Straight Outta Havana

Opinion

Straight Outta Havana

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
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.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on August 7, 2011, on page SR9
of the New York edition with the headline: Straight Outta Havana.

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/opinion/sunday/cuban-rap-straight-outta-havana.html?_r=1