CUBAN HIP HOP
obsesionvideos on Sep 23, 2010
Obsesion Cuba hip hop - Se busca
se Busca una mujer que le entre a esto...Hip Hop Cubano
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Photograph courtesy of Papaya RecordsEl Rap: Anier Santana Fernández, Warner Hernández Duartez and Raidel Diaz Fernández-Criado of the Havana hip-hop group Quarto Imagen.
Underground Revolution
The Buena Vista Social Club is yesterday--Cuban youth have founded a burgeoning hip-hop scene
By Annelise Wunderlich
IT'S A LATE FRIDAY afternoon in downtown Havana, and an old man in a worn-out tuxedo opens the doors under the flickering green and red neon sign of Club Las Vegas. A poster on the wall, its corners curling in the humidity, advertises the usual cabaret fare of live salsa bands, banana daiquiris and beautiful women in skimpy red sequins. But the people standing outside the club are not tourists looking for an exotic thrill. They are mostly young, mostly black, and dressed in the latest Fubu and Tommy Hilfiger styles.
Once inside, they dance until the DJ tells them to give it up for the two guys who step on stage. One is tall and languid, the other shorter and in constant motion. They wear baggy jeans and oversized T-shirts, and sprinkle their songs with "c'mon now" and "aw'right." But while they might emulate American hip-hop style, Yosmel Sarrías and Maigel Entenza, who make up the duo Anónimo Consejo, rap about a distinctly Cuban reality.
"This is so that you understand that all young people aren't garbage," Yosmel and Maigel shout in Spanish. Then they rap: "It's time to break the silence/ This isn't what they teach in school/ In search of the American dream, Latinos suffer in the hands of others ..." The audience stares raptly.
"This music is not for dancing. It's for listening," says a kid wearing a Chicago Bulls jersey. He waves his hand high in the air. "And for Cubans, believe me, it takes a lot to keep us from dancing."
The two raperos are a study in contrasts--the writer and the star. Yosmel stands toward the back of the stage, his handsome face impassive as he delivers a steady flow of verse. Maigel electrifies, crisscrossing his arms as he prowls catlike across the stage. The crowd follows him, word for word. Anónimo Consejo is one of Cuba's top rap groups, waiting for their next big break--a record contract and a living wage to do what they love.
Three girls, decked out in bright Spandex tank tops, sit on the sidelines watching Maigel's every move. Yordanka, 20, Yaima, 19, and Noiris, 17, are cousins who a year ago started their own rap group, Explosion Femenina. So far, the only explosion has been in their living rooms or at school talent shows, but that could change. In a week, they will perform in public for the first time at Club Las Vegas. And if Cuba's top rap producer likes them, he'll groom them just as he has Maigel and Yosmel.
Pablo Herrera, the producer who can make them--who already made Orishas, the first popular Cuban rap group--is in the DJ's room looking down. "What you're seeing is Cuba's underground. I'm talking the empowerment of youth as a battle spear for a more conscious society," he says in English so flawless that he's sure he lived another life in Brooklyn. And he looks it--from the braids in his hair down to the New York attitude.
Herrera is one of the few hip-hop producers in Havana, and in a city with more than 250 rap groups, he says he's in demand and overworked. "I can't work with everybody, I'm not a machine. I mostly go with what I like."
The members of Orishas, frustrated by the slow pace of Cuba's state-run record industry, moved to Paris after a French producer dangled a recording contract in front of them. Their album A Lo Cubano sold more than 400,000 copies in Europe and nearly every kid in the 'hood in Cuba owns a bootlegged copy.
Maigel and Yosmel attracted Herrera because they push the limit, but they got a painful reminder of how far that limit can be pushed two years ago. After performing a song about the police and racial profiling, they were arrested and thrown in jail. The next morning they were released with a warning, and it's clear that, at least for now, they are heeding that warning. "My country is my text, and my flag is the paper I write it on," Yosmel raps. Viva la Revolución is a refrain in his songs and a Che Guevara T-shirt is a staple in his wardrobe.
Biggie Lives
But for young rappers here, the world is full of contradictions. They believe in Cuba, but they're not ideologues--they just want to make music from their own reality. Anónimo Consejo's lyrics are edgy, but getting too edgy could end their careers. Each day is a balancing act. Maigel and Yosmel want to succeed on their own terms, but they've been at it for four years, and their parents--supportive so far--are beginning to wonder how long they can afford to continue.
