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La Habana que no conoces: Cuban
rap and the social construction of

urban space
Geoff Baker
Studies of Cuban rap have focused on issues of race and resistance, but have paid less
attention to hip hop as urban discourse and practice. Through a combination of
ethnographic study of Havanas underground rap scene and textual analysis, this
article explores rap as a response to recent changes in the physical and social fabric of the
Cuban capital and to the opportunities and restrictions of life in a late socialist city.
This is the real Havana by night and Im part of it,
As youre asleep Ill have to tell you about it.
1
It was dark when Miguel and I got off the bus at the bridge over the Rio Almendares
on the western edge of Vedado, Havana. We took a footpath that led down into the
Parque Almendares, the gloomy tree-filled gorge that spreads out below the bridge.
After a few minutes of weaving between the trees, we came to a small open-air
amphitheatre; we paid our 5 pesos (about 10 pence) and made our way inside. After
much hugging, kissing and hand shaking, we sat down on one of the concrete
benches. A DJ was up on the stage, playing US rap on two CD walkmans hooked up
to a PA, but most people were too busy meeting and greeting to pay much attention.
Someone had snuck in a plastic bottle of rum, which was doing the rounds. More
people trickled into the venue, most of them rappers or DJs, their partners and
friends, some of them with small children. It wasnt a big crowd maybe a hundred
people, mostly Afro-Cubans, dressed in US-style hip-hop gear. Although the venue
Geoff Baker is a lecturer in the Department of Music at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has published
extensively on music in colonial Peru and his article on Cuban rap and the state appeared in Ethnomusicology in
2005. Correspondence to Geoff Baker, Department of Music, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham,
Surrey, TW20 0EX, UK. Email: geoff.baker@rhul.ac.uk
ISSN 1741-1912 (print)/ISSN 1741-1920 (online)/06/020215-32
# 2006 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/17411910600915380
Ethnomusicology Forum
Vol. 15, No. 2, November 2006, pp. 215246
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was open-air, it felt quite enclosed as the trees formed a canopy overhead, blocking
out all but a few stars.
Eventually two rappers took the stage: a backing track came on over the PA, and
they launched into their routine, prowling the stage, gesturing like rappers the world
over. The beats were underground hard and spare and the voices animated and
intense. People didnt dance; they sat or stood still and listened mostly in silence,
nodding their heads and sometimes mouthing along the words to a chorus. After a
couple of songs, two more rappers made their way onto the stage from the audience,
and the evening continued with groups coming and going frequently, sometimes
performing a track together then leaving the stage to rejoin the audience. This wasnt
party music; this was serious stuff. One duo, Los Aldeanos, spat out their lyrics with
particular venom, almost haranguing the audience. Their songs Were fed up now
and My country had the audience whooping and whistling; they spurred on the
rappers as they pushed the limits of the say-able, laying bare the ills of Cuban society.
Los Aldeanos left the stage to whistles and applause and wandered into the audience,
where one of them picked up his baby son and sat down to play with him. When the
live music had finished, the DJ came back on stage; by now the rum had been
flowing, and the audience was soon up and dancing to the US sounds. But this was a
government-sponsored venue not a commercial club, and before long it was time to
get everyone out and shut up for the night.
The crowd wandered slowly out of the amphitheatre and up the hill to the bridge.
What was everyone doing next? It was only 11 p.m.; the night was young. Someone
said that one of Havanas top DJs, El Piz, was playing at a house-party in the distant
neighbourhood of 10 de Octubre; after brief deliberations, a group of us ran after a
bus that was crossing the bridge and jumped on. The bus was packed, so we spread
out among the passengers. One of the rappers from the concert, Wilder 01, turned
and made a quip to another, Reynor, who was standing further down the bus. Reynor
answered back, in rhyme with Wilders remark. Wilder, a diminutive figure with a
prodigiously quick mind, replied in kind. Reynor wasnt to be outdone, and what had
started as a casual comment quickly escalated into joking banter and then a no-holds-
barred rap battle, a rapid-fire exchange of rhymes. At first the passengers were silent,
pretending not to notice, but after a couple of minutes there were sniggers at some of
the funnier lines, spurring on the participants in this battle of wits. Soon half the bus
was in stitches as each rapper outdid the other with his rhyming puns. Suddenly
someone shouted vamos: we had arrived at 10 de Octubre.
We squeezed our way off the bus and headed down a dark street where dim
streetlights illuminated dilapidated buildings. The crowd in the street was visible
from a distance, perhaps 50 people milling around in the semi-darkness. We got to
the door and pushed our way into a small house. Inside it was even darker, all I could
see was a mass of dancers and, at the back, DJ Piz hunched over a table. All the other
furniture had been taken out of the house: there were just people dancing lots of
people and music, mainly US hip hop. I had often heard people talk about
underground rap in Cuba, referring to the kind of groups that I had seen earlier at
216 G. Baker
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the Parque Almendares and their social critiques, but there was something under-
ground about this house-party too. It wasnt anything to do with words after all,
the music was recorded and in English, and thus unintelligible to most of those
present but there was something about the emptying and transformation of the
house, as well as a certain charge in the air, as such a large party could easily attract
attention from the police. Some time later, Miguel and I left, jumped into the cab of a
passing truck, and arrived back in Vedado shortly before dawn.
As I reflected on that evening, I was struck by the places we had been: the concert
venue, the bus and the house. As their affinity for rap drew them across Havana,
members of the hip-hop scene had made these places theirs, claiming and
redefining these spaces through their words and actions, challenging the limits of
what might be considered appropriate behaviour and forms of expression in those
places. Furthermore, during the concert the rappers addressed the problems of their
urban environment and in particular the socio-spatial inequalities of a city where,
according to Los Aldeanos, an apartment block takes years to build but a hotel goes
up in months. Havana was a city under pressure: as Hermanos de Causa put it,
with apocalyptic simplicity, the streets on fire.
2
Musicologists have begun to pay increasing attention to issues of space and place
over the last decade (e.g. Leyshon, Matless and Revill 1998; Whiteley, Bennett and
Hawkins 2004), with scholars of popular music in particular showing interest in the
role of music in struggles to appropriate and rework urban spaces (e.g. Bennett 2000).
Within the field of hip-hop studies, Murray Formans work stands out for its
geographically informed approach: he places the city at the heart of his analysis of US
rap and underlines the centrality of spatial practices and discourses in rap and in the
broader hip-hop culture of which it forms a part (Forman 2002). It is worth
enquiring, however, into the relevance of his characterization of US hip hop to global
manifestations of the genre. Does space still matter in global hip hop?
While analyses of non-US rap have often focused on issues of ethnic or racial
identity, rap produced in two of the major hip-hop markets outside the US Brazil
and France shows evidence of the central, firmly rooted spatial awareness discussed
by Forman. Pardue notes that, under the influence of the group Racionais MCs in the
1990s, Brazilian rappers began to focus increasingly on marginal urban spaces, in
particular the favela (shanty town) and periferia (urban periphery). Race, he
observes, took a back seat to socio-geographical realities as marginality came to be
defined in spatial as much as social terms (Pardue 2004). In France, meanwhile, the
marginalized spaces of the banlieue (suburbs) and cite (housing project) are key sites
in hip-hop culture and the rap imaginary. Rappers have produced powerful critiques
of dual cities like Paris, slating the landscape of decaying housing projects on the
periphery of the city, a world apart from the urban core, and exposing what has been
termed postcolonial urban apartheid (Silverstein and Tetreault 2005).
US hip hop has been characterized by spatial practices as well as discourses (Rose
1994; Forman 2002). Appropriations and transformations of urban spaces were
central to the early years of hip hop in New York City, and a focus on hip hop as
Ethnomusicology Forum 217
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urban practice may be instructive in considering the genres global manifestations.
Ian Condry, in his study of Japanese rap, explores the social spaces of the Tokyo rap
scene, investigating the world of hip-hop clubs as sites which allow the creation of
social networks, facilitating communication and interaction across a vast city
(Condry 2001).
There is good reason to suggest, therefore, that a focus on spatial discourses and
practices may be fruitful, yet such an approach has made little impact on academic
studies of hip hop outside the US or, specifically, on the growing body of work on
Cuban rap, which has concentrated instead on renewed debates surrounding racial
identity politics (e.g. West-Dura n 2004; Fernandes 2003a; Perry 2004). While Perry
evokes various significant places of Havana hip hop, his explicit focus is on racial
discourses and he pays less attention to the articulation between race and space.
Though he defines the concept black space in both geo-spatial and metaphorical
terms (Perry 2004, 16), the latter predominates in his account and the contours and
dynamics of the actual sites of rap (Condry 2001) are rarely explored.
