(Watch: 23:20-30:15/ 47:41-51:15)
Group Questions
Describe the importance of son and hip hop in shaping the cultural identity of Black Cubans.
What patterns did you identify in the state responses to son and hip-hop? What differences?
What contradictions does the embracing of the son music genre by the state and cultural elites present?
Why is hip-hop in tension with the official discourses of racial equity in Cuba after the revolution?
In what ways do these musical genres serve as forms of resistance and cultural expression?
In this vibrant “son,” the lyrical persona exudes confidence, boasting about his good looks and “Paran Pan Pan” skills as the ultimate dancer and “cumbanchero.” The chorus joyously declares that his dancing style and infectious party spirit are celebrated everywhere in Cuba. Specifically, the song highlights the enthusiasm of Black women, who are portrayed as being enthralled by his rhythm and sabor. In an inclusive gesture, he invites Black women to join him in dancing, emphasizing the shared joy and connection in their spirited dance.
The song features a narrative from a black schoolboy, the son of a construction worker, who reflects on the class disparities. He contrasts himself with the sons of doctors, noting their attire of Adidas shoes and expensive cologne. At school, he faces negative stereotypes related to his race and economic background, being labeled as a thief, poor student, dishonest, and disrespectful. In contrast, the doctor’s son is revered and respected. When some math tests go missing, the black schoolboy humorously remarks that he is automatically blamed, joking that the only reason he passed was by cheating. Clan 537 uses this story to highlight social inequality and racial discrimination issues. The repeated reference to the construction worker’s son as “negro” underscores the role of race in the differential treatment of black individuals in Cuban society.
Does this critique match what the rappers in Gates’ documentary series argued?
Hip-hop in Cuba
Hip-hop resonates in Latin America and the Caribbean because of its legacy of colonialism and slavery. The region’s rich oral tradition is connected to the stories of people with African roots. Latin America and the Caribbean have the largest concentration of people with African ancestry outside Africa — up to 70 percent of the population in some countries. The region imported over ten times as many slaves as the United States and kept them in bondage far longer. Hip-hop in Latin America reminds us that African cultural contribution is often forgotten or ignored.
Hip-hop embodies a set of shared meanings and styles that indicate a widespread network of cultural practices transcending geographic boundaries. Rap lyrics, in particular, offer language, ideas, and insights for expressing similar yet unique challenges faced in different locations and eras. At the core of this interconnected space is the shared experience of marginalization, encompassing racial and ethnic prejudice, poverty, violence, and adversity. However, hip-hop’s integration into everyday struggles also leads to significant differences in local stories, influenced by the cultural environments in which it is rooted.
Cuba’s geographical and political isolation due to the U.S. embargo initially limited direct exposure to hip-hop culture. However, in the 1980s, television shows like Soul Train and various U.S. radio stations, which Cubans accessed through makeshift antennas, reached audiences nationwide. The 1980 Mariel boatlift, which allowed many Cubans to move to the United States, facilitated the exchange of cultural materials like cassettes and music videos between the two nations.
By the mid-1990s, Cuba’s relaxation of foreign investment policies and a global increase in world music sales led to a surge in contracts between Cuban musicians and international music labels.
Fernandes, Sujatha. “The Capital of Rap: Hip Hop Culture in Alamar.” The Cuban Hustle: Culture, Politics, Everyday Life. Duke University Press, 2020.
Written Reflection:
Option One:
Explore how one of the concluding paragraphs of Fernandes’s “The Capital of Rap: Hip Hop Culture in Alamar” encapsulates the article’s delineation of the various influences and concerns that amalgamated in Cuban rap:
Here, in a mansion-turned-culture-house, technology courtesy of the Soviets, Cuban rappers were reworking the ideal of revolution to encompass the kind of changes they wanted to see as a local and global movement. The Hip Hop Revolución drew inspiration from the Cuban Revolution and from Fidel, but it was also connected to the motherland. And perhaps this imagined connection to Africa was what kept rappers somewhat outside the orbit of the state, even as they continued to collaborate with it. The ties of Cuban rappers with French record labels and African American rappers, even with fans in San Diego and Montreal, gave them a level of recognition. When black American celebrities such as Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte came to Cuba to meet with local rappers, it meant that they were somebody. (69-70)
Option Two:
How do any of today’s materials relate to any form of culture or entertainment that you enjoy or participate in?
Option Three:
Create your own prompt. Is there a critical observation about the materials that you would like to explore?
Sujatha Fernandes’, “The Capital of Rap: Hip Hop Culture in Alamar” explores the origins and rise of Cuban rap. He begins by depicting the space in which the music and musicians emerge, Alamar: a massive concrete housing project designed by Russian architects and built by Cuban labor. He details the conditions of stagnation economically, spatially, socially that affect residents of the Alamar housing project. The word “project” is deliberate as it summons the specter of American housing projects built for poor and working minority communities. And this deliberate choice reflects the parallel that the article explores between the rise of rap in the South Bronx and later in Alamar.
However, the opening dwells on the physical, social, economic and cultural architecture of Alamar for a deeper reason. The project is essentially a foreign imposition on Cuba. It responds to a local need, but its physical design and the needs it is supposed to meet are foreign. The underlying metaphor of how Cubans inhabit this foreign construct is itself the project of this piece—showing how Cubans took rap and made it their own.
Fernandes notes both the original fascination with American rap and the dissonance experienced when trying to imitate the form. Cuban artists not only experimented with form, cadence and rhythm, meshing Cuban Spanish and English. They also needed to reflect their own economic, political, social, and racial realities that were different from the American context in which rap first developed.
For all the similarities, these differences were determinative. For instance, the American racial binary of white/black did not work in Cuba, which recognized many more racial categories. Cuba, a racially and economically stratified society, never had a civil rights movement, yet its Black youth had greater levels of educational attainment than African Americans. Similarly, the protest against materiality and commercialism didn’t translate—recall the incident in which M-1 burns American money on stage and the crowd protests the value and use of that money in Cuba. While both Cuban and American rap were protest music, American rap—long marginalized socially, culturally and as a musical genre–positioned itself in opposition to government policies while Cuban rap received state support and shared a protest stance and language with the state, even as it pushed against the state to go further.
These were the multiple local conditions and realities that differentiated Cuban rap from its American ancestor. Yet, what seems consistent between the two is the emphasis on airing and empowering the Black voice. And this resonates with two other important themes in the piece—first, the spiritual connection that Cuban (and African American) rappers established with Africa; second, the rise of rap as a way to dispel boredom that creates community in an otherwise depressed space. Where they seem to diverge most strongly in focus comes out of the mutual embrace of Cuban rap by rappers and the state: Cuban rappers reflect their state’s concern with international politics.
Discussion Questions:
What parallels and divergences do you see between the rise of rap in Cuba and of reggae in Jamaica?
How does Cuban rap negotiate its roots in protest music and state intervention in the organization of its cultural events?
Fernandes depicts rap as creating the conditions for positive inhabitation in Alamar. How do you assess this claim and does any evidence in the piece argue against this?