When they met eight years ago, Maigel, then 13, and Yosmel, 17, were just kids looking for fun on an island so depressed that scores of their countrymen were building rafts out of everything from styrofoam to old tubes to take their chances at sea. Yosmel and Maigel watched them from their homes in Cojímar, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Havana dotted with dilapidated Soviet-style high-rise apartment buildings and cement-block homes.
For relief from the dog days of 1993, the two teens and their friends hung out at Alamar, a sprawling housing complex nearby. The kids entertained themselves improvising, breakdancing and listening hard to the American music coming from antennas they rigged to their rooftops to catch Miami radio stations.
Rap like this was infiltrating the airwaves: "Cause I'm black and I'm proud/ I'm ready and amped/ Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps," rhymed Public Enemy in 1990's "Fear of a Black Planet." Yosmel loved it. "Their songs spoke to me in a new way. There was nothing in Cuba that sounded like it."
There also wasn't anything in Cuba that talked about the same issues that have challenged black Americans for decades. Cubans have been taught to ignore race, and the revolution tried to blur color lines by opening all professions, universities and government to Afro-Cubans. In school, when Yosmel mentioned his African ancestry, teachers reprimanded him. "They told me we are all Cubans," he says. "It wasn't patriotic to think of myself as different from anyone else."
But increasingly, he and Maigel discovered that they stood out. "There is this perception that all white people are saints and all blacks are delinquents," Maigel says. Though they add that police rarely do more than question them on the street, the stigma of being a young black man in Cuba wears on their nerves.
Basic Instinct: The trio Instinto, founded in 1996, was Cuba's first female rap group.
Pride and Politics
Even though Afro-Cubans have benefited greatly from the revolution, they've also suffered the most during its crisis. Every Cuban needs dollars to survive, and the bulk of the easy money coming in remittances goes to the white Cubans because it was their relatives who left early on. Darker Cubans also face discrimination getting the island's best jobs in the tourism industry. Skin color--despite the revolution's best intentions--has once again become the marker of a class divide.
Maigel, Yosmel and others in Cojímar felt it, and like any disaffected youth, they looked for role models who made them feel proud. Yosmel started asking his mother about his African roots, and before long, her stories became his lyrics. "In my poor bed, I read my history/ Memories of titans/ Africans kicking out the Spanish." She also taught him about santeria, Cuba's African-derived religion that has outlasted any political regime. "In school they taught him about slavery, but they didn't go into depth," his mother says, standing in the dirt yard in front of their small wooden house. Lines of laundry hang to dry in the hot sun. A single mother, she washes her neighbor's clothes in exchange for a few extra pesos each month.
She isn't Yosmel's only source of extracurricular knowledge. Cuba has long welcomed black American activists and intellectuals, and many of them have reached out to Afro-Cubans youth. Yosmel and Maigel often stop by the house of Nehanda Abiodun, a Black Panther living in exile, for informal sessions about African American history, poetry and world politics.
Abiodun, 54, calls herself an "elder guide" for Cuba's underground rap scene, and her influence is clear in the music. "Banal lies cover up the truth/ just like the killing of Shaka Sankofa," Yosmel raps, referring to the execution last year of an African American on death row. But the highlight of Yosmel's life so far has been meeting some of the biggest names in the U.S. rap underground. "It was amazing to hear rappers from another country worried about the same issues I was," he says.
Rap groups like dead prez and Black Star have been traveling to Cuba since 1998 as part of the Black August Collective, a group of African American activists and musicians dedicated to promoting hip-hop culture globally.
In addition to responding to the music, Cuban youth were also attracted to the visitors' obvious pride in being black. Embracing their African heritage, just as black Americans did in the 1960s, became a source of solace for young Afro-Cubans.
Along with Che Guevara and Jose Martí, Yosmel and Maigel admire Malcolm X, Mumia Abu Jamal, Nelson Mandela and other black icons. They were among thousands of Cubans that went to hear Mumia's son speak at an anti-imperialist rally last year. And when Yosmel and Maigel talk about meeting American rappers like Mos Def and Common [Sense], their faces beam.
Urban Realities: The members of top Cuban rap groups Junior Clan and Grandes Ligas hope to gain exposure beyond the island.Fidel Raps
Although rap has tied Yosmel and Maigel to a heritage that validates their existence, it has yet to improve their economic reality. But Herrera, the producer, may help them find a way out of poverty. He, along with others at the forefront of Cuba's underground rap movement, has been instrumental in changing the government's attitude toward hip-hop.
