Sampling Hip Hop and Making ‘Nóiz’: Transcultural Flows, Citizenship, and Identity in the Contestatory Space of Brazilian Hip Hop

Dissertation

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By

David James McLaughlin, M.A.

Graduate Program in Spanish and Portuguese

The Ohio State University

2015

Dissertation Committee:

Abril Trigo, Advisor

Ana del Sarto

Laura Podalsky

Copyright by

David James McLaughlin

2015

Abstract

The dissertation examines how marginalized Brazilians use hip hop culture as a space in which to build community, demand citizenship and its associated benefits, and contest social, economic, racial, and national exclusion. Special emphasis is placed on how the Brazilian hip hop community uses rap music and visual culture and negotiates urban and digital space to achieve these goals and build connections to similar populations around the globe, taking advantage of increased connectivity through globalization. I also locate Brazilian hip hop in both Brazilian and Latin American musical, historical, and political contexts through a comparative theoretical framework that examines transculturation, antropofagia (cultural cannibalism), mestizaje, and sampling. Ultimately, with hip hop culture and rap music as spaces of contestation, I argue that hip hoppers connect globally to challenge traditional notions of nation and citizenship in an effort to access rights, increase visibility, and build community.

ii

Dedication

To Sarah, who came with me and nearly died for this.

To Julieta, who came back for us.

To Helder Garmes, who picked us up, put us up, then flew at his own expense to make

sure we were okay before our families arrived.

To our families for coming to be with us.

To Dr. Marco Aurélio Pellon for getting us home.

To Viniscius, for inspiring Sarah to live again.

To the hip hop community of São Paulo and of Brazil at large.

And for Maude Cecilia. A song in your heart, you came out singing. Thank you, my love.

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Acknowledgments

Zulu King Nino Brown and Nelsão Triunfo welcomed me to the Casa do Hip Hop in Diadema and have continued to be great inspirations. Derek Pardue suggested I meet

Nino at the Casa, and I thank him greatly for that. Richard Gordon introduced me to

Derek, and also to Key Sawao, who called her friend BBoy Brenu who then met me at the Casa my first time there. Muito obrigado pela ajuda e pela boa recepção.

Abril Trigo has been an outstanding mentor and advisor, pushing me to develop my ideas, offering words of encouragement and focus, supporting me on every grant application, and easing back when I needed some serious headspace to heal. I have appreciated your guidance over these years and will continue to draw on it throughout my life and career.

Laura Podalsky stuck with me when I needed someone to stick with me and helped me hone my writing and develop in many aspects of the field, most notably in film studies, music studies, and youth culture studies. Laura, thank you for always making time, for the great teaching and research opportunities, and for keeping tabs on

Sarah and Maude.

Ana del Sarto has offered important insights about my work that have and will continue to help me develop my research and future work. Her support both academically and personally has been invaluable and an important example for me.

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Richard Gordon’s spirit of collaboration, guidance, and support have always been an important factor in my continuing in these studies. His encouragement in going to conferences and introducing me to other scholars in Brazilian Studies, and in helping me connect broadly in São Paulo and Rio are much appreciated.

I thank Fernando Unzueta, Lúcia Helena Costigan, Rebecca Haidt, Pedro Schact

Pereira, Lisa Voigt, Terrell Morgan, John Grinstead, Ulysses Juan Zevallos, the late

Maureen Ahern, the late Samuel Amell, Judy Manley, Melodie McGrothers, Susan

Farquar, the late Melinda Robinson and the rest of the Department of Spanish and

Portuguese, as well as Carol Robison of the Center for Latin American Studies for the consistent support and encouragement throughout my MA and now through the PhD.

Joanna Kukielka-Blaser of the Office of International Affairs was instrumental in my winning the Fulbright-Hays and I thank her for her dedication and support. My thanks also to Barry Shank in the Department of Comparative Studies, to Ryan Skinner of

Ethnomusicology and African and African American Studies, and to Middle Eastern and

Islamic Studies Librarian Johanna Sellman for their encouragement. Thank you, Emerson

Inácio da Silva at the Universidade de São Paulo (USP) for hosting me during my research and offering on-the-ground direction.

Thank you to the Fulbright Commision of Brazil for hosting me during my

Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad grant and for helping assist us and our family during our hospitalization. Thank you, also, Dustin Salveson of the United

States Department of State for your assistance during that time as well.

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Josh Kun, Charles A. Perrone, and Christopher Dunn have inspired me through their work, dedication, and encouragement.

In some ways, this project began in my undergraduate years at Ohio Wesleyan

University. My thanks to Rebecca Steinitz for encouraging my initial scholarly investigations into rap and hip hop and to my undergraduate advisor Conrad Kent for encouraging me to follow my gut as a scholar and as a person. I have always appreciated that confidence. Sandra Harper, Patricia DeMarco, and Helmut Kremling were likewise encouraging and nurturing of my work and scholarly inclinations. Thank you all.

Steven Hyland has been my academic older brother and is my great friend. He has offered excellent feedback and suggestions along the way and, always a few years ahead of me, has consistently shared insights and encouraged me from the first time we met in

Abril’s Latin American Cultural Studies course. Thank you, brother.

Alejandro Jacky and Elizabeth Bell have likewise been great friends in the field and outside of it, along with Katherine Parker-Horrigan from Folklore Studies. Thank you for the many hours of writing critique and all the support. I look forward to continuing our working group. The same to Justin Acome and Lindsay Bernhagen, my co-conspirators in the Popular Music Working Group at Ohio State. I look forward to our future collaborations in listening, reading, writing, and musicking.

Many thanks to my other peers and friends from Ohio State and elsewhere, without whom I am not sure I would have made it to this point. Thank you Thaddeus

Fortney, Rebecca Carte, Ryan Kowalski, Tom Stovicek, Ian Tippets, Christopher Dennis,

Hugo García, Stephany Slaughter, Christopher “Crit” Minster, Kirt Komocki, Meghan

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Armstrong, Ryan Walker, Amy Walker, Maggie Harrison, Bryan Brookes, Lynn Healy,

Jeff Courtright, Matt Barton, Ricardo “Zetta” Iazzetta, Mauricio Espinoza, Samuel Cruz,

Stephen “Kip” Tobin, Steven Lownes, Augusto Rodrigues, erin trapp, Rachel Johnson,

Ryan Sarni, Sarah Sarni, Phil Hampe, KaTanya Ingram, Luke Herren, John Quiroz,

Alejandro Escalante, Greg Bober, Paul Levar, Dan Hammer, Dave Kaminski, and Ryan

Kelly. You all have provided so much support during good times and bad. Much obliged.

Much love. Um grande abraço.

Of course the same applies to our families. My parents always encouraged us to pursue our interests and dreams, and gave us a place to make music, for me starting when

I was two when my mom stuck me in front of the speaker, to which I latched on and in one way or another have never let go. Thank you, Mom. And thanks, Dad for sticking a guitar in my hands and for always being a constant source of guidance in times of stress or calm. My brother Joshua McLaughlin and my cousins Patrick Duplaga and Eli

Cesaletti have been inspirations musically and otherwise. And to mis tíos Marie and Art

Couture and my in-laws, Patty McLaughlin and Sharon, Jeff, and Brian Lowry, your consistent enthusiasm, support, friendship and nurturing have been much appreciated.

My partner Sarah Lowry and I have had deep connections to both space and music from the beginning. She has always inspired me personally, emotionally, intellectually, musically, and professionally. She has seen this project through every step of the way, nearly dying in a manhole explosion that severely burned us in Rio de

Janeiro, supporting me before and since then as we’ve worked to forge on. We’ve been through five advanced degrees together, and five serious illnesses and traumas. I am

vii looking forward to getting to know you outside of those contexts as we shift into a new phase after almost eleven years together. Grad school sweethearts. As you would say, ever onward. Thank you for all your amazing work with Maude. She has brought us so much joy and is awakening us to insights and emotions we never imagined. Your nurture and wisdom have been a great guide for our family.

Lastly, to Maude. You were born with a song in your heart and have shared your music with us. Thank you for your joy and light.

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Vita

June 1997 ...... North Olmsted High School

2001 ...... B.A. Spanish, English, Ohio Wesleyan

University

2006 ...... M.A. Spanish and Portuguese, The Ohio

State University

2006 to present ...... Graduate Teaching Associate/Graduate

Student, Department of Spanish and

Portuguese, The Ohio State University

Fields of Study

Major Field: Spanish and Portuguese

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Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Dedication ...... iii

Acknowledgements ...... iv

Vita ...... ix

List of Figures ...... xi

Introduction ...... 1

Chapter 1: Towards an Understanding of Hip Hop in Brazil: Identity, Sampling,

Antropofagia, and Transculturation ...... 25

Chapter 2: “Faz Barulho, Família!”: Hip Hop, Community, and Citizenship ...... 91

Chapter 3: “A Rua É Nóiz”: Brazilian Hip Hoppers Creating Urban and Digital Spaces

...... 158

Chapter 4: Flows, Nodes, Bridges, and Circuits: Brazilian Hip Hoppers Enhancing

Citizenship within Globalization ...... 216

References ...... 274

x

Table of Figures

FIGURE 1. Panels 1 and 2 Marcelo D2 Meu Samba É Assim cover art …………….……..... 54

FIGURE 2. Panels 2 and 3 Marcelo D2 Meu Samba É Assim cover art ..………….………... 55

FIGURE 3. Panels 3 and 4 Marcelo D2 Meu Samba É Assim cover art ….……….………… 57

FIGURE 4. Panels 5 and 6 Marcelo D2 Meu Samba É Assim cover art ..……….……...…… 59

FIGURE 5. Panels 7 and 8 Marcelo D2 Meu Samba É Assim cover art ..……….……...…… 59

FIGURE 6: Panels 9 and 10 Marcelo D2 Meu Samba É Assim cover art…….….……...…… 60

FIGURE 7. Panels 11 and 12 Marcelo D2 Meu Samba É Assim cover art ….….……...…… 60

FIGURE 8. Uma Só Voz cover art ……..………………………………………………..…………...…… 80

FIGURE 9. Uma Só Voz cover art unfolded ..………………………………………..…………...…… 82

FIGURE 10. Uma Só Voz cover art unfolded reverse side…………...………….…………...…… 83

FIGURE 11. Racionais MC’s cover art …………………………………………………………...……146

FIGURE 12. Racionais MC’s Raio X do Brasil cover art ……………………………...... …...… 147

FIGURE 13. Rashid Facebook post. Screen Shot ……………………...…………………...…...… 153

FIGURE 14. Emicida Pra Quem Já Mordeu um Cachorro front cover …….…..…...…..… 177

FIGURE 15. Emicida Pra Quem Já Mordeu um Cachorro back cover ….………….…..… 178

FIGURE 16. Emicida Pra Quem Já Mordeu um Cachorro liner notes ……………….…… 179

FIGURE 17. Rashid Confundindo Sábios cover art ………………………………...………..…… 197

FIGURE 18. “É NÓS!” graffiti on the Brooklyn Bridge ……………………….…..……...….… 217

FIGURE 19. Zulu King Nino Brown Honorary Diadema Citizenship Ceremony …...... 271 xi

Introduction

Throughout the writing of this dissertation, I was often asked what it was about.

Whenever I said the words “hip hop,” regardless of other aspects of it, people most often responded with “that sounds like fun.” My responses varied from “yeah I like it,” to

“what’s interesting is how that community uses hip hop to access points of citizenship that they are marginalized from for their skin color and social class.” The latter often felt like I was qualifying my choice of topic given the “fun” response. But I wanted the commenter to know that the people of the Brazilian hip hop community are doing really important work, both for themselves as individuals and a community, and for the world.

It is difficult for many to understand hip hop as important, as able to help communities focus their energies and connect with others globally, nationally, and locally. Sure, music, dance, graffiti, deejaying, production—it is fun. But more important than the trivialization of my work, as if this being fun makes it less serious or less valuable than

“sophisticated” topics as “fun” implies, the real issues here are the lack of nuance and sophistication in people’s understanding of hip hop in general, how it arrived in Latin

America and elsewhere, why it remains and why these processes, cultural flows, transformations and productions, are important.

For me, the path to Brazilian hip hop began with my wanting to keep up with my

Spanish after finishing my undergraduate program. I started investigating Spanish-

1 language rap. That took me straight to Orishas, known as Amenaza when they lived on the island but quickly changing their name to reflect Cuban and Afro-Cuban cultures and identities in their outside-of-Cuba existence. Right there in that shift in name and location lies a plethora of important questions. For starters, knowing that the arts and the outward projection of Cuban identity have been closely guarded and shaped to be, at least, less exoticizing than in pre-Revolution, and especially Batista times, how did Orishas get away with this blending of hip hop, a form originated in the United States, with son, guaguanco, and other Cuban genres? How is the band considered by the Cuban government? By its friends still on the island? Are they required to give part of their earnings to the government though they are living in France, Spain, and elsewhere?

Another point that arose for me immediately was wondering how hip hop arrived to Cuba in the first place. It is this principal question that led me to the many Latin American theories that I have come to characterize as theories of cultural contact and subsequent production. Hybridity, heterogeneity, mestizaje, and transculturation have been my principle theoretical companions in the broadly defined Latin American context, antropofagia in the Brazilian context, and more broadly theories on globalization, which all of these theories are really about in the end.

But it was not theory that prompted my interest in Cuban hip hop and in hip hop throughout the Americas. It was sound and my gut response to it. This is why I say that while this is not a project about me, I am of course ever present as the participant observer and analyst, but also as a listener and as myself a node upon or within which sound passes through and from. I borrow this node notion from Manuel Castells, of

2 course, and his use of it to reflect on mega-cities, and specialized cities as connecting points through which financial, technological, visual, sonic, cultural, and symbolic flows pass in a system of exchanges. I believe this conceptualization of the self matters greatly for multiple reasons. Each listener is not just a point at which music hits the ears and is consumed, but the idea of a node upon, or within which, sound passes through and from helps demonstrate that the listener, and variably defined the consumer, participates in multiple exchanges with these sounds. Certainly on the physical level sound reverberates the eardrums and that can cause a variety of responses in the listener that become chemical as well when response from the brain enters into the equation. But the resultant response leads to choices on how to express like or dislike, and to what type of energy the listener will put out as a response to the given sound. Does the sound prompt dancing? If so, what type(s) of dancing? How does that type of dance express the sound and all that it signifies to another person or persons? Josh Kun’s concept of the “audiotopia” helps locate the individual listener and music as varying sites that are capable of housing conflicting perspectives. I argue that this understanding of listening and music can function for individuals as well as communities.

A gut reaction is a term familiar to all. It is itself a metaphor and not a term used to describe the specific site of a reaction to sound. Like the heart, the gut is used as a sort of in situ corporeal metaphor to describe the power of the outside source being responded to and the power of the feeling being felt in response. As São Paulo emcee Kamau says in his song “Amar é,” “Más mesmo que a razão manda, é o coração que faz ritmo.” Of course there is a physical truth to the heart marking and relying on rhythm, but the

3 metaphor stands here too. With Orishas, the blend of styles that I would later learn is criticized by many Cubans that consider such a blend a mode of selling out, copping to the already appealing sounds connected to Cuba, is what grabbed me. The strength of the flow as well, meaning rhyme, word play, delivery and how those performances connect and disconnect from the rest of the music of the song also made me want to know more.

As I dug deeper into lyrical content, I found it interesting to see what these rappers were reflecting on and the stories they were telling. In my course work and research I would come to find much more about hip hop en las Américas, and about theorists that have long been working to understand local and regional identities as their nations delinked from Spain, Portugal, and other empires to form their own nations and national cultures.

Theories like those mentioned above have much to offer how hip hop can be understood from the Américas. Hip hop is based on the practice of sampling, a form of “bricolage” and understanding of cultural meetings and resultant productions much like these theories mentioned above. For example, antropofagia stood out for its use of a type of cultural cannibalization and digestion (gut) to understand how to enter cultures into contact to create new productions reflective of local and national identities, specifically in Brazil.

Ultimately, I will argue that transculturation offers the best way to understand hip hop from the Latin American periphery within globalization but I analyze the others mentioned here as well.

I would eventually find my way to Cuba to better understand what the hip hop community is about there, as well as other scenes like that of Brazil, particularly of São

Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The São Paulo community is the primary subject of this project

4 and I spend some time looking at one hip hopper in particular from Rio as well, reflecting on Cuba to illustrate some broader points. All of these communities were excellent hosts that approached my interest in their lives and work with appropriate caution at first and with enthusiasm after getting to know my intentions and getting to know me more.

Rio de Janeiro emcee Marcelo D2 developed his sound around a similar type of palette as

Orishas, in his case using a blend of rap with samba. Like Orishas, the sound calls immediate attention to the ears (and to the gut). It is fantastic. It sounds great and locates you right in Brazil, right in Rio, but then makes you stop and ask, “but what about that hip hop component?” Gabriel o Pensador, Gabriel the Thinker, and Racionais MC’s were my other introduction to Brazilian hip hop prior to my arrival then, when I learned more about those artists and many others.

I view my job as a critic of this community to thoughtfully consider what its members are doing with their art and lives, how they and their work are feasible and sustainable, the effects they have on others, and the relationships they participate in. It is my hope that with my analysis I am contributing to an understanding of music and people and how people make use of music so that we might understand better the power and potential of cultural production as tools for self-empowerment, resistance, and change. In a world that relegates culture to the realms of entertainment and how it can help facilitate business and financial goings on, I hope that in some small way I can contribute to the understanding that culture is first and foremost about people and ways of thinking, thriving, maintaining, and surviving.

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The following analysis of Z’Africa Brasil’s song “Tem Cor Age” was written to be a part of the final chapter here on global flows, nodes, and bridges, but it felt best to extract it from there. It could fit within other chapters, too, namely chapters one and two on sampling and the theories of cultural contact and citizenship respectively. By including it here, I hope to illustrate some of the analysis I conduct throughout this dissertation.

Gaspar is one fourth of the São Paulo group Z’Africa Brasil. The group has always explored connections between Africa and Brazil, even creating their name based on those links and with an homage, through the letter “z,” to quilombo leader and symbol of resistance to slavery and oppression Zumbi dos Palmares. Their song “Antigamente

Quilombos” refers to the quilombo communities of Africans and Afro-Brazilians who had escaped enslavement. The chorus to the song draws links from the past to the present, equating quilombos with current conditions for the black and the poor when they say

“antigamente quilombo, hoje periferia.” While quilombos were formed in resistance and as protection from enslavement and recapture, the urban peripheries and slums were likewise formed out of necessity but never under the same conditions of fear of enslavement or resistance against it. But the idea that black people, and now the poor, must exist, or subsist, in such a detached way from the rest of society makes this connection understandable and in some ways understood as a trajectory. How people have resisted that disconnect, that “othering,” or how they have used it to their advantage to build identity and visibility for their own needs, reveals how oppressed and discriminated peoples have long worked towards their own survival, and in more recent

6 times towards a fuller citizenship, including access to rights guaranteed but frequently

“disconnected” from their realities.

Z’Africa’s song “Tem Cor Age” addresses this disconnect and promotes an attitude of self-empowerment through endurance and persistence much like that promoted by Emicida, Rashid, and many others throughout Brazilian hip hop. Z’Africa Brasil creatively deconstructs the word “coragem” to inject the word “courage” with the meanings of “color” and the command to “act,” and likewise to infuse the noun “color” and the verb and command “act” with meanings of “courage” in the face of fear and other pressures and tensions weighing down on people. The title urges that “people of color, act.” The word “tem” from the title can be understood in either of two ways. “Tem” can either be the third person singular present tense conjugation of “ter,” as in “she has,” “he has,” or “you have.” This form is enacted in the opening and closing line of the song, “o que importa é a cor / E quem tem cor age.” So, “the person who has color, act,” or understood from the title as it is repeated in the chorus “(if you) have color, act.” “Color,” in this first instance, marks the genetic circumstance and encourages people of color to act.

“Tem” can also be understood as the command form of the verb “ter,” so the mandate in this latter instance is to “have color. Act.” “Color” is transformed into a marker of character as much as a descriptor of skin color, here making a statement akin to telling people to have chutzpa, and to not be color-less, but to work against such a lack and what it represents. The opposite could be whiteness, Europeanness, or a number of other identifiers, but the idea is clear. Act against the oppression against color. And to

7 return to the play on the word “coragem,” Z’Africa is encouraging its listeners to not be afraid, but to have courage and character and act.

The verses of the song reveal much more and help flesh out just why this mandate from Z’Africa Brasil is so important. Gaspar rhymes each verse and duets in a call and response, give-and-take format with Funk Buia on the chorus. Gaspar says:

Tem cor age

De mudar o rumo da história

Cor age

Pra transformar cada dia em vitórias

É o canto da sabedoria

O ataque reage agora, reage!

Tem cor age capoeira de maloca

Do fundo do coração

prolifero idéias

Centuplicando o pão

a cada passo de uma centopéia

Faço barulho

Amenizo tensão

Hoje é o futuro

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Vivo respiro mundão

Mas atenção

Tem cor age

De fazer um corre de sul a norte

Eliminar as estatísticas

Vencer a morte

Tem cor age

Na humildade, irmão

Tire essa arma das mãos

Jogue essa arma no chão

O inimigo é outro

Não seja o espelho

Uma doença contagiosa irreversível

Alastrando o medo

A covardia é justiça no paraíso da maldade

Na verdade, vencer é pra quem tem cor age

(Refrão: 2x)

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Tem cor age

De quebrar as algemas? Quero ver.

Tem cor age

A humildade traz vantagem pra viver

Tem cor age

Na caminhada a fé vem fortalecer

Tem cor age Jão

Tem cor age irmão

Tem cor age

Falta cor?

Não, falta cor age

Falta rap?

Não, falta reportagem

Tem que ter cor age

Pra cobrar a bronca

Tem que ter talento e ser ligeiro pra colar com a banca

Dos guerreiros organizados

Diz o aviso luminoso

Cor age é pra cabra-macho

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Mas acho que o ventre da mulher terra supera

Cor age pra gerar herdeiros

Frutos dessa eterna guerra

Irmãos, cor age

Quem dará continuidade?

Matrix, vida padrão, capital, sociedade

Cor age pra lutar com os dragão

Nadar com os tubarão

Pulverizar tamanduá

Afastar escorpião

Então, que rufem os tambores da verdade

É mais que um desafio

É mais que um combate

Salve a sagacidade,

O poder da humanidade

Gente de fibra não foge da briga

Porque tem cor age

(Refrão: 2x)

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Tem que ter cor age

Pra construir um castelo

Cor age pra coçar um parabelo

Pisar no verde e amarelo

Do genocídio

Cor age pra trampar

Cor age pra criar um filho

Cor age pra ultrapassar as barreiras do impossível

Cor age é tudo

Ter cor age é meu hino

É o sambista versando

É o ladrão no pânico

É o gavião voando

Cor age é o b boy girando

Microfone é o portal

Da hinfo-percepção

É da rua ao repeteco, universo, rimação

É o som

Cor age irmão

12

Transmita seus pensamentos

"interage" Jão

transforme os acontecimentos da vida

que aflora a energia meteórica

favela exótica

resistência quilombola

Eu adianto

É a missão malandragem

pra você que faz um mat facing no quintal

(Refrão 2x)

O que importa é a cor

E quem tem cor age

This call to work introduces many nuances and issues at play for the black and poor and connects to those examined throughout the dissertation, such as “família” and

“nosso trabalho,” “uma só vóz,” and “a rua é nóiz.” The urge to “act” is a call to build, resist, and make change.