The insights of these scholars, illuminating though they may be, have centred on
textual analysis and on the explicit socio-political concerns of Cuban rap: the self-
perception and self-presentation of Cuban rappers as artists with a message have
shaped academic approaches, which have focused primarily on discourses rather than
the locales and lived realities of the hip-hop scene. There has been a tendency to treat
rap lyrics as transparent documents, leaving little room for investigation of more
implicit meanings or the relationship between messages and practices. An exclusive
focus on rap as political or protest song largely fails to account for the variety of
performance contexts in which it is embedded or for its improvised forms. While it is
undeniable that Cuban rap lyrics have presented powerful new perspectives on race
issues, I would argue that these perspectives are entwined with the shifting relation of
habaneros (residents of Havana) to urban space. Young Afro-Cubans have used rap in
order to claim spaces and forge social networks that counteract their marginalization
in modern Havana, and their racial discourses are rooted in contests and negotiations
over space. Racial discrimination and inequality are spatialized and are countered on
that level: it is thus necessary to investigate the places where rap is performed as well
as rappers rhetorical strategies, and to broaden the enquiry to cover the meanings
constructed through hip hops practices, which may complement or contradict
textual messages. Following Condry, I would argue that examining the contexts of rap
performance and consumption is vital to understanding the pleasures, and thus the
politics, of hip hop.
Below I will focus on hip hop in Havana as urban practice and urban knowledge, as
a means of claiming and representing the environment in which young habaneros
live, creating distinctive social and economic spaces and narratives of locality.
Underlying my analysis is Setha Lows definition of the social construction of space
as the actual transformation of space through peoples social exchanges,
memories, images, and daily use of the material setting into scenes and actions
that convey symbolic meaning (1999, 112). I will argue that in the Cuban capital
218 G. Baker
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since the 1990s as in the South Bronx in the 1970s the urban environment has
been a key constitutive element in the development of hip hop, but also that this
relationship has been dialogic and that rappers have participated in the social
construction of late socialist Havana.
Context: Havana since 1990
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of its preferential trade arrangements
with Cuba in 1991 led to the most profound upheavals in the islands economy and
society since the 1959 Revolution. The early 1990s was a time of severe shortages and
plummeting living standards. Fidel Castro euphemistically named these years a
Special Period in a Time of Peace (Perez 1995; Kapcia 2005, 17983). From 1993,
the Cuban government took radical measures in order to breathe life into the ailing
economy, including legalizing the possession of dollars and permitting small-scale
private enterprises, encouraging joint ventures with foreign companies, and, above
all, promoting tourism as a vital source of foreign exchange. The connections between
the profound crisis of the Special Period and musical forms such as rap and timba
have been well documented (e.g. Fernandes 2003a, 2003b; Perry 2004; Perna 2005).
However, while scholars of music have focused on the transformations of the
economy and the attendant effects on urban society, especially in realms such as race
and gender relations and religion, less attention has been paid to the physical
transformation of the city and its repercussions on musical practices.
Two recent historical-geographical studies examine the evolution of Havana during
the 20th century, and both illuminate the Special Period (Rutheiser 2000; Kapcia
2005). After 1959, Havana was relatively neglected by the government, which
preferred to focus its resources on rural areas, and the city experienced a deterioration
of its infrastructure. The dilapidated colonial centre, Habana Vieja, was named a
UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982, but it was only in the early 1990s that efforts
to restore the citys architectural heritage took off, as the growing economic
dependence on tourism led to a shift from the earlier anti-urbanism towards the
reinvention of Havana as an attraction. In 1994 the City Historians Office launched
a reconstruction plan, the Plan Maestro para la Revitalizacio n Integral de la Habana
Vieja. This aimed not only to restore historical monuments in the former colonial
centre but also to invest money in its residential infrastructure, which had declined
markedly during the 20th century as it became a destination for poor rural
immigrants and wealthier citizens moved to the suburbs.
While Rutheiser and Kapcia agree that the state has made efforts to improve living
conditions for residents of Habana Vieja as well as for tourists, they differ in their
assessment of the effectiveness of these measures. Kapcia acknowledges the difficulties
that are faced, but is quite optimistic, suggesting that with restoration under way,
Habana Vieja is a beautiful city in the re-making (2005, 2). Two points should be
underlined here: first, Havana, since the mid-1990s, has been a city in flux; and,
second, Kapcia conflates Habana Vieja with Havana, implying that the restoration of
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the old centre is enough to rejuvenate the city as a whole, a view not shared by all the
capitals residents, many of whom would agree with Rutheisers conclusion that the
scale of the problem the sheer dilapidation of the residential fabric of the city
dwarfs the efforts to solve it.
If the state has made efforts to serve the interests of residents of Habana Vieja,
investment by the joint ventures with foreign enterprises that have blossomed since
the Special Period, focusing on the old city and on the upmarket districts of Vedado
and Miramar, has been aimed squarely at providing an infrastructure for foreigners
and a small Cuban elite with hard currency to spend. The blending of socialism and
capitalism in joint ventures over the last decade sometimes termed sociocapitalismo
has thus fed a spatial reordering of the city, as investment revives urban enclaves
destined primarily for foreign use but provides little benefit for most habaneros. As
David Harvey has noted (quoted by Forman 2002, 6), uneven capital investment is a
prime factor in the production of difference in space, and socio-capitalist ventures
in Havana have led to dramatic eruptions of unequal value in an otherwise uniform
land-rent surface (Rutheiser 2000, 234). Tourism and foreign investment are thus
leading to the emergence of a dual city, with the redevelopment of sections of
Habana Vieja, Miramar and Vedado intensifying the disparity between these districts
and those areas of the city that lack architectural distinction or tourist appeal. The
governments tourism strategies, meanwhile, have led to rising socio-spatial
segregation, creating both tourist enclaves set apart from the city and also a form
of tourist apartheid within those enclaves (2000, 233): most Cubans are not
allowed to set foot in these new spaces and even if they could, the prices would be
beyond them. Local resentment over this double segregation is only increased by
the high (and often intrusive) police presence in key areas to ensure both tourist
safety and, in some cases, their separation from the local populace. Young, darker-
skinned Cubans are stopped for identification checks with depressing regularity in
tourist areas; the high visibility of police underlines the emergence of such urban
spaces as contested zones.
The relationship between city residents and urban space in Havana has thus altered
significantly since the early 1990s, with the emergence of marked differentiation in
the built environment and socio-spatial divisions highly contentious in a socialist
society as well as increasing competition over public space in certain areas. This
rapidly changing, contested environment will be the scene for the discussion of the
Havana rap scene that follows.
Rap Performance: Creating Social Spaces
Since the Afro-Cuban socio-cultural associations, or cabildos, that dated back to the
colonial period were dismantled by the government in the early days of the
Revolution, Afro-Cubans have had few spaces in which to come together, socialize
and discuss their problems (Perez and Stubbs 2000, 19). Music and expressive culture
have thus been of fundamental importance in promoting social cohesion within
220 G. Baker
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Afro-Cuban communities. But since the Special Period many of Havanas music
venues have become dollar-only clubs aimed at tourists and a local elite, depriving
young habaneros of social and cultural spaces. Timba groups have shifted their
emphasis from performing for ordinary locals towards playing for predominantly
foreign audiences and economically successful Cubans in clubs and on overseas tours;
though their music is widely heard on recordings and the radio, affordable live
performances are rare. Much of Havanas nightlife takes place in venues from which
most Cubans are barred by door policy or by economic constraints, and young people
are often reduced to spending their evenings sitting on the Maleco n, watching the
world go by. Rap venues, with their cheap entrance fees in local currency, therefore
provide a precious opportunity for young habaneros of limited means to socialize
and to connect with musicians, serving the need for some kind of community
cultural space.
Hip-hop venues such as the Parque Almendares and La Madriguera in Centro
Habana (run by the Asociacio n Hermanos Saz (AHS), the cultural wing of the Union
of Young Communists and the main source of institutional support for rap in Cuba)
are used by the rap community to create alternative social spaces. Rappers and their
fans claim and adapt these performance spaces through their music and associated
social practices. At a concert at La Madriguera, the duo Los Paisanos set up the stage
to look like a living room, with armchairs, a coffee-table, telephone and other props.
Their theme for the evening was to imagine that the audience was eavesdropping
on a rehearsal in their house, and various rappers dropped by to rehearse tracks
with them for a supposed forthcoming concert. The stage set and visits by guest
artists stressed intimacy and community and transformed public into private space;
the rappers claimed a government venue to be as much theirs as their own houses.
This sense of ownership became yet clearer later in the evening, when the music
stopped without warning and the DJ came onstage to say that the evening was over.
Stony-faced, he also announced that this was the last rap concert to be held at La
Madriguera, which was going to be turned into a theatre. The concert promoter at the
Figure 1 Los Paisanos.
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venue, an AHS employee, then came on stage and started explaining the rationale
behind this decision. For a minute it looked like there might be trouble; the tension
was becoming palpable as people began shouting out angry remarks. Suddenly the
promoter broke into a grin: just kidding. Aside from the novelty of a state employee
publicly and playfully highlighting the contradictions in state policy towards rap (its
frequently inexplicable mixture of support and constraint), this incident revealed that
the rappers and audience identified strongly with their space and seemed prepared
to defend it against the designs of government officials.