"The purpose of hip-hop is serving the country, not being an antagonistic tool," he says. "The idea is to improve what is already in place." These efforts were rewarded in 1999 when Abel Prieto, the Minister of Culture, officially declared rap "an authentic expression of cubanidad" and began nominally funding an annual rap festival. Even Fidel himself rapped along with the group Doble Filo at the national baseball championship two years ago.
But some have questioned Herrera's position as the arbiter of Cuban hip-hop's message and music.
"The only reason Pablo has game is because he is sponsored by the government," says Abel Robaina, a Cuban musician living in San Francisco. In fact, Herrera is a member of the Asociacion Hermanos Saiz, the youth branch of the Ministry of Culture that oversees the island's creative output. Any rap musician who hopes to be seen at a decent venue must get the association's approval, and that can only happen if their music is seen to serve the revolution.
It is no surprise, then, that Anónimo Consejo has become a favorite at state-sponsored shows. In their songs, they often warn young Cubans against the temptations of American-style capitalism. In the song "Appearances Are Deceiving" they rap: "Don't crush me, I'm staying here/ Don't push me, let me live/ I would give anything for my Cuba, I'm happy here."
Five years ago, both Maigel and Yosmel decided to forego Cuba's legendary free university education and devote themselves to making music. "They deserve a very good record deal," says Herrera, "and they deserve to be working at a studio every day making their music."
Despite their lyrics about staying put in Cuba, Yosmel and Maigel want more. "We are waiting around for an angel to come from abroad who recognizes our talent and is willing to invest a lot of attention and money in our project," Maigel says. Anónimo Consejo appears on the U.S.-released compilation produced by Herrera, Cuban Hip-Hop All Stars (Papaya Records), and they were featured in recent issues of Source and Vibe magazines.
But for now, when their session is over, Yosmel and Maigel still need to borrow a dollar to catch a bus back home.
Shouting Out: The boisterous trio Obsesión is a sort of Cuban Fugees, formed by Alexei Rodríguez, Magia López and Roger Martínez.Club Machismo
As difficult as it's been for Anónimo Consejo to land a record contract, it's tougher still for female rappers to earn respect in Cuba's rap scene. The three girls from Explosion Femenina would do almost anything to be in Anónimo Consejo's shoes.
In a rundown tenement in Central Havana, the girls have taken over their family's tiny apartment as they practice hard for their upcoming debut at Club Las Vegas. A faded portrait of Fidel looks down from the dark living room walls as the girls crank up the volume on their boom-box and rap about boy troubles over Eminem's hit, "Real Slim Shady." Whatever they lack in technique they make up for with sheer enthusiasm.
Through some connections, they managed to secure a spot at next Friday's Las Vegas show--and a chance to woo Pablo Herrera. That scene, however, is predominantly a boy's club, and they have to prove that they can do more than move well in tight pants if they hope to win Pablo's support.
On the rooftop, with the sun setting over the maze of narrow streets below them, they practice their one finished song before the show. Yaima, born for the spotlight, undulates and shimmies as all three harmonize about the hardships they've faced as women rappers: "With my feminine appearance I've come to rival you/ If you want to compete, if you want to waste time trying to destroy me/ I'll get rowdy and impress you."
They know their music needs a sharper edge to make it in the macho rap scene and practice another song about jinateras, Cuba's term for girls that sleep with foreign tourists to earn extra dollars. "We wrote this because so many guys we know assume we're jinateras just because we like to look good," Yaima explains. "Even though about 70 percent of the girls we know do it, we don't, and we're sick of them judging us."
The next Friday, outside Club Las Vegas, the girls are giddy. They excitedly snap photos of one another and different rapper friends, laughing to disguise their nervousness. They huddle with Magia, one of the few women rappers in Havana and also their mentor. "Remember to pay attention to where you are standing on stage. And sing in tune," she instructs, rubbing their backs in encouragement. Time to go in.
Santaurio, a group visiting from Venezuela, is the first to storm up to the microphones. Adorned with heavy gold chains, gold-capped teeth and designer labels, they clearly come from a different economic situation than their Cuban hosts. Yaima, Noiris and Jordanka are next. "They are so amazing," Noiris says, biting her lip. "Do you really think we are good enough to be up there after them?"
Good enough or not, DJ Ariel calls out for Explosion Femenina. The girls, looking very young and decidedly unglamorous, breathe deeply and take the stage.
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Hermanos de Causa - Tengo
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Straight Outta Havana
By SUJATHA FERNANDES
Published: August 6, 2011
Sujatha Fernandes is an assistant professor of sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and the author of the forthcoming “Close to the Edge: In Search of the Global Hip Hop Generation.”