Chapter 1, “Towards an Understanding of Hip Hop in Brazil: Identity, Sampling,

Antropofagia, and Transculturation,” begins with my earliest research question as to how

13 hip hop arrived in the Américas, in this case in Brazil in particular, and how it has managed to flourish there. In considering this question, I consider a broader history of popular music in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Early on in hip hop’s existence, it was heavily criticized for the ways that the four artistic elements of the culture disrupted standards and social expectations. While graffiti certainly existed prior to hip hop, it was here developed in new styles and connected to gangs and crews. It seemed for many to represent the decay and decline of neighborhoods, the altering of walls and other surfaces with words that were difficult to read or seen as an eyesore or some other type of disturbance. Street dancing and break dance were less disturbing, as quirky, innovative body movements do not “harm” anyone looking on. However, as I examine throughout this dissertation, hip hop uses performance and community to build presence and demand attention and rights. Break dance is reflective of this phenomenon, with dancers marking their presence through their movements, forcing onlookers and passers-by to deal with their use of a given space. One must either walk around a crew of dancers performing for money or simply exhibiting their talents, or stop and watch. The non-performer is forced to choose a response. Rap music, both the deejaying and musical production side of it as well as the emceeing component, have likewise challenged outsider expectations, particularly with respect to questions of musical construction and quality. As Tricia Rose demonstrates, rap has been heavily criticized for lacking melody, relying heavily on rhythm, at least to the ears of those that would balk, and for not using “real” instruments. Its fundamental existence and its qualifying as music were questioned (80-1).

14

But rock ‘n’ roll had undergone a similar criticism in the 1950s and 1960s, and the incorporation of electric instruments into folk music as initiated by Bob Dylan at his famous Newport Folk Festival performance led to criticism that questioned his authenticity. Jazz and other musical innovations also suffered similar criticisms. I situate rap and hip hop in this conversation.

The sampler has long been a key instrument and tool in the creation of rap music.

After it was transformed and repurposed as a tool of rap, the act of sampling eventually raised ethical questions as to what was legally allowed without permission and what required remunerating the copyright owners of sampled music. Sampling itself has long been regarded as a cheap form of music making that relies on other musicians, or in the view of some actual musicians’ abilities. But as groups like Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, and countless others have demonstrated, sampled musical segments get used for multiple purposes, in some cases to conjure a feeling, and in all cases to create a sonic texture, which varies from song to song. But in the case of a song containing twenty-four, or forty-eight tracks, samples are woven in and out and often, though not always, with the aim of making them indistinguishable. The producers making this music are both musicians and bricoleurs, to use the term used by Claude Levi-Strauss. I analyze Gregg

Gillis, better known by his artistic name Girl Talk, for his work with sampling, invoking

Josh Kun’s concept of an audiotopia to begin to understand how one person can serve as a meeting point of sonic flows.

Sampling enables retooling and repurposing. Each use of it will vary and every producer will use the practice to achieve unique results. Those sounds demonstrate

15 fusions that can sound like something totally new with its sampled parts untraceable, or something that indeed incorporates those samples in more conspicuous ways so that the end result has a more obvious nod to its components but still is a new production in its own right.

The act of sampling has remarkable points of comparison with many of what I call theories of cultural contact and subsequent new production. Always in an effort to define national and regional identities, Latin American theorists have proposed various methods of understanding cultural contact. Whether they are meetings wrought with violence or in the case of music marked by the flow of sounds through one of many channels, I argue that these new productions that arise from those moments of contact, indicate deliberate choices and actions by the people that create them. In particular, I analyze Néstor García Canclini’s hibridez, or hybridity and later processes of hybridization, Antonio Cornejo Polar’s heterogeneidad, or heterogeneity, Fernando

Ortiz’s transculturación, or transculturation and its later developments by Ángel Rama and Abril Trigo, and Oswald de Andrade’s antropofagia, which Christopher Dunn has called a process of cultural cannibalization. All of these theories have examined the meeting of cultures, characterizing moments of contact in varying ways.

After a look at antropofagia I explore its importance in the history of Brazilian music, particularly in the 20th century and into the 21st, demonstrating how in spite of the term beginning in elite circles as a way to work towards a Brazilian national identity and its use by educated musicians updating the theory during the 1960s when technological

16 advances and pop culture flows were increasing, hip hoppers have likewise used the theory to conceptualize their own work and lives.

Later I explore the other aforementioned theories to understand how they work to understand cultural contact, arguing in the end that transculturation offers the best opportunity to understand how people are able to enact their own voices and agency through a type of transculturation from below, which really means through an active taking of cultural components for the purposes of turning them into a new production representative of individual and local or national community voices.

I draw on fieldwork interviews and observations and analyze a variety of music, using the music, lyrics, and cover art of Marcelo D2’s Meu Samba É Assim, and a conversation with Banks Back Spin, of Back Spin Crew (the oldest break dance crew in

Brazil), to reflect on hip hop’s antropofagia. I look at the music and artwork of the compilation album Uma Só Voz: Mantendo o Hip Hop Vivo, created by Zulu King Nino

Brown, as a way to understand the importance of community as a tool to resist and contest marginalization. The song “Hip Hop Não Vai Morrer” from Uma Só Voz provides a sharp counter to the songs “Hip Hop Is Dead” and “Bad Boy for Life,” by U.S. emcees

Nas and P.Diddy respectively. By comparing these songs I demonstrate what hip hop means for hip hoppers in Brazil and argue that as such U.S. hip hop misses how hip hop serves communities around the world and monopolizes the hip hop discourse. By working to create community and build an understanding of a culture important in its own right, with its own histories, and that is larger than the individual and the local, but

17 that recognizes the importance of the individual and the local, Brazilian hip hoppers contest their marginalization by working for rights of inclusion.

In Chapter 2, “‘Faz Barulho, Família!’: Hip Hop, Community, and Citizenship,” I begin with a vignette from Zulu King Nino Brown’s June 2010 honorary citizenship ceremony at the Casa do Hip Hop in Diadema, one of several industrial suburbs connected to São Paulo proper. I look briefly at how Nino exemplifies citizenship and why he was being honored that day. Later I examine the development of citizenship as explained by T.H. Marshall, then look at UNESCO’s definitions of the concept and associated rights. Next, I examine the Brazilian constitution to understand the expectations Brazilian citizens have regarding their rights.

Considering rights of equality regardless of factors like skin color, I draw on

Melissa Nobles’ work in Shades of Citizenship and Robert J. Cottrol’s work to demonstrate how categories of racial self-identity have always reflected a preference for whitening, or branqueamento. I later engage James Holston’s work on what he calls insurgent citizenship, and also differentiated citizenship, to show how the playing field is uneven based on factors of skin color and economic status. Holston argues that the city is specifically a site in which citizenship is forged and he argues for a new type of polis, reimagined and reconstructed and with its own order of citizenship (313). I argue that hip hop works towards this.

As Derek Pardue (219-20) and Wivian Weller and Marco Aurélio Paz Tella (196) have indicated, black and poor communities in Brazil are excluded or minimized in terms

18 of their representation in the education system and they have limited services available in their communities.

By inserting themselves into larger conversations about civil and human rights, hip hop functions as a socio-political movement, raising awareness of their own humanity through music and other arts as well as knowledge building. Hip hop’s organization is influenced by, and comparable to, that of the Civil Rights movement in the U.S., to the

Movimento Negro Unido (MNU) in Brazil, and even to the Movimento Sem Terra

(MST) in Brazil.

By examining how hip hop began in Brazil during the final years of the last dictatorhip, I explore the different levels of support and lack of support from government for hip hop, arguing that while some assistance is necessary, hip hoppers are vital agents and the very essence of their culture is to encourage and create space for people to engage that very agency and their own voices.

In my observations, the very practice of hip hop as a lifestyle and as a community, and its continued presence for over thirty years in Brazil, speaks to its importance as a space from which to assert agency and declare one’s existence. This is an important benefit to hip hop given that the majority of its practitioners live in marginalized areas of the city, in small towns that developed on the margins of São Paulo, or in favelas. This is to say that hip hop has been transformed by its practitioners into a space from which to contest economic and racial marginalization, and to contest these problems of exclusion, thereby demanding inclusion. My contention is that hip hop as a cultural sphere serves as a contestatory space for the Brazilian hip hop community.

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Drawing on Benedict Anderson’s “imagined community” and Paul Gilroy’s

“Black Atlantic,” I examine how Brazilian hip hoppers connect locally and globally to build local community and improve access and other elements of citizenship they are traditionally denied. The emcee and singer Criolo’s international tour videos help understand how Brazilian hip hoppers have in part built their communities by reaching outward, drawing on commonalities within the African diaspora, but also drawing heavily on unifying language and language that recognizes common points of struggle and labor. Terms like “família,” “nosso trabalho,” and others factor into this discussion.

While Anderson’s “imagined community” certainly helps understand hip hop’s broader reach, and while Gilroy’s “Black Atlantic” adds a further conception of hip hop’s circulation, I think it also adds to a real, lived component of this community building. Hip hop does not exist as a state or a country, themselves imagined in many ways, but one’s belief in that greater entity of hip hop creates opportunities for connections and tends to have real effects on local life and citizenship.

Music and citizenship are often analyzed in terms of lyrics and cultural and political components. I engage in these forms of analysis too, but I add some analysis of the music itself. There are many choices that happen in the construction and writing of the non-lyrical elements of a song, whether they are made by a producer or written by the performer of the song. So these components need to be considered. While my attention to these components is sometimes more in depth than others, I find it is an important component of musical analysis that can illustrate tensions or other themes addressed in lyrics. I look at the songs “Cidadão do Mundo,” by Nação Zumbi, and “Fim de Semana

20 no Parque,” by Racionais MC’s, as well as criticism about those songs, to demonstrate the function of musical analysis and listening analysis.

What’s more, music and its sounds are important factors in how people engage identity. Music’s flows, crossings, and meetings all play into how it functions as a space in which listeners can come to grips with the sometimes conflicting components of varying cultures. Josh Kun’s “audiotopia” again helps understand music’s importance, perhaps especially for listeners, arguing that listening to music and lyrics can help us understand the type of utopic and heterotopic spaces that music can enable. I also examine album artwork and an image and Facebook post by Rashid to further understand the importance of listening and sound and citizenship.

Kun’s audiotopia can serve in tandem with the ideas of transculturation and antropofagia to note the complexities of Brazilian hip hop and also how hip hop forges individual and collective listening spaces. I contend that a collective imagining of a world and entering into that world through sound and listening are also deeply important in the imagined and lived hip hop communities, both local and global. To belong to this community is to listen for sounds of blackness, sounds of connection to that larger community, rooted in blackness and a sense of responsibility to other marginalized peoples.

Chapter 3, “‘A Rua É Nóiz’: Brazilian Hip Hoppers Creating Urban and Digital

Spaces,” examines how hip hoppers make space for themselves in urban and digital environments. Drawing on de Certeau’s notion that “space is a practiced place,” (117) and his understanding of story as an authorizing agent that defines space, rap clearly uses

21 stories and draws on its history to define its own spaces, from the Batalha de Santa Cruz, to the Casa do Hip Hop, to the ways they live and traverse the streets in their comings and goings. I draw on my own positioning within São Paulo as a complement to understanding the immensity of São Paulo and the need to and effects of circulating through the city.

In recalling a concert experience with two hip hoppers, BBoy Brenu and Banks

Back Spin, I demonstrate how race and perceptions of class are used to limit entry and access to institutionalized culture. A look at the “rolezinhos” phenomenon and some insights from Teresa Caldeira also help understand this limitation on how the black and poor are able to circulate. An interview with Emicida illustrates how even the famous are first judged by their skin color and raises the critical question of what happens in the cases of those who are not famous, such as many of the cases in the United States in which authorities and other citizens make assumptions of the black and poor based on dress, skin color, and other factors that demonstrate racist assumptions.

Emicida’s album Pra Quem Já Mordeu um Cachorro por Comida Até que Eu

Cheguei Longe demonstrates hip hop’s attempts to work independently, including doing the manual mass production labor of constructing CD packaging as a way to keep the album affordable and also as a way to transmit energy, akin to Walter Benjamin’s sense of “aura,” to listeners. Liner notes and art also reveal instructions on how to perform a hand signal to represent Emicida’s phrase “a rua é nóiz,” or “the streets is us,” connecting listeners and performers corporally and metaphorically to the street. Rashid’s song

“R.A.P.”, which features a call and response chorus that riffs on this concept of “a rua é

22 nóiz” and raises some additional questions. The street is demonstrated to be a conduit through the chaos of the postmodern, globalized city and an important space to rally around and in.

Through works like this album and other examples, and importantly through their use of digital formats like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and others, hip hoppers work to transmit positive energy and use family terminology and other unifying discourse to build community as a method of accessing elements of citizenship.

Chapter 4, “Flows, Nodes, Bridges, and Circuits: Brazilian Hip Hoppers

Enhancing Citizenship within Globalization,” looks at how hip hoppers have been able to navegate globalization to enhance local citizenship and expand notions of citizenship as they participate in the international hip hop community. The chapter begins with an image of some graffiti on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City that reads “É NÓS!”

This is an important instance of Emicida’s phrase and with its presence in New York City exemplifies how hip hop works through a circuitry that has been enhanced by globalization, most importantly through technological advances and the globalization and internationalization of culture.

Emicida’s song “Sorrisos e Lágrimas” offers an important example of this dialogue enacted from within perhaps the most important node of this hip hop circuitry,

New York City. I demonstrate that through blurring effects and minimal visual or lyrical references to New York, the city becomes a backdrop from which to talk broadly about issues of importance to the black and poor anywhere, New York, São Paulo, Rio de

Janeiro, Paris, and other urban metropolises. Emicida teams up with French rapper Féfé

23 on the song and video “Bonjour,” which they advertise as “um salve audiovisual às quebradas do mundo,” again speaking to the black and poor of the world, this time from a different node within the globalized hip hop circuitry. A comparison with the music of

Jay Z and the music and a video by Beyoncé offers a point of contrast in motivations and perspectives and helps demonstrate how hip hoppers in Brazil think globally and locally.

The comparison exemplifies how hip hop makes use of urban, digital, and hyper- connected channels to work towards improving daily life and citizenship.

In considering global and local positionings and the flows of culture, Renato Ortiz helps build understanding of how local elements tend to be stripped from cultural productions in order to find longevity and other markers of success outside of the local sphere. He cites Brazilian soap operas as an example of content and form being altered to appease a mass audience and massified tastes. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s work on mass culture adds an additional layer to this understanding, and Manuel Castell’s

The Network Society and Ankie Hoogvelt’s work helps to illustrate the hyperconnectivity of globalization and its movement to the level of consciousness. I argue that this occurs at least two decades earlier in Brazil with the Tropicalistas. Ultimately, given hip hop’s concern with always supporting and building the local, I argue that Brazilian hip hoppers work against this concept of massification of culture. I analyze an image from Zulu King

Nino Brown’s honory citizenship ceremony to demonstrate this simultaneous local and global connection and how it enables Brazilian hip hoppers to build community and citizenship.

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Chapter 1:

Towards an Understanding of Hip Hop in Brazil: Identity, Sampling, Antropofagia, and

Transculturation

Lógico! Why Hip Hop Makes Sense for Brazil and Latin America

Sampling is the practice of using previously recorded sounds to produce new works. Of course there are many nuances that make the practice controversial, and I’ll discuss those below. I engage this topic in order to properly understand Latin American hip hop, and particularly Brazilian hip hop. Sampling will help us engage this understanding for several reasons. First, sampling is a foundational tool of rap music production and therefore of hip hop culture. From the earliest rap recordings to the present day, sampling has played an important role in musical construction and so to approach the study of this music and this culture one must understand this practice.

Second, in the constant flow of cultures, money, ideas, and material products due to globalization we might blindly accept hip hop’s presence anywhere, and what’s more accept it as “others” simply ‘doing’ American culture, or in this case, as Brazilians imitating U.S. hip hop. The implicit idea then is that Brazilian rap is not truly Brazilian music. Sampling likewise is accused as a practice of imitation, copy, or thievery. But rap and hip hop’s paths around the world, and to Brazil in the case of this project, is not so simple.

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Latin America has a long history of theorizing cultural contact and Brazil has played a crucial role in this effort. Many theorists have examined cultural contact and the subsequent resulting cultural productions, and music is commonly analyzed as evidence; for example the Cuban son is marked as Cuban but contains elements traced to Spain and to various locations in Africa. These processes of cultural contact, when understood as deliberate choices of mixing and producing, become strikingly similar to sampling. By understanding the history and debates surrounding sampling and rap, and by comparing sampling and several Latin American theories of cultural contact and subsequent production, we arrive at a more profound understanding of how it is that rap music and hip hop culture “land” in Latin America and why it is that they will remain there as important engines of local cultural production.

In this chapter, I will locate the practices of sampling and rap music within broader traditions of both popular music and criticism of popular music. I demonstrate how Latin American theories of antropofagia and transculturation parallel how sampling works on similar principles. I will argue that as a result, hip hop makes perfect sense for the Latin American periphery and demonstrates how youth of several generations have adopted and adapted the genre to meet local needs. I will go more into depth on this last topic in other chapters but will make the case in this first chapter that transculturation is the best working model to understand the Latin American periphery from within globalization. I think this is true because of the way the term has been adapted over the years, most notably by Ángel Rama and Abril Trigo, to meet specific contemporary

26 social, economic, and political conditions. I also demonstrate how hip hop offers the best scenario to understand transculturation in the current geocultural moment.

Situating sampling and rap music within popular music

Like other popular musics before it, most notably different forms of jazz and rock music, rap music has been criticized since its inception on varying counts of bastardization of more traditional forms, lack of originality, or some other generic representation that denotes a certain level of inauthenticity (Moon, 265). Musical progressions and innovations have long suffered such critique in the eyes of both critic and audience. Bob Dylan’s famous incorporation of the electric guitar into his set at the

Newport Folk Festival drew jeers that questioned his place within folk music, as if instrumentation alone defined the genre (Rollingstone.com). Rock ‘n’ roll in the 1950s caused alarm due to its fast tempo and the styles of dance that young listeners would practice in response to that speed. Assumptions of Elvis Presley’s hip shaking dancing promoting sexual promiscuity are now enshrined in the logs of U.S. popular music history as misguided, puritanical notions of proper youth etiquette. Rolling Stone, for example, points to Elvis as “a hip-shaking symbol of liberation for staid America”

(Rollingstone.com).

Indeed, changes in musical styles or genres and in audience participation in those genres have often drawn responses of panic, derision, or other negative judgment from audiences steeped in prior traditions. In my own generation, Ramones-style and 1980s punk rock are still reified as inherently better and more important than the power-pop-

27 punk of groups like Good Charlotte or Blink 182 of today or even of the ever-changing and increasingly-poppier music of longstanding bands like Green Day, these more recent or current bands standing in as representative of punk as a genre in the eyes of mainstream media but also new generations of listeners taking ownership of and linking their identities to the style.

Rap music has suffered similar judgments but also endured worse, and more constant, criticism, which I will later argue has more to do with race than with musical values. As rap music was gaining popular attention, it was quite easy for music purists to denounce it as something other than, but definitely not music. The question went something like: How can sounds not written for an instrument and to be performed by a musician qualify as music? In addition to this critique, questions arose about the authenticity of electronic sounds (a critique even waged against predominantly white genres like 80s synthesizer pop) as well as the practice of rapping lyrics. Personally, I can remember some classmates, and even adults, in the 1980s and early 1990s critiquing rap for being rhythmically spoken as opposed to sung. Tricia Rose’s analysis of this questioning of rap as “other than music” is worth quoting at length. She notes:

Because few rappers are formally trained musicians, rarely compose elaborate

melodic phrases, and do not frequently play “real” instruments, rap has been

accused of not being music at all. David Samuel’s New Republic cover story

on rap music entitled, “The Real Face of Rap: The ‘black music’ that isn’t

either,” reduces rap’s history to a commercial ploy to attract white teenagers

28 and suggests that “rap’s hour as an innovative popular music has come and gone.” J.D. Considine’s article in Musician magazine, “Fear of a Rap Planet,” cites a number of examples of antirap media coverage regarding rap’s lyrics but notes that the most common criticism about rap is not, in fact, related to its racial politics. Instead, he argues, most criticism of rap has to do with rap’s status as music. Basically, many rock musicians do not consider rap as music.

Considine, attempting to convince Musician readers that rap is music, claims that “even a seemingly simple rap record...reveals unexpected complexity if you know where to look.” During the same month in 1992, Jon Parales published an article entitled “On Rap, Symbolism and Fear” in the New York

Times that was devoted to mainstream white fears of rap because of its violent imagery and black teen audience. All of the response letters published two weeks later were in rather aggressive opposition to Parales’s piece. However, rap’s lyrics and angry audience were not addressed in these letters; rather, the fact that Parales presumed that rap is music was the source of the respondents’ frustration. Writers claimed that, “loud, pounding rhythm with shouted lyrics and no melody do not constitute music,” and “music began with rhythm, progressed to melody...reached its developmental culmination with harmony. Rap, despite its modern trappings, is a regression.” These comments clearly support Eurocentric notions of the terms of cultural progress and link them to music. The significance of these comments is not in the ignorance they display but in the fact that the New York Times believed

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that these analyses carry enough social weight and legitimation to warrant

publication without rebuttal. (Rose, 80-1)

The connections between hip hop culture and rap music and African Americans and

Latinos would not have been lost on New York Times readers, regardless of their own ethnic backgrounds. The New York Times, one presumes, would also have been reluctant to print any reader comments that promoted racist thinking in the 1990s when this article was written. But the comments they did print, and the fact that, as Rose points out, no rebuttal to those comments was ever printed, still connect to race. The idea that rap is a regression, is not as sophisticated as other music, and other debasing comments that question authenticity, creativity, and intelligence, connect to race because the readers knew who was making the music. And the “Eurocentric notions of progress” (81) that

Rose mentions connect to the Western notion that melody is superior to rhythm, whereas in African musics rhythms predominate, the one commenter quoted above positing that melody is to be regarded as progress, and the lack of melody as a lack of progress, in the commenter’s words, a regression, or a return to a less sophisticated, less developed state.

While of course criticism of cultural productions made by any race are certainly allowable, these comments read as debasing and trivializing, so the motivations behind the comments warrant analysis. Furthermore, it must be said that conceiving of music in this way that creates an “us” versus “them” binary misses the point of music primarily being an art form and vehicle of expression and communication.

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Such social positioning of minority populations would not be lost on many

Brazilians, including the Brazilian hip hop community. Brazilian hip hoppers could easily identify with being publicly positioned by critics, media, and other people in a negative, unsophisticated light. In fact, Zulu King Nino Brown says in his song “A Voz do King” that rap music is being portrayed “…de uma forma negativa e a mídia reforça essa imagem” (Zulu Nation Brasil). This type of positioning, no matter where it occurs, is dangerous because it is stigmatizing, or plays on existing stigmas that black and other minority populations struggle with throughout the world. It is not difficult to understand, then, how Brazilian hip hoppers would identify with rap music and hip hop culture as positive spaces from within which they could develop a sense of belonging, identity, and meaning.

As part of this attempt to debase rap and label it as “not music,” as well as criticize the intelligence of hip hoppers themselves, rap also faced criticism for the practice of sampling, especially due to the ideas Rose analyzes above about rap artists not playing

“real” instruments and about rap as a regression due to it not culminating in harmony, as if all music is supposed to do that to qualify as music, and as if all music is supposed to follow the same patterns and developments.

Hank Shocklee, one of the producers behind Public Enemy’s music, acknowledges this position and challenges it, noting how “people say we just copy, we can’t make our own music. Let’s be realistic here. There are only so many chords you can come up with.

Everybody’s copying variations anyway. The difference is we’re taking it from the record and manipulating it into something else. That’s another type of musicianship” (Moon,

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265-6). Shocklee’s remarks bring several important points into play. First, I understand his use of “we” to reflect the producers, rappers, and others that create rap music. In short, hip hoppers. The hip hop community has always been multi-ethnic, most notably

African-American and Latino in origin, with heavy Jamaican roots. Within the United

States, these groups were heavily marginalized during rap’s first two decades and they remain as such despite social, political, and cultural developments that have created changes such as larger numbers of political representatives from these backgrounds. This to say that Blacks and Latinos are still marginalized as “others” in the U.S.

