In Cali, hip-hop represents a search for identity among those
who have no voice
No sooner did I suggest a spot for taking photos of the 15 rappers and
breakdancers we went to meet in Aguablanca (Colombia) than trouble began. In the
cab ride to the interview, I passed a neighbourhood barbershop with a poster of
slain U.S. rapper Tupac Shakur in the window and some funny haircuts painted on
the glass—and thought of suggesting it as a backdrop.
But on broaching the idea, a guy called “Maligno” got in my face and
said, “I ain’t down with [agreeing to] the bit about the barbers.
Some people be sayin’ that the barbers be down with hip-hop ‘cause
they be doin’ the razor cuts [popular among male rappers], but that
ain’t necessarily so.” The complaints continued, once we reached the
shop, as four of the rappers pointed to the name, “New American
Power”. Lalo, the photographer, and I quickly suggested looking for
another site.
Walking down a side street, I began explaining that readers in other parts of
the world would like to see where they live. “Yeah, you wanna see how poor
we are, right?” announced Puto, a young man with his hair braided in the
dreadlocks of a Rastafarian. “Here you go,” he said pointing to a
shack at the end of a dirt road. “I bet you wanna take a picture of us in
front of that shack, right?”
This went on for an hour. At the end, Lalo, a well-traveled Colombian
photographer, was sweating, and not because of the heat. “These kids are
tough to work with,” he said with understatement.
Demanding precision
And I began to realise what hip-hop in Colombia is all about—a search for
identity among those who have no other voice. These kids wanted Lalo’s
photos to show exactly who they were, down to the last detail. They speak the
“language of the world’s ghettos”, as 23-year-old rapper and
producer Carlos Andrés Pacheco explained later—but in their own urban,
South American, Colombian version. This can mean including Cali’s
particular salsa cadence in a tune or even rapping about the narcotics trade
wreaking havoc in Colombian society.
In what were once wetlands on the southern edge of Cali (the country’s
second city), Aguablanca is one of Latin America’s largest
“invasions”—areas on the outskirts of cities where people seek
refuge from rural violence and poverty. About 400,000 people of colour from the
Pacific coast have settled here over the last few decades, often finding more
violence and poverty in an urban form. Since 1994, the Aguablanca Cultural
Network has been trying to help, for example, by supporting about 25 of the
area’s dozens of rap and breakdance groups.
This support includes practical help like giving the groups a gathering
place—a big help in light of the fact that many of these kids live in
single-floor houses with up to eight siblings crammed into a few rooms, while
few institutions open their doors to bands of teenagers with dreadlocks and
baggy jeans. One of the networks’ leaders is Robinson Ruiz, who also
belongs to BS, a rap trio with a video—a status symbol of sorts in
Colombia’s rap scene, barely a decade old.
“Throwing consciousness out there”
Ruiz has called a meeting to discuss upcoming events, including the first
anniversary of a weekly radio show dedicated partially to rap called “The
Zone”. Cali, with four radio stations now programming rap, leads the
nation; Bogotá, the capital, has two.
The 15 rappers and breakers dwelled on the same issue raised by the photos:
identity. They talked about whom to thank at the ceremony and why—meaning
who is really part of the scene and who isn’t. They also talked about
money, questioning whether some groups are paying for airplay on the radio.
A few days later, rapper Carlos Andrés Pacheco highlights another aspect of the
local hip-hop culture. Until recently, Carlos Andrés belonged to the Bogotá
group, Gotas de Rap, or Drops of Rap—one of the few to have two produced
CDs and to have performed in Europe on three tours.
Pacheco told the story of the Colombia Rap Cartel, a “trade group”
that he founded with members of five other groups around the country three years
ago to help up-and-coming rappers get instruments, studio time, and so on. He
spoke of “problems” with this effort, including “different
ways of thinking” among members. “Many of the groups think that when
they make a demo tape and play a few concerts, they’re going to get rich
quick,” said Pacheco. “They think they’re going to ride in a
Cadillac. They aren’t conscious of what rap is really about.”
For Pacheco, hip-hop is aimed at “throwing consciousness out there”
to the public, including rapping about the complex relations between Washington
and Bogotá as reflected in the war against drugs. “The way I see
it,” said the rapper, “we sell cocaine, just like the United States
sells arms— which also kill people. Both are part of the economy, and
it’s pretty hard for people in the countryside here to survive on anything
else.” Through his lyrics, he tries to highlight positive options for kids
in Colombia’s cities who “always have that door open to gangs,
drugs, prison…” Finally, he admitted that it isn’t easy to
raise such topics in a violent country like Colombia. “You have to be
careful about how you get the message across and make it almost
subliminal,” he warned.
For most of the rappers and breakers, there are two kinds of messages worth
communicating: protests or proposals. Maria Eugenia Barquero, whose five-girl
group, Impacto Latino, is one of a growing number in Colombia’s hip-hop
scene. “We’re telling other kids to take up culture, instead of
violence and drugs. To feel proud to be Colombian. This is our proposal,”
she said before explaining that some groups focus on protesting against the
state, the rich, or the United States. As for the gangsta image put across by
many U.S. rappers, she and most others view it as a commercial development of
little interest.