ONSTAGE is Instinto, a female trio extraordinaire. It’s my first time seeing them perform in Havana. The divas are wearing shimmering strapless dresses with high heels. As a salsa beat kicks in, they shake and turn, rapping lyrically, then singing in three-part harmony.
This is Cuban rap, where the streets meet highbrow art. It is an American-derived subculture that has flourished on the island despite — and in some ways, because of — the United States’ half-century-long embargo against Cuba.
President Obama has relaxed travel restrictions to Cuba and has begun granting visas for visiting Cuban artists. This month, the Grammy-winning singer Pablo Milanés will tour the United States for the first time since 1979. And on Monday the National Assembly agreed to lift some restrictions on the economy. Many are celebrating these changes as the beginning of the end of the embargo and an opening of Cuban society. But it’s worth remembering that, besides the hardships, there can be benefits to living in a bubble. Islands are hot spots of biodiversity. And out of isolation, Cuban art forms like rap have developed a particular richness and vitality.
Rap was originally an import. In the early ’90s, young Cubans built antennas from wire coat hangers and dangled their radios out of their windows to catch 2 Live Crew and Naughty by Nature on Miami’s 99 Jamz. Aspiring Cuban M.C.’s rapping at house parties and in small local venues crassly mimicked their American counterparts.
“Just like you, just like you, nigger, we wanna be a nigger like you,” Primera Base rapped offensively about their hero, Malcolm X. The group was known to sport thick imitation gold chains and fake diamonds — even though “bling” was a remote concept given Cuba’s endemic scarcities.
But Cuban rap soon took on a life of its own. Unlike other hip-hop fans around the world, young Cubans had little access to the latest trends in American rap, so they had to look inward for inspiration. With only two state-run TV channels, they couldn’t tune in to the globally televised Yo! MTV Raps to see pioneers like Public Enemy or N.W.A., and Havana wasn’t on the touring circuit for De La Soul.
The embargo also kept out the key tools of background beats — samplers, mixers and albums — so Cuban rappers instead drew on a rich heritage of traditional local music, recreating the rhythmic pulse of hip-hop with instruments like the melodic Batá drums, typically used in ceremonies of the Afro-Cuban Santería religion. In the tradition of Cuban a cappella groups like Vocal Sampling — which conjured up full salsa orchestras solely through their voices — Cuban rappers made up for the lack of digital technology by developing the human beat box, mimicking not just drum machines but congas, trumpets and even song samples.
Cuban rap is also special for the caliber of its lyrics. Thanks to the country’s excellent and free schools, rappers — although predominantly black and from poorer neighborhoods — received a high degree of education. Cuba’s most prolific rap producer, Pablo Herrera, was a professor of English at the University of Havana. Rap lyrics mine Cuba’s literature and history in their portrayals of the tribulations of street life.
“I have a race that is dark and discriminated / I have a workday that demands and gives nothing,” rapped Hermanos De Causa in their song “Tengo.” The song reworked a 1964 poem that praised the achievements of the revolution for blacks; a new generation was watching those gains erode.
The increasing innovativeness of Cuban rap stands in stark contrast to American rap, where the diversity of sounds and themes has been eschewed in favor of a catchy pop formula with a focus on consumption. Hip-hop originated in the outdoor jams and battles of the Bronx during the 1970s, and commercial distribution began in 1979, when the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” became a hit. Global entertainment networks have promoted many influential rap artists, like Run-D.M.C. and Salt-n-Pepa, but today there is less and less room for American rappers to experiment with unconventional subjects and styles.
Cuban rappers avoided this fate for a number of reasons. One was government support. Initially, the government criticized the “racially divisive” culture of rap, but seeing how popular it was among the youth, the state soon came around. It began to support the annual rap festivals and now finances a yearly international hip-hop symposium. In Cuba, many musicians are full-time employees of the state, paid a monthly salary for performing, composing and rehearsing. Starting last decade, prominent rappers also entered into this arrangement, freeing them to be creative rather than producing generic salsa-rap fusions to appeal to foreign record labels.
The government’s interest in rap isn’t all positive, however. With state sponsorship comes state censorship: Rappers who criticize the government risk being censored on the radio or barred from performing in prominent venues. But censorship, like seclusion, can foster innovation. Cuban artists perfected techniques of metaphor, allusion and ambiguity to trick the censors. The rapper Magia Lopez of Obsesión defended a song, from her 2002 album, that was about prostitutes in barrios like Central Havana by saying that it was about capitalist countries. But she had never been to a capitalist country when she wrote it. The song takes on a universal appeal because of the artist’s need to dissemble.