It should be emphasized that La Madriguera, like the Parque Almendares, is a
complex, multiply inflected space: it is run by a state organization, the AHS, and the
low entrance fees are thus the result of government subsidy. Clearly, this fact colours
any understanding of the extent to which this space may be considered to be
appropriated or alternative; on the other hand, through hip hop a small
community of young habaneros gained a strong sense that this venue could be made
into their place, not simply a crumbling concrete shell in the depths of an urban
park but a key node in a vibrant hip-hop scene. This space was transformed into a
platform for alternative voices and social critique, albeit temporarily and with state
approval. Importantly, the notion of an alternative space in a government-controlled
venue is not as contradictory as it might first appear; indeed, there is a long history of
the accommodation of certain kinds of critical voice within state institutions in
Revolutionary Cuba (Moore 2003). Since the early 1990s, the states combination of
socialist theory and capitalist practice has undermined any illusion of ideological
coherence, and the alternative or oppositional stance adopted by rappers frequently
entails siding with the theory (its emphasis on community, equality, activism and
moralism) against the practice (socio-economic differentiation, the dual economy,
rising materialism and individualism).
3
Many underground rappers broadly share
the governments ideological resistance to these Special Period socio-economic trends
(though in both cases their practices are more contradictory). It is to the problematic
and paradoxical realities of late socialist urban life, then, that the hip-hop movement
seeks to provide an alternative, opposing not so much dominant ideologies as the
failure to live up to them and, in particular, the capitalism in socio-capitalism.
The community feel of rap concerts is evident in the sharing ethos (bottles of rum
passed round, rather than drinks being sold), the importance placed on greeting all
friends and acquaintances, and the presence of children: one prominent DJ would
begin every announcement with the word family, and his own toddler was often in
the audience or even on his lap as he played. I was told repeatedly that rap concerts
provided a healthy, safe, positive environment, which was contrasted with salsa
concerts, where the troublemakers supposedly went and which often ended up with
fights. Given the reputation of rap concerts in some other countries, whether justified
or not, and the frequent, high-profile characterization of hip hop as opposed to
family values in the US, it may be surprising that the rap scene in Cuba defined
itself as a more wholesome environment than other musical alternatives.
222 G. Baker
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It could be argued, then, that despite being sponsored by the state, rap concerts
contain elements of symbolic critique of the restrictions and deficiencies of life in
Havana (Bennett 2000). They provide an alternative social space for ordinary, young
Afro-Cubans who are largely excluded from Havanas nightlife, a space which they
shape through the practices of hip hop as a positive, communal environment, thereby
overcoming some of the problems of contemporary urban life. This also illuminates
the significance of the house-party which ended my evening: it counteracted the
exclusion of its participants from mainstream nightlife. As Bennett suggests, house-
parties are a way for members of a scene to celebrate a shared underground
sensibility that is designed to challenge the perceived oppression and archaism of
[the] official night-time economy (Bennett 2000, 68). Havanas official late-night
music venues standardly charge the equivalent of a months salary for a Cuban,
obliging participants in the rap scene to make their own underground arrange-
ments. While this type of event is not explicitly political, it is a reaction by young
Cubans against a nocturnal environment that currently marginalizes them and,
implicitly, against the rampant dollarization and commodification of culture that
engendered it.
Spaces of Debate: Rap Performance as Communicative Arena
4
If rap concerts provide opportunities for social activity, they also create spaces for
public debate. An Afro-Cuban interviewed in the mid-1990s complained: We have
no places to meet where we can argue and discuss these problems [principally
racism]. And theres no motivation to create a kind of center that is attractive to
people and where serious topics can be discussed (Perez Sarduy and Stubbs 2000,
71). The rap movement, however, supported by one of the more progressive branches
of the state, the AHS, has created exactly this kind of place for Afro-Cuban youth, and
they do indeed discuss serious topics: racism, police harassment, the negative effects
of tourism, but also issues of more specific relevance to the hip-hop scene, like the
commercialization of rap, the meteoric rise of the dancehall-influenced genre
reggaeton, or the relationship between artists and state cultural organizations.
I was struck that rap concerts provided a space for discussion and debate that
included but also went beyond the pre-composed lyrics performed on stage. Unlike,
say, salsa concerts, they have a significant hands-on aspect, allowing people to
participate in and create a scene rather than simply attend a concert. The divide
between audience and performers at underground rap concerts is bridged by
constant interchange.
5
Many concerts are organized as penas, which means that a
number of groups perform at each concert; there is frequent to-ing and fro-ing from
the stage as groups join in and drop out, and collaborations are encouraged, and thus
a broader range of viewpoints is aired than at a simple concert. This blurring of the
performer/audience distinction is increased by the freestyling that often occurs
during or after performances, allowing those who have not played a part in the formal
concert to join in, rather like a jazz jam session. Rappers talk to each other and to the
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audience between songs, during change-overs between groups, in freestyles both on
and off the stage, and in conversations before, during and after the performance.
Concerts are thus places of extensive and multi-directional communication: it is
precisely as places to discuss, rather than simply to listen, that rap concerts are
distinctive, the interactivity going beyond the improvised commentary that is a
feature of many Cuban musical traditions. As performances are not limited to the
prepared elements, emphasis is placed not only on showcasing finished products
but also on a continuous process of critical exploration and evolution. This element
of collective debate, generally lacking in more commercialized music scenes,
distinguishes rap from other Cuban musical genres.
A focus on the interaction between rappers and audiences, in their banter between
songs and their improvised freestyles, reveals a broader range of issues than the song
lyrics alone, and demonstrates how rap serves as a particularly appropriate vehicle
not just for occupying space but also for constituting social relations within the
spaces that its practitioners have claimed. Musical performance may serve as a means
of resolving conflict, negotiating disputes and thus shaping social relations (Askew
2000), and a number of the Cuban rappers to whom I spoke saw their role almost
explicitly in these terms. One of the best-known groups is Ano nimo Consejo, or
Anonymous Advice, while Papa Humbertico took his stage name from the idea of a
father giving advice to his children (pers. comm.) and Jessel of Los Paisanos told me
that he wanted to improve relations between neighbours in his barrio. Many rappers,
then, are actively trying to leave their mark on social relations; but social realignment
also happens in a more contingent, unscripted sense in the fills between songs at
concerts, when rappers often contextualize their lyrics by discussing topical issues
within the rap scene, and, above all, in freestyles.
The aesthetic in freestyles is often a long way from the carefully wrought lyrics of
composed songs: here performance, flow, and immediate relevance are everything.
There are sometimes organized freestyle sessions at the end of concerts, in which
established artists and members of the audience queue up to come on stage and
improvise a few verses; these freestyles may act as a kind of counterpoint to the
composed songs, offering a commentary on them or on the current state of the rap
scene. These on-stage freestyles after concerts may be fairly serious and engage in the
kind of dispute negotiation that Askew describes: one leading rapper, Papo Record,
was accused of betraying the rap movement by another, El Adversario, during such
a freestyle session in 2004. Papo Record is one of the small number of artists
promoted by the state-backed Agencia Cubana de Rap (Cuban Rap Agency), enough
in itself to arouse suspicion among the ranks of underground rappers to which he
once belonged, but he had recently started composing songs in the rival,
commercialized style of reggaeto n, which was beyond the pale for underground
rap fans. Rappers are willing and able to wax eloquent to researchers about their
message, which forms the basis of many pre-composed lyrics, but live debates
within the rap scene often focus on other, more immediate questions. In such
situations, many rappers focus more on who is selling out, who stole the show, who
224 G. Baker
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won a freestyle, which official has been causing problems, than on more abstract
social issues.
In 2004, reggaeto n and the Cuban Rap Agency both regarded as significant
threats to the hip-hop scene dominated the agenda in these more formalized
freestyle sessions and the discussions that informed them. Although these debates
can, on the surface, seem somewhat superficial or parochial compared with song
lyrics about the problems facing wider Cuban society, they in fact reveal important
issues affecting young Cubans in general and artists in particular. We should therefore
beware of assuming that the unscripted micropolitics of rap performances is less
significant than the messages of the pre-composed songs that have attracted
attention to date. Controversies over the commercialization of rap, musical fusion or
reggaeto n, over the role of the Cuban Rap Agency or the AHS, form part of broader
questions about the commodification of Afro-Cuban culture since the Special Period
and about the role of artists in society and of the state in the arts. They also highlight
the increasing materialism of Cuban society, contrasting underground rappers who
choose to follow their line despite its lack of commercial viability with
commercial rappers who have changed tack in order to profit from the reggaeto n
boom. Following your line has deep resonances in Havana at a time when state
ideology and practice are increasingly divergent, when ordinary Cubans see their
governments rhetoric of equality undermined by its increasingly market-driven
policies and its preferential treatment of foreign tourists.