Curious about her sense of identity as a person of colour and how this might
relate to her “proposals”, I asked which black Colombians she
admired. “My father,” she said, “for all he’s done to
raise us.” When pressed for more names, she asked “Do they have to
be black?” As for “people in general,” she mentioned U.S.
female rappers TLC and Salt n’ Peppa.
As for being a young female rapper in a country where most beer ads are adorned
by buxom blondes in bikinis, Barquero said, “you feel that the other
groups and the public are all saying, ‘can she do it?’ And then we
show that we can.”
The braided 18-year-old Barquero sees herself as a potential ambassador of
sorts. In about five years, she hopes to take her hip-hop message of
non-violence around this country mired in civil war. But she hasn’t
figured out how to overcome a major barrier—money.
While discussing hip-hop’s meagre financial rewards, Luis Felipe Jaramillo
of Discos Fuentes recounted two experiences he had recording rap groups in 1998.
The company didn’t agree with the groups’ lyrics “attacking
the United States and the Spanish conquistadors.” So, they released the
records under another name: Factory Records.
Political demands vs. commercial dividends
“We did the project basically to help the groups,” said Jaramillo.
Only 1,000 copies were printed, but “very few of them sold.” So
Discos Fuentes is not embarking on any major rap adventures for now, aside from
one group, Latinos en la casa, or Latins in the House—who rap about
subjects like Juan Pablo Montoya, the young Colombian driver who recently won
the U.S. car race, Indianapolis 500. About 1,500 copies of the album will be
produced. Even Gotas de Rap has never pressed more than 5,000 compact discs.
Orlando Cajamarca, a director who brought theatre to 150,000 of
Aguablanca’s kids over the last 14 years, questions rap’s future in
Colombia for cultural reasons rather than money. He sees rap as part of
globalisation, tracing it to cable TV’s arrival in Colombia over the last
decade, explaining that “even the poorest slums here have
television.” He wonders if rap isn’t just a passing fad and says
leaders are lacking in the Colombian hip-hop community.
Patricia Ariza, producer of the group Gotas de Rap, disagrees. Hip-hop is a
“valuable cultural alternative for marginal sectors of this
society,” said Ariza, before expressing faith in its financial future.
“The business world always takes a long time to recognise the underground
world, but eventually it does.”
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Tambien de UNESCO
Hip-Hop for Literacy
Published on: October 19, 2000
Page 21
Rappers at UNESCO? Many of the older members of the audience attending the
celebrations for International Literacy Day at headquarters on September 8 were
visibly taken aback by the four groups that performed there.
But the school kids invited along loved it, and took in the rappers’
message loud and clear.
Rap is part of the hip-hop sub-culture sweeping the world. Like literacy,
it’s a way for people to express themselves and communicate with others,
argued Marc Gilmer and Martine Bousquet of UNESCO’s Education Division who
organised the rappers’ presence on the day.
How many people got this handicap?
Ignorance can be a heavy load
When poverty means you can’t study, can’t learn, can’t
discover
Can’t persuade people, don’t know how to argue, don’t dare
defend yourself
Or show what you know
(Prime Essence)
For the show, UNESCO contacted Dal’As, an association of young people from
the poor suburbs of Paris. They brought along their music (groups such as Prime
Essence, Cercle Vicieux and Supa Daniel), their words, their dances (the group
Sol Air) and their graffiti (a fresco by Darco). They put on a 45-minute show
that featured rap, urban culture in French, English and Spanish, and
Afro-Caribbean music, to an audience that included several classes of
schoolchildren from the French capital’s poorest suburbs. “We wanted
to get the kids involved in an event, give them a voice in a UNESCO setting and
get them to tell us what they thought about literacy and what
‘learning’ means to them,” said Bousquet.
Literacy, like hip-hop for these youngsters, is a way to escape from isolation
and deprivation, “to gain self-confidence and self-respect and so find
ways to take part and do creative things,” says Jérémie Maradas Nado, who
runs Dal’As.
Hip-hop is a good way of coping with all the everyday social, economic and
educational hassle and the humiliations poor youngsters are constantly subjected
to. “If they’re told they’re no good, it’s not
surprising they rebel and want to prove they exist by smashing things and being
violent,” he says.
How much longer they gonna exploit us?
How much longer they gonna rape us?
How long am I gonna be praying?
If you can hear me God, tell me please
How much longer I’m gonna be shivering?
How much longer I’ve gotta go to bed hungry?
How much longer they gonna be stealing our childhood
With no place to live, no family and no hope of love?
(Prime Essence)
After music and folk-dancing from Nicaragua, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela,
Cameroon and Thailand, the hip-hop performers came on stage. The children in the
audience raised their arms and swayed their bodies to the music and the words.
As the children got going, some adults even got up and joined them.
Cécile, a sociologist who was in the audience, calls hip-hop “the only
international culture which unites all the world’s youngsters and says
what’s happening in one shared language. Hip-hop is part of the scenery
now. Even kids from rich families do rap these days. How can we turn our back on
these kids, how can we keep on ignoring them?” she says.
The rappers also handed over a cheque for 20 000 French Francs (almost ),
to support UNESCO’s activities for underprivileged kids, raised from the
royalities of a CD they cut last year, “L’univers des
lascars”, (The World of the Street Guys). No need to wait until
you’re a millionaire to be generous or make a humanitarian gesture, the
producers said.
Cristina L’Homme
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