This is, of course, not an argument in favor of state censorship or the embargo — which has deprived Cubans of basic necessities like food and medicine. The recent openings initiated by the Obama administration should be celebrated. But we can also recognize that some things, like the distinctiveness of Cuban rap, may be lost as the country opens up to a global market economy. It’s worth remembering that imposed, even self-imposed, isolation can be a crucible for artistic creativity.
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Mi Ventana Randy Acosta
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| Cuba Represent! |
| By Sujatha Fernandes |
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When I first visited Cuba in 1998, women's presence in hip-hop was still negligible. At concerts I would come across male rappers with their gold medallions, Fubu gear, and mindless lyrics about women, cars, and guns, the latter two hardly a reality for most young Cuban men. Over the years, there have been important changes in gender politics within Cuba, particularly in rap music, and women within the genre feel empowered to speak of issues such as sexuality, feminism, as well as gender roles and stereotyping.
In interviews with Pacini Hernandez and Garofalo, Cuban women rappers mentioned American female groups and rappers such as TLC, En Vogue, Salt n' Pepa, Monie Love, and Da Brat as important influences.[1] Prominent African-American feminist artists like Erykah Badu have performed in Cuba at rap festivals and concerts, and have been important in providing a role model for young aspiring women rappers. Visits and performances by grass roots feminist rappers such as Mala Rodríguez from Spain, Vanessa Díaz and La Bruja from New York, and Malena from Argentina have also been crucial in developing perspectives and exchanging ideas.
Women rappers have been part of the Cuban hip-hop movement from the beginning. Although there were no women performers at the first hip-hop festival in 1995, at the second festival in 1996 there was a performance by the first all-women's rap group, Instinto. Another rapper, Magia, was part of the male-female duo Obsesión, which originated during this early period and has come to be one of the most prominent rap groups in Cuba. Magia has played an important role in raising the profile of women within the movement of rap, and she defines herself as a feminist: "All of those who promote and give impulse to the representative work done by women and who try in one way or another to see that this work is valued and recognized, we are feminists… women's presence to me is fundamental, with their work to be shown, with their things to say, with their pain and happiness, with their knowledge, their softness, with the prejudices that they suffer for being women, with their limitations, with their weakness and their strength."[2]
Other women such as DJ Yary also see themselves a part of this tradition: "With all my work, I seek to strengthen the role of Cuban women within hip-hop. It is thought that within this movement men are more important, but young women have shown what we can do to enrich it."[3] The first all-women's music concert was organized by Obsesión in 2002 in a popular venue for rap music known as the Madriguera. The concert included not just rappers, but photography and art exhibitions, guitarists, poetry, and dance. This was repeated twice in 2002 and 2003, and then in December 2003 the Youth League organized an all-women's hip-hop concert as part of the rap festival. The sold-out concert, titled "Presencia Probada," or Proven Presence, signaled the strength of women rappers within hip-hop.
In the first years of the twenty-first century, there were about thirteen women rappers and rap groups in Cuba, a small but prominent number, especially since several of these women are among the relatively limited number of artists that have produced discs through both official and unofficial channels. Given the small number of discs produced by the state recording agency EGREM and the lack of airplay for Cuban rap on state-controlled radio stations, many musicians have begun to produce their own disks with foreign funding and help from friends, and this has produced a growing underground network of distribution and circulation. Magia MC as part of Obsesión has released two discs, one with the Cuban agency EGREM, and another as an independent label. The other woman rapper working within a mixed rap group is Telmary Díaz, from the group Free Hole Negro, who have produced discs both inside and outside of Cuba. La Fresca, a relatively more commercial rapper than the others, recently came out with her first disc.[4] The trio of women rappers who identify as lesbians, Las Krudas, have produced their own disc, and they frequently perform in popular and official tourist venues such as the Sunday-morning rumba at Callejon de Jamel. Other women rappers also sing independently or in all-female groups and consist of Oye Habana (previously known as Exploción Femenina), Esencia, Yula, I & I (pronounced Ayanay), I Two Yi, Atomicas, Mariana, Soy, and Las Positivas in Santiago de Cuba. Women have participated in other areas of hip-hop culture such as graffiti and djaying. Two women disc jockeys, DJ Yary and DJ Leydis put out a cd in 2004, entitled Platos Rotos (Broken Plates), where they have produced tracks by major Cuban rap groups such as Anónimo Consejo and Hermanos de Causa. DJ Yary and DJ Leydis have participated in DJ battles, the Havana hip-hop festival, and concerts with major Cuban rap groups. Not all of these women address feminist themes, and as a tendency within hip-hop they are unstable, but they nevertheless represent a growing, positive force for change.