If on-stage freestyles often broach serious issues, impromptu freestyles like the one
that I saw on the bus tend to be more lighthearted, focusing on skilful rhyming and
facetious boasting; they may be competitive, but usually only in the sense of playful
verbal jousting. Although freestyling can be a way of circumventing the constraints
put on rap by government institutions and officials, I found that rappers rarely used
these opportunities to be more overtly political: they were usually more interested in
humour, showing off, settling scores, in other words, in constructing social spaces
and identities. Rap performances are thus more than merely sites for publicly reciting
scripted denunciations of racism and other social ills: they are occasions when the rap
community comes to know and to recreate itself. This location of meaning in the
social practices of music-making accords with Simon Friths suggestion that
[m]aking music isnt a way of expressing ideas; it is a way of living them (Frith
1996, 111).
Freestyles often have a strong element of play. In such cases, it is verbal dexterity,
flow and sound rather than semantic content which take the lead role (Maxwell
2003, 21824), and participants reveal a sense of communality (freestyles often take
place in a circle, with those who are not rapping providing a vocalized backing
track, and anyone can take a turn) but also competition (the sharpest tongue wins).
To expand on points made by Frith and by Martin Stokes (1994, 12), it may be argued
that music-making can enable a community to generate (rather than simply embody)
a different social order and a distinct set of moral values. The organizational principle
of rap penas as communal, interactive performances in which a number of artists
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share the stage, collaborate and create space for freestyling challenges a social order
in which opportunities to speak publicly about social issues are limited, and in which
such public utterances are usually carefully planned and controlled. Rap perfor-
mances, then, do indeed produce a different social order, one based around a
democratic practice of free speech. Viewed in this way, hip hop has provided not
only an outlet for self-expression but also a set of practices which have facilitated the
production of communal values and knowledge. The micropolitical debates and
freestyles are thus of central importance, for it is here that a democratic community is
created.
Communal events in the rap scene thus allow young Afro-Cubans to construct
more congenial social spaces within the city, yet ones that also permit critical
reflection on the difficulties of urban life. The significance of rap lies partly in that
such opportunities are strictly limited in Havana today, and that raps distinctive
form encourages a kind of performative verbal interaction which in turn engenders
impromptu debate. Because it requires no equipment freestyles are often acoustic
rap is not limited to prepared, on-stage performances: it spills over into the times and
spaces surrounding formal concerts, allowing performers and audiences to enter into
conversations with each other, to shape ideas as well as listen to them. Many of the
hip-hop performances I attended exemplified Matterns deliberative form of acting
in concert, in which music-making serves as a communicative forum (1998, 27).
Cuban rap has rightly attracted considerable attention as one of the most dynamic
areas of social commentary in contemporary Cuba, yet it should be noted that
observations directed internally towards the rap movement tend to engage audiences
attention as much as externally directed social critiques. Much of the activity in and
around concerts focuses on more or less serious competition and disputes, and thus
the renegotiation of social bonds. The most charged moments that I observed at
concerts were those which centred on current rivalries between individuals,
institutions, aesthetics and artistic ideologies. Such disputes sometimes made their
Figure 2 Freestyle in Alamar.
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way into composed lyrics, though these songs have not figured in academic analyses,
yet they were carried out primarily in the unscripted parts of penas .
For this reason, it is limiting to focus solely on self-expression through pre-
composed lyrics. The fact that many audience members regularly attended rap penas
at which the same groups performed suggests that the message was not necessarily
the only or even the principal locus of meaning. Freestyling, meanwhile, further
underlines the limitations of lyrical analysis: as Maxwell explains, words may be less
bearers of meaning than elements of sound and badges of skill, and despite rappers
insistence on the centrality of their prepared messages its all about the words
freestyling is, in fact, not simply about the words at all. Its about these moments,
this flow, this flight from ego, the feeling of being led away by the energy of the
rhyme . . . . The words here are the devices for getting there, to that state (Maxwell
2003, 228). If I have characterized rap performance as freedom to speak, freestyling is,
arguably, also a form of freedom from sense (2003, 225), and thus a performative
mode of liberation that has broader resonances in Cuban society, where ideas and
consciousness are given pride of place by the state. So it is important to take into
account the full range of rappers verbal expressions the conversations and the
debates, the confrontations and the reaffirmations, but also the strings of nonsense
(2003, 219) if we are to understand the pleasures and challenges of live rap
performances.
Rap Concerts: Economic Spaces
As the reputation of Cuban hip hop has grown internationally, rap concerts in
Havana have begun to draw in more than simply Afro-Cuban city residents. In recent
years, small but significant numbers of foreigners mainly US and Canadian
journalists, documentary-makers, researchers, hip-hop fans and students taking
courses in the city have sought out the Havana rap scene and have usually been
welcomed by local artists and audiences. If rap concerts started out as an alternative
for young habaneros to the dollar-only tourist venues, they have also become, in
small measure, an alternative to these same venues for foreign rap aficionados and
adventurous overseas visitors who are looking beyond the more traditional,
somewhat packaged and often expensive musical experiences of Old Havana and
the Casas de la Musica. The overwhelmingly Afro-Cuban social spaces that were
characteristic of hip hop in the 1990s have thus expanded into more mixed,
transnational social networks.
Since the Special Period, tourism has become a defining feature of life in Havana.
As most young Cubans have not left the island, they are often keen to make cross-
cultural contacts; but also, since the economic crisis of the early 1990s, tourism has
developed into a mainstay of both the formal and informal urban economies, and
habaneros have become increasingly reliant on foreigners in order to overcome
everyday hardships and, in some cases, to realize larger dreams. Those who are
fortunate enough to live in desirable parts of the city, own cars or have skills that
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foreigners seek to acquire have been able to accumulate dollars by providing services
to tourists, thereby raising themselves economically above the peso-earning majority
of capital residents.
6
City-dwellers who have been able to gain regular access to
foreigners have thus emerged as a privileged group. At its most extreme, the quest for
dollars is evident in the huge increase in hustling and prostitution (both of which
come under the umbrella term jineterismo, literally jockeying), yet many young
habaneros, under pressure from material scarcity and limited social and career
possibilities, see contact with foreigners as a way forward, whether this entails a free
beer, a night out on the town or the seed of something much more substantial, such
as marriage and emigration.
Tourism and its perceived nefarious effects hustling, rising materialism, the
increasing dominance of the dollar are often criticized in rap lyrics. Fernandes
paints a picture of commercial rappers who justify jineterismo and underground
rappers who contest it:
Underground rappers do not share the views of more commercial rappers such as
Orishas; they reject the paths of jineterismo as a way of surviving the special period,
suggesting instead that it is important to maintain a belief in socialist values of
honesty and work in order to raise oneself up. The criticism of jineterismo in
underground rap music is a polemic against consumerist mentalities that have
been emerging with increased access to a market economy, and a condemnation of
the desire of young people to find an easy fix rather than working hard to achieve
their goals and the goals of the revolution. (Fernandes 2003b, 367)
Anti-materialism is indeed part of the discourses of Cuban underground rap, but it
clashes with the very real material needs of these same rappers and should not,
therefore, be taken simply at face value. A glance at the rap scene reveals laptops, DJ
equipment, electronic goods, music, clothing and other gifts donated by foreign
enthusiasts, as well as a widespread dependence on selling self-produced CDs to
foreigners for dollars at concerts. Fernandes polarized perspective, while an accurate
reflection of rap lyrics, thus ignores the more complex realities of rappers lives,
encapsulated in the very Cuban word inventar. Translating roughly as to make
something happen or to get by somehow, and including a large grey area of semi-
legal or illegal activities, inventing is an inherent part of daily life in a country
where state salaries are widely considered too low to cover the cost of living; it has
even been described as a national sport (Chavez 2005, 9). An account of Cuban rap
which describes only the poles of hard work or hustling fails to reflect a reality in
which most Cubans, rappers included, have to invent to a degree in order to
survive. Indeed, a documentary film, aptly titled Inventos, includes a scene in which
the underground duo Ano nimo Consejo discuss the need to invent.
7
Foreigners
who have spent time in Havana will know that attempts to invent will often centre
on them, as many have economic resources beyond the wildest dreams of most
Cubans. Outright jineterismo is rare, though not unknown, in the rap scene, but at
the same time it is na ve to imply, as Fernandes does, that underground rappers
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subscribe in an uncomplicated manner to a belief in socialist values of honesty and
work and working hard to achieve their goals and the goals of the revolution. As
those foreigners who have sufficient linguistic skills and interest in hip hop to hunt
down rap concerts are generally interested in underground rap, it is in fact
underground rappers, rather than those espousing a more commercial or even
mercenary outlook, who have been best placed to make the most of the opportunities
afforded by such cross-cultural contacts.
Involvement with rap can therefore stimulate the imagination and realization of an
alternative kind of urban existence, one which opens up the possibility of
accumulating not just cultural capital but also material benefits and precious dollars.
Pace Fernandes, a rap lifestyle often involves, in practice, an active rejection of the
dominant discourse about work and an engagement with the new economic realities
characteristic of late socialist Havana in other words, a considerable amount of
inventing. Rappers often told me that it was not worth having a normal job, and
many did not work in a conventional sense: they might earn ten dollars a month
working full time in a state enterprise, yet they could earn the same money selling one
self-produced CD to a foreigner, so a number preferred to rely instead on occasional
bursts of entrepreneurial activity centred on rap concerts, seeking to tap the
economic potential of their scene. Indeed, on some occasions I heard rappers describe
their motivations for attending concerts primarily in terms of the need to raise
money. For such individuals, then, rap may provide an alternative to the dominant
socialist work ethos and the peso salaries provided by state employment.