Second, Shocklee points to the assumption that hip hoppers are incapable of creating their own music but are simply copying, the underlying subtext of copying here being stealing and a lack of originality or authenticity. By pointing to the limited number of available chords in music, Shocklee correctly identifies, however, that music has many limitations within its many possibilities. It is the manipulation he notes that permits

“something else,” or something new, to be produced. Sampling is the principal tool in this process of “taking it from the record and manipulating it into something new.”

Shocklee’s understanding of cultural production and sampling has much in common with many Latin American theories on the subject that I discuss at length in this chapter and that warrant comparison to the process of sampling.

Sampling is the practice of creating new works from previously recorded sounds.

Vanessa Chang suggests that “Marcel Duchamp’s moustachioed Mona Lisa, William

Burrough’s cut-ups and Andy Warhol’s soup cans have all served as aesthetic analogues, in their usage of ‘found objects’, to sampling practice” (145). We can think of sampling

32 as sound collage, or perhaps promote a more visual understanding through Chang’s examples or through a comparison with images of one figure, typically a person, created from a mosaic of the smaller images of other people. This type of image has grown quite popular in contemporary advertising. Those examples can help us better understand the concept of sampling and its purpose of creating a new whole based on a recomposition of parts from various sources.

Sampled sounds are used in many ways. Songs like The Sugar Hill Gang’s late

1970s classic “Rapper’s Delight” is one of the first recorded rap songs and samples

Chic’s disco-funk hit “Good Times.” The Sugar Hill Gang used almost the entire instrumental from the Chic song, simply cutting out the lyrics and rapping on top of the music. Other rap songs take multiple samples and either build a new song around them or otherwise incorporate the samples as a reference into a song being built out of bass and drum sounds. The Beastie Boy’s album Paul’s Boutique includes so many samples throughout the album that it is said it would be impossible to make the record today due to the ways that copyright laws have changed over the years (Tingen,

Soundonsound.com). Public Enemy used samples in similar ways in some of their early albums (Richards, Articles.washingtonpost.com), Shocklee using up to forty-eight tracks to produce any given song, which is substantially more than most producers (Moon, 266).

Still others rely on a simple hook, or chorus, taken from another song and using it as the hook in their own1 while some songs rely simply on a beat or a groove from another

1 Consider Nas’s “Street Dreams,” which doesn’t simply lift the chorus from “Sweet Dreams are Made of This” by the Eurythmics but takes the chord progression and modifies the lyrics to reflect the new title and its theme. 33 recording as a building block for a new composition. Countless songs for example, are built on one drum sample from Clyde Stubblefield, former drummer for James Brown2.

While many people are still critical of the practice of sampling due to the idea that it lacks originality, authenticity, or even skill, or because of economic issues related to copyright, music critics and many listeners have grown to understand that in fact sampling is a form of composition comparable to long-respected popular practices and techniques like collage, quilting, and other mediums that build something new from the previously produced. Also similar are the many oral traditions of story and song that build on previous iterations. These types of practices are quite often originated as practices by groups of people living in economically marginal conditions and so forced by necessity to create new from old3, a process Claude Levi-Strauss would call

‘bricolage’, which I examine below. Collage, quilting, and sampling have all been practiced by the non-marginalized for quite some time now after beginning in humbler economic conditions. In the case of sampling, it must also be considered that the sounds themselves are the building blocks and that producers and musicians make choices as to how to recontextualize or reappropriate said sample, or, how to include it in the mix, to achieve a very specific effect they wish to create. All too often, musicians that sample are accused of “ripping off” other artists or, as mentioned above, of a lack of creativity, originality, or authenticity. Some examples will help me problematize those accusations.

2 (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93KOm2bLnEQ&feature=related from 4:21 to 8:26, especially 7:01 to 8:26). 3 In Cuba, the practice of “inventos,” or inventions, is common. Doors are repurposed as tables, toothpaste is turned into glue, and other items are similarly transformed to meet daily needs there (INVENTOS, 2004). In the United States, the green movement is now calling this type of practice “upcycling” (TTBOOK). 34

Perhaps the most hotly debated sample-driven music of the past decade is Girl

Talk, Pittsburgh electronic musician Gregg Gillis’ one-man project. Girl Talk’s albums are large party mixes built from samples of multiple tracks and reconfigured into new songs. In essence, they do what Paul’s Boutique did in the 80s, but instead of creating music over which he raps, Gillis uses vocals from other songs and layers them atop a pastiche of other sounds. In his song “Let It Out,” for example, he takes the bass line and guitar tracks from Fugazi’s “Waiting Room,” mixes it with sounds from an R&B song, and then layers the vocal track of Rihanna’s “Rude Boy” on top--and that is just the final minute of the song. The sounds come from other sources, but combined they form a song based on well-known, and seemingly incongruous references. In Gillis’ mind, his songs are new and original and he wants people to consider them as such. In a segment of

Morgan Spurlock’s A Day in the Life television series for Hulu.com, Gillis talks about his conception of his own work and points out that he is not a deejay and does not deejay house parties. For him, despite his project’s continued success being built on party anthem hooks and familiar beats, his songs are a complex mix that rely on precision and hours of construction, much like other forms of music, and much like collage, quilting, and other art forms. His performances require a similar aptitude, as he commands hundreds of samples and clips and must be able to trigger them in time for his songs to work effectively live. I have used the words “construction” and “trigger” here, which we should also understand as “composition” and “play.” The latter are the words we would use were we talking about a traditional pop or rock song or more accepted instruments such as guitar, bass, drums, horns, piano, and vocals. Gillis’ choice of instruments asks us

35 to use some different terminology, but the idea that he is in fact creating new work is what we must consider here.

Above I make reference to how Gregg Gillis conceives of his music in his own mind. I want to briefly engage Gillis’s mind as an audiotopic site. Josh Kun’s term audiotopia (2005) invokes ideas of utopia and locates them in the sonic sphere in an effort to disturb borders but also create space for difference. Kun analyzes several figures, including Langston Hughes, Mickey Katz, Jean-Michel Basquiat and others of a multi-cultural upbringing. Ostensibly Kun is building the case that within these individuals difference is a living experience. These individuals are sites of difference; they embody difference. Returning to Gregg Gillis, we can envision him in a similar fashion, perhaps more in the sense of a site through which sounds of difference pass through, meet, clash, and connect in various ways. Gillis is clearly not the only example of someone hearing and welcoming so much difference, but we can understand him as an example of a type of transculturation, a term I will explore in detail below, in the way that he engages sonic difference and transforms it into new cultural productions that at once pay homage to their respective parts but also produce something new, something unique to the site at which those parts meet.

The aforementioned examples of collage and quilting are sufficient to create an image of what sampling achieves. But society at large has a harder time understanding sampling as a practice used to produce original works. In this way, sampling is still not accepted, particularly in large doses. But sampling can be understood well as a process among many that require the practitioner to rely on available tools to accomplish a given

36 task or create a given project. Claude Levi-Strauss examines this tension in his analysis of bricolage. He examines the ‘bricoleur’ and and the engineer to explore their difference, the former working with what is available, and the latter trying to reach beyond that limitation. This comparison is one of several binaries Levi-Strauss explored in his career, which was heavily influenced by his time spent with several indigenous communities in the Brazilian Amazon. In examining the concept of the ‘bricoleur’, Levi-Strauss points to the French verb ‘bricoler’, noting that “it was however always used with reference to some extraneous movement: a ball rebounding, a dog straying or a horse swerving from its direct course to avoid an obstacle” (16). Of the person practicing this, he continues, saying “and in our own time the ‘bricoleur’ is still someone who works with his hands and uses devious means compared to those of a craftsman (16-7).” Levi-Strauss then mentions in a footnote that while bricolage denotes a do-it-yourself, Jack-of-all-trades type of attitude, there is a difference between the bricoleur and an odd-jobs man or a handyman in that the bricoleur uses “devious means” in comparison to these counterparts. This concept of devious means might sound a bit extra-legal or criminal, however given the definition of the verb ‘bricoler’ that Levi-Strauss lays out for us this concept can best be understood as a type of fluidity, the capability to move between different points or the capacity to pull from different sources to reach a suitable solution.

In other words, devious by not following some direct or expected path but instead making do with what tools one has.

In Latin America, cultural theorists, politicians and artists have worked to define national cultures, however they have recognized the type of cultural mixing that resulted

37 from centuries of European, indigenous, and African contact. They have sought to define the nation and national cultures, but have paid particular attention as well to the role of previous cultural formation in the development of those cultures. It is within this tradition that I situate rap music in Latin America. I make the claim that hip hop is a sample(d) genre, that is a sample-based genre and a sampled genre, and that through local coding and grappling with the contact of local and international influences, Latin American, specifically Brazilian rappers are indeed crafting a local cultural product. I will refrain from labeling Brazilian rap music as authentic in order to later interrogate that category, which I argue blindly erases the cultural components of any and all cultural products in an effort to stake claim as an original, culture-defining and culturally defined product. To be clear, while I will argue that Brazilian hip hop is a local practice, its practitioners make great efforts to participate in local, national and global dialogues and circuits. Some theoretical back-story as well as the larger historical trajectory of Brazilian music in the

20th century will help contextualize Brazilian hip hop in this tradition of looking inward and outward and help demonstrate why hip hop makes sense in Brazil and Latin America at large.

Latin American mixtures: Brazil

In the push to define both nation and national culture, Brazilians in the early 20th century sought to distinguish themselves from Portugal and from Europe at large. In the

1910s and 1920s, modernist painters, sculptors, writers, musicians and other artists, like

Tarsila do Amaral, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Graça Aranha, Emiliano Di Cavalcanti, Oswald

38 de Andrade and many others took up this charge. They wanted to create unique Brazilian cultural expressions by “returning” or turning towards domestic/local/indigenous inspirations. Amaral’s paintings for instance offer Brazilian desert settings and indigenous figures, often with modern exaggerations in size or shape. Villa-Lobos drew inspiration from indigenous cultures of Brazil as well as the African and Portuguese elements at work there. E. Bradford Burns notes that this movement of Brazilian

Modernists “turned their attention to the present and to their immediate surroundings.

They set about to discover Brazil. To define and encourage national culture were their dual objectives, and in fulfilling them they intended to declare Brazil’s cultural independence” (327). Burns also notes that these efforts culminated in the Semana de

Arte Moderna, or Modern Art Week, during Brazil’s centennial celebration in 1922. The

Semana de Arte Moderna took place at the municipal theatre of São Paulo, the seat of the cultural establishment, and was a sort of coming out party in which artists performed their poetry and other work and made declarations about breaking “from restraints and patterns of the past” (Burns, 327) and being “in rebellion against the stagnant state of the arts in Brazil,” this latter comment attributed by Burns to Graça Aranha in his opening speech at the Semana de Arte Moderna (328). The event concretized the Modernists’ presence. Though they would split into factions (McCann,7), an important group including Amaral, Oswald de Andrade, and others emerged to produce several documents arguing for the explicit mixture of foreign cultural elements with indigenous elements into local/Brazilian cultural manifestations.

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In his 1928 “Manifesto Antropófago” writer Oswald de Andrade continued this turn towards the indigenous but also called for a deliberate use of foreign elements in the construction of unique Brazilian cultural productions and expressions. The document itself warrants some examination. The term antropófago comes from the term antropofagia and relates to the cannibal practices of the indigenous Tupinamba people whose notoriety is enshrined in the annals of history by Hans Staden in his graphic memoir that depicts the Tupinamba cooking and eating their enemies (127-37). They believed that by consuming the vanquished, they would absorb their best qualities, be it courage, strength, or some other trait perceived as valuable, “ingesting his qualities toward the preservation of the tribe’s own autonomy” (Jackson, 8). In Hans Staden’s account, the chief of a tribe would use an animal tooth to scratch the man charged with killing the captive. This scratch would serve as a mark of honor. Following the execution, the common practice was for the executioner to lie around in a hammock while the scratch healed, and almost in lament of what he had done. Also, each killer would take on a new name for each person they killed (132). All of this suggests a deep sense of importance surrounding this ritual, but also surrounding identity. That of the vanquished was considered important enough to mourn and to cause an altered state of being for the killer as a result of the killing act and as denoted by the new name. The vanquished, then, or from the killer’s perspective, the foreign, had a noticeable effect on the killer, later read as the local.

Andrade’s spin on this practice was to consider a cultural cannibalization in which

Brazilians consumed and ingested foreign art forms and absorbed or incorporated them

40 into their own cultural expressions. In short, this was a recognition of cultural contact in the 20th century and the inevitable influence, often mutual but in this case thought of from the Brazilian perspective, that is felt and lived as cultures flow from point of “origin” to other destinations or receiving points. The “Manifesto Antropófago” itself is a complex document. Andrade references world literatures, philosophy, music, history, and in one line ostensibly summarizes the message and intention of the document. He practices what he preaches by merging Shakespeare and indigenous culture when he asks, “Tupi or not

Tupi? That is the question.” This question is at once sincere and rhetorical, as it is answered in its very asking. Indigenous, or not indigenous? The question is a refashioning of Shakespeare’s famous line in order to reflect on Brazil’s cultural situation. But the either/or question is marked by a both/and, in that the question as to whether to seek identity in the indigenous or seek it elsewhere ultimately argues that

Brazil’s identity in the 20th century would be found and fashioned in the combination of the indigenous and not indigenous, that is, the foreign. In this case, the foreign is marked by the recontextualization and refashioning of the English playwright’s most famous query. According to Andrade and his peers, that combination of foreign and local was the answer. Indeed the entirety of the “Manifesto Antropófago” serves the purposes of taking useful elements from foreign cultural productions and incorporating them in such a way that makes them uniquely suited to and representative of the Brazilian situation at the time, that of defining Brazilian identity and seeing it as wholly related to cultural contact and mixtures. We might understand this call to recontextualize or reappropriate as similar to sampling, in which musicians draw on elements of previously recorded works to make

41 unique musical productions representative of their own interests, vision, or statement.

Finding that individual or national sound or voice, that agency no less, was an important goal throughout the 20th century in Brazilian music, including some groups that make direct connections between themselves and Oswald de Andrade’s antropofagia.

Bryan McCann (2004) has demonstrated that early maxixé players were concerned with creating a truly Brazilian sound, and that this was also a central preoccupation of samba composers and performers from the 1920s through the 1950s.

McCann notes that audience and composers alike were concerned with making authentic

Brazilian music and he illustrates how with the invention of radio, samba was easily able to spread throughout the country despite having previously been a Rio de Janeiro-specific genre. Concerns of U.S. musical influence corrupting the national sound were prevalent, though some performers, such as Carmen Miranda and others straddled that line (129,

157). Ethnic and racial tensions were created by radio’s preference for white performers and their recordings. White performers were able to earn money per performance as opposed to the black composers of many of the songs, who received a one-time payment for each work, often directly from the white performers that later made their money from the same works (42, 58). While many distinguished between the samba da cidade, linked to the white and mixed race middle class downtown areas, and what they deemed the more authentic samba do morro made by favela residents who were by and large black

(42), samba in general became celebrated as an authentic Brazilian expression because of its mixture of European and African instrumentation and song structure. While many artists crafted sambas to musically or lyrically distinguish Brazilian culture from the

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United States, by the 1940s the offshoot genre of samba-exaltação developed as big band samba numbers with sweeping passages played by orchestral stringed instruments. The song ‘Aquarela do Brasil’ for example, became an unofficial national anthem for Brazil, and the style was promoted by Brazilian national radio and by cultural promoters.

Samba’s growth as well as the growth of Brazil as a modern nation and of Brazilian national identity was deeply connected to the radio. McCann notes that “radio stations, above all, proved to be crucial laboratories for popular cultural formation, for it was through radio that most Brazilians made their first and most enduring contact with new sounds, and it was radio that linked the production of the metropolis with the audience of the far-flung hinterlands. This connection was fundamental, for the emerging popular culture was national in both scope and intent” (5). President Gertulio Vargas (1930-1945,

1950-54) even used samba-exaltação in particular as a means to rally the populace around a common cultural product. Vargas’s Estado Novo (1937-1945) sought to unify

Brazil and Brazilian national culture and identity by normalizing basic labor rights

(Dunn, 24), by industrializing the nation, and by using force and incarceration as tools to forge the nation (Burns, 357) and move it beyond the coffee era (Burns, 367). While

Modernism had already begun amongst artists, writers, musicians and others, Vargas’s centralization project of defining Brazil matched the arts community’s objectives at defining Brazilian national culture (McCann, 7). Eventually a genre known as critical samba developed and was used to critique both the nation and the failed project of racial democracy (McCann, 94). McCann demonstrates that despite three distinct shifts in

43 motivation behind how to use samba to mark national identity, it indeed became an official marker of Brazilianness (93-4).

While samba began prior to Oswald de Andrade’s antropofagia, it no less was an artistic sphere that sought to set itself apart as a uniquely Brazilian art form. McCann notes that samba lyrics are incorporated in the “Manifesto Antropófago,” “implying that popular musicians were leading the way in incorporating foreign influence into a robust national culture” (7). Ironically samba would become a standard to be bent, stretched, and moved beyond much like the Modernists had pushed to move beyond European standards. It would be embraced simultaneously, however, because it was Brazilian.

In later years, bossa nova would emerge as a unique Brazilian sound. Antonio

Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes collaborated on many songs in the late 1950s and in the 1960s that became Brazilian and international standards of the genre. João Gilberto also penned and sang many of these now canonical songs, including a version of de

Moraes and Jobim’s “Chega de Saudade.” De Moraes and Jobim’s “Garota de Ipanema” and the English-language version “The Girl from Ipanema” performed by Astrud

Gilberto and U. S. jazz saxophonist Stan Getz helped popularize the genre on national and international levels, the latter version selected by the U.S. Library of Congress for the

National Recording Registry in 2004 and accredited to “Stan Getz, et.al.” in the genre of

“Pop (post-1955)” (Library of Congress). As Juan E. de Castro points out, bossa nova had a certain pop sensibility to it that appealed to fans of cool jazz and Frank Sinatra and other “post-swing singers” (73). As pop merged with rock and other sounds, however,

44 bossa nova lost its appeal in spite of its own capacity and tendency to absorb international pop sounds (de Castro 74).

It was that very capacity to merge sounds that appealed to the subsequent generation of singers that wanted to both honor past sounds but update them. Wrestling not only with national and international musical influences, but with mass media and mass mediation, the 1960s would see the emergence of these singers as the Tropicália movement.

Juan E. de Castro notes how one of Tropicalia’s main performers, Caetano

Veloso, has described an evolutionary line in the development of Brazilian music. He highlights the Tropicalistas sense of respect for bossa nova but desire to build on it, saying that “for Veloso, bossa nova is an example to be followed not in its specific musical traits but, rather, in its ability to process and incorporate international popular music within a Brazilian framework” (74). De Castro further posits that “one can interpret Veloso’s concept of an evolutionary line as an argument for an unending process of transculturation in which new trends in foreign pop are continuously incorporated into Brazilian music, which is somehow able to maintain a recognizable national and regional difference” (74). I analyze the term “transculturation” and its own evolution below. It is a kindred spirit of Oswald de Andrade’s “antropofogia,” which has also been an important tool towards understanding the Tropicália movement.

Christopher Dunn has demonstrated how Oswald de Andrade’s antropofagia made a return to prominence through the Tropicália movement of the late 1960s

(Brutality Garden, 6). Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso were two of the principal players

45 in the movement that actively mixed electric and acoustic instruments and foreign sounds with sounds deemed local or national (though not without their own travel narrative).

Gil’s performance of “Domingo No Parque” at the 1967 Festival da Música Popular, the third edition of the musical festival sponsored by the TV Record, caused a stir because as he sang and played his nylon-string classical guitar, the group Os Mutantes backed him on electric instruments while a berimbau player also joined in. With the berimbau representing capoeira, African Brazilian traditions and therefore links to Africa, and with the presence of electric instruments symbolic of the U.S. and British music scenes of the time, Gil’s performance was as alarming to many as Dylan’s Newport Folk Festival show, probing similar questions about authenticity. Dunn notes that:

artists and critics of the nationalist left regarded the experiments of Gil and

Veloso with suspicion, if not hostility. Their use of electric instruments,

their open celebration of the mass media, and their highly subjective and

fragmentary songs departed from the norms of MPB [Música Popular

Brasileira]. Informed by experimental music, international popular music,

and Brazilian musical forms, the “universal sound” of the Bahians testified

to what García Canclini has called the “hybridization” of cultural spheres.

(Dunn, 68)

This type of shock value helped the tropicalistas achieve their goal of creating unique Brazilian cultural manifestations through such sonic mixtures. Indeed they lived

46 this culturally-cannibalized experience, citing Andrade as a major influence among other

Brazilian and foreign literary, musical, sociological, political and cultural inspirations.

Talking about Gil, Veloso, Costa, and the other Bahians who had migrated to São Paulo and the influences of the Concrete Poets and other artists, Dunn notes that “concrete poet and theorist Augusto de Campos wrote enthusiastic reviews of their work in the local press and later introduced them to the work of modernist iconoclast Oswald de Andrade, whose poetics of antropofagia [cultural cannibalism] directly inspired Tropicalist appropriations of exogenous styles.” (BPMG, 76). Elsewhere, Dunn points out that

“cannibalism proved to be a compelling and controversial metaphor for artists and critics of subsequent generations. Forty years later, Veloso would claim that Tropicália was a form of “neo-cannibalism” relevant to the cultural context of the 1960s.” (Brutality

Garden, 6). Like Andrade and the Modernists, the tropicalistas embraced the foreign- domestic mixture. Rather than operate from a protectionist stance, they viewed the contemporary moment of technological advances and cultural flows as an opportunity to participate in that global circuit while simultaneously defining their local, or nationally- rooted, identities. Indeed, they shaped their national identities by participating in those flows and circuits, arguing that such participation was necessary towards shaping identity.

As the Tropicalia moment ended, the tropicalistas themselves would later emerge in the Música Popular Brasileira, or MPB movement, which as the name indicates would encompass a variety of musical styles, since the 1960s incorporating pop, samba, ska, reggae, soul, and electronic sounds to name a few.

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The cannibalist trope resurfaces in the work of MPB artists, especially in the

1990s and early 2000s (Moehn, 2001). Given antropofagia’s resurgence every few decades (1928, 1968, 1990s and 2000s), one might assume it is an overused theory for understanding Brazilian culture. However, the tradition continues that musicians and artists themselves are the ones conceiving of their own work and lives in this manner. Hip hoppers, as I will demonstrate here, have also conceived of their lives and work through this framework. Given this self-conceptualization, and also due to its similarities to other

Latin American theories which I explore below, I believe antropofagia remains a viable and important theoretical concept to engage.

Hip Hop Digests

I met Banks during my first visit to São Paulo in 2007. He is a member of the oldest breakdance outfit in Brazil, the São Paulo-based Backspin Crew. He also works at the Casa do Hip Hop, or the House of Hip Hop, an institution in Diadema, a small town attached to and basically on the outskirts of São Paulo proper. There, Banks and others administer classes on breakdancing, emceeing, deejaying, and graffiti writing (referred to as the four elements of hip hop, though we will see that they are the four artistic elements), and they organize monthly community-building celebratory events to offer a consistent space in which the hip hop community can gather, promoting a sense of rootedness and stability. This sense of a common place to gather within and around is seen at all levels in São Paulo hip hop, from locals taking classes to well known artists like Rashid referencing the Casa in his song “E Se” and artists like Rashid, Thaide, and

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Z’Africa Brasil performing on the Casa’s stage for events like Hip Hop em Ação (Hip

Hop in Action). At those events, the Casa offers some sort of speech or other education- intentioned effort to promote the fifth element of hip hop, conhecimento, or knowledge.

This fifth element is not unique to Brazilian hip hop, but its importance is fundamental to the community and will help us understand hip hop’s connection to Brazil’s antropofagiac cultural strategies. The promotion of knowledge serves several purposes.

As Weller and Paz Tella have documented, Brazilian education has left large swatches of

African and Afro-Brazilian history out of its general curriculum, focusing primarily on the period of slavery but nothing prior to or since that most-heinous institution (196).