The networking of feminist rappers with older Cuban feminist activists has helped bolster their voices within hip-hop and create more of a presence for their concerns within society. On International Women's Day, March 8, 2003, activist Sonnia Moro and the women rappers organized a forum entitled, "Machismo in the lyrics of rap songs." Following this, another activist Norma Guillard organized forums on, "The importance of educative messages in rap lyrics" and "Rap and Image: a proposal for reflection." During one of the rap festival colloquiums in 2004, Guillard presented a paper on the work of Las Krudas, entitled, "Las Krudas: Gender, Identity and Social Communication in Hip-Hop." The feminist activists have also offered their writing and poetry to the rappers to incorporate into their songs. For instance, a poem of Georgina Herrera, "Guerrillas of Today," was given to Las Krudas to make into a rap song. In her interactions with the women rappers, Guillard notes that they are much more open to feminist ideas than an earlier generation: "I have observed that young women don't confront the same subjective conflicts as us, they recognize themselves as feminists without problems, they didn't live through the same era we did. We recognize that among the rappers there are feminists, that is to say, with a more radical focus, more autonomous."[5] Because of the inroads made by earlier feminists,[6] it has been easier for this new generation to claim a space. The older feminists regularly invite the women rappers to their forums, they offer them materials to read and understand more about feminism, and they have spoken about women's rap in forums inside and outside of Cuba.
Women rappers, given their experiences in racially-defined transnational networks of hip-hop, identify with the ideas and principles of black feminism as it emerged from third-wave feminism in the U.S. These ideas, as defined in the Black Feminist statement by the Combahee River Collective, consist of a recognition that race, class and sex oppression are intertwined; women must struggle with black men against racism and with black men about sexism; black women face psychological obstacles and minimal access to resources and they must pursue a revolutionary politics. These themes occur frequently in the texts of women rappers. Indeed, Cuban women's rap fits closely into what some black feminists in the US have referred to as "hip-hop feminism".[7] Just like the music of American rappers such as Salt-N-Pepa, Queen Latifah, and MC Lyte helped inspire the feminist consciousness of a generation of black feminists who listened to hip-hop,[8] feminist rappers in Cuba are also producing new kinds of political awareness among young women affiliated to the growing movement of Cuban hip-hop.
Cuban women rappers attempt to talk about practices such as jineterismo without vilifying the women who practice it. In a song written by Magia MC in 2002, entitled Le llaman puta (They call me Whore), Magia talks about the desperate conditions that give rise to prostitution, and the sad lives of the many women forced into prostitution. The song opens with the sounds of a caxixi, or woven basket rattle over the deep tones of a vibratone. The entry of a traditional drum ensemble including the bata, the bombo andino, a mellow low-pitched drum, and the campana, a heavy cowbell, evoke the rhythmic pulse of hip-hop. The song's chorus, begins with the phrase "They call me puta," deliberately employing the derogatory slang used for female sex workers in order to invoke the humiliation and degradation associated with this occupation.
In contrast to both the objectification of women's bodies and a confining revolutionary moralism, women rappers seek to define their own notions of sexuality and desire. Rap music has been seen by many American scholars as a reassertion of black masculinity,[9] but as Tricia Rose notes, this definition not only equates manhood and male heterosexuality, but it "renders sustained and substantial female pleasure and participation in hip hop invisible or impossible."[10] In Cuba, female rappers seek to carve out an autonomous space within the broader hip-hop movement, in which they narrate female desire and the materiality of the female body on their own terms. In the song Te Equivocas (You are Mistaken) on her 2000 album Un Monton de Cosas (A Mountain of Things), Magia derides an ex-lover who has mistreated her and she asserts her rights to her body and her sexuality. Magia tells her ex-lover that he is no longer welcome in her life, she is not the weak and dependent girl that he thinks she is: "You are wrong to tell me I would die to kiss your mouth." Magia attacks the machismo and egoism of her ex-lover: "With egoism made machismo, you yourself fell into an immense abyss of false manhood." Magia demonstrates that the myths created by her ex-lover about his virility and manhood are false. He is not worth even one-thousandth of all she has gone through for him and he has denied her happiness. She tells him that she will no longer be used by him: "I have finished being your toy." This kind of assertion of female agency has a history in black popular culture, which dates back to American blues women and Cuban rumba. As Imani Perry argues, the music of black female artists "functions in strong contrast to the 'sex innuendo' and objectification of the female body that is generally seen in popular music."[11] Women rap artists continue this legacy of negotiating sexuality and power with their lovers and asserting their presence as sexual beings, not objects.