Both Cuban and foreign responses to the Havana rap scene have often constructed
Cuban rap as an authentic, idealistic manifestation of hip hop harking back to
the cultures South Bronx origins in the days before it was corrupted by money.
This perspective overlooks not only the contradictory realities of the Cuban scene
but also the extent to which the pursuit of financial gain has been integral to the
history of hip hop since its inception (Forman 2002, 1013). Hip hop emerged at a
time of economic decline in New York City and provided minority youths with
urgently needed economic opportunities as well as discursive outlets. There are
economic parallels between the South Bronx in the 1970s and Havana in the
1990s, two periods in which many youths were forced to survive by turning to
the informal economy and seeking new ways of making money. The glorification
of cash in much US hip hop is hardly a surprising response given the straitened
circumstances in which the culture evolved, and it has found widespread acceptance
not least because it sits easily in a society where entrepreneurialism is highly
prized. Overt materialism is more fraught in socialist Havana, however, not least
within the rap scene itself, in which the label underground is valorized and
commercial denigrated. Cuban rappers have to tread a more difficult line between
economic necessity and rhetorical orthodoxy than their American counterparts,
something that should be borne in mind when their public pronouncements are
considered.
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The Havana Rap Scene: Transnational Spaces
Fundamental to the evolution of these new social and economic spaces has been the
presence of overseas visitors. A number of artists have profited from the international
attention paid to their scene to establish relations with foreigners and thereby to gain
access to material resources that are virtually impossible for most Cubans to obtain.
Foreigners may simply help to oil the wheels at rap concerts buying drinks, paying
for transport and provide cash or vital goods like blank CDs at moments of need.
They are also the main source of new music. During the annual rap festival, the
connections with foreigners can lead to bigger things: donations of equipment,
negotiations over potential recordings, even an overseas invitation.
The number of male rappers with foreign partners illustrates the fact that the hip-
hop scene provides more than just imagined connections with the outside world.
Indeed, taking into account the number of leading artists who have left the island
over the last decade, as well as the regular presence of foreigners and the crucial
involvement over several years of the US-Cuban Black August Collective (Asho
2004), the Havana rap scene is a markedly transnational space. Cubas most famous
rap group, Orishas, is based in Europe, and many others have since sought to pursue
their careers overseas and to capitalize on the international cachet of Cuban rap; in
some cases, romantic attachments formed through the hip-hop scene have led to a
highly prized marriage visa. The huge success of Orishas and the current global
popularity of Cuban culture, combined with the challenges of everyday life in
Havana, mean that, behind the public rhetoric of nationalism and solidarity with the
Revolution within the hip-hop scene, the lure of overseas is a constant background
presence.
Thus, while rappers address the negative effects of tourism in stark terms in their
lyrics, even demonizing the tourist, in reality the relationship between Cubans and
foreigners is continually played out in much more complex and contradictory ways.
Despite their critiques of tourism and the dollar, many rappers are at least partly
dependent on foreigners for income, material resources and improved life or career
prospects, something which has been noted by the more acerbic rappers. Los
Aldeanos wrote a song for the 2004 rap festival in which they upbraided their fellow
MCs for using rap as a route to seducing foreign girls and leaving the island, while
Papa Humbertico criticised the gulf between rhetoric and actions within the rap
movement in his track El movimiento (The movement):
Many of them talk about our African roots
And they say that they defend them at all costs black people!
So why do they chase round after white European girls, who understands them?
For all the anxieties over contact with foreigners, the rap scene has facilitated this
kind of social interaction, and part of the attraction of the scene (for both foreigners
and locals) in recent years has been the opportunities for social mixing in some of the
few places in Havana where such mixing is permissible, affordable and relatively
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hassle-free. Overseas visitors can bypass the expense and overt jineterismo typical of
mainstream commercial music venues, while rappers connect with foreign fans who
offer moral and practical support even when artists feel neglected by local audiences
and media. Global hip hop the Hip Hop Nation is more than an imagined
community, it is a real presence in the Havana rap scene. Involvement with rap
opens the door to this transnational space, to the accumulation of cultural capital,
but also to precious human contacts and material resources, and thus holds out the
possibility of a different kind of urban existence, one of unusual geographical, social
and economic mobility. Certainly, no underground rappers have made serious
money, though some who have embraced more commercial styles, especially
reggaeto n, have recently seen more substantial rewards; but a number have
accumulated consumer goods and a more cosmopolitan lifestyle, while a few have
even travelled overseas the ultimate prize or starred in foreign-produced
documentaries on their music. For all the somewhat moralistic, nationalistic
discourses of many lyrics, the transnational spaces of rap provide unusual socio-
economic opportunities for their authors. In the rap scene, as in the city beyond, the
pressures on Cuban society are played out in contradictory ways to a backing track of
ideological rectitude.
By focusing on the social and economic aspects of the hip-hop scene, I am again
underlining that, while rap may be considered a form of political music, its
meanings are not limited to this, nor, indeed, are its politics to be found solely in its
lyrics. Maxwell sounds a cautionary note, warning against a tendency both to simplify
and to over-state the political dimensions of cultural practices:
my status as a researcher frequently elicited highbrow explanations for a given
persons involvement or engagement with hip-hop. Virtually everyone I met could,
to one extent or another, talk the talk: hip-hop was the voice of the streets; it was
giving a voice to people who dont have one; it was, simply, political. I am not
denying that this is, to an extent, the case. It is not, however, the whole story, and it
is the other side of the story that does not get written about enough. (Maxwell
2001, 266)
Maxwell locates the other side of the story in the groove of it. Another element is
musical fashion. The principal studies of Cuban hip hop are based on research carried
out between the late 1990s and 2003, when rap was arguably the most happening
form of music on the island. Leading conscious rappers from the US were regular
visitors, journalists were sitting up and taking notice, video cameras became a
common sight at performances: underground hip hop was undeniably fashionable,
and everyone wanted a piece of its politicized action. Given a prevailing
academicized agenda of enlisting youth cultural forms to positions of progressive
political agency (Maxwell 2003, 123), Cuban rap seemed too good to be true. When
reggaeto n took Havana by storm in 2003, however, rap artists and fans started to
jump ship in increasing numbers, revealing an unexpected allegiance to groove, a
renewed interest in the cars-women-cash triad and a less-than-wholehearted espousal
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of raps explicit politics. If this should introduce a note of caution into the celebration
of the politics of Cuban rap lyrics, I would also suggest that the appeal, and also the
oppositional stance, of hip hop should not be characterized so narrowly, but should
rather take in the distinctive spaces that have been carved out by its practitioners. By
proposing that the unwritten story of hip hop in Havana encompasses the social and
economic possibilities opened up to young Afro-Cubans, the pleasures fashion,
groove as well as the politics of rap, and, in particular, the attractions of foreign
interaction, I am thus expanding, rather than undermining, hip hops political
significance.
The Movement of Our Movement: Engaging with the City
8
The trajectory that I followed across Havana with my companions illustrates how rap
stimulates and accompanies movement around the city. Rappers talk about their
scene as el movimiento (the movement), a word which refers to a socio-cultural
community but also evokes the physical engagement of rappers with the city, as well
as the socio-economic possibilities that rap opens up. The rap scene is a social
network that stretches across the sprawling city (Condry 2001), and rap performances
unite young Afro-Cubans from diverse neighbourhoods, providing them with the
motivation and opportunity to explore an urban environment in which their
movements are generally limited by their slender economic means and by a lack of
places to go. Rap in Havana provides a means for its producers and consumers to
participate in the social life of the modern city (Sansone 1995, 127). For rappers,
many of them unemployed in a formal sense, not only performances but also
rehearsals, meetings, and recording sessions are prime stimuli to get out and about.
Such incentives to explore the urban terrain are particularly important to the
residents of Alamar, a vast concrete suburb on the easternmost extreme of the city.
Frequently described as the home of Cuban rap and arguably the dominant place in
the Cuban rap imaginary, Alamar has been the source of a number of leading artists
and many rap devotees. Their participation in the rap scene has counteracted their
geographical marginalization: not only are they drawn into the city by the staging of
concerts at central venues, but rappers and fans from other parts of the city are also
attracted to Alamar for penas and especially for the annual rap festival.