There is a general lack of education within the country on African connections to Brazil.

The hip hop community sees this neglect as something to be corrected. The Casa do Hip

Hop’s fifth element initiatives aim to work against the standard current by informing its visitors, students, and others on issues and figures important to the African diaspora. Its speeches at their monthly Hip Hop em Ação events frequently offer biographical and historical overviews of figures such as Zumbi dos Palmares, Martin Luther King, Jr.,

Marcus Garvey, and Sharylaine, one of the first woman emcees in Brazil4. Helping fill

4 These figures represent a selection of Brazilian and other important historical figures of the African diaspora. Marcus Garvey was a Jamaican politica leader, author, and activist that promoted Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism. Among his many endeavors, he created the Black Star Line, a cruise ship fleet whose purpose was to help the African diaspora “return” to Africa. Mos Def and Talib Kweli, to emcees from the United States, created a duo called Black Star. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of the most important leaders of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. He remains famous for his use of non-violence, encouraging sit-ins at lunch counters and other businesses, especially in the Southern U.S., as protest against racially discriminatory practices, for his support of bus boycotts, and for the the March on Washington. It was at that event that he gave his “I Have A Dream” speech. Highly regarded everywhere, there 49 educational gaps such as these helps create a better-informed hip hop community and encourages additional research on an individual level. Even the already well-informed hip hoppers such as the older generation continue to push their own boundaries by seeking educational opportunities in addition to creating them for others. Banks for example was studying in a theatre class at a downtown São Paulo theatre in 2010. He told me about his personal investments in education as he was driving me home one night following a visit to both a children’s theatre project he was working on in the Paraísopolis favela and to the favela of Real Parque. Traffic was heavy and he asked if he could let me out at a point close to my apartment but still convenient for him to get to his class in a timely manner.

As he drove, he explained that he almost always was involved in some sort of class, even if he could only attend it infrequently. He elaborated that he had taken classes in a variety of fields, including literature and various arts such as theatre. He said from all these experiences, he could take a little bit from everything and put all of that into his own creative output and daily life. “Isso é nossa antropofagia5,” he reflected.

is a statue and memorial in his honor in Havana, Cuba. Zumbi dos Palmares was the most famous quilombo leader, heading up the Palmares community. Quilombos were communities of free and escaped African peoples that tried to resist the institution of slavery by building solidarity. Zumbi famously evaded capture longer than anyone and as such became revered as a symbol of resistance for black peoples and cultures in Brazil. The group Nação Zumbi incorporated his first name and the group Z’Africa Brasil incorporated the Z of his name. I analyze Nação Zumbi and some recent scholarly criticism of their work in chapter 2. Interestingly both Nação Zumbi and Z’Africa Brasil play with concepts of nation and inclusion in their names through the figure of Zumbi dos Palmares and the issue of black resistance. Sharylaine, again, was one of the first women emcees in Brazil, beginning her career with the group Rap Girls in 1986. She remains active appearing at various events and still recording and releasing music and videos that promote community and black identity. 5 “This is our antropofagia.” 50

We have seen antropofagia’s prevalence in Brazilian musical production. We can see evidence of the cultural strategy in the lives and music of many Brazilian hip hoppers and I contend that antropofagia can function for Brazilian hip hop at large. The strategy is still a viable theoretical mark for understanding Brazilian music and culture for both theoretical reasons and because of the concept’s place in the general self-conception of

Brazilian artists. Like in Banks’ own admission, Rio de Janeiro rapper Marcelo D2 denoted the antropofagia of his own music on his MySpace.com blog in 2006. I will examine some of his music as well as his cover art here to demonstrate this cultural strategy and later argue that as a result we can understand Marcelo D2’s mixture of samba and rap beats as a marker of brasilidade in hip hop.

In his song “Meu Samba É Assim” Carioca rapper Marcelo D2 describes his sonic mixture of beats and other hip hop staples with samba rhythms typical of Brazil and more specifically of Rio de Janeiro. He raps “Meu samba é assim / E tá bom pra mim / Dois toca-discos e um tamborim / A calça é larga, o boné pro lado / 4 por 4 / mais sincopado”

(My samba is like this / and it’s good for me / two turntables and a tambourine / The pants are long, the hat to the side / 4 beats per measure / more syncopated.” From this opening verse, Marcelo D2 sets up a lengthy rap about how his samba is infused with hip hop, both musically and in terms of his personal appearance and style. In these first lines we can understand several of D2’s claims. First, he lets his listeners know that he is talking about his samba and how it is good for him. While there is a level of individualism involved in the lyric, the generational distinctions and connections at work are more important. Throughout Brazilian musical history there have been several albums

51 and songs by the name “Meu Samba É Assim” but before D2 no one had fused samba and hip hop or even referred to their rap music as “meu samba.” While D2 is in his 40s, he grew up on hip hop and rock and therefore speaks to a certain demographic born between the late 60s and late 90s. In some ways, he speaks for them too, sonically marking the global flows of cultural production by blending the music most representative of Brazil and Brazilian culture (and both within Brazil and abroad) with the music most representative of youth culture and black culture throughout the world at this moment. As he continues his rhyme, D2 demonstrates both how he, his music, and his style fit in with hip hop norms (baggy pants, hat to the side, four beats per measure, etc) and how his is different (the tambourine he mentions is specific to samba music and other African-derived musics and not the tambourine most often used in Anglo musics.

He also notes how his music is more syncopated as a result of his mixture). This active blend demonstrates an antropofagiac approach to both music and style. Marcelo D2, like the Modernists, Tropicalistas, and others before him, is mixing the foreign with the local/national to create a new cultural product. As Carioca hip hopper DJ TR (2007) and

Derek Pardue (2008) have argued, and as I will further contend, mixing sounds is not a mandatory marker of creating Brazilian hip hop. More abstractly, mixing sounds is not required to create a local manifestation of a globalized product, in this case rap music.

Instead, Pardue argues that rap’s importance lies in how it addresses the local (2011:

207). Pardue does not give much attention to the sonic elements of hip hop culture and rap music, however. While few in Brazilian hip hop mix sounds in ways that Marcelo D2 and his producers do, I find these musical choices, as well as the choice to simply use

52 standard, seemingly not Brazilian beats to be important towards understanding how this music, this culture, and its participants/adherents are negotiating their own space and to what ends they are enacting said negotiation. In short, musical, lyrical, style and other choices all warrant analysis towards understanding Brazilian hip hop and its connections to antropofagia and transculturation. As a final note here on the song “Meu Samba É

Assim,” while the delivery cadence is not the same, it’s still worth noting the similarities between “two turntables and a tambourine” and the famous “two turntables and a microphone” from Beck6’s “Where It’s At” as further evidence of this antropofagia.

The cover art for Meu Samba É Assim demonstrates some important assertions to this end as well. To best understand what is being conveyed visually through this cover art, it’s best to open and unfold it to examine the four outside panels from left to right.

The first thing you notice is that the cover art is a collection of photos all taped together with a type of masking tape. While this type of tape would not be used in analog film editing, the visual sense is of a film being cut and edited. The first panel [panel 1] is made up of a photo and some graffiti tags and images. The photo is in the upper left hand corner and is a close up of the white slip-on loafers of male samba-school dancers. Next to the shoes is a wooden box. Sitting in between the shoes is a drum beater and behind the shoes a bass drum from a samba school. These items set a sambista tone to the image,

6 Interestingly, Beck is one of the United States artists that drew inspiration from the Tropicalistas and specifically the group Os Mutantes in the late 1990s with his song “Tropicalia.” So if the Tropicalistas drew on U.S. influences, then Beck drew on the Tropicalistas from the U.S., now Marcelo D2 is pulling from Beck and other U.S. influences. A sort of full circle, or maybe a double or triple antropofagia? Of course, Beck also took the phrase “two turntables and a microphone” from rap music of the 1980s, but he most certainly made it a popular catch phrase. 53 which is clearly playing on the title of the album. The graffiti figures are two large- bellied characters wearing the sambista hat and striped shirts. One figure is playing the bass drum and the other the pandeiro, a tambourine-like instrument very typical of samba and capoeira. Next to this figure is a tag that says “Artideiro do pandeiro,” or “Artisan of the pandeiro.” Beneath him is another tag stating “Samba no pé,” or “Samba in the feet.”

Another tag seems to incidentally paint the stripes on this figure’s shirt red and white and black, colors frequently seen in samba dress, and the colors of Rio de Janeiro’s Flamengo soccer club.

FIGURE 1: Panels 1 and 2 Marcelo D2 Meu Samba É Assim cover art

Masking tape affixes these images to a set of three photo booth-style photos of D2 from a profile [panel 2]. In the first, he looks ahead with an out-of-focus building behind him. He is looking to our right, so forward towards the remaining images. In the second

54 film strip photo, D2’s brow is slightly furled and his head is leaning forward. It’s as if he is not believing what he is seeing. He is now wearing a New York Yankees cap that appears barely placed on his head and cocked towards to the camera, much like the off- center styles popular with U.S. hip hoppers and now the world over. In the final photo of this set of three, we see two images of D2’s head blend into a third that is mostly in focus. In the first blurred image his hat is in the same position as the previous photo. In the second his hat is turned to the back and it remains that way in the third image, his face looking satisfied as he cracks a slight, perhaps coy smile. This set of photos is taped to another [panels 2 and 3], a long shot of the room from the first panel. We see the same

FIGURE 2. Panels 2 and 3 Marcelo D2 Meu Samba É Assim cover art

pairs of white slip-on shoes in front of the bass drum. The wooden box and drum beater are not visible, however we see the shoes and drum sitting on a table with a folding metal

55 chair pushed in at the front. Behind the table is a large shelving unit that stores stacks of pandeiros and tambourines, bass and other drums typical of samba school performances.

Next to this shelf is a wall [panel 3] with a black and white and red figure playing the bass drum in a similar manner as the figure in the first panel. A desk with cans of spray paint, several paint brushes, and other supplies sits to the right of the frame and the right of this graffiti figure. A vertical piece of tape [panel 3] connects this photo to the next image. On the tape is written the album title Meu Samba É Assim. The title is written horizontally as well, and as a series of three graffiti tags.

Up to this point we can see the connections between samba and hip hop through the graffiti figures. Graffiti is representative of hip hop and the figures are drawing on classic imagery of samba dancers. The photos of instruments seek to bring in the musicality and imagery of samba. D2 is looking forward in the photo booth series of photos as if he were looking forward, both at the images of the shoes and instruments and graffiti, but more importantly towards both these images and the rest of the photos taped together here. It as if he is looking forward at his sound, his production.

In panels 3 and 4 the final two photos appear. In the penultimate photo [panels 3 and 4] there is a close-up of a table and several items. In the background sits an orange, red, and green kitchen towel or a cloth napkin. In front of it and to the left is a small plate holding a can of olive oil. To the right and closer still to the front of the frame is a slightly larger plate holding a wax paper napkin commonly found in Brazilian bars and

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FIGURE 3. Panels 3 and 4 Marcelo D2 Meu Samba É Assim cover art

restaurants. Atop the napkin is a knife and a fork. Finally, sitting in the front of the shot and touching the plate is a small notebook adorned with stickers featuring mostly

English-language words. Chief among them is a sticker for the U.S. underground hip hop label Stones Throw. A pen sits on top of the notebook.

In the final photo [Panel 4], D2 himself appears sitting wearing a Manifiesto 33

1/3 [logo concealed by folded arms, but he wears it elsewhere] basketball jersey and a large-faced watch. His tattooed shoulder shows in the foreground as he smiles and looks up and to the right of the viewer. Behind him is the same maroon tile from the previous photo and the same kitchen towel/napkin from the table is now slung over his right shoulder. While we cannot see the table from the previous shot, we’re led to believe he is sitting at it. The towel/napkin over his shoulder lets us know he is ready to eat. Taking from all the previous images we’ve seen, we can assume that he is ready to eat from the

57 samba instruments and imagery, the graffiti, and from other hip hop influences as evidenced by the stickers on his notebook, his Yankee cap, and his clothing style. The position of the notebook next to the plate, knife, and fork in the penultimate picture is no accident. The notebook, marked by English-language and U.S. hip hop stickers, is a site of consumption, digestion of all these influences laid out before him, and subsequent production of his own work [inside the CD booklet there are images of notebook pages filled with lyrics]. In the final image, the album title is written in black Sharpie and the

D2 stencil label is placed slightly askew, as if it has been stamped on the cover much like a stamp of approval. While the tape itself might signal a tenuous connection between this samba and hip hop-related iconography, we as consumers of this album and this product are led to buy into a deeper connection by the final images in which D2 is clearly preparing to consume all of these influences and produce something new. This album combines all the influences of samba and hip hop laid out here in the artwork, which have been reconfigured into D2’s own invention, stamped with his name and made ready to be consumed by others.

The artwork inside the CD booklet draws on similar themes and presents similar connections. We see similar graffiti figures and tags, photos taped to lyric pages and to each other. On the second page [panel 6], there is a close-up of D2’s arm playing a samba drum. The photo next to it a medium focus shot of D2 with an out-of-focus drum in the foreground, as if he has simply stepped back away from the drum after playing it in the first image on the page. Pages 5 and 6 (FIGURE 5: Panels 7 and 8) show lyrics in the background with two photos of D2 affixed to them, again with masking tape. The first

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FIGURE 4. Panels 5 and 6 Marcelo D2 Meu Samba É Assim cover art

FIGURE 5. Panels 7 and 8 Marcelo D2 Meu Samba É Assim cover art

image is a long shot of D2 leaning in a door frame cut out of a blue wall. He is wearing all blue with hints of white, adorned in Nike shoes, long and baggy jean shorts, an extra long t-shirt, his large-faced watch, a chain, and white and blue-rimmed hat cocked to the 59 side of his head. The next shot is a close up of his gold chain. The face etched into the dog tag may be of D2 himself, but it’s unclear. Instead, what is clear is the tag line on his

Manifesto 33 1/3 t-shirt, which reads “De volta ao passado,” or “Back to the past.” The line is a connecting point to both the origins of hip hop and of samba, a methodology of returning to the past while still in the present and moving forward. Much like Oswald de

Andrade returned to ideas of the Tupinambá, infusing new cultural productions with foreign and indigenous influences, Marcelo D2 is creating his sound, his cultural production, from a mixture of old and new, foreign and national influences, samba now considered indigenous to Brazil after nearly a century of development and connection to nation-building.

Other photos [FIGURE 6. Panels 9 and 10] from the inside cover art show D2

FIGURE 6. Panels 9 and 10 Marcelo D2 Meu Samba É Assim cover art

60 looking at cordel7 literature, a popular form of literature typically sold from clotheslines in the Northeast of Brazil. Here D2 is connecting himself to another tradition considered uniquely Brazilian. Cordel is a popular and ancient musical-literary tradition, so he is drawing the connection that through his “samba,” his rap, he is connected to this tradition of cordel and deeply rooted in Brazil. By connecting to the Northeast, D2 is also linking himself to the area of Brazil considered most influenced by Africa and often revered in conversation as “outro mundo,” or “outro Brasil,” or “o Brasil de verdade.”

Yet he is ready to put his samba into motion. The images on the final inside page

FIGURE 7. Panels 11 and 12 Marcelo D2 Meu Samba É Assim cover art

7 Cordel began in the 1890s and developed into both a written and oral tradition. Based on stories and songs, and connected to the corridos of Central America, to the desafios in the Northeast of Brazil (themselves very similar to emcee battles), and slightly less so with the romance of Spain (Slater 2-4), cordel stories were made to be sung, accompanied by a viola or guitar, or recited. (Trindade Negrão 135). 61

[FIGURE 7. Panels 11 and 12] show D2 boarding and inside a plane, presumably ready to travel to deliver his music, his sound, and continue participating in the circuitry of cultural production by building on foreign and domestic influences and towards the end of forever reconfiguring the local/national.

Antropofagia, Transculturation, and Sampling

Having now seen antropofagia’s consistent presence as a conceptual musical and stylistic tool in Brazilian music of the 20th century and its further use as a knowledge- building ethos in hip hop, it is important to understand how other Latin American theorists have understood cultural contact and subsequent cultural production. Indeed, ideas of such cultural mixing resound throughout the Américas. Mexican cultural theorist

Néstor García Canclini’s term “hibridez,” or hybridity, and Peruvian critic Antonio

Cornejo Polar’s “heterogeneidad,” or heterogeneity, are some of the most notable incantations and offer important portrayals of the processes and effects of cultural contact. The widely used term “mestizaje” does as well.

Heterogeneity was Cornejo Polar’s way to describe the heterogeneous nature of

Latin American literature. He admits that not developing the term to include cultural production beyond literature is a major limitation, but notes how he later reconfigured the concept, stating that “in its first version, the concept of heterogeneity attempted to clarify the nature of processes of discursive production in which at least one of the instances differed from the others, with respect to its social, cultural, and ethnical affiliation. Later,

I ‘radicalized’ my idea and proposed that each of these instances is internally

62 heterogeneous” (Cornejo Polar, “Mestizaje, Transculturation, Heterogeneity” 118). So in broader terms about Latin American literature and cultural production, and not to mention the specific ethnic groups of the Aymara and the Quechua he references here, and so other groups by extension, Cornejo Polar is saying that all components involved in their construction are already heterogeneous, composed in uneven ways of cultural elements from varying points of “origin.”

This revision to his own term highlights Cornejo Polar’s issues with mestizaje, hibridez, and transculturación. On mestizaje, the critic remarks that:

…despite its prestigious tradition, [it] is a concept that falsifies the

condition of our culture and our literature in the most drastic way. In

effect, what mestizaje does is to offer a harmonious image of what is

obviously disjointed and confrontational, proposing representations that

deep down are only relevant to those for whom it is convenient to imagine

our societies as smooth and non-conflictive spaces of coexistence. In

another occasion, I have also considered the inappropriate use of the life

and work of Inca Garcilaso as an exemplary mestizo, emblematic of a

nation so mixed that it would already be a non-fissured totality. (Cornejo

Polar “Mestizaje and Hybridity: The Risks of Metaphors—Notes” 760-1)

Cornejo Polar’s problem, then, is that in trying to find a term to accurately describe the totality of Latin American literature, and more broadly then, Latin American

63 cultural production, all critics fall into a trap. That trap is the assumption that national literatures can be summed up as one solitary thing, in this case a national literature. To enter into this critique, however, it becomes necessary to critique not simply national literatures, but also the very concept of Latin American literature, which Cornejo Polar does not fully articulate but I believe would definitely support. “It is clear to me, however,” he states, “that a salvational ideology of mestizaje and mestizo people has prevailed and still does prevail as a conciliating synthesis of the many mixtures that constitute the social and cultural Latin American corpus” (Cornejo Polar, “Mestizaje,

Transculturation, Heterogeneity” 116). He struggles with the idea of synthesis, believing it exclusionary by definition. He points out later that he does not think any contemporary critic would leave out Aymara and Quechua oral literatures from the category of Andean literature, but wonders how the thought processes and epistemologies behind oral and written traditions can live together within a broad category such as Andean literature, and more broadly Latin American literature (Cornejo Polar, “Mestizaje, Transculturation,

Heterogeneity” 118). To define is necessarily limiting, which seems to trouble Cornejo

Polar. He wants an all-inclusive term, and consequently critiques all terms coined to discuss plurality and the cultural productions that result from cultures meeting because those very terms cannot seem to account for all differences. He says that “at some point regarding this question I advanced the hypothesis that the entirety of these literary systems would form a ‘contradictory totality’, but I continue without exactly knowing how such a category would work” (Cornejo Polar, “Mestizaje, Transculturation,

Heterogeneity” 118). He continues:

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be it as it may, the essential question consists of producing theoretical and

methodological devices sufficiently rigorous and sophisticated in order to

better understand a literature (or more broadly, a vast gamut of discourses)

whose evident multiplicity generates a copious, profound, and disturbing

conflictiveness. Assuming it as such, making contradiction the object of

our discipline can be the most urgent task of Latin American critical

thought. Something, of course, that would have to be debated. (Cornejo

Polar, “Mestizaje, Transculturation, Heterogeneity” 118-19)

With transculturation, Cornejo Polar is equally frustrated when he says the term

“has become more and more the most sophisticated disguise of the category of mestizaje”

(Cornejo Polar “Mestizaje and Hybridity: The Risks of Metaphors—Notes” 761). He continues, saying, “I want to make clear that I am not denying in any way the obvious or subterranean relations that exist between the diverse socio-cultural strata of Latin

America; what I object to is the interpretation according to which everything would have been brought into harmony within the supposedly placid and pleasant (and certainly enchanting) spaces of our America” (Cornejo Polar “Mestizaje and Hybridity: The Risks of Metaphors—Notes” 761). Elsewhere Cornejo Polar contests transculturation due to its search for synthesis, saying “another theoretical device would have to be formulated in order to explain sociocultural situations and discourses in which the dynamics of the

65 multiple intercrossings do not operate in a syncretic way, but instead emphasize conflicts and alterities” (Cornejo Polar, “Mestizaje, Transculturation, Heterogeneity” 117).

So how do we account for the non-harmonious, or that which does not seem to fit within the definition? Can a single term be all encompassing, or does a term by definition necessarily have to exclude to produce harmony? Can dissonance be incorporated?

Certainly any national or regional literature can be subdivided thematically, ethnically, and otherwise. They are complex, which is Cornejo Polar’s point in signaling his frustration with the many theories that seemingly erase or promote a lack of understanding of that complexity and nuance. He seems to prefer García-Canclini’s hibridez of all terms. Its connection to science disturbs him (Cornejo Polar “Mestizaje and Hybridity: The Risks of Metaphors—Notes” 760), yet he finds the term adequate because of its connection to history, noting how that aspect makes it possible to enter and leave hybridity (761), just as García-Canclini talks of hibridez as a method of entering and leaving modernity.

By way of introduction to his 2001 edition of Culturas híbridas, García-Canclini discusses some of the criticisms of his use of the term hibridez, or hybridity. He admits that some of these criticisms are warranted, and point to his needing to further elaborate his theory. Addressing Cornejo Polar’s concern about the term’s connection to the sciences, García-Canclini concurs with a question, asking, “¿Cuál es la utilidad de unificar bajo un solo término experiencias y dispositivos tan heterogéneos? ¿Conviene designarlas con la palabra híbrido, cuyo origen biológico ha llevado a que algunos autores adviertan sobre el riesgo de traspasar a la sociedad y la cultura la esterilidad que

66 suele asociarse a ese término?” (iv) Much like Cornejo Polar, García-Canclini poses the notion that “hybrid” can define any number of cultural combinations, and so a more nuanced term is necessary. He credits other fields for pushing this definition, saying “la construcción lingüística (Bajtin; Bhabha) y la social (Friedman; Hall; Papastergiadias) del concepto de hibridación han servido para salir de los discursos biologicistas y esencialistas de la identidad, la autenticidad y la pureza cultural” (García-Canclini v).

These hardline ideas like authenticity, purity, and essentialism are debunked by concepts like hybridity, which questions origins by denoting that all components to a cultural production are necessarily already hybrid in their origins. The very concept of “origin” is troubled, then, and troubling. And just like with mestizaje, which as I have argued above elides nuance and asks us to believe in a mestizo culture, as if that were one thing,

García-Canclini sees the issue with the term “hybrid,” and here promotes its expansion.

He notes how “es útil advertir sobre las versiones demasiado amables del mestizaje. Por eso, conviene insistir en que el objeto de estudio no es la hibridez, sino los procesos de hibridación” (x). This idea of processes of hibridization opens the concept of hybridity to be more encompassing, enabling the understanding of cultural contact to take on multiple shapes, depending on the many factors involved, be they economic, social, political, or otherwise. To further promote the importance of this nuance in allowing for multiple processes, García-Canclini promotes procesos de hibridación as a way to defeat jingoism and cultural protectionism, saying, “las políticas de hibridación servirían para trabajar democráticamente con las divergencias, para que la historia no se reduzca a guerras entre

67 culturas, como imagina Samuel Huntington. Podemos elegir vivir en estado de guerra o en estado de hibridación” (x).