A notable feature of Cuban hip-hop has been the participation of women openly identified as lesbians. Given homophobia in Cuban society, as well as the absence of queer issues from the mass media, the presence of lesbian rap group Las Krudas represents an important opening. Las Krudas, consisting of Olivia Prendes (Pelusa MC), Odaymara Cuesta (Pasa Kruda), and Odalys Cuesta (Wanda), make open references to their bodies and sexuality in the songs recorded on their 2003 demo CUBENSI. In a song entitled 120 Horas Rojas (120 Red Hours), Las Krudas talk about the monthly experience of menstruation as a symbol for women's enslavement to their biology in a male dominated society:
Painful drops of vital liquid color our
most intimate parts, weakening our bodies weakening our minds weakening our voices Gotas dolorosas de líquido vital sangre colorean nuestras más íntimas soledades, debilitando nuestros cuerpos debilitando nuestras mentes debilitando nuestras voces Menstruation and the female bodily functions are the reason why women are perceived as physically and intellectually weaker than men. Las Krudas address men, when they point out that, "You don't want to listen? Thanks to this red source you could come to know this world." Las Krudas speak openly and directly, "with a single seed I develop you in my vagina cradle." For the rappers, the very processes that are hidden, used to devalue women's participation and silence them, is what brings life into the world. Black women exist at the intersection of race, gender, and class hierarchies; as Las Krudas rap in 120 Horas Rojas, they are "marginalized by the marginalized, at the bottom, in all senses." While male rappers speak about historical problems of slavery and marginality, black women must face forms of enslavement and marginalization from males themselves. In another song from their album, Eres Bella (You are Beautiful), Las Krudas point to machismo as an "identical system of slavery" for women. Just as male rappers point to the exclusion of rap from major media programming, venues and state institutions, Las Krudas challenge male rappers for their exclusion of women: "I have talent and I ask, how long will we be the minority onstage?" Black and mulatta women have been made invisible, objectified, and silenced in the historical record, and popular culture is no exception. In Amiquimiñongo, Las Krudas argue that since the time of slavery black women and men have been stereotyped as "a beautiful race," "so strong," and "so healthy," but they point out that black women have never been given a voice: "When I open my mouth, 'poof!' raw truths escape from it, they don't talk of this, they want to shut me up." Las Krudas and other women rappers restore subjectivity to black women, as actors with voice and agency. Women rappers demand inclusion into the hip-hop movement and society more generally. As Las Krudas claim: "There is no true revolution without women." Female rappers are "ebony guerrillas" who are fighting for a place in the struggle alongside black men. The all-female rap group Oye Habana, consisting of Yordanska, Noiris, and Elizabeth, celebrate female power and black womanhood. In their song Negra (Black), Oye Habana celebrate black female beauty, in contrast to dominant representations of beauty: Black woman with my thick lips, there is nothing that surprises me. Black woman with my nose and my big legs, black woman… Who says that for my dark color I should hang my head? This is how I am, black woman! Negra con mi bemba, no hay que me sorprenda. Negra con mi ñata y mi Grande pata, negra… ¿Quien dijo que por mi color oscuro debo bajar mi cabeza? ¡Asi soy yo, negra! Negative and racist descriptions of black-identified features are fairly common in Cuba; it is not unusual to hear complaints about "pelo malo" (bad hair) or "mejorando la raza" (improving the race) by having children with lighter skinned people. The rappers from Oye Habana reject these stereotypes; they assert the beauty of Afro features and the power and presence of black women. For the women rappers, questions of self-esteem are related to a pride in who they are as black women. In her spoken-word piece, ¿A Donde Vamos a Parar? (Where are we going to go?), DJ Yary claims, "My example of a woman to follow: It's me! And my favorite artist: It's me!" Cuban women rappers such as Instinto, Magia, Las Krudas, and Explosión Feminina have been able to develop styles and attitudes that reflect their distinctness as women. Perry describes how some American women rappers such as Yo Yo, Harmony, Isis, and Queen Mother Rage seek to carve out a space of empowerment within hip-hop by adopting explicitly Afrocentric styles, wearing braided or natural hairstyles, African headwear, nose rings, and self-naming.