9
Rap facilitates a particularly dynamic engagement with the city, due to the almost
total absence of constraints on its performance. A striking aspect of my movement
across the city was the improvised rap contest on the bus. Whereas scripted rap songs
are usually performed in prescribed, circumscribed locations, freestyling may be
impromptu and frequently takes place in public places, contesting the uses and
meanings of such spaces. I often saw freestyles in the street, either outside venues after
a concert or when people were walking between venues. Such performances were
consciously public: rappers were drawing attention to their skills outside the official
spaces for rap, claiming places like streets or buses as legitimate stages for their talents
and thereby contesting their spatial marginalization in distant suburbs and their
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relative invisibility (or inaudibility) in the city. Movement itself physical
engagement with the city thus opens up new platforms for self-expression. The
use of public buses as spaces to entertain and inform a captive audience is apparently
not uncommon in Havana: Roberto Zurbano, former vice-president of the AHS,
describes rap improvisations as a regular feature of his journey into the city when he
lived in Alamar (Zurbano 2004, 7). This recalls Philip Bohlmans description of the
Chicago rappers who responded to the beating of Rodney King and the subsequent
Los Angeles riots by taking to the citys el-trains and performing the news to
passengers (Bohlman 1993, 413).
Freestyling, because it needs no equipment or preparation, is thus ideally suited to
the temporary, instantaneous appropriation or poaching of public spaces; it is a
characteristic urban guerrilla strategy, a facet of the subcultural urban nomadism
found in contexts of intensive spatial regulation that has been aptly described as a
performative mode of inhabiting the city (Fielder 2001, 280). Such public courting
of attention may, however, carry risks in Havana: I was told that one of the freestylers
on the bus, Reynor, had been stopped by the police while rhyming his way down the
street. Indeed, the only time that I witnessed the police act with force was at a
freestyle outside a party in Vedado. A concert had been cancelled earlier that the
evening, so the sizeable audience descended instead on a house-party in Calle Linea.
The occupants, sensing an unexpected opportunity, had started charging an entry fee,
so many people decided to stay outside in the street. Soon there were some 70 people
outside, and a freestyle began, some people making percussion sounds as an
improvised backing track, others taking it in turns to rhyme a verse. Suddenly four
police vans screeched up, 30 policemen piled out and within seconds there were
batons flying and people running in all directions.
Without wishing to make a direct link between freestyling and police repression,
I see this event as illustrating not simply the spatialized practices of Cuban hip hop
but, more importantly, that it is precisely in the spatial domain that much of its
Figure 3 Alamar.
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political challenge can be found. I never witnessed any reaction when rappers
criticized the police in rap songs performed in government venues and distributed on
CDs, yet the improvisers of harmless strings of nonsense in the street were violently
dispersed. While the lyrics performed in state venues are often more political than
anything heard in a freestyle, several of the principal rap venues are in isolated, self-
contained locations such as the middle of urban parks (Parque Almendares, Quinta
de Molina). Rap penas were also held on occasional Friday afternoons in Cafe
Cantante in the basement of the National Theatre, a place and time that were unlikely
to pull in casual passers-by. The challenge of rap appears to be directly related to its
visibility/audibility, and thus to be at its greatest either when outsiders are watching,
particularly during the annual international rap festival, or when it spills out of its
prescribed spaces into public places. Yet even official venues are contested zones:
the struggle over regular access to performance space has been central to the history
of hip hop in Havana, which is usually charted by the flowering and usually abrupt
end of activities in a series of locales, rather than by stylistic developments.
Negotiations and confrontations between the state and the Havana rap movement
have been as much about territory as self-expression. On repeated occasions, popular
rap pena series have been terminated with little notice or reason given, and the
Havana rap scene has thus been regularly uprooted, creating a sense of impermanence
and uncertainty.
An event in mid-2004 illustrated the degree to which the precarious status of rap
was directly related to place. After the last-minute cancellation of the rap festival in
August 2004 due to a hurricane, an enterprising DJ and promoter persuaded the
director of the Teatro Mella to allow him to put on a series of afternoon rap shows in
the theatre garden in order to provide a performance outlet for the frustrated groups.
This garden, however, opens directly onto a busy street in the up-market Vedado
neighbourhood and faces a military building, and rappers could be heard clearly on
the street. This was not a conventional venue for rap performances, and the theatre
official in charge of the event was clearly nervous, hovering near the stage and literally
pulling the plug on the sound system on several occasions. The songs were no more
contentious than those performed at nocturnal penas at isolated official venues, but
they were apparently beyond the pale in a central public place during the day. This
event illustrated differing understandings of the proper places for rap performances
and the appropriate uses of public spaces, and it is to the issue of conflicting
perceptions of urban space that I now turn.
The Havana That You Dont Know: Contesting Urban Narratives
A focus on urban imaginaries is a feature of much recent work within the field of
urban studies (e.g. Bridge and Watson 2000). Urban experience is mediated by
representations of the city which form an integral part of its reality: [t]he city is an
understanding of itself. To make it work, to make it operate, to make it liveable, all
manner of ideologies, schema, concepts and images are required (Miles, Hall and
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Borden 2003, 23). Urban space is thus multiply imagined and inflected, contested
rather than fixed, a series of discourses, which involve ways of picturing the local and
ones relation to it (Bennett 2000, 63). Underpinning these conflicting discourses or
representations are the radically unequal opportunities of urban environments:
[t]he city is something akin to a vast and variegated whirlpool replete with all the
ambivalence of a space full of opportunity, playfulness and liberating potential,
while being entwined with spaces of oppression, exclusion and marginalization . . . .
Cities seem to hold the promise of emancipation and freedom whilst skilfully
mastering the whip of repression and domination. (Merrifield and Swyngedouw
1996, 1314)
Such a perspective is central to Formans account of the development of rap, which in
the 1980s began to express critiques of the uneven distribution of power in US cities
(Forman 2002, xviii). As Tricia Rose writes, rap articulates the chasm between black
urban lived experience and dominant, legitimate (e.g., neo-liberal) ideology
regarding equal opportunity and racial inequality (1994, 102). The socio-spatial
divisions of New York City shaped raps oppositional narratives in the 1980s and were
famously articulated in landmark tracks by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
such as The Message (1982) and New York, New York (1983).
The image of the divided city, a place of opportunity but also of marginalization,
has been particularly apposite to Havana in recent years. During the crisis of the
Special Period, the Cuban government realized that it would have to embrace tourism
wholeheartedly in order to keep the economy afloat. This required an image overhaul:
in order to sell the country as a mass-tourist destination, the dour images of Soviet-
era Cuba were augmented by classic Caribbean marketing icons sun, sea, sex and
music. The repackaging of the country as both heritage site and tropical playground
included representing Havana through the twin lenses of colonial architecture and
nightlife.
10
Central to this re-imaging of the city have been the revamping of music
venues and, above all, the project to restore Habana Vieja. Money has been pumped
into the restoration of colonial buildings and the renovation of hotels, commodifying
the capitals architectural heritage in order to create a distinctive and attractive place-
image for the city.
The combination of joint ventures with foreign capital and the Plan Maestro have
turned parts of Habana Vieja, Vedado and Miramar into picturesque places of
opportunity, but largely for foreigners. The majority of habaneros have been
marginalized by these rapid changes, and they watch their neighbourhoods slowly
collapsing as funds are poured into a few visually appealing blocks of the city. The
Cuban governments socialist rhetoric of equality has thus come to look ever more
disconnected from reality, especially for many Afro-Cubans, who are widely perceived
to have been disproportionately disadvantaged by these recent changes (e.g.
Fernandes 2003, 5789). Havana is increasingly a city of illusion (Boyer, quoted
in Low 1999, 16), an assemblage of enticing images for foreign consumption and
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proclamations of equal opportunity that bear little relation to the everyday lives of
most residents of the capital.
Many young habaneros are well aware of the images of their country that are
promoted to tourists: they have a strong sense of living in an imagined community
for others (Sissons, quoted in Foster 1999, 268). Aldo, a rapper who accompanied
me to the tourist Viazul bus station, snorted with derision as he perused the postcards
on sale. The gap between Caribbean illusion and reality, paralleling the gulf between
dominant ideologies and black urban lived experience described by Rose, is nicely
captured in one of his verses:
Magnificent, enchanted island of dreams
Whose treasure is a frustrated youth
11
Rappers explore the disjunctures between Havana as a global city of the imagination,
packaged for consumption by foreign tourists, and the realities experienced by most
local people. While artists and fans enact alternative narratives of urban life through
the social and spatial practices of hip hop, the social construction of urban space also
takes place on symbolic as well as physical planes (Low 1999; Forman 2002).
Oppositional narratives of locality can thus take the more literal form of discursive
redefinitions of city spaces. Young Afro-Cubans, largely written out of the tourism
script, have found in rap an opportunity to counter hegemonic images with
their own versions of urban reality and to construct their own representations of
the city.
As a tool for imagining the city in new ways, rap has been described as a form of
alternative urban cartography (Forman 2002, 71), its lyrics providing maps upon
which young artists and their wider audiences might trace patterns of dominant
hegemonic power and locate spaces where alternative or oppositional potentials can
cohere and thrive (Forman 2002, 60). Employing the same metaphor rather
differently in a non-US context, Maxwell describes hip hop as a map preceding, and
making, a new place, in which it is possible for the agents to think and experience
their own being in a manner or modality that previously had left them feeling
denied (Maxwell 2001, 265). With the globalization of hip hop, then, the genre
arguably serves both as canvas and template, a blank sheet but also a guide. In
Havana, hip hop provides a frame for naming and connecting marginalized places
Alamar, Centro Habana, Cerro, Almendares, 10 de Octubre allowing local rappers
to create meaningful cognitive maps of the city that contrast markedly with those in
guidebooks, with their focus on Old Havana and Vedado. Alamar, in particular, is
transformed by this hip-hop cartography. Suburban rappers have contested the
peripherality of their barrio by resignifying it as a cultural centre, as the home of
Cuban rap.
