...2. The project was organized by International Hip-Hop Exchange, a group of New York activists including actor Danny Hoch and Mairanieves Alba, director of Hip-Hop Leads, and the organizations Vera List Center for Art and Politics of the New School for Social Research and the Caribbean Cultural Center...
...Then when visiting an Afro-Cuban friend I noticed a poster (from a women's group in the Dominican Republic) behind her door that listed '"Ten racist expressions we should not repeat...
...But the success of the festivals is only one step in a struggle that continues "por el suelo," they tell me using a Cuban expression for crawling across the floor, as in avoiding the cloud of smoke lurking above in the middle of a fire...
...Cultural officials decide who gets to participate and perform in the festivals, however, and on occasion some groups have felt they have been unjustly excluded...
...7 Racial identity is also mediated by other factors...
...While not all rap is politically charged, a number of groups have begun an important movement for cultural and social change, using rap as a vehicle to speak out about racism, prostitution, police harassment, growing class differences, the difficulty of daily survival and other social problems of contemporary Cuba...
...Like the majority of groups, they mix Afro-Cuban rhythms, referred by most as simply "traditional Cuban music"(that it is African in origin is assumed), with their rhymes...
...The social role it is playing is very important," says Fernmndez...
...8. Interview with author, Havana, October 2000...
...3. See Deborah Pacini HernBndez and Reebee Garofalo, "Hip-Hop in Havana: Rap, Race, and National Identity in Contemporary Cuba," in Journal of Popular Music Studies, Vol...
...That is how the sounds of U.S...
...We feed off rap, timba, soul, son and guaguanc6...
...Young Afro-Cubans also recognize that the police brutality against blacks is worse in U.S...
...That was when Abiodun encountered thousands of young AfroCubans enjoying themselves and breakdancing to U.S...
...rappers have brought their politicized messages to Cuba and since 1998, the New Yorkbased oganization Black August has held fundraising concerts in the United States to support the Havana rap festivals and establish a hip-hop library and studio there...
...The media attention the movement is getting provides opportunities to get their expressions of racial identity to mainstream society...
...He replied: "Well, let's say there are lighter-skinned rappers, because no one in Cuba is white...
...Nehanda Abiodun, a U.S...
...The subtext here reads: Given the difficulty of travel for Cubans, Cuba is the only island they have ever seen...
...89, No...
...5 She pointed to number nine, "she is black but has a white soul" and told me she herself would use this expression even well after the revolution...
...rap music at street parties...
...2, pp.4-9...
...o a Y 0 0 0 28REPORT ON RACE AND IDENTITY and supports, to the extent that it can, the yearly rap festivals held in (aptly) Alamar...
...Cuban rap is criticizing the deficiencies that exist in society, but in a constructive way, educating youth and opening spaces to create a better society...
...Instinto likes to rap to live drums-"cati, tambor, the sound of beating on goat skin and wood, mixing rumba and rap...
...Most young Afro-Cubans recognize that racial prejudice was more pronounced during their parents' generation and that intermarriage is far more common today...
...We make music of the street to make peoimming pool that transforms into a hipple dance and think...
...But the frequent references to Cuba and being Cuban are more often on a serious note...
...While rap is not necessarily offering solutions to these problems, the movement has created an opening for freedom of expression under the threat and pressure of state censorship...
...The Reyes de la Calle, for example, have a song about people who devoutly pray while still holding on to their prejudices, and their likely reaction if at the world's end, God turned out to be black...
...I have the whole world in me...
...For example, Doris Agramonte from Instinto, a female rap trio, identifies as both black and mixed race...
...There are people who reject blacks and we live this and feel this in Cuba...
...l At the same time, Abiodun noticed Cuban rappers imitating U.S...
...The latest evidence of this has been the October 2001 visit of Cuban hip-hop groups Obseci6n, RCA and An6nimo Consejo to New York City as part of this ongoing cultural exchange...
...They frequently asked me about the human rights abuses under the Rudolph Giuliani administration, especially about the Amadou Diallo and Abner Luima cases...
...We let the message be in the lyrics but in an ironic way...
...It was here that in the 1980s young residents would construct antennas to put out on their balconies to capture the sounds of "la mofia," r&b and rap music from Miami radio stations WEDR 99 Jams and WHQT Hot 105...
...Built in the early 1970s, it is one of the largest housing projects in the world, made up of massive, Sovietdesigned, walk-up buildings spread across 16 zones divided by stretches of tropical vegetation...
Vol. 35 • May 2002 • No. 6