This idea of choosing a mindset of protectionism or one of understanding cultural contact as processes of interconnection is an important development and contribution to this longstanding conversation on how to understand cultural formations and cultural productions. However, García-Canclini does not take this element of choice to the next step, that of allowing for individual agency and choice in the actual mixture of cultures.

Hybridity, mestizaje, heterogeneity, and other terms are useful ways to consider

Latin American literature and culture despite their problems in glossing over difference to propose syntheses such as national literatures, Latin American literature, or even other cultural productions such as musical or other artistic movements that have been criticized for erasing their cultural roots. While García-Canclini’s push for processes of hybridization is an important development that permits differenciation between one hybrid production and another, the theorist does not seem to include individual agency as part of these processes. The same can be said of Cornejo Polar’s heterogeneity, which while expanded since its initial use is also more description of the process of cultural mixing rather than nuanced to the level of the individual person or collective.

Transculturation, however, allows for this. While it has its own problems, particularly in its initial conception, the way transculturation has been developed to think about literature as well as culture and now cultural production within globalization sets it apart from the other terms discussed here. The words mestizaje and hibridez, and even processos de hibridación as well as the concepts themselves, denote processes that

68 happen. The action involved in creating a mestizo culture or a hybrid product can be deliberate, but more often these terms describe actions that occur as overarching trends.

Transculturación, however, denotes a similar process but seems to allow room for agency, even as a word. Considering the prefix trans-, which captures the actions of change, transfer, and moving across, there is a deliberateness that the word

“transculturation” itself permits. And the term has been developed to include this deliberateness, which we can read as choice and agency. This development demonstrates the usefulness of transculturation as a category that will help us further understand contemporary manifestations such as hip hop.

Cuban sociologist, anthropologist, and ethnomusicologist Fernando Ortiz (1940) coined the term transculturation to describe processes of cultural mixing. Ortiz rejected the concept of acculturation because of its implied dominance of one culture over another. He posited transculturation as a way to denote the loss, gain, and creation of cultures and cultural forms upon contact of two or more. Speaking of such contact, Ortiz makes note of the many groups of people that passed through Cuba over the centuries, including “indios continentales, judíos, lusitanos, anglosajones, franceses, norteamericanos y hasta amarillos mongoloides de Macao, Cantón y otras regiones del que fue Imperio Celeste.” He continues, “Y cada inmigrante como un desarraigado de su tierra nativa en doble trance de desajuste y de reajuste, de desculturación o exculturación y de aculturación o inculturación, y al fin de síntesis, de transculturación” (Ortiz 130).

These thoughts, indeed a reflection on movement, change, and transference, come from

Ortiz’s Contrapunteo cubano entre el tobaco y el azúcar, in which he examines the

69 arrival of sugar cane as an imported crop and the native tobacco crop, analyzing the benefits and detriments of each. In a small section of the book, he examines culture and society explicitly in an attempt to highlight that when cultures meet, each is bound to lose and gain and the two will become something all together new. In Cuba’s case, this occurred in the interesting fashion of Europeans leaving by their own volition for new prospects and by Africans arriving without choice or ambition. Each group necessarily had to lose certain elements of their lives, be it family or cultural or political elements, by leaving those components in their past lives, whether by choice or by force. Upon contact, Ortiz’s argument is that further losses occur, but gains occur in the sense of each entity gaining from the other and in the formation of a new society based on the combination of each group (132-3). Ortiz notes that “Al fin…en todo abrazo de culturas sucede lo que en la copula genética de los individuos: la criatura siempre tiene algo de ambos progenitores, pero también siempre es distinta de cada uno de los dos. En conjunto, el proceso es una transculturación, y este vocablo comprende todas las fases de su parábola” (135). He notes that this neologism transculturación does not simply signify a loss of one culture to another, but an exchange, and something more. This idea of having something of both (or all) parts, but being something completely distinct is quite similar to Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of not either/or but both/and, in which the borderlands theorist describes the frontera as a site in which the people and culture there are of both sides, and something more since they are distinct from those living away from the border, deeper within either side of the geopolitical division. To follow Ortiz’s line, then, recognizing both (or all) commingling cultures, in broad terms European and

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African, is necessary. But it is also necessary to recognize the existence of something else, something new that is different than the two or more parts composing this new whole. So to break down Ortiz’s logic into an Anzalduan equation, we could say that not

European or African but both European and African, and Cuban.

Much like Cornejo Polar’s criticisms about all terms that deny the complexity and conflictiveness of cultures, Patricia Catoira (2004) has argued that Ortiz’s transculturation ultimately called for a homogenous cubanidad that spoke of Cuba’s indigenous and African elements as part of the past, effectively whitewashing these non-

European elements of the island’s people (181). I think she misses the main point of

Ortiz’s theory though. He is not arguing that African elements do not exist. He is arguing that in the geopolitical and cultural space of Cuba, those elements take on new meanings, especially with the passage of time as people start to self-identify as Cuban. Even markers such as Afro-Cuban mean differently than African, or for that matter, differently than Ghanean, than Angolan, than Yoruba, etc. All of these latter cultures have a presence in Cuban culture, but those elements traveled and were transformed throughout history by their practitioners. Also of note, Ortiz wrote this text in the late 1930s and published it in 1940. Throughout Latin America there was a push in the 19th and early

20th centuries to self-define through revolution and decolonization from Spain and

Portugal. In Cuba, this effort can be seen as succeeding with the 1959 revolution, though of course even since then Cubans have continually sought to define themselves and refine those definitions. But for 1940, I see Ortiz’s push to understand what it meant to be

Cuban as very much in line with the avant-gardists of the 1910s through 1930s as they

71 tried to develop their own artistic methods in literature, painting, music, and other arts as a way to help define what it meant to be Brazilian, Mexican, Peruvian, and so on. So

Ortiz’s cubanidad is clearly one built from various parts. Calling the sum of those parts, totaled from both losses and gains, something new does not erase the contributing elements. The convergence of cultures from varying “origins,” rather, in a new location, leads to something unique to that convergence and that location. John Charles Chasteen describes transculturation as “a give-and-take process” that is “always within the force field of hierarchy and domination” and calls it “…the formation of new and distinctive

Latin American cultures—not Spanish or Portuguese, not indigenous or African, but fusions of two or more elements, varying from region to region in kaleidoscopic combinations” (74). It is true, Cuban or Afro-Cuban is not Spanish, Portuguese, indigenous, or African. But again, it does not mean that those elements have been erased, or even forgotten by Cuban people in the construction of their own identities.

Following Ortiz, other theorists, molded his term into an inclusionary tactic, complete with all the deliberateness at work in such a strategy. Uruguayan literary and cultural critic Ángel Rama (1982) revisited this concept in an attempt to create a unique

Latin American literary canon that included Brazilian literature, thereby expanding the idea of transculturation to incorporate Brazil (23) which is often viewed apart from the rest of Latin America due to linguistic and geocultural reasons. Rama argued that to

Ortiz’s conception of transculturation as a process of deculturation, incorporation, and recomposition, it was necessary to add selectivity and invention (45-7). His model thereby recognizes the agency of peoples within cultural contact to actively choose

72 cultural components and purposes in the creation of new cultural formations. Abril Trigo

(2008) contends that transculturation offers the best chance for a critical understanding of globalization for and from the Latin American periphery. He argues that to properly understand transcultural processes in Latin America one must examine the political economy, and in particular, modes of productive consumption and consumptive production. Productive consumption would characterize a process by which global production appropriates local cultural forms, such as Sony Records producing CDs of

Andean pan-flute bands. Conversely, consumptive production would shape the active processes by which local societies adopt and adapt global art forms, ideas, and symbols.

These are two different modes of production. The first, productive consumption, is institutional, capitalistic, industrial, and from the point of view of the those motivations, strategic. The latter, consumptive production, is local, artisanal, from below, or from these positions, tactical and and frequently about survival. The term ‘consumptive production’ reflects the agency of these local societies. Trigo posits music as a prime location for these processes and specifies hip hop as a site of consumptive production, and therefore consumers’ transculturation, or transculturation from below. Marginalized

Brazilians are engaging in this very process by adopting hip hop and adapting it to their needs, using it to lay claims to citizenship and identity, pursue social justice, contest economic dislocation and otherwise create space for themselves within the socio-political national fabric. Riffing on Jackson’s comment on the Tupinamba mentioned above, indeed hip hoppers are ingesting the qualities of the foreign towards the preservation of their own autonomy (Jackson, 8).

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The agency at work in consumptive production is an important aspect to understanding local societies’ roles in cultural production from within globalization.

Thinking about health and nutrtition-related definitions of “consumption” and

“consumers” we arrive at a metaphorical connection with antropofagia. While antropofagia has served Brazilian musicians for close to fifty years as a working model for how to theorize and construct their cultural output, its parallels to transculturation are important to note. Both theorize contact between cultures and subsequent use of various elements to create new manifestations or iterations. Both recognize artistic agency and the choice to select which elements to mix and how to reshape them. But antropofagia has been limited towards understanding the formation of Brazilian national identity and culture, even as it looks outward towards participating in global circuits as hip hop does.

Meanwhile transculturation has already been retooled by Rama to include Brazil and, as

Trigo demonstrates, helps us understand political, economic, and socio-cultural decisions at work within these musical choices. Through transculturation we can understand how culture and cultural flows can be used not only to sell or develop national culture, but how culture can be used to survive, to resist exclusion, and to live meaningful lives with meaningful connections on local and international levels and from within globalization.

If we cut back to sampling we can see its parallels with antropofagia and transculturation. While sampling is not a theory, in practice it reveals similar benefits as those offered by antropofagia and transculturation, thereby becoming a theory in practice.

And yet sampling has been labeled as theft. Interestingly, theories of cultural contact and rearticulation are not considered as thievery and themselves do not consider cultural

74 contact and formation as such. Instead, they are analyzed for their capacity to enable understanding of cultural flows, recognizing that culture flows whether the producer of a given cultural product or the owner of a particular copyright likes it or not. Sounds in particular flow with great ease, a fluidity only augmented by advances in Internet technologies. Antropofagia as a tool has always been used to incorporate sounds, ideas, and styles that were not copyrighted. Transculturation has been used in a similar way.

Sampling brings into the equation the element of the specific, already-packaged-for-sale- and-consumption. Since what is being sampled are specific sounds recorded by others, and since those people own copyrights to the recordings of those sounds, legal and ethical questions, as well as questions about authenticity, have abounded. Those questions neglect the aforementioned flow of sounds regardless of copyright holder and focus on the politics of ownership rather than the flow of sounds, creation of culture, and recognition of agency.

Despite Brazilian hip hoppers adopting and adapting a genre to their own situations and not sampling something specific per se, it is fair to think of hip hop as a sample-based genre, and in the context of Brazil, as a sampled genre, deliberately selected by its participants as a vehicle to be remixed, retooled, and refashioned for self- expression. The comparison between sampling, antropofagia, and transculturation permits an understanding of hip hop in Brazil as an important example of the cultural mergers that people choose to create and how they are using these creations to forge more meaningful lives. While music has played a strong role in the formation of the Brazilian nation, only hip hop is creating and maintaining community spaces to perform, record,

75 learn about black culture, and engage citizenship on a daily and community-supported level.

Why Hip Hop for Brazil?

As I have argued, in some ways, we could understand hip hop’s presence in Brazil from the perspective of sampling and even consider hip hop a sampled genre. Having adopted hip hop, Brazilian hip hoppers transform the culture to produce their own product. We are forced to return, however, to the question of why hip hop makes sense for Brazil and Latin America. I have made the theoretical connections above to demonstrate how both Brazil and other Latin American societies have a long history of practicing reappropriations and recontextualizations. A musical genre and subculture rooted in these practices makes sense then. Hip hop more than any other genre makes sense for Brazil and Latin America because of hip hop’s history of connections to marginalized populations. To be clear, hip hop is practiced by and large by the economically, politically, and socially marginalized in Latin America. In its beginning moments and even today, though perhaps more so in the less commercial sphere, hip hop is still practiced by these sectors in the United States. It has always carried with it an element of resistance, of creating community and art despite a lack of resources and a low standing in the social hierarchy. Trigo’s concept of consumptive production, or transculturation from the act of consumption helps illustrate why hip hop makes sense in

Brazil and Latin America at large. The idea is that the individual, alienated as a

76 consumer, finds in consumption the possible agency—a limited one though—to make choices as to what elements to mix into a new whole.

Christopher Dunn summarizes Roberto Schwartz’s opinion that the antropofagia metaphor was in itself classist in that elite intellectuals were able to ignore the disconnect between themselves and the working classes by creating this conception of a generic

Brazilian national culture. Dunn notes that “in this view, cultural cannibalism functions as a sort of ideology of national identity that elides class inequality and ignores power differentials between metropolitan centers and peripheries” (20). While Oswald de

Andrade and his peers were indeed elite class theorists and artists attempting to break new ground in the construction of identity, and while the university educated

Tropicalistas can also be marked as elite class, hip hop comes from the streets, from the non-elite, poor and working classes. So hip hoppers’ own adoption of antropofagia as a working model of understanding their own bricolage transforms the cultural strategy into a viable option for any class, moving from using the theory to denote a generic, class-less

Brazilian identity to using it to describe their own day-to-day existence within hip hop and the periphery. While the theory remains primarily a political and cultural conception,

Banks’s and others’ use of it from below enacts a shift that makes the theory applicable to non-elite classes as well.

Hip hop and transculturation enable global connections and participation.

Antropofagia also does to a certain extent, but it always returns to Brazilian identity and cultural production. Transculturation and hip hop shift the focus to include resistance and community-building in the age of globalization and at once allow for an inward focus on

77 national Brazilian identity but also an outward focus as part of both a Latin American and a global hip hop community. Antropofagia simply just does not account for economic conditions but instead is rooted purely in the creative and political realms. Hip hop’s use of the theory, however, works towards including economy by inserting themselves into a once elite-class-only discussion. Transculturation, on the other hand, has been developed to account for all three. Economic gaps have been widening throughout Latin America, in particular since the 1970s and 80s. Rap and hip hop arrived to Brazil in the 1980s and quickly became an outlet for youth and it has continued there as an underground, or on the ground, methodology of education, community-building, and space of contestation as wealth gaps have only increased. Indeed, hip hop has gone hand in hand with these increases caused by globalization, so it can be said that hip hop makes more sense than rock or other genres as a musical subgenre suited to the interests of the marginalized. As rap music was founded on sampling elements of different sources to create new cultural productions, and as hip hop was originated with community and resistance in mind, they are perfect matches for marginalized youth in the Brazilian and other Latin American peripheries, societies that have a long history of recontextualization.

Hip hop has served two generations of Brazilian youth, and some of the pioneers of Brazilian hip hop continue to foster the next generations. Zulu King Nino Brown, for example, is the historian of the Casa do Hip Hop and insists that hip hop is first and foremost about education. As mentioned above, this is an education that is filling in gaps in the national education system and geared towards building a community within which individuals can find their own place. Recently, Nino created a compilation CD entitled

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Uma Só Voz: Mantendo o Hip Hop Vivo (Only One Voice: Keeping Hip Hop Alive). The title of the album makes it clear that in the mind of the hip hop community, hip hop is around to stay as a space to raise a collective voice. On the opening track, “A Voz do

King,” Brown lays out in detail how rap music is the voice of contestation but that it is given a negative image by the media. He states that the purpose of this project is to return to the essence of rap, which he calls rhythm and poetry, and promotes the fifth element of wisdom and knowledge. He states:

Zulu Nation Brasil

Apresenta:

Uma Só Voz: Mantendo o Hip Hop Vivo

O Rap é a voz da contestação

E atualmente ele está sendo veículado de uma forma negativa

e a mídia reforça essa imagem

Hoje a música rap

Se está distanciando da cultura hip hop

e o CD Uma Só Voz: Mantendo o Hip Hop Vivo

tem o objetivo de resgatar a essência do rap – ritmo e poesia

quinto elemento do hip hop – conhecimento, sabedoria

Salve Afrika Bambaataa

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Paz, União, Amor e Diversão

King Nino Brown (Zulu Nation Brasil—“A Voz do King”)

It’s clear from just this short intro song that Brown and others feel a need to defend the positive, affirming attributes of hip hop and rap to contrast the negative media attention thrust upon them. In this way, the album serves as an act of resistance against such criticism. It also serves as an education-oriented project for those in the hip hop community, reinforcing the beliefs of hip hoppers themselves by including common phrases about hip hop as a space of “peace, unity, love, and having fun8.”

The artwork for Uma Só Voz: Mantendo o Hip Hop Vivo also speaks to this aspect of community through hip hop culture. The cover art is a large square folded into fours.

The cover [FIGURE 8] is a mostly yellow background with the album title popping out in red. The title sits within a yellow circle reminiscent of the blue center circle of the

Brazilian flag, though here much larger. The artwork might be asking us to consider

‘keeping hip hop alive’ as a method of ‘order and progress’ given that this former tag line is presented here as if it were on a sash of sorts, much like the flag’s tag line cuts across the center of the flag’s main image. The yellow circle here is emitting yellow and white rays, as if it were a sun. Still, the parallels to the Brazlian flag are relevant and important.

8 This quote comes from Afrika Bambaataa, the founder of the Universal Zulu Nation and an early hip hop and electro-funk pioneer. He created the Universal Zulu Nation to promote hip hop as a tool for organizing black and other minority youth. Nino Brown’s status as a Zulu King is linked to the Brazilian branch of this organization, which is referenced above. 80

FIGURE 8. Uma Só Voz cover art

Unfolding the artwork, the front cover is in the upper right hand corner. The other panels include images representing four of the five elements of hip hop. The upper left hand corner shows a turntable playing a vinyl record and representing turntablism, or the dj.

Beneath this image is a close-up of a hand pressing a spray can and paint shooting into the air, representing graffiti. Beneath this photo is the image of a young man sitting in the patio of the Casa do Hip Hop in São Paulo reading a pamphlet from a Ciclo Cultural, a cultural cycle, or a series of cultural events. This image represents knowledge and wisdom. The final image, in the lower right corner are two members of the Backspin

Crew at their 25th anniversary celebration performing different breakdance moves. All of these images are divided, and in actuality connected, by rays of the front cover sun image that project outwards from the sun-like, flag-recalling yellow circle of the front cover and onto the other panels or folds. Each element emanates from one center, one voice, hip 81

FIGURE 9. Uma Só Voz cover art unfolded

hop. Further teasing out the connection between this image and the Brazilian flag, the album cover can be read to say that hip hop is at the center of the nation. While some would argue against this claim, it is an important one by the hip hop community, at once asserting its voice and inserting itself into the national fabric.

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FIGURE 10. Uma Só Voz cover art unfolded reverse side

The artwork here is simple but effective. All the elements of hip hop are represented here. All are given a position of prominence in the overall layout of the project. The final element, that of emceeing, is represented on the other side of the artwork [FIGURE 10]. A hand holds a microphone and is surrounded by the album credits. The microphone by itself on one side of the artwork might suggest a penchant for the words put forth in the songs compiled here. Given that the project is predominantly musical and largely rooted in the verbal message put forth in track one by Zulu King

Nino Brown that the hip hop community is one voice and is staying alive, and later put forth by Brown and several others that “hip hop will not die,” this solo position for the microphone makes sense. Still, all elements are made visually prominent here and

83 consumers of this disc are here visually encouraged to respect them all, and therefore to engage in the culture as a whole.

The track “Hip Hop Não Vai Morrer” features six emcees and is another song from Uma Só Voz that highlights these efforts to reinforce belief and participation in hip hop and the longevity of the community. Johnny MC talks about the community suffering from various forms of exclusion from its earliest days to the present but states that the struggle continues. Thaide talks of keeping one’s ego in check and points to how the natural order of learning and achieving is by learning from those with experience in order to continue the culture, stating, “todo profesor foi aluno primeiro” (every professor was a student first). Gaspar offers a list of important African connections with and within Brazil and Rappin’ Hood discusses the beginnings of hip hop in Brazil near the São Bento metro stop, citing the importance of the history, of Afrika Bambaataa, and of how “living in hip hop makes [him] happy.” All of these themes point towards maintaining and continuing hip hop in Brazil but also towards creating and maintaining this community as a safe space for minorities and the socially, politically, and economically marginalized.

“Hip Hop Não Vai Morrer” as a track, and Uma Só Voz as an album, exemplify the idea of transculturation from below. The album serves to capture cultural flows in motion and recompose them into a document that speaks to the local, that is, to the hip hop community of Brazil as one voice, one movement, one community. “Hip Hop Não

Vai Morrer” cannibalizes in several important ways. Musically, while I have yet to confirm the use of a sample, the guitar riff is at the very least a nod to that performed by

Dave Navarro, guitarist for U.S. rock band Jane’s Addiction, on the track “Bad Boy for

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Life” by New York rapper and producer Sean “P.Diddy” Combs. That song also explores themes of longevity, though in a different way that merits comparison and illuminates the differences between what hip hop has become in the United States and what it is in

Brazil. The lyric, “We ain’t goin’ nowhere, we ain’t goin’ nowhere, we can’t be stopped now, cuz it’s Bad Boy for life” talks of the longevity of and loyalty to P.Diddy’s record label Bad Boy Entertainment, now Bad Boy Records. That label has generated such acts as Notorious B.I.G., and now Janelle Monáe and Machine Gun Kelly, all very commercial acts of varying artistic motivations and thematic content. “Bad Boy for Life” is a classic rap statement of braggadocio in which the rappers boast of their own financial or other successes, represent their clique, and further bolster their image of success by proclaiming their longevity. Rap once promoted a small group, a gang, or a neighborhood in these regards. “Bad Boy for Life” promotes the label of the same name, and therefore itself as a brand and a lifestyle. P.Diddy himself sings, “Don’t worry if I write rhymes, I write checks,” positing that the most important part of what he does is control finances.

He continues, “Who’s the boss? Dudes is lost. Don’t think because I’m iced out I’m gonna cool off,” suggesting that wondering who is in charge is a poor question and that he has no intentions of slowing (cool off) his business just because he wears a lot of diamonds (iced out), here posited as a sign of success and achievement. It is clear that what is important to the rappers, and the idea that they are promoting, is personal financial success based in consumption and consumerism.

“Hip Hop Não Vai Morrer,” however, not only riffs on the guitar track of the

P.Diddy song, but retools it into an anthem about the genres’ longevity across

85 generations, survival, and community, with absolutely no concern towards the economic sphere associated with fame and super stardom. Much is revealed in the titles of these two songs, which both serve as the main lyrical hook to each piece or as part of it. With

“Bad Boy for Life,” interestingly, the “for life” element here seems to be be limited to the lifespan of these artists. There is an instant connection to lifespan and a recognition that death will end the life of Bad Boy Records and its Bad Boys. For example, later in the

P.Diddy song, rapper Mark Curry sings, “Bad Boy ‘til the casket drop.” It is possible that

P. Diddy has his own immortality in mind when he says at the end “we gonna stay right here, for ever and ever and ever…” However there is no real sense of the life of Bad Boy extending beyond the life of its purveyors. “Hip Hop Não Vai Morrer,” however, has another attitude. First, rather than promoting one record label, the song draws on artists from different generations of hip hop in Brazil who all work independently, or with small independent labels, with the exception of Thaide. No one is trying to promote a label or a brand here, but simply hip hop culture and community. Second, the difference between

“we ain’t goin’ nowhere” and “for life” versus the Brazilian song title and hook, which translates as “hip hop will not die,” or “hip hop is not going to die,” is an important one.