12
The city is also a significant presence in rap lyrics, in some case coming to the fore
as the main protagonist, and I will now look at two songs that suggest that one
oppositional aspect of rap in Havana relates to representations of the city. In other
words, it is not socialist ideals which are contested, but rather the tangible evidence of
236 G. Baker
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their betrayal in the new Havana emerging since the early 1990s. Underlying these
songs are perceptions of a widening gulf between the citys glittering appearances and
its gritty reality. In the first, La Habana que no conoces by Papa Humbertico, the
contrast is made through a description of Havana by night, the Havana that you
dont know:
Here I am in the streets of Havana, cant sleep,
Going nowhere, dont want to do anything
I watch the whores and pimps making a living
No respect anywhere
You can hear the cops siren in the distance
People running, trying to avoid the police,
The situation cools down, everything goes back to normal,
Masturbators give free reign to their instincts
Thats how my city becomes after midnight
This is the side of Havana you dont know, my friend
Voices that draw you in, moments that get out of control,
Cowards who get brave after a couple of shots
They dont forgive, those professionals of the small hours,
If youre not all there you lose, theyll do their business,
In every corner a bit of corruption
While planning the attack, you flirt with a queer,
The drivers in league with the bag-snatcher
The night bus is easier; its a sitting duck
Taxi-drivers fiddle the fare, theyre making love in the security room
Scammers dressed up as shop assistants behind the counter
Its a big mistake to go there, some neighbourhoods are no-go areas by night
around here
Up there at the window a 4-year-old kid is lost in his sobs
While his mother sells her charms
(Chorus )
This is my Havana, the Havana you dont know,
The Cuban capital after midnight,
Enjoy it if youre foreign, struggle if youre from here
How I love my Havana, what would I do without you?
This song reveals the other face of Havana, the hidden side that the listener does
not know because s/he is asleep. This may be taken as a literal description of
Havana after dark, one which contrasts starkly with the portrayal of the nocturnal
city in a 2006 government tourist brochure: Party rooms, cabarets, discotheques
and bars fill the tropical nights with the sound of sones, guarachas, mambos,
catchy Cuban rhythms and international music. It sounds a dissonant note by
exposing the dark side of Havana that is never shown on TV or in brochures,
contesting the sunny images projected to the world by the Cuban government and
by tourist agencies. The image of the dual city is neatly expressed in a chorus
which also carries interesting echoes of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious
Fives valorization of the insiders perspective in New York, New York. Suggesting
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that the true city remains invisible to outsiders who are asleep, Papa Hum-
berticos verses may be seen as a recuperation of local awareness and thus evidence of
a nuanced urban perspective rather than a simple dystopian vision; the enjoyment/
struggle dichotomy is mirrored by ignorance/knowledge. In Havana, where the
tourist/outsider is often seen as king, this linking of pleasure and ignorance has
particular resonance.
A similar implicit critique of the tourist gaze (Urry 1990) is articulated in a
collaboration between Los Paisanos and Boston rappers the Foundation which
includes the following verse:
My Havana isnt just beaches and palm-trees
Like in the videos made by foreign companies
Why is it that the truth is always hidden?
The more you ask, the fewer people reply
Havana is the place, I keep wondering,
On every corner a committee,
13
everyone going about his own business,
Havana isnt just unusual for its scale-model
14
Its also got the cheapest whores on the planet
Here its not just all parties like they show on TV
Here you can see cops getting really stoned
The truth hurts, the truth tends to
Be deeply wounding to certain people
Who think theyre King Midas
But everything they touch turns to rotting garbage.
Go on! Thats how we live in this city,
Tourism is for you, ours is another reality
Go on! Here we do whatever to get by
Huevo knows Im not lying, everything else is just talk,
Go on! How many businessmen are behind bars
People have died when buildings have collapsed in Old Havana
Havana is the ideal place for immigrants,
Most of them are from where the singers come from,
15
Car 8 to Car 7, sellers on the streets,
Big fish, gamblers, and even drug-dealers.
Los Paisanos, like Papa Humbertico, juxtapose the enjoyment of foreigners with
the struggle of city residents. Here, the contrast is made even more explicitly between
the harsh reality of Havana life and the rosy images produced by the media and for
tourist consumption. Whereas the government projects images of beaches, palm-trees
and fiestas, Los Paisanos paint a picture of prostitution, drunken policemen, rotting
garbage, rising crime and collapsing buildings. If the tourist industry prefers to focus
on the restoration of Habana Vieja, these rappers allude to the wider infrastructural
decline: indeed, in 1997 it was estimated that more than half of the citys buildings
were in poor condition, while more than 5,300 collapsed between 1993 and 1996,
leading Rutheiser (2000, 2312) to claim that some sections of the city looked like
Beirut or Sarajevo.
238 G. Baker
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Both songs, then, are exposes of the underside of city life; their creators are
chroniclers of the other Havana. These artists disrupt the re-imaging of the city as
an attractive tourist playground, revealing the problems that lie beneath and
challenging Kapcias optimistic view that with restoration under way, Habana Vieja
is a beautiful city in the re-making and that this project is a genuine moment and
process of self-discovery and quiet confidence (Kapcia 2005, 2, 213). These rappers
seem to be implicitly questioning the idea of a cultural identity for Havana based on
romanticized colonial imagery and a Plan Maestro for Habana Vieja with which they
do not identify and which brings them little benefit. Forman has noted that, if the city
provides the frame for much black popular culture, the spatial scale is often reduced
to a more localized perspective in hip hop (Forman 2002, 267). This focus on
micro-levels of space and experience makes rap a particularly useful tool for
countering the homogenization of the city that occurs with tourism-oriented
imagineering (Low 1999, 16). Rappers close observation of urban conditions
resists the reduction of Havana by the tourist industry to a limited set of simple,
Figure 4 Collapsing Building in Habana Vieja.
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positive, easily consumed images colonial architecture, salsa clubs and disrupts
any tendency to conflate run-down Havana with revitalized Habana Vieja, instead
registering the social and material inequalities behind the facade of the citys
showpiece plan for restoration.
Revolucion sin Pachanga: Rap and the Politics of (Not) Dancing
16
In the face of the packaging of Havana as a commodity or city of illusion, hip hop
provides frameworks and practices which allow marginalized youth to impose
meaning on the urban environment and to challenge dominant discourses of the city.
It is partly in this sense that rap may be considered a distinctively urban cultural
form, but it is also worth considering briefly the purely musical aspects of the genre.
Papa Humbertico and Los Paisanos perform their underground visions of the city
through music as well as words, choosing to produce a hard sound, with no obvious
Cuban inflections, which mirrors their uncompromising lyrics. Idealized, tourist-
centred images of Havana are contested by music designed to challenge the
characterization of the city in terms of the soothing, nostalgic sounds of the Buena
Vista Social Club or the body-centred hedonism of salsa.
These songs are not dance music; indeed, at underground concerts that I
attended, audiences did not usually dance to live rap. Yet Cuba defines itself like few
other countries through dance, which looms large in both popular and tourist-
oriented images of the country. It is partly through musical sounds, then, that
underground rappers challenge images of their nation as a tropical paradise and
place of carefree pleasure, and the realm of bodily movement is where rap audiences
connect to this challenge. In other words, not dancing is politically significant: it is an
embodied form of dissent, providing affirmation for the performers as they seek to
reshape the national imaginary. For underground rappers and fans, dancing is tied
up with the city of illusion: an anti-dancing rhetoric is regularly expressed in
recordings and interviews by underground artists. Dance music is seen as inhibiting
genuine challenge to the status quo because of its focus on bodily pleasure and
alegra. The social critiques in rap lyrics are thus endorsed through audience
performance, which reinforces the idea of a genre centred on a serious message rather
than sensual pleasure. Underground rap is designed to block a dance response, to
force listeners into an intellectual mode of reception. This disruption of common
corporeal responses correlates with the disruption of habitual mental patterns: it is
a physical stimulus to wake up to the disjunctions between appearances and
reality described in lyrics stop moving your ass and your mind will follow, one
might say.
For Lise Waxer, salsa is a cultural practice
through which Calenos [residents of Cali, Colombia] have made explicit their own
sense of being together . . . salsa has served as the sonic cue for the participatory
framework of the rumba that is the hub of Caleno collectivity, suturing the wounds
of daily struggles and banishing the shadows of urban violence. Through dancing,
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listening, and performance, Calenos have forged activities that get them in sync and
that reinforce and indeed structure the deeper synchrony of social life itself. (Waxer
2002, 261)
The content and bipartite structure of Cuban rap concerts not dancing to live
Cuban rap, followed by dancing to recorded foreign music suggest a rather different
dynamic. Both the lack of audience movement and the lyrical topics during the live
part of the concert suggest that underground rappers are pulling apart the
appearance of Cuban collectivity and deconstructing the national discourse of
equality: exposing wounds and shadows rather than healing or banishing them.