[12] Cuban women rappers also use style to project a political message, and indicate their individuality, presence, and identity as black women. Magia and the rappers from Las Krudas usually wear head wraps, African clothing and natural hairstyles, or baggy shirts and pants. In the song Mujeres (Women), rapper Mariana declares her desire to be taken seriously as a performer and protagonist, alongside men. She declares: I call myself, "Protagonist!" but in the field and not in bed. As many prefer to go from rapper to rapper to earn fame. I, Mariana, show the world that the Cuban woman doesn't only know how to move her body, but when they speak of hip-hop we are best, the most real, even if we're discriminated by machistic concepts. Yo me nombro, "¡Protagonista!," pero en la pista y no en la cama. Como muchos prefieren ir de rapero en rapero para comer fama. Yo, Mariana, hago demostrar al mundo que la mujer cubana no sólo sabe mover sus caderas, sino cuando se habla de hip-hop somos las primeras, las realistas, aunque seamos discriminadas por conceptos machistas. In contrast to the eroticization of black and mulatta women within a new tourist economy as sexually available, good lovers, and sensual dancers, Mariana reclaims for women the capacity of thinking, rhyming, and producing "real hip-hop." Mariana rejects the available role models for young women of cooks ("Nilsa Villapol with her recipes") and models ("Naomi Campbell in her magazine"); rather she chooses to be a hip-hop artist because of the agency it gives her. Despite the important inroads made by feminist rappers into hip-hop, and their use of the form in order to put forth a feminist agenda, women still face obstacles participating in a largely male-dominated genre. As Margaux Joffe noted in 2005, of the nine rap groups officially represented in the Cuban Rap Agency, only one group had a woman, Magia MC from Obsesión.[13] Most Cuban rap producers are men. Joffe cites Magia as saying that female artists are grateful for the recognition they receive in the annual festival, but she saw the organization of a special section for women within a male-dominated festival as "patronizing," and that "women should not be pitied or put on a pedestal."[14] Part of the problem facing women rappers is that they are part of a broader movement of hip-hop that is closely tied to state institutions and includes a largely male leadership who still make most of the decisions.[15] Yet their attempts to engage with sexism and machismo represent an important step for women rappers; the issues are being discussed and they are part of an ongoing dialogue and debate. Rap music has provided a space for dialogue between older and younger feminists, as well as between black men and women in the hip-hop movement. |
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[1] Deborah Pacini Hernandez, and Reebee Garofalo. 1999. "Hip Hop in Havana: Rap, Race and National Identity in Contemporary Cuba." Journal of Popular Music Studies 11 & 12: 23. [2] Interview with Magia, April 2005. [3] Interview with DJ Yary, April 2005. [4] Joaquín Borges-Triana, "Raperas Cubanas - Una Fuerza Natural," Juventud Rebelde, 5 Agosto, 2004, [5] Interview with Norma Guillard, April 2005. [6] Sujatha Fernandes. 2005. "Transnationalism and Feminist Activism in Cuba: The Case of Magín." Politics and Gender 1(3):1 – 22. [7] Perry. 1995. "It's My Thang and I'll Swing it the Way That I Feel!: Sexuality and Black Women Rappers." In Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Text-Reader. Gail Dines and Jean Humez, eds., 524 – 530. California and London: Sage Press; Imani Perry. 2002. "Who(se) Am I? The Identity and Image of Women in Hip-Hop." In Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Text-Reader, 2nd Edition. Gail Dines and Jean Humez, eds., 136 – 148. California and London: Sage Press; [8] Pough, "Do the Ladies Run This…?, 235. [9] Houston Baker. 1991. "Hybridity, the Rap Race, and Pedagogy for the 1990s." In Technoculture. Andrew Ross and Constance Penley, eds., 197 – 209. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press; Henry L. Gates Jr. 1988. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press. [10] Tricia Rose. 1994. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 151. [11] Perry, "It's My Thang and I'll Swing it the Way That I Feel!, 526. [12] Ibid., 528. [13] Margaux Joffe. 2005. "Reshaping the Revolution through Rhyme: A Literary Analysis of Cuban Hip-Hop in the 'Special Period.'" Working Paper #3, Andrew W. Mellon Undergraduate Paper Series in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Duke University Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 22. [14] Op. Cit. [15] Update: recently Magia was made director of the Cuban rap agency.
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Excerpted from Cuba Represent!: Cuban Arts, State Power, and the Making of New Revolutionary Cultures (pp. 109 – 117)
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