Bad Boy’s life is about amassing wealth, power, and position for the individuals involved in the label and its music. When the casket drops, we might imagine that wealth and power will be passed on to P.Diddy’s next of kin, but the song posits these characteristics as fleeting, ending with the death of these artists. “Hip Hop Não Vai Morrer,” however, suggests that it is the culture, hip hop itself, that will go on. It will endure due to individual efforts, but more so due to community-wide efforts and attitudes that hold the

86 history, and the present and the future of the culture, in highest regard. The attitude behind the lyrics “will not die” require action on the part of the rappers singing here, but also on the part of those they are singing to. Hip hop will not die because of this participation. In this way the song could also be read as a warning to stay involved to maintain the culture, but this is more of a proclamation, or a declaration of faith, that because of the attitudes promoted in the song, which are promoted at events and in other formats as well, the culture will live on indefinitely, regardless of the lifespan of the individuals on this track. From this comparison it is possible to understand the fundamental ethos at work in Brazilian hip hop. Yes there are those strictly focused on selling rap music rooted in consumption of material goods and women and the accumulation of wealth. However, the greater voice is the community voice that works to build and maintain itself as a space from which to create and critique.

Lyrically “Hip Hop Não Vai Morrer” also does some other important work, taking a jab in the direction of U.S. emcee Nas. While Nas is widely considered among the most inventive and poignant lyricists in hip hop both at the underground and commercial levels, and while he circulates in both of those spheres, his choice of more serious themes and general tendency towards avoiding guest performances on songs by artists associated more with the commercial side leave him strongly associated with underground hip hop. In 2006, Nas released the album Hip Hop Is Dead, with a title track causing a great stir at all levels of hip hop. On the one hand, it is difficult to criticize

Nas’s belief about hip hop due to it really being a commentary on hip hop’s vitality as a form and a movement. The title is commenting on the turn towards bling rap, which

87 despite the updated moniker is simply a continuation of a strain of rap about conspicuous consumption of cars, jewelry, sex, and women. In short, these are hot commodities used to elevate the egos, personae, and worth of a given rapper within the commercial rap sphere. In the 2000s there were few exceptions to this style of rap in the commercial sphere and so the critique is that hip hop and rap no longer had the community-orienting power so associated with them in the 1980s and even 1990s.

While Nas’s claim against the commercial side of hip hop resonates with many, and while such a polemical statement can be necessary to engage debate, Nas misses several very important points. Plenty of underground U.S. emcees and groups, like

Boston’s Mr. Lif or northern California duo Blackalicious to name just two, have represented more social, political, and otherwise non-bling themes throughout this new century. Moreover, to say that hip hop is dead because of such a turn towards conspicuous consumption is to miss out on how hip hop culture is working in countries around the world. In Cuba, for example, hip hoppers tend towards criticism of consumption and of self-definition through material accumulation while emphasizing building connections with hip hoppers in other parts of the world. In Guatemala, emcees represent the Highlands, distinguishing themselves from the underground and promoting the importance of their Mayan cultural heritage, even rapping in Kaqchikel, Kiche, and other dialects. Discussing US rappers with hip hoppers at the Casa do Hip Hop and in other locations, many were critical of Snoop Dogg’s performance in Brazil given his highlighting marijuana, sex, and other consumption. “Hip Hop Não Vai Morrer” rebuts

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Nas’s claim in a similar vein (and quite openly with its title), though most certainly supports and echoes Nas’s disappointment in the turn of the commercial sphere.

Conclusion: Theories and Methods of Cultural Contact, Hip Hop, and Citizenship

In this chapter, I have examined major theories of cultural contact and creation such as antropofagia and transculturation and compared them to the practice of sampling.

The three ideas share a basic ethos of taking pieces of varying cultures in contact and constructing new cultural manifestations from those selected elements. Selection is an important factor in all three concepts because it signals the agency of cultural creators, recognizing their choice of what elements they choose and how they construct them into new wholes or cultural forms. Resistance, either collective or individual, is another key component of transculturation, antropofagia, and sampling as all three enable cultural creators to define identity in spite of outside pressures.

I argue that transculturation was developed by Ortiz, Rama, and Trigo to best understand cultural contact and subsequent manifestations as active creations in response to that very contact. In other words, when people find themselves in the midst of such contact and cultural flows, they draw inspiration from all cultures at play as they create within this new context. I have demonstrated that like many musicians and other artists and thinkers before them, hip hoppers have embraced their particular musical form in order to understand their own positions on local and global levels. In subsequent chapters

I explore in further depth how hip hoppers are using these processes, and hip hop, to enact real changes in their lives. For example, I further demonstrate how hip hop

89 functions as a contestatory space in which the marginalized can build community and stake claims to citizenship and its basic rights. The songs and art work analyzed above from Uma Só Voz offer a glimpse at some of the efforts to maintain that space and that community and work towards a fortified citizenship in spite of the exclusionary effects of these different forms of marginalization. Marcelo D2’s work illustrates how, even at the major commercial level, hip hop is considering just how it mixes sounds and images from varying eras and locations to create a new cultural product and establish hip hop as part of Brazilian musical history. Inclusion in this musical history, which was deeply intertwined in Brazil’s nation-building project, and remains intertwined in defining

Brazilian national identity and culture, is a strong connection to a larger citizenship and recognition sought through the work of Brazilian hip hoppers.

If rap is the voice of contestation, and hip hop is “one voice,” then hip hop itself is a voice of contestation, or that uses rap music to create this protest/contestation. This is a key performance of citizenship, as citizens throughout the world have fought for their citizenship through community-building and protest. Hip hoppers are using rap in Brazil to create space for themselves and their cultural backgrounds, and calling attention to their inherent importance. As rap and hip hop arrived at the tale end of the last Brazilian dictatorship, it is understandable why people would have looked at the time for a vehicle of expression that enabled them to bolster their own self-esteem and community-building efforts and that improved their access to elements of citizenship. Rap, then, is an act of citizenship in the basic sense of fighting for rights of inclusion.

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Chapter 2

“Faz Barulho, Família!”: Hip Hop, Community, and Citizenship

Introduction. Zulu King Nino Brown: hip hop citizen

“Mais uma!” Nino said, as I obliged his request for one more photo of him standing in front of the Universal Zulu Nation mural in the Casa do Hip Hop and holding above his head the framed certificate of citizenship he had just received from the town council of Diadema. Nino would repeat this to me several times as he took pictures with people following his citizenship ceremony that June day in 2010.

Zulu King Nino Brown has lived and worked in São Paulo since he migrated there from the northeastern state of Pernambuco as a teenager in the 1970s. At that time, he fell in love with what Brazilians call black music, which includes soul, funk, R&B, blues, and many other genres, and he developed a voracious musical appetite that continues to this day. Nino attended bailes black, or black dances/parties organized for teenagers and young adults as spaces to socialize. There he found others that shared his tastes in black culture, and he was able to trocar idéia, literally to trade ideas, with his peers about music, dance, and even the fashion they were seeing on album covers. They would collect LP records and see and hear the latest releases when acquaintances would bring them back from trips to the United States.

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When hip hop arrived to Brazil in the early 1980s, Nino was already well versed in black music and the community that he found within it. But hip hop offered something more in its five elements. It offered a chance to build community in new ways. Its four artistic elements (emcee, deejay, breakdance, graffiti) created spaces for hip hoppers to specialize in one or more of them, yet still feel part of a larger culture. The fifth element, knowledge or wisdom, was originally instituted by Universal Zulu Nation founder and hip hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa to encourage people to know the history of hip hop and its connections to black culture on a global scale. In Brazil this element has proven fundamental towards encouraging young Brazilians, particularly those hip hoppers of poor classes and of African heritage, to search for their place in the Brazilian socio- economic sphere and Brazil’s connections to Africa and to a larger African diaspora.

Nino Brown has been crucial in the promotion of hip hop in São Paulo and throughout

Brazil, and in particular of the fifth element.

Nino resides in São Bernardo do Campo, one of the seven cities in the ABCD region to the southeast of São Paulo. São Bernardo neighbors Diadema, home to the Casa do Hip Hop where until recently Nino worked as the resident historian of hip hop and black culture for a decade or more. In 2013, Nino began a new Casa in São Bernardo do

Campo, due to what he reported by email was a change in support and structure to the

Casa in Diadema. For purposes of this dissertation, when referring to his work at the

Casa or to the Casa do Hip Hop in general, I am referring to that of Diadema where I conducted much field research and developed many connections with hip hoppers from the greater community. Nino has encourged me to return to São Paulo to visit his new

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Casa do Hip Hop in São Paulo, where they have built a recording studio in addition to offering space for courses and various hip hop-related events. I will follow up on that invitation in preparation to expand this project into a monograph.

Nino is revered by all hip hoppers in Brazil for his dedication to the culture, to community, and to youth. Under his watch, the Casa do Hip Hop has served as a space of gathering and learning for hundreds of youth and statistics have demonstrated a reduction in murder and other crime in Diadema during its existence. That day in June 2010 the

Diadema town council honored Nino for his efforts and for his commitment with a ceremony that lasted several hours and included speeches by city representatives and members of the hip hop community. Music, dancing, and food with Nino’s friends, family, and invited guests followed. My invitation to the event was an extension of

Nino’s hospitality but also an opportunity for me to witness an important milestone for

Nino and for hip hop. This official recognition of Nino for his work and efforts came with all the rights and benefits of any citizen of Diadema. While those benefits are largely symbolic given that Nino’s town is adjacent to Diadema and given that this is a city-level recognition and not a national distinction, the importance of the moment should not be overlooked. Beyond Nino’s personal recognition, this was a government body recognizing hip hop for its capacity to bring people together and in short, to provide in ways the government had not been capable of doing. While hip hop had been recognized before, even at the national level through the famed pontos de cultura program, this city- level recognition was a formalized version of the sentiments of gratitude that the people

93 of Diadema and its neighboring cities, as well as hip hoppers at large, feel towards the work of Nino, the Casa, and hip hop.

As I demonstrate in chapter 3, Hip hop has always been connected to the city, whether the center or the suburbs. This connection begs the exploration of hip hop’s connection to citizenship. First, an examination of citizenship, in particular in Brazil, will be important. A subsequent understanding of some of Brazilian hip hop’s connections to citizenship and what is at stake for the hip hop community will lead to an examination of

Brazilian music’s relationship to citizenship. This will lead into my analysis of the importance of sound and the musical component of music, in addition to other musical choices as they relate to citizenship, and finally how hip hop plays a crucial role in the citizenship of the marginalized people in Brazil.

Citizenship in Brazil

When we speak of citizenship, we speak of the rights and benefits afforded to people living legally and naturalized within a nation. This then excludes people visiting for any length of time or even those who have permanent legal or illegal residence within a country, though legal permanent residents will often share similar benefits of the naturalized or born there. By benefits, I mean the rights associated with citizenship, such as the right to land and/or home ownership, to make money via fair working conditions, to expect and receive fair treatment under the law, to representation, to education. These are just some of the characteristics that define citizenship in many countries, though exact definitions of course vary from place to place. In his Citizenship & Social Class (1949), 94

T.H. Marshall outlined the basic components of citizenship and what each component should offer in the case of England, though always with a lean towards a universal understanding of citizenship. To best understand citizenship he proposed:

…to divide citizenship into three parts…I shall call these three parts, or

elements, civil, political and social. The civil element is composed of the

rights necessary for individual freedom—liberty of the person, freedom of

speech, thought and faith, the right to own property and to conclude valid

contracts, and the right to justice. The last is of a different order from the

others, because it is the right to defend and assert all one’s rights on terms

of equality with others and by due process of law. This shows us that the

institutions most directly associated with civil rights are the coursts of

justice. By the political element I mean the right to participate in the

exercise of political power, as a member of a body invested with political

authority or as an elector of the members of such a body. The

corresponding institutions are parliament and councils of local

government. By the social element I mean the whole range from the right

to a modicum of economic welfare and security to the right to share to the

full in the social heritage and to live the life of a civilised being according

to the standards prevailing in the society. The institutions most closely

connected with it are the educational system and the social services (8).

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Marshall continues, suggesting that each of these types of rights developed in its own century, civil rights in the 18th, political rights in the 19th, and social rights in the 20th century, with political and social rights building on civil rights, and social rights building on political rights. Also, each realm has further developed in terms of enfranchisement

(12-13). Tom Bottomore in a 1992 essay reflecting on and updating Marshall’s contribution, notes that ethnic, racial, gender and class hierarchies have played an important role in the development of citizenship, arguing that rather than citizenship on a national level, human rights on the national and global levels are what are at stake.

Indeed, this conception broadens definitions of citizenship and rights to a more universal conception, understanding all human beings as worthy of full participation and rights (90-

91).

As a general conception of citizenship, UNESCO refers to citizenship as “a collection of rights and obligations that give individuals a formal juridical identity.” It is this status, according to the United Nations, that arose in conjuction with the development of the modern nation state to promote full participation to those members of the nation state and to distinguish between other states and their citizens (UNESCO).

In Brazil, the aforementioned rights are afforded to citizens under the law. The

Brazilian Constitution of 1988 was ratified just three years after the end of the military dictatorship of to period of 1964 to 1985. The preamble sets the people and human rights- centered tone of the rest of the document, stating:

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Nós, representantes do povo brasileiro, reunidos em Assembléia Nacional

Constituinte para instituir um Estado Democrático, destinado a assegurar o

exercício dos direitos sociais e individuais, a liberdade, a segurança, o

bem-estar, o desenvolvimento, a igualdade e a justiça como valores

supremos de uma sociedade fraterna, pluralista e sem preconceitos,

fundada na harmonia social e comprometida, na ordem interna e

internacional, com a solução pacífica das controvérsias, promulgamos, sob

a proteção de Deus, a seguinte CONSTITUIÇÃO DA REPÚBLICA

FEDERATIVA DO BRASIL.

This emphasis on rights, liberty, safety, well-being, development, equality, justice, and pluralism is noteworty in its intent. These values are further exemplified by the various articles throughout the body of the constitution. For example, Article 1 lists “a soberania, a cidadania, a dignidade da pessoa humana; os valores sociais do trablaho e da livre iniciativa, e o pluralismo político” as the fundamental initiatives upon which the government and the constitution are founded. Article 3 boasts that its motives are to

“construir uma sociedade livre, justa e solidária; garantir o desenvolvimento nacional; erradicar a pobreza e a marginalização e reduzir as desigualdades sociais e regionais; e promover o bem de todos, sem preconceitos de origem, raça, sexo, cor, idade e quaisquer outras formas de discriminação.”

Again, the intention to not discriminate based on a variety of categories and qualities is noble, as is the attention paid to eradicating poverty and marginalization and

97 otherwise reducing social and regional inequality. Indeed it is remarkable for a document such as a constitution to include these ideas. Clearly its ratifcation date of 1988, locates it in a socio-political era where these concerns and this language were able to be included in new government documents. That is to say that the 1980s were post-1960s and 1970s, when anti-racist, anti-war/pro-peace, and feminist movements throughout the world made great strides towards building awareness around these and other important issues.

However, as in many places throughout the world, many of the rights guaranteed in the Brazilian constitution are, in fact, dependent largely on class or economic status, and also on race. As stated in the above constitutional excerpts, it is not that these rights are openly denied for certain people, however there is evidence that Brazilians of lower economic status and those not of European descent have a harder time gaining full access to these rights and therefore the full benefits of citizenship. And this despite the constitution stating that, in addition to the above citations, “homens e mulheres são iguais em direitos e obrigações, nos termos desta Constituição.” Perhaps the latter part of this phrase then, “…in the terms of this Constitution,” opens a caveat for how equality plays out in reality. Cetainly that was not the intent of the writers of this Constitution, however reality has been shown to differ depending on many of the factors discussed in the examples above.

Melissa Nobles examines this very phenomenon within the United States and

Brazil in her Shades of Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics. She examines the role of the census in the definition of race and the development of racism

98 and its effects on political and social life and national identity in both countries. She demonstrates that as in the U.S.:

In Brazil, likewise, all are members of the ever-evolving Brazilian race,

although certain Brazilians have enjoyed the full benefits and privileges of

such membership in ways that many more have not. In significant

measure, these differences in experience have turned on skin color and

other physical features presumed to represent Brazil’s three founding

races. In both countries, racial membership has pertained to everyone, but

certain racial memberships have conferred privilege and served as a

standard for full citizenship, and others have denied and then restricted

citizenship. (178)

So indeed the intention of citizenship, as it is sold to the people, is that all people are equal under the law. However, as I explore here as well as in chapter 3, the very notion of “whitening,” and of the idea of lighter skin as more appealing and more representative of Brazil and of what Brazil aspired to be, undercuts this supposed good intention of equality. It places an unfair, biased preference as a standard.

Earlier Nobles analyzes this proposed strategy of whitening, as in the gradual and eventual whitening of, or creation of lighter and lighter skin as generations of Brazilians of varying ethnicities mix. This was the predominant thinking by elite classes, that the

Brazilian citizen would be whiter and whiter as the years went by. Nobles notes that “to

99 be Brazilian, in contrast, has turned on an elastic notion of race in which all Brazilians are regarded as racially mixed and all are becoming ‘whiter’. Yet whatever the extent of racial mixture among Brazilians, the majority have lacked the basic rights associated with citizenship for most of the twentieth century and for all of the country’s earlier history”

(178). Also, notes Nobles, “clearly… color is a significant variable in determining levels of educational attainment, employment prospects, and income” (119).

Robert J. Cottrol has also examined the history of whitening in Brazil, demonstrating Brazil’s late 19th and early 20th century immigration policies as the main example of Brazil’s clear desire to whiten, as official efforts to increase European and

Eastern European immigration and limit or completely deny African immigration were the norm. Cottrol notes that:

Branqueamento (the desire to whiten Brazil) would become national

policy starting in the Velha República (Old Republic), formed in 1889.

The republic differed from its imperial predecessor. The law of the empire

protected slavery but in most other major respects was silent on the

question of race. The law of the republic was different. It would outlaw

slavery. Nevertheless, constitutional and statutory provisions would make

clear the desire of the republic’s leaders to transform Brazil into a white

nation. (143)

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Through Nobles’ and Cottrol’s work it is possible to understand the social positioning of a community such as that of hip hop in Brazil. Hip hop becomes a space in which to rally around common experiences as minorities, both ethnic and economic. It serves as a counterweight to the more than a century of official “whitening” and otherwise ostracizing political rhetoric and aspirations. This type of policy positions minority groups as less important and less desired within their own land and amongst their own people. And importantly and tragically, it encourages them to think less of themselves in their own minds. To fight for citizenship rights and space, then, becomes a matter of mental stability and self-esteem as much as cultural, social, political, and economic stability.

James Holston examines how Brazilians have fought for their rights to citizenship and their citizenship rights, largely within the context of housing and infrastructure.

Throughout his book Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in

Brazil, Holston analyzes the citizenship of Brazil, particularly in São Paulo, its largest city. He looks at how people have struggled and continue to struggle for their rights, having been forced over almost a century into one precarious living situation after another. Holston describes the poor first living side by side with the rich, but then being forced farther and farther outside of the city center with the advent of city expansion, industrialization, and further modern and postmodern development(s). Finally, some poor have relocated to downtown areas, the most impoverished favelas sitting adjacent freshly built luxurious high rise apartment buildings heavily guarded with security personnel, cameras, and walls or other barriers. All the while, construction of public services such as

101 transportation (162) and utilities (165-169) frequently could not match the pace of the continued outward push of the poor, often taking years. Holston examines the ways that people resist this type of treatment, in particular pointing to how squatters and “illegal” residents have claimed their land, built their homes, and then continued to develop those spaces and their communities. History has demonstrated the development of a deceptive real estate market that allowed several people to each sell the same plot of land, and often more than once, leaving people without legal recourse (169-70).

Holston captures the spirit of those affected by these processes by calling their citizenship an “insurgent citizenship.” The resistance implied in that term correctly acknowledges the agency of these people, though Holston makes it clear that any bright spots are often part of a systemic plan to make people happy in their own misery, or at least complacent in it to a degree, stating that “as a strategy of domination, the deployment of these differentiated citizenships as much deprives most citizens of their physical well-being as it diminishes their standing as citizens” (312).

By “differentiated citizenship,” Holston explains that not all Brazilians are treated equally, or rather, not all citizens have the same access or rights. He notes that:

Due to this perpetuation, most Brazilians have been denied political rights,

limited in property ownership, forced into segregated and often illegal

conditions of residence, estranged from the law, and funneled into labor as

servile workers. These discriminations result not from the exclusion of

Brazilians from citizenship itself. If that were the case, it would be

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difficult to explain their sense of belonging to the nation. Rather, these

Brazilians are discriminated against because they are certain kinds of

citizens. (7)

Indeed, as Holston puts it earlier when talking about the differences between citizens, “in legalizing such differences, it consolidates their inequalities and perpetuates them in other forms throughout society.” He calls this “a differentiated citizenship because it is a [sic] based on differentiating and not equating kinds of citizens” (5). This in order to maintain belief in the common bond of national identity, but at the same time to maintain the power of those who hold it. From Holston’s work and from my own observations, we can understand São Paulo’s hip hop community to have faced similar struggles. Holston remarks that:

…cities remain strategic arenas for the development of citizenship. Far

from dematerializing their importance, today’s globalizations of capital,

industry, migration, communication, and democracy render cities more

strategic: by inscribing these global forces into the spaces and relations of

daily life, contemporary cities make them manifest for unprecedented

numbers of people. City streets combine new identies of territory,

contract, and education with ascribed ones of race, religion, cultures, and

gender. Their crowds catalyze these new combinations into the active

ingredients of political movements that develop new sources of rights and

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agendas of citizenship concerning the very conditions of city life. Thus

cities provide the dense articulation of global and local forces in response

to which people think and act themselves into politics, becoming new

kinds of citizens. In the process, cities become both the site and the

substance not only of the uncertainties of modern citizenship but also of its

emergent forms. (22-23)

In the following section I examine the connections between citizenship and hip hop in Brazil, analyzing, among others, a moment of police harassment of break dancers in general, as well as one individual’s very personal experience. The performance of the body within the city street is an example of people converging, charged with their own educational, cultural, territorial, and other backgrounds to express their voice, their agency, in an effort to define citizenship in the performative act.

The harassment faced by those first break dancers, who finally felt forced to leave the city centers, for example is an expulsion from the city center much like that faced by poor classes some decades earlier as Holston demonstrates. What is more, these are people that continue to battle marginalization, economically, politically, socially, racially and otherwise. And this despite the aforementioned preamble and constitutional articles guaranteeing protection against, in the constitution’s own word choice, marginalization.

Hip hoppers live in many parts of the city, including in some of those downtown favelas adjacent to new high-rise apartments as well as in the outskirts of São Paulo proper. Their living spaces range from favelas to middle class neighborhoods and many come from

104 families that have built their own residential space, or from areas near where this process happens. Part of this construction, as Holston points out, is a new style of citizenship. In the case of hip hoppers, this is a citizenship based in community building through art and knowledge. Their claims are staked and are longstanding at this point. Holston notes that

“Thus, in building the urban peripheries, São Paulo’s workers became property owners, taxpayers, and modern consumers. Through the development of these unprecendented identities, they came to see themselves as contributor-citizens entitled to stakeholder rights in the city” (23).

Holston talks about building a new city or a new view of it, a new polis with its own order of citizenship (313). Hip hop is after this. Connected to the street, using the urban setting and its pathways to create new avenues to community and build the polis in the most community-minded way and even in terms of physical structures (Pardue, 2011:

219). While Holston focuses on residential property and aspects like housing, plumbing, etc, hip hoppers fit right in to this group of marginalized citizens made to live on the outskirts and with less access to services and the power center. Hip hop culture, however, offers a way for this community to organize for better services and access, as well as to create their own order of citizenship, that is, through organization, performance, classes, etc. Through their commitment to building community through hip hop, they are indeed contributor-citizens staking claim to their rights within the city, and more broadly within the nation.