It is a deliberate breaking away from the in sync-ness of Cuban social activity
centred on dancing. But in the second part of the concert and in the house-party
afterwards, when recorded US rap is played, by dancing a non-native style to the
sounds of foreign music, they reformulate the social bonds in a new way, countering
the widening fissures of local society with a close-knit local hip-hop subculture and
affective links to a global hip-hop community. Cuban rappers and fans deconstruct
dominant discourses of collectivity and then, by embodying a kind of imaginative
transformation through dancing to US hip hop (Wade 2000), enact a new urban
narrative while simultaneously imagining their place in a wider world that most of
them have never seen.
Conclusions
Rap is distinguished from other forms of popular music by its spatial practices
and narratives. It emerged in the South Bronx in the 1970s as a reaction to the
deterioration of the urban residential infrastructure, which contrasted with the
concentration of funds in business and tourist districts. Rap thus has its roots in a
context of major urban change and is the music of urban inequality and socio-
spatial segregation par excellence. Its adoption is highly suggestive in a rapidly
changing urban environment like that of the Cuban capital in the 1990s. Rap has
connotations that are lacking in other adopted musics in Cuba, such as rock, for
it carries historical echoes of dissent against the unevenness of urban develop-
ment. It is music not simply of youthful protest but specifically of spatial
polarization, and thus an ideal lens through which to observe the emergence of a
dual city.
Havana has seen a rising differentiation of the cityscape since the early 1990s
under the influence of rapidly expanding tourism and foreign investment, leading
to an increasing segregation of urban space. This is particularly contentious in
socialist Cuba, for the core ideology of equality has been undermined in a public
and visible manner. Rappers in Havana have reacted to rising inequality in the
distribution of power across the city, shining a harsh light on the racialization of
urban space and on the spatialized discrimination evident in de facto no-go areas
and police harassment in tourist districts. Rap, with its history of analysing the
articulation between race and space, has been a particularly sharp tool for
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documenting these new spatial conditions and observing the widening gap
between image and reality in Havana, just as it has been for examining the
shifting socio-spatial inequalities resulting from deindustrialization, urban decay
and post-industrial renewal in US cities.
Many studies of global rap have focused on the use of the genre to open up
debate on ethnic or racial issues, yet it would appear that raps association with
the exposing of spatial inequalities has been retained in some of its major global
manifestations. If rap is a new lexicon and medium through which youths may
describe the spaces and places of urban landscapes (Forman 2002, 343), it appears
to have been readily translatable. Rap may have particular resonance in contexts
where globalization and/or local dynamics such as immigration, regeneration or
tourism have contributed to significant urban changes and widening socio-spatial
divides, and it may be no coincidence that some of the cities which
have generated the most vibrant rap scenes outside the US, such as Paris, Sao
Paulo and Havana, are also places in which discourses about polarized urban
spaces banlieue, periferia, dollar zones have loomed large in popular
imaginaries.
From this spatial perspective, the predilection for the term underground (as
well as for recognizably underground sounds) within Cuban rap is notable.
While studies of global hip hop have tended to favour an adoption-adaptation
model and thus focus on locally inflected musical developments (e.g. Mitchell
2001), musical non-adaptation can also be revealing, especially if viewed in terms
of the construction of locality. The enthusiastic adoption of the underground
announced that Havana had an underside, that the socialist ideology of evenly
structured space concealed a quite different reality. The question of whether such
Cuban rap is imitative or authentic thus takes on less significance, because
underground sounds bear a distinctive message about place (as well as national
identity, aesthetic outlook and so on). Bearing in mind that the rap scene
developed in the context of the demarcation of dance venues as generators of
foreign currency, the adoption of the term underground can be seen in part as
a response to the changing urban environment. With its implication of spatial,
aesthetic and economic dichotomy (suggesting an overground official or
commercial counterpart), it echoes a series of binary opposites (such as dollar/
peso, tourist/local, formal/informal economies) that are often used to characterize
urban life since the Special Period. Both sound and label, then, evoke the
polarization of the modern dual city of Havana. The valorization of the
underground label, meanwhile, points towards a positive resignification of
marginalization. This is mirrored by a frequently told origin story of Cuban rap
which recounts how the tall, seaside apartment blocks of Alamar were ideally
constructed and located for mounting illicit aerials which could capture radio
signals from Miami. Alamar, then, was the home of the underground because it
was high-rise, the centre of the rap scene because it was in the middle of
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nowhere. In the Havana rap scene, spatialized thinking is rarely far from the
surface.
17
Havana has shown increasing parallels with the postmodern city (Low 1999,
16) since the mid-1990s. Although postmodern cities are normally associated with
late capitalism, Lows emphasis on the repackaging of cities as commodities,
imagineering and an obsession with history has many resonances with late
socialist Havana; the marketing of the Cuban capital has, I have argued, created a
distinctively postmodern city of illusion. Cuban hip hop, too, has been
characterized as postmodern for its capacity to undermine modernist construc-
tions of the nation (Perry 2004, 74). Ian Maxwell, however, has noted the
conservatism of Australian hip hop and suggests that the centrality of discourses
of community, nation, culture and representation are evidence of an Enlight-
enment worldview and thus the opposite of a postmodern sensibility (Maxwell
2003, 1224). The evidence presented above reveals resistance on the part of
underground rappers to the postmodern re-imaging of the city, leading me to
concur with Maxwell and suggest that hip hop in Havana is a decidedly
modernist cultural project: a self-perceived movement with a strong sense of
history, seeking to represent the truth and reality hidden behind media
illusions and rejecting the postmodern play of consumable images characteristic of
socio-capitalist Havana.
Acknowledgements
Afectos y respetos to Jessel, Randeee, Miguelito, Los Aldeanos and Papa Humbertico.
Many thanks to Karel and Charlotte for assistance with translations and editing
respectively, and to the anonymous readers for their comments. Photos (except
Figure 2) by Alex Lloyd un fuerte abrazo, mijo.
Notes
[1] Papa Humbertico, La Habana que no conoces (The Havana that you dont know). All
translations are by the author with assistance from Karel. The rap songs quoted in this article
were available only on self-produced demos in 2004, when the research for this article was
undertaken.
[2] El Cartel, Bajo presio n; Hermanos de Causa, La calle esta en candela.
[3] See Kapcia (2000) on the ideological underpinnings of the Cuban state and Baker (2005) on
their parallels with underground rap.
[4] Mattern (1998).
[5] The term underground has been widely used within Cuban hip hop and has been valorized
by many rappers and DJs. It normally refers to particular musical and lyrical qualities e.g.
social commentary, hard beats with few surface local features, a rhythm that does not
invite dancing rather than an oppositional stance towards the state. Many self-described
underground artists receive support from governmental institutions such as the AHS.
[6] At the time of research, Cuba operated a dual dollar-peso economy. Dollars were vital for
obtaining most consumer goods and even some staple foodstuffs, yet were hard for most
Cubans to earn in a legal manner.
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[7] Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi, Inventos: Hip-Hop Cubano, USA, 2003.
[8] Papa Humbertico, El movimiento.
[9] In 2004, however, I noticed that, as rappers had become more aware of foreign interest in
their work and more dependent on selling CDs to foreigners for their income, they had
become increasingly focused on the more accessible city-centre venues. Many Alamar and
Havana rappers were thus reluctant to perform in the Alamar suburbs; as the epicentre of the
rap movement had moved west to the city, the popularity of rap in its Cuban birthplace
had declined in favour of reggaeto n.
[10] See, for example, the promotional brochure, Cuba, produced by the Cuban Ministry of
Tourism in 2006.
[11] Los Aldeanos, Mi pa s.
[12] As Perry notes, the cultural construction of Alamar as the home of Cuban rap was
undoubtedly informed by the parallels, underlined by US visitors, between this suburb and
the housing projects in New York which are central to the origin story of US hip hop (Perry
2004, 149). Maxwells comments are thus particularly apposite.
[13] Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (state-sponsored neighbourhood associa-
tions).
[14] A scale model of the city is a tourist attraction in Miramar.
[15] From the mountains of Santiago de Cuba. This line, from Trio Matamoros, Son de la
Loma, refers here to present-day issues of immigration from eastern Cuba to the capital.
[16] Che Guevara reportedly characterized the Cuban Revolution as a revolucion con pachanga,
referring to a Cuban dance rhythm.
[17] Papa Humbertico, in his track El movimiento, describes watching from below
the movement of our Movement, while tracks on his compilation Sonido Tupido 3
are interspersed with a sung sample debajo de la tierra (literally, under the ground). He
thus imagines the dual city as vertically layered, like Fritz Langs Metropolis.
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