While citizenship and its associated rights are not denied in publicly admitted ways, exclusion and marginalization still play large roles in maintaining the status quo for

105 those in the social majority, which is dependent on excluding those that do not fit within that group. While hip hoppers are indeed organizing to gain access to certain basic citizenship rights, such as better access to health care and services, they are also building their visibility as an underserved group. As such they are building their ability to represent themselves and be heard and further organize. Hip hop functions as a socio- political movement, then, raising awareness of their own humanity through music and other arts as well as knowledge building. Hip hop’s organization is comparable to that of the Civil Rights movement in the US, to the Movimento Negro Unido (MNU) in Brazil, and even to the Movimento Sem Terra (MST) in Brazil. Hip hop certainly draws influence from these movements, as well, as they all used organization and community building to gain access to rights that were being denied to marginalized peoples. As

Nino’s Diadema citizenship was largely a symbolic gesture in a time far removed from that of the aforementioned movements, we can understand that hip hop’s struggles are not exactly the same. But their concerns are real and valid and linked to the same social problems against which the Civil Rights, MNU, and MST movements organized themselves. Access, inclusion, visibility, and the expectation of the basic human right of equal treatment are, as I see it, the motivations of all of these initiatives. With the fifth element palestras at the monthly Hip Hop em Ação events covering important black figures and groups throughout world history, as well as other events organized throughout São Paulo and Brazil, Nino Brown and Brazilian hip hop as a movement are creating an expectation, or a general culture within the movement, that very much seeks out connections with other black movements. They are situating themselves among those

106 movements, including themselves in the greater conversation. By no means would Nino or anyone overgeneralize and call all black culture the same. But as I demonstrate later in this chapter, there is a solidarity felt and promoted that highlights similar experiences as points of connection to other black movements and populations, regardless of the nation in which they take place or reside.

While hip hop is organizing itself around access to basic elements of national citizenship, indeed it is simultaneously organizing around an alternative citizenship that thinks outside of national borders, and in my view aims at empowerment by bolstering self-esteem and highlighting their place within that larger, transnational sphere. In terms of education and as I mention in chapter 1, it has been noted (Weller & Paz Tella, 196) that history misses a lot of important elements of Brazil and Brazilians’ connections to

Africa. From the U.S., we can note similar gaps in the history taught across the country.

African-Americans are often only considered in the context of the civil rights movement, or within slavery and as slaves, but with much of that history glossed over as one chapter in a book as well as within the history of the nation.

This type of official absence speaks loudly about the nation’s appreciation and position on African-descended and other minority populations. Missing from the education of its citizens, but happily and eagerly included when it is time to sing the praises of the nation as a melting pot, as in the case of the U.S. tag line that also significantly erases individuality by melting it or synthesizing it into one. In Brazil’s case, this synthesis has been touted as a racial democracy, which purports a racial paradise that at once links to notions of earthly paradise associated with the tropical and

107 subtropical climes of Brazil whilst ignoring racial discrimination or prejudices that have long factored into discussions on social differences there. Yet those prejudices were always part of the conception given the primary bias towards the status of the Portuguese as superior to the indigenous and African components of the “Brazilian race.” Cottrol notes how Brazilian sociologist and anthropologist Gilberto Freyre did not coin the term

“racial democracy,” but was responsible for its popularization both in Brazil and abroad.

Cottrol discusses the term, and says that:

The outline of the thesis was simple enough. Racial mixture had created a

“Brazilian race.” That new race took from the best elements of the

nation’s three races. The civilization, the laws, the language, the

religion—all of course came from the Portuguese. But the Africans and

the Indians contributed as well. Their contributions were less substantial

than those of the Portuguese, to be sure, more in the way of colorful

folkloric customs than great achievements in law or science, literature or

the arts. But they were part of the national culture and that should be

acknowledged. Racial harmony would be the Brazilian way. Brazil would

proudly acknowledge that it was a biological and cultural blend of the

three races while of course stressing that it was the Portuguese who played

the predominant role in shaping the national civilization. (161-2)

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Cottrol and others (Guimarães, 125) have pointed to UNESCO’s investigation of race and racism in Brazil in the early 1950s as an early debunking of the myth of racial democracy. But its effects still linger in popular conceptualizations of race relations and therefore on actual minority rights and race relations. “To this day in Brazil,” says Elisa

Larkin Nascimento, “the popular conscience expresses racist ideas of biological inferiority in many ways, one of them being a primary concern with what is ‘in the blood’” (70). In a word, representation, inclusion, class, race, and ethnicity are key factors that are intertwined with citizenship in Brazil. The hip hop community is a population that wrestles with all of these issues and so offers some unique insights into the trappings of Brazilian citizenship.

Hip hop and Citizenship: what is at stake?

Hip hop’s arrival to Brazil in the early 1980s followed the surge in popularity of

African-American-style soul and funk, most particularly in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

The military dictatorship9 that began in 1964 ended in 1985, so it is important to understand that hip hop was starting as that dictatorship was in full swing and began to grow as the dictatorship was dying down. On the ground, this meant encounters with

9 The Brazilian government was overthrown by the military in a 1964 coup that ousted then president João Goulart for fear of his plotting a leftist conspiracy (Burns, 443). Once Goulart began supporting land reform initiatives that aimed to break up large landowning estates, as well as other initiatives like his “Package Plan” that “called for fundamental economic and political changes that would benefit the lower classes (437), the military and elite and middle classes sought to remove him. The resulting dictatorship lasted until 1985 and served to strengthen efforts at internationalizing Brazil’s economy, ultimately weakening them through high interest International Monetary Fund loans, while repressing its own people (474). 109 authorities bent on maintaining order. One particularly poignant example of such a run-in happened to Nelsão Triunfo, one of the first break dancers in Brazil and an elder statesman of hip hop there. Nelsão is one of the gentlest people you will ever meet, but carries with him a stance of defiance and resistance that permeates his work and life choices. Hip hop arrived to São Paulo first in the form of break dance. Nelsão led his own break dance crew, Funk & Cia (Funk & Co.), performing on the Rua Vinte Quatro de

Maio outside shopping gallerias. Police harassment led the group to relocate near the São

Bento metro stop by the São Bento church. Further problems led to breakers leaving the downtown for cities like Diadema, far removed from the city center by a combined trolleybus and metro ride of an hour or more, that is, via today’s transportation options.

At one point in the downtown days, Nelsão was stopped by a police officer downtown and told to cut his hair, which at the time was a large afro. The racial and power implications of such harassment are deep, and Nelsão still carries this offense with him now almost thirty years later. He told me that at that moment of being told to cut his hair, he vowed to himself that he would never cut it again, and he never did. Today his hair remains long and he maintains it in a tam hat the style of which was made famous by Bob

Marley who used it to contain his dreadlocks from time to time. When Nelsão wants to get a rise out of a crowd watching him dance, or at the end of a dance routine, he will whip his head around until the hat flies from his head and his hair pops out, exploding from underneath. The cheers from the crowd, and the exuberance on Nelsão’s face at that moment represent a communication of sorts between him and the crowd. His hair is a living protest, but more so an affirmation of culture, history, and community for all to

110 see. Through such affirmation, it is impossible to not see the resistance at work and the importance of hip hop’s work towards ethnic and cultural self-esteem, and more broadly towards citizenship, here based on resistance, education, and cultural rights.

Some level of government concern came to exist under the presidency of Luiz

Inácio Lula da Silva, better known as Lula, with the pontos de cultura program that doled out funding to community centers to teach the arts. Centers of design sprang up, as did various music-oriented programs. In Diadema, the Casa do Hip Hop became a ponto de cultura and still continues to teach the four artistic elements (emcee, deejay, break dance, graffiti) of hip hop culture as well as what is known as the fifth element, that of knowledge. The four artistic elements allow students, mostly youth between the ages of 8 and 18, to build skills, confidence, and self-esteem in one or more of these practices, which have historical connections to African-originated forms. The fifth element serves as a way to fill in the gaps in official education and teach young people, many from ethnic minority backgrounds, about the cultural and historical connections between Brazil and Africa, as well as other places, such as other Portuguese-speaking nations and the US and its black cultures. In addition, through community celebrations and events organized by the Casa do Hip Hop and other members of the hip hop community, spaces are created from which to contest the absence of recognition of minority existence in official discourse.

Hip hoppers emphasize that the importance of hip hop is that it has the ability to educate. Nino Brown told me in one of our interviews that this was the bottom line he wanted to stress. And São Paulo emcee Rashid points to hip hop’s educational purpose

111 when he notes the importance of the element of rap, or emceeing, and more broadly of hip hop, in his song “R.A.P.” There he posits “se isso fez pá nós tudo que a escola não faz. Me deu ideais” (if this did for us everything that school doesn’t do. It gave me ideals)

(Rashid, “R.A.P.”). Here Rashid is pointing to the aforementioned gaps in the education system and how rap, and by extension black culture, did for him what school did not, giving him ideals to live by and strive for, a significant measure in terms of fostering self- esteem.

Derek Pardue has also analyzed this pedagogic tendency in several hip hop artists and organizations. He cites the non-profit hip hop organization Força Ativa’s efforts in getting a library built in the town of Cidade Tiradentes. Pardue notes that prior to this library, the closest library to Cidade Tiradentes was forty-five minutes away by bus. The construction of this library, then, was a way to enable Cidade Tiradentes, a poorer, working class area, greater access to information and knowledge. At the library’s inauguration, an elder member of the organization stated “you can’t change the world without understanding it. To read is a principal way of understanding.” Later, the hip hoppers in the audience repeated a similar slogan, “ler é o jeito de entender” (to read is the way to understand) (2011: 219-20). This importance of reading and learning was also evident during my visits to the Casa do Hip hop. Both artists and students alike would reference the Casa’s library of African, African-American, African Brazilian, and hip hop materials as an important collection, access to which has helped them build their own knowledge. When people return to or visit the Casa, they visit with Nino Brown and others in the Casa library. Clearly, hip hoppers consider education a way to better

112 understand the world and also a way to change it and to contest their own marginalization and lack of access.

In my observations, the very practice of hip hop as a lifestyle and as a community, and its continued presence for over thirty years in Brazil, speaks to its importance as a space from which to assert agency and declare one’s existence. This is an important benefit to hip hop given that the majority of its practitioners live in marginalized areas of the city, in small towns that developed on the margins of São Paulo, or in favelas. This is to say that hip hop has been transformed by its practitioners into a space from which to contest economic and racial marginalization. And to contest these problems of exclusion, thereby demanding inclusion, or at the very least recognition of the problem of exclusion as a way to build awareness and eventually gain missing citizenship elements, is a major component of hip hop’s connection to citizenship in Brazil.

My contention is that hip hop as a cultural sphere serves as a contestatory space for the Brazilian hip hop community. As I argue in chapter one, theoretically hip hop fits

Brazil like a glove. It is a musical culture that allows Brazilian hip hoppers to digest what elements they see fit, inject local themes and musical interests (tastes of course both influenced by what are popularly accepted as Brazilian genres or non-Brazilian genres, say samba in the former and rock or hip hop/rap in the latter) and put into the world a new production while reaching out to participate in a global circuit. Brazilian musical history has already cleared the path for hip hop as a strong choice of music and subculture for those that choose it, or are chosen by it as some might argue. In addition, given Brazil’s stark class divisions quite similar to those found within New York City

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(consider the Bronx versus Manhattan for example), hip hop’s birth place, it is easy to understand how hip hop can function for São Paulo and other areas of Brazil. Hip hop offers a space to vent and release, a space to debate and question, a space to celebrate and give thanks. It offers a space to criticize and to build. For someone living in squalor, or marginalized for where they come from, how much money their family has, or the color of their skin, access to such spaces is very enticing and enriching. Of course there are other spaces within which to vent, celebrate, criticize, and build. Other communities have built graphic design schools through the pontos de cultura government program for just one example. So why choose hip hop?

As a community or as an individual, hip hop provides a sense of sharing and a sense of visibility. Each element of hip hop is built on these premises. You share your words or sounds or images or dance moves with an audience, no matter if it is people within the movement or people outside of it, and no matter if it is on a street corner, a stage, a wall, or through headphones or speakers. This visibility creates a platform from which the individual or groups (small or large, so, a band or a graffiti collective, or the community at large) can make their statements, whether they are celebratory, constructive, critical, or otherwise.

This idea of visibility is of enormous importance to people whose voices and opinions often go unheard. Being marginalized people by and large, their voices are suppressed in some way, shape or form. Of course it is not everyone that will see or listen to what these hip hoppers have to say. People are bombarded with information, causes, products, etc., vying for their attention, and so they filter. With a platform, people can

114 build, sometimes consensus, sometimes discontent. But they can always build a sense of community and participation. Joseph S. Tulchin argues that through citizen participation in policy development, crime actually decreases (320). People feel included, consulted, as if they were important. Participation in community creates similar feelings. Returning to the Casa do Hip Hop, I have already mentioned that crime decreased in Diadema as the

Casa’s programming and popularity and visibility grew. Having a physical space to practice, perform, study, and otherwise convene has given Diadema, but also the broader hip hop community of São Paulo a physical place of reference that offers them a community of like minds. This is a shelter from those that scoff at the culture or at its participants. But it is also a place to build and create. And the hip hop community itself, however concrete or nebulous of a definition of “community” you might choose, also creates this type of environment. Speaking of the Casa do Hip Hop in his song “E Se,”

Rashid asks “E se a Casa do Hip Hop fosse no seu coração e não só em Diadema (And if the Casa do Hip Hop were in your heart and not only in Diadema),” wondering, what then (Rashid, “E Se”)? The statement behind the question is that the Casa is a place as well as part of a philosophy, which Rashid here encourages his audience to remember and keep with them wherever they are. The Casa then becomes a symbol of the larger hip hop philosophy espoused by this community and also comes to symbolize the community itself.

Nino Brown’s honorary citizenship then, really serves as a recognition of his and the community’s work, a work built on bringing people together, building one movement, or as the title of Brown’s compilation analyzed in chapter 1 would have us believe, uma

115 só voz. In June of 2014, Nino Brown posted a picture of himself on his Facebook page after having been awarded the Premio Governador, or the Governor’s Prize. This is yet another government distinction, this time at the state level, for Nino Brown and hip hop.

As Nino presented it on his Facebook page, he received the “premio de reconhecimento por lutar pelos menos favorecidos,” or “the prize of recognition for fighting for the least favored.” This description directly connects with Melissa Nobles’ analysis of census and race and the clear objectives put forth towards diminishing the stability, social worth, and self-esteem of people of color. Hip hop has always been a space for the least favored to unite and build. It is for this reason that Nino Brown, among many others, is adamantly opposed to and speaking out against a law proposed by São Paulo State Respresentative

Romário to institutionalize hip hop. That proposed law would formalize hip hop, forcing its practitioners to perform certain trainings and certifications in order to practice hip hop and any of its artistic elements as a means of earning money. Banks Back Spin, the breakdancer and educator whose work and philosophy I analyze in chapter 1, as well as

Nino Brown, offered some poignant remarks on this proposed law, both pointing to hip hop being a culture of the street and of the poor and black. Banks addresses the representative directly on a comments section of an advertisement for the law on

Romário’s own web page, saying:

Senhor Romário,somos uma cultura de resitência quem esta ao seu lado te

orientando não representa nossa cultural porque somos uma cultura livre,e

sabemos que se esta lei for aprovada nossa luta contra esta patifaria que

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chamamos de politica partidária será banida ja que tem um monte de gente

querendo que isto aconteça para poder se beneficiar financeiramente.

quem é do Hip Hop se forma na pratica não temos cursinhos para nos

formar ja que a base de nossa formação é a nossa realidade de vida que há

muito seculos é negada pelo mesmo sistema que tu ta envolvido.

Portanto com todo o Respeito deixe nossa cultura em paz. (BANKS

BACK SPIN)

Banks’ comment is an important connection to the aforementioned points by

Cottrol, Elisa Larkin Nascimento, and Guimarães regarding the continued effects of racial democracy and racism. Nino Brown actively addressed the proposed law multiple times per day throughout 2014. On June 19 of that year Nino commented on the international support he was receiving with respect to his and hip hop’s stance against this law. Nino writes in all caps so I maintain that style here:

*ATENÇÃO MUITA ATENÇÃO EU ESTOU EM UM COLETIVO

QUE E CONTRA ESSA PL* ALEM DA AMERICA LATINA JA ESTA

COMEÇANDO NOS EUA, ACABO DE RECEBER UMA MENSAGEM

DA ARABIA SAUDITA QUERENDO SABER O QUE

ACONTECENDO*COMO EU FALO E MOSTRO A CARA TUDO EM

NOME DO HIP HOP*ESTOU AQUI PRA APRENDER

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DEMOCRATICAMENTE COM TODAS E TODOS POR UM HIP HOP

MELHOR*MAS NÃO COM UMA LEI RIDICULA DESSA*

As Nino says, he represents for hip hop and has always seen it as a tool to teach and a space within to learn from others on how to best build community. Even within this same post Nino breaks interrogates the linguistic masculine dominance that calls for the word “todos” as a reference to “all,” whether a group of all men or a mixed gender group.

Not only does Nino include “todas” here, but he writes “todas” first, questioning the ingrained gender superiority complex present within language and still present in society.

Questioning this tradition through the practice of “todas,” here meaning “all women,” is one example of hip hop building itself as a community.

As Nino, Banks, and others have said, and as the title of the Facebook group

“Romário Deixe o Hip Hop em Paz!!!” indicates, the hip hop community wants to be left in peace to do their work freely and not as a regulated industry. In other words, hip hop does not need the government to take over, they simply need space to do their own work and build their own voice. They do not need to be spoken for. They can speak for themselves, questioning assumptions of race, gender, and class. They sometimes need financial support to promote their culture, but a full on takeover does nothing to continue to build hip hop as a lifestyle and a movement. In many ways such a government initiative would subsume hip hop’s vitality, undermining the community’s sense of working in an independent capacity towards attaining its goals. As others pointed out in their own comments, the musicians and other artists of hip hop were already regulated in

118 their lives as musicians or plastic artists, so this new law was going to add a layer that made hip hop illegal to practice without an additional regulation.

Regardless of this legal proposition, Nino’s recognition at both the local and state levels is at once an affirmation that official, government voices are seeing and hearing the voices of the hip hop community but also, an affirmation to continue in this life of resistance. Kim Rygiel argues “if we fail to see the ways in which the abject is also the political, then we will simply succumb to reproducing the dominant politics, which attempts to silence the abject by rendering them other than political” (196-7). Here Rygiel is focusing on citizenship and issues of detention and surveillance. But her idea fits for other “othered” communities as well, in particular if we understand the term abject in

Kristevan terms such that the abject is anyone outside of the dominant social order. Hip hoppers are clearly outside of this order. This citizenship ceremony, the governor’s prize, and the proposed law might make us believe otherwise. However, when we consider the lack of cultural representation of hip hop after over thirty years of struggle, and African- descended Brazilians’ even longer struggle for cultural rights, this is not an award that means problems are solved and hip hop’s work can stop. As Rygiel states, “If we fail to see bodily acts as acts of citizenship, then we run the risk of also failing to recognize abject subjects as political subjects” (196). This citizenship ceremony clearly recognizes citizenship, recognizing Brown’s work and more broadly hip hop’s “bodily acts.” An official recognition is no call to stop this work, however. It is still needed. There are still problems, there will most likely always be. Hip hop reminds people that there are reasons

119 to keep showing up. There are reasons to continue to resist just as there are reasons to celebrate. There is still work to be done.

A Family Affair/Family Matters: The Work of Hip hop and Why Hip hop Works

Sitting next to São Paulo rapper Criolo in an off-stage setting during the mini- documentary of Criolo’s final 2012 international tour stop, Central Park Summerstage in

New York City, DJ Dandan talks about the music and the tour in general. He notes how what they do “…é dedicada a todos os irmãos e irmãs que acreditaram e que acreditam em nosso trabalho. Todos que conhecem a nossa história e sabem o que a gente já passou.” The concept of work, or labor, is an important one in Brazilian hip hop and the first of three components I want to unpack from this quote. Hip hop as labor might sound like a strange concept, because hip hop may seem like a hobby or pastime to some, or maybe the job of performers, but certainly not of anyone uninvolved in the production and performance processes. DJ Dandan’s reference to hip hop as “nosso trabalho” though is something I have heard Nino Brown, Nelsão Triunfo, Rashid, Banks, and many others say. While they are performers and producers of hip hop culture, the “labor” component for them is always something that extends beyond those public or performing aspects of what they do. There is a psychological and affective charge behind this statement and behind the word “labor.” It is not that this is just any old job. It is a labor of love and a sense that this is what they have to do, because it has to be done—“has to” meaning on a cultural, political, and personal level. It comes down to educating oneself, through listening, reading, analyzing, and participating, always seeking ways to build community.

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Having pushed our understanding of the word “labor” in the context of Brazilian hip hop, it is important to do the same with the word “nosso.” With other words like

“communidade” and “família” (analyzed further below) also incorporating listeners and what one might consider the non-performer sect of hip hop, the word “nosso” doesn’t simply mean the work of the performers alone. Instead, the “we” implied by the “our” of

“nosso” is a constant reminder that the whole community, performers and listeners alike, have the responsibility for this work. This work is one of resisting exclusion and marginalization. It is the work of practicing and promoting culture, of building and representing community, of perpetuating, and more importantly growing hip hop, both

Brazilian and at large. On the national/local level, we have seen how hip hop works to provide services to young people, as well as older people through literacy and health programs. I argue that the very fact that a community has forged itself around hip hop creates a space from which to contest marginalization. On the international level, growing hip hop is important towards participating in a larger, global community of resistance and culture.

This idea that hip hop is their work comes up a lot in Brazil. It is as though this is a sacred work, complete with responsibilities for representing something greater than self, the community. Dandan’s humility in dedicating their labor to all those that believed and believe in it and that know their story and what they have gone through, is the third component from his quote that merits attention. It is a tribute that signals this belief in being part of something greater than self. Their work represents a cultural continuance, of pushing forward, building a safe space for others from the community and of similar

121 economic, ethnic, social, and political positions. This is true on both local (Brazilian) and international levels. Their work is to create a safe place and a space of resistance that functions on both a local and a broader, more global scale and includes links to diaspora.

Weller and Paz Tella discuss the concepts of blackness and Africanness as key ideas around which the hip hop community is built. One passage is worth quoting at length to further understand this idea of community, which encompasses both the local community and an international, diasporic, global one:

“Blackness” or being black is not essentially associated with phenotype,

but rather with a process of becoming black. Black is thus synonymous

with shared experiences of marginalization and struggle against racism, as

well as the color of political resistance (Back 1996: 142-47). Becoming

black implies a process of recognizing one’s belonging to a group. In this

sense, young people construct a notion of blackness by identifying with

common elements in the history of the African diaspora and with shared

experiences of discrimination and segregation. The process of relating past

history to the current reality contributes to the formation of a black

identity with a basis in collective memory and lived history (Halbwachs

1992). Black identity and ethnic consciousness emerge from that process

of becoming and from the notion of belonging to a social space of shared

experiences. (Weller and Paz Tella, 197)

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These connections of becoming black and belonging to a group rooted in shared experiences play an important role in the work of hip hop. The work of cultural representation and unity is a work that continues because of these shared and continuing experiences of discrimination and segregation, on individual and group levels. This work of representation is always local and always looking outwards given this connection through hip hop and desire to exist in the more global musical, artistic, and cultural realm that hip hop has become.

Criolo began working as an emcee as a teenager. Now in his late 30s, after twenty-five years as an emcee, his national and now international audience has surged since 2010. His 2012 tour took him to different parts of Europe, Los Angeles, and New

York City. This international recognition opened up a new element of citizenship.

Similarly, Nino Brown’s honorary citizenship was a recognition at the local level that demonstrated both government and community understanding of the work being performed by Brown and by hip hop. At that level, hip hop grants a space within which to work for aspects of citizenship that are missing locally and nationally. But on another level, Brown himself travels internationally to do workshops and trade ideas with other hip hop communities, most notably so far in Lisbon, Portugal and Caracas, Venezuela.

This type of connection abroad is sought on the basis of shared experiences of marginalization, shared enjoyment in hip hop music and culture, and a shared desire to use hip hop as an educational tool. Criolo’s international recognition gives him the ability to travel with his music and to physically move through different global circuits, as a

Brazilian, as a marginalized Brazilian, and as an emcee, participating in musical,

123 international, and hip hop circles. As mentioned above, this type of diaspora comes with a sense of obligation to connect and work on behalf of the greater community, be it a local, national, or transnational community.

While this transnational connection I am exploring here is outside of the borders of the nation state, it pushes ideas of citizenship and belonging, both inside state borders and outside of them. Citizenship, then, in a sense becomes a notion that in its actual practice challenges boundaries, or perhaps flexibilizes them, as Aihwa Ong would state it, creating “new cultural logics of transnationality” (23). Much like music’s ability to move through national boundaries and thereby challenge concepts of cultural origin and copyright, hip hop is a space that is at once global as it is local. There is an expectation to be connected and to understand the cultural, political, social, and economic connections, be they similarities or differences, between one local community and another somewhere else in the world. Citizenship takes on a national sense, but also a transnational scope that looks outside of the nation in order to fulfill certain needs and connections based on culture, politics, and other shared experiences.

Benedict Anderson’s concept of the imagined community allows us to better conceive of how an emcee, or any hip hopper, would feel this sense of belonging.

Anderson cites the advent of the printing press and its convergence with capitalism as a fundamental basis for the creation of nations. He says:

the convergence of capitalism and print technology on the fatal diversity

of human language created the possibility of a new form of imagined

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community, which in its basic morphology set the stage for the modern

nation. The potential stretch of these communities was inherently limited,

and, at the same time, bore none but the most fortuitous relationship to

existing political boundaries (which were, on the whole, the highwater

marks of dynastic expansionisms). (Anderson, 46)

Four interesting parallels can be drawn to Anderson’s understanding of nation, one with digital culture, one with sound, one through hip hop, and finally another through diaspora. The four are at this point necessarily intertwined given hip hop’s connection to the digital through the sounds it produces, given sound’s ease of transport through mp3 and other formats that supersede borders and other political markers, and given the importance of diaspora in hip hop culture.

The term “hip hop nation” has been used and studied in linguistic terms (Alim,

PBS). Anderson points to language and printed language as main forces in the development of modern nations and their transition from larger empires. He argues that the nation was only possible when it became imaginable, and that that was only possible with the advent of print capitalism, which through sales of printed texts brought together people of similar languages that might not have understood one another but for the written version of their language, which led to some standardization and a new sense of belonging. Speaking of these “print-languages,” Anderson notes that they “laid the bases for national conciousness… Speakers of the huge variety of Frenches, Englishes, or

Spanishes, who might find it difficult or even impossible to understand one another in

125 conversation, became capable of comprehending one another via print and paper. In the process, they gradually became aware of the hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people in their pariticular language-field, and at the same time that only those [people] so belonged” (Anderson, 44).

Paul Gilroy examines imagined communities and nations in terms of black populations and their movement and collectivity in specific parts of the world. He questions the concept of nations and of the often-limited scope of ethnicities and nationalities when he says:

The specificity of the modern political and cultural formation I want to

call the black Atlantic can be defined, on one level, through this desire to

transcend both the structures of the nation state and the constraints of

ethnicity and national particularity. These desires are relevant to

understanding political organizing and cultural criticism. They have

always sat uneasily alongside the strategic choices forced on black

movements and individuals embedded in national political cultures and

nation states in America, the Caribbean, and Europe. (Gilroy, 19)

This concept of the black Atlantic is an important one to pair with Anderson’s national imagined community, especially in terms of hip hop. While a hip hop nation might be a catchy phrase, clearly it is not a nation in the sense that a modern country is.

Nor is it a state, nor an ethnicity. But hip hop has become its own community, and one

126 that has transcended the constraints of nation states and limited definitions of ethnicities to work towards a global community united by common interests. This is not to say that any hip hopper would not identify along national or ethnic lines. But just as Gilroy points out in the disappointment blacks of many nations felt in the limited definitions and expectations behind ethnicities such as English, American, etc, there is a quest for something greater within hip hop, something more inclusive and accepting of differences.

Hip hop is the chosen space to fulfill these desires for many. This imagining or searching beyond national boundaries has produced movements beyond those frontiers, lines, and definitions.

Gilroy points to a type of circuitry at work in black music, examining, for example, the song “Keep On Moving” by North London’s Funki Dreds, which was produced in England by Caribbean descendants, then re-mixed in a Jamaican dub style by

African-American producer Teddy Riley using samples by James Brown’s band the JBs and Jamaican performer Mikey Dread. Gilroy unpacks the concepts of diaspora and transnational movement when he says of the song that “this formal unity of diverse cultural elements was more than just a powerful symbol. It encapsulated the playful diasporic intimacy that has been a marked feature of transnational black Atlantic creativity. The record and its extraordinary popularity enacted the ties of affiliation and affect which articulated the discontinuous histories of black settlers in the new world”

(16). From Gilroy’s work we can see how black artists have connected across ethnicities and borders in ways that challenge those boundaries through a type of black circuitry.

From both Anderson’s and Gilroy’s work we can return to the idea of circuits that music

127 works through and that hip hoppers are drawing on. For them, the diasporic connection, as well as the hip hop connection, are global realities. Perhaps they are based on an imagined or desired result, but hip hoppers are forever working towards these ends, thereby creating real circuits and real community at local levels and beyond.

Episodes 10 and 11 of Criolo’s 2012 tour videos offer some interesting points of analysis of hip hoppers behaving and living this local and global community. In Episode

10 Criolo performs with his band at a small club in London. He invites two guests on stage that do not speak Portuguese, but English and other languages. MC Prankster, sporting a Toronto Dee Jays tee shirt with an altered Toronto Blue Jays baseball team logo, here a blue jay wearing headphones, talks about where he is from, where everyone else is from, and how inside the club everyone is together. Everyone is one, despite the common language being the cultural forms of hip hop and not a specific language like

Portuguese or English. This belief in unity is the same promoted by Nino Brown in his compilation Uma Só Voz and the same promoted by Afrika Bambaataa in his famous

Zulu Nation slogan “Peace, unity, love, and having fun.” Unity is a common sentiment in hip hop. It is an idea that is also present when Dandan yells “Faz barulho, família!” or

“Isso ai, família!” Invoking the concept of family plays into this sense of unity. The term family also complicates the topic by suggesting a common origin for all participants in the family group. That common origin can be a sense of coming from the same place, a desire for unity, a position of marginalization. The term family can also help us better understand the concept of hip hop as work not just for the performers, but for the entire hip hop community.

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Drawing on a sentiment of togetherness, unity, community, we can understand how performance in different nodes within the international global circuitry of hip hop becomes an important opportunity for representing the local at the international level. It also follows that a certain sense of desire to belong to the more global hip hop community can influence action at the local level, as seen in the Casa do Hip Hop and its activities, as well as other outlets discussed throughout this dissertation. We can also understand how performance outside of Brazil, to a mostly English-speaking crowd, could present a challenge. But through use of some English, plus these concepts of unity and togetherness, barriers are broken, at least inside this London club. This is a performance of unity through music, and encouragement to take that unity and that music outside of the club to be lived daily.

Towards the end of Episode 10 of Criolo’s tour videos, the camera focuses on a black arm and fist in the air and tilts down, still in a close up, to show what we later learn from a medium shot is Dandan’s dreadlocks and part of his shirt. His shirt shows a design of colorful pixels that form the shape of the continent of Africa. The pixels do not seem to represent individual countries, but imagine a sort of digitized Africa through this image. Digitized and multi-colored, Africa is imagined for/in the 21st century through this tee shirt. The fist in the air, and the video’s signal to viewers through the close up that this fist is to be seen and focused on, is drawing on a history of this posture that was made famous by the Black Panther movement and perhaps even more famous by

Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the African-American Olympians who raised their fists on the podium in Mexico City in solidarity with the Black Power movement and in

129 protest of civil rights abuses in the United States. This diasporic connection draws on imaginings but also on connections felt through skin color and discrimination against that skin color. Dandan is from Brazil, which is a different racial context than the United

States and that of London, England where this performance takes place. But the sense of connection through common experience is felt and lived. Dandan’s performance, through his fist and posture, through his tee shirt and baggy jeans, through his dreadlocks, is one of common threads of marginalization and methods of resisting that marginalization.

Those methods include style, hairstyle, design, music, and unity and are lived daily as part of a hip hop identity. This identity, much like hip hop itself, largely depends on its musical components.

Music and citizenship

While Holston and others such as Teresa Caldeira have analyzed Brazilian citizenship with respect to economics, politics, and most importantly through a focus on city planning and urban design, the connections between music and citizenship are a growing concern, in particular in research on Brazilian music. In recent years this scholarship has been plentiful, especially with the 2011 publication of Christopher Dunn and Idelbar Avelar’s edited volume Brazilian Popular Music and Citizenship. In that volume, scholars examine the performance of citizenship in samba, Afro-reggae, pagode, mangue beat, hip hop, and other genres, demonstrating the large variety of genres at work in Brazil and how different players have engaged the topic of citizenship. Particularly, several methods of inquiry are recurrent approaches to the analysis of how citizenship is

130 both performed and lived through music. Lyrical analysis is one of these tools and is generally used to examine thematic content in a song and draw links to artists’ personal histories, or to political or other contexts. For example, Shanna Lorenz examines the lyrics of the Japanese Brazilian band Zhen Brasil. A line from a song used in the epigraph to her article sums up some interesting issues at play. The band says “No Japão sou brasileiro/E no Brasil sou japonês” (In Japan I am Brazilian/And in Brazil I am Japanese)

(155). Outsider perception plays a key factor in the “other”ing process clearly demonstrated in these lyrics and the search for identity, and by extension the right to exist, is shown to be a main concern for these musicians.

Demonstrating how music is used to call attention to a given subculture, class, or movement’s existence is another method of inquiry into citizenship and music. Malcolm

K. McNee uses lyrical analysis and considers a shift from a one-genre album to a multi- genre album by the Creative Sector of the Movimento Sem Terra (MST), the Landless

Movement in Brazil. He makes the claim that MST uses its music to defend its right to exist as a movement, its people’s right to exist, and to their rights to use the land to make a living (131-2).

Cultural and political analysis enables an understanding of how artists and their music function in broader senses. Aaron Lorenz examines the work of Bezerra da Silva to understand its importance in the realms of culture and politics. Lorenz examines

Bezerra’s atypical performance, licensing, and artistic strategies and later his lyrics to demonstrate his use of double consciousness to subvert dominant channels and function as “‘the ambassador of the favela’” (178). Lorenz questions the relation between

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“subversive performance and citizenship,” saying the former cannot be confused for the latter, but should instead be seen to mark the lack of citizenship (186). We will recall that hip hop’s presence marks a similar lack.

All of these are important methods that I also employ. There is much to be learned from lyrics, from cultural and political contexts, and by asking why musicians or music- based communities feel a need to make their own existence known, for clearly in these cases external forces are pushing the existence of these people towards obscurity, a fact that needs to be examined. Wivian Weller and Marco Aurélio Paz Tella use these methods in their contribution on São Paulo hip hop found in the Dunn/Avelar edition.

Derek Pardue does as well, and uses visual cultural analysis and ethnographic practices quite well both here and elsewhere (2008).

Weller and Paz Tella discuss worldviews and how the role of researchers is to interpret these worldviews to understand the group in question. They say, “in this sense, the focus of analysis on the musical and artistic praxis of hip hop does not entail the interpretation of music and its expressive meaning; rather, it entails the understanding of worldviews constituted through the articulations of young people engaged in the movement. The understanding and theoretical explanation of the social context or the social spaces of shared experiences are fundamental (Mannheim 1982). In the case of young blacks from São Paulo’s periphery, collective praxis in the hip hop movement and common experiences with discrimination and exclusion constitute these social spaces.”

(192)

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Understanding worldview through praxis is important. Derek Pardue argues the same thing in his contribution to Brazilian Popular Music and Citizenship, saying “Part of my overall intention in this chapter is to illustrate the brasilidade, or “Brazilianness,” in local hip hop. As I have argued elsewhere (2007), what is “Brazilian” about Brazilian hip hop—just as is the case with any other cultural formation—must be understood in terms of practice and not simply a set of sounds, images, and gestures. Part of hip hop practice involves organization and employment strategies” (207).

But sound and musical construction and its expressive meaning make up an important part of this practice/praxis. The musical side of hip hop is what drives the culture. It would not exist without it. The lyrics that get so much attention both in consumption and analysis of hip hop; musical construction and performance by musicians, including djs and producers, not to mention the delivery and cadence and overall performance by the emcee; and also the fact that this music is used to fuel break dance and other street dances—it is clear that music is vital to hip hop. So despite the literary bias that characterizes most of this criticism, definitely sound should be at the core of our analysis. This idea that we should not analyze sound is striking.

In Brazilian Popular Music and Citizenship, only one article engages the musical side of the artistic output at hand with anything other than basic references to genre- specific sounds. Most articles, if they examine sound at all, just use adjectives like heavy and loud or simply include a list of genres to give the reader a basic sonic point of reference. This is to say, no one is analyzing the musical component of what is in fact a musical practice. Elsewhere critics have looked at music from the perspective of music

133 theory and how chord choices play into song composition and genre trends. But it is rare to see any analysis on how sound shapes musical statements, be it lyrically, culturally, politically, or otherwise, or how sound is used to shape community. In hip hop studies this is simply not done. But on the very basic knowledge that as listeners we know how a song can move us or turn us off regardless of any lyrical component, as critics we owe it to the music and the artists that make it to examine how actual sounds, textures, and chord progressions function. What message do they help deliver? What motivations does the artist fulfill by choosing these sounds or what can we otherwise learn from these choices? I want to make the case for the analysis of the actual music and how it connects to citizenship.

An important point is that music, in particular sound, is perhaps even more difficult to describe verbally than taste. Words like “ethereal” have been used to describe the reverb-heavy vocal tracks of Irish singer Enya’s songs (Chicago Tribune). “Bombastic” is now used to describe heavy drums, as if the word has anything to do with musical sounds

(blogscritic.org; Spin; nerve.com). Yet from these words we can understand at least basic qualities of the music being described. But why choose an ethereal or bombastic sound?

What is the motivation? While an artist may simply be following intuitions when making these choices, or simply adding lyrics to music created by a producer, there are still moments when sound is important to examine beyond simple genre-specific assumptions and tendencies.

As I mention above, I use lyrical analysis and cultural and political analysis. I do not pretend to only focus on sound, but it is an element that is largely missing from hip

134 hop scholarship, Brazilian hip hop scholarship, and often from popular music scholarship.

I also want to build a case for analyzing listening practices. Weller and Paz Tella analyze a song and give reason for audience and performers to connect via shared experiences.

Lyrical content is the basis, though they invoke sound, specifically through the act of singing, without really landing on the role of voice and agency explicitly. They say that

“public presentations generate recognition of performance…and of the band’s musical elements, creating a moment of habitual and collective communion (Bohnsack et al.

1995) between the group and its listeners based on shared experiences…When young people sing this song [“Pai Decepção”], they establish a feeling of collectivity that is created by the critical analysis of the father figure in the family context” (193-4). While this focus on shared experience is important, what I believe Weller and Paz Tella are doing is analyzing individual and collective listening practices, though they do not quite put their own collective finger on it. As sound must be heard to make meaning, listening practices become crucial to analyzing music and musical cultures and understanding how they connect to citizenship.

Community Imagined And Lived Through Sound

I want to look at what music does to people and what people do with it, but I also want to examine how music does. In other words, what is it about a piece of music that motivates, influences, or produces certain feelings? Why does music resonate with us as listeners? In literature, a story can captivate or turn off a reader. A turn of phrase can inspire or otherwise trigger emotions in the brain. In film, a camera angle can instruct us

135 how to understand the relationship between two characters or can even put us as viewers into the film. Film stock quality can take us to a different time period in film or photography, and even phone apps (applications)10 can create images that direct the viewer to see them in certain ways. But with music, we often focus on the reasons why an artist writes a song, the lyrics themselves, or the after effects of creating music, such as touring, sales, audience reception, etc. But seldom do we talk about the music itself, from the chords and their progressions, to the textures and other sonic qualities and how these elements help shape a listener’s response, or even how they shape or realize an artist’s objectives for a given piece of work. How often is it that a musical moment strikes us as listeners as a perfect moment, whether for concord or dischord? As listeners we can all recognize that music will give us pause to ask how a given moment came together.

I want to push this idea of an imagined community to include how people is imagined or imagine themselves through sound and through sounds, and therefore explore the links between sound and citizenship. We might consider sound as another form of language, which follows a semiotic logic and like any other language it has the capacity to have an effect on the social imaginary. But sound also offers something different. Rather than rely on common speakers converging around a more standard version of a language, sound communities, or sonically imagined communities, rely heavily on choice. Music enthusiasts might argue that sounds choose their listener,

10 Just look at Instagram, an app that allows you to take pictures that look like old photos from the 1960s and 1970s based on the image quality, which tries to cop that of film and film development from that time period. São Paulo’s MC Rashid incorporates Instagram and other applications into his Facebook artist page, offering digital snapshots of his goings on, which play into the construction of his artistic identity. 136 meaning that one is grabbed by a particular sound and does not choose to like it. But in terms of hip hop, one can choose a level of participation in the culture and whether one might consider oneself a part of some larger community. Indie rock, or simply indie music at this point, also tends to attract a distinct group of listeners and that music arguably reflects certain aspects of lifestyle. The same can be said of country music. But neither country nor indie has any of the community sensation conjured by hip hop. In the

U.S. or in Brazil, to be a part of the hip hop community, you have to look for it, meaning you need to attend shows or other activities, or simply participate in whatever projects or goings on a given community might offer. Typically these are in the realms of performance. But in some places, like in São Paulo, performance becomes an integral component of bringing people together for a common purpose. This would not be possible in the same ways without sound. So the choice to involve oneself in this world becomes rooted in a preference for certain sonic styles or in those sounds themselves drawing listeners. Style comes into play as well, which is observed in the fashion and other choices hip hoppers make. But this attraction to hip hop would not occur without the sound, and different from other genres, without some connection between sound and aspects of citizenship.

This type of community building around hip hop is necessarily rooted in or anchored to music. Other critics focus their analyses entirely on the social and political aspects of hip hop, which are important elements that I also examine. But few if any have looked at the actual music and how it serves as a lynchpin to this whole process.

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Weller and Paz Tella, for example, ignore the musical side, instead entering into some lyrical analysis to better understand hip hoppers’ motivations and objectives.

Talking about the song “Fim de semana no Parque” [Weekend in the Park] by Racionais

MC’s, they examine how through lyrics, rapper Manu Brown creates a story about his own life and realizations that might help others in his community, saying:

In another part of the rap, Brown expresses displeasure again with where

he lives, but also affirms that he is among “friends” and “equals,”

expressing a feeling of belonging to an imagined community. This rap can

be the story of any young Afro-Brazilian from the periphery. It refers to

the wishes and desires that cannot be fulfilled. Even at the beginning of

the song, Brown draws attention to the maldade (malice) of young people

with consumer desires. Although he recalls his admiration for the thieves

and malandros (hustlers) who had expensive clothes and new cars, he also

notes that they are all dead or in jail and arrives at the conclusion that

crime is the worst option: “It took a while, but now I understand/ that real

malandragem is just staying alive.” (Weller and Paz Tella, 202-3)

The wishes and desires that cannot be fulfilled are consumer-based in “Fim de

Semana no Parque,” but here as elsewhere in the article Weller and Paz Tella are talking about community and how the feeling of belonging (197) is an important one that speaks strongly to hip hoppers. The music then, becomes a space in which we can hear these

138 unfulfilled but living desires in this desired community, which I would argue transforms from an imagined one to a lived, experienced, real community both through the hip hop community’s various activities and penchant for unity, as well as through its music.

Weller and Paz Tella’s quote here opens up the possibility for an audiotopia type of experience as coined by Josh Kun (2005) to describe how listeners can enter into sound as they can enter into architecture (3) and to demonstrate how music can break national barriers and borders and function as its own world. Kun notes that “listening to a song’s whole was always listening to its parts, to the crossings and exchanges and collaborations that went into its making” (3).

It is music’s capacity to facilitate these crossings and contacts and create new possibilities that leads Kun to riff on the concept of a “utopia” and more specifically on

Althusser’s notion of the “heterotopia,” or attainable “utopia,” to create his idea of an

“audiotopia,” a type of attainable sonic utopic space. Reflecting on the power of music to house conflicting energies, he says that:

Because of music’s ability to do just this—to point us to the possible, to

help us remap the world we live in now—and because of its uncanny

ability to absorb and meld heterogeneous national, cultural, and historical

styles and traditions across space and within place, the possibility of the

audiotopia makes sense: sonic spaces of effective utopian longings where

several sites normally deemed incompatible are brought together, not only

in the space of a particular piece of music itself, but in the production of

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social space and the mapping of geographical space that music makes

possible as well. Thus, reading and listening for audiotopias (through

analysis of both lyrics and music) has a dual function: to focus on the

space of music itself and the different spaces and identities it juxtaposes

within itself, and to focus on the social spaces, geographies, and identities

that music can enable, reflect, and prophecy. In both cases, the audiotopia

is a musical space of difference, where contradictions and conflicts do not

cancel each other out but coexist and live through each other. (23)

This definition that Kun arrives at, that of sonic spaces of difference where the contradictory can coexist, recognizes that identity is often comprised of seemingly incompatible components. In terms of the musical, one’s interests in pop and classical music, just to give a generic example of musical poles, might seem odd. But each of those apparent extremes might connect with the same person, engaging different aspects of their identity. One song has the power to do this too, merging various cultural, sonic, historical, political, and other interests, perhaps not in some successful blend, but within the confines of a song or album, offering space for all points to breathe and live. It is this capacity of music that Kun is emphasizing, that music and sound can give space for all to coexist. Sometimes that coexistence is more harmonious than others. It does not have to be pretty. The idea is that through music, coexistence simply is.

I find this conception of music to be very compatible, although at once at odds much like the contradictions it houses, with the theories of transculturation and

140 antropofagia. These latter theories notably both mark the meeting point of cultures as a space and a moment of transformation of cultural elements flowing from unique points of

“origin,” that is to say, seemingly incongruent or unrelated prior to their meeting. Within that space, these cultural elements become components of a new trans-formed cultural product(ion), that is altered and shaped by the players and creators finding themselves within this meeting point and forced, broadly and variably defined, to act as part of this cultural convergence. Through that act, that expression of voice and agency as elaborated upon in chapters 1 and 3, these actors form new cultures and cultural formations from

“old” ones, or again, from those component cultures. Transculturation and antropofagia emphasize the creation of new cultural products, designed by the voices serving as the meeting points of cultural flows and convergences. An audiotopia is this type of meeting point, as well, enabling voice, agency, the formation of self. However, its insistence on a lack of synthesis, or really admitting the possibility of such disharmony, is where it differs from transculturation and antropofagia. As I argue in chapter 1, neither theory necessarily erases the “original” cultures that come to merge into a new one. Often this is dependent on the desires and affinities of those doing the merging and whether they want to keep the component cultures, or even the memories of them active. Cuban rappers, for instance, would argue that their music is Cuban, but many of them would draw linkages to Africa and would not deny the Africanness of a particular element of their sound or identity. But that would be a component of the new. An audiotopia, while similar, does not seek to produce something new, but to serve as a space for the production of something new or simply for the psychological “figuring out” or coming to terms with

141 identity and its sometimes seemingly incongruent parts. Regardless of the differences between the theories examined here, I find there is room for all three to coexist as tools to help understand Brazilian hip hop and its motives at creating space from which to form community and forge identity on both individual and group levels.

Returning to Weller and Paz Tella’s take on “Fim de Semana no Parque,” the critics point out how Manu Brown expresses a sense of belonging to an imagined community through his story, which undoubtedly reflects the experiences of others and makes them also feel a similar sense of belonging to this community, to the world created in this song. Kun’s concept of audiotopia, though, is not simply about lyrics and story.

The concept must necessarily have some anchoring in sound and its construction to even be able to exist. It is an audiotopia after all. In Kun’s words, again as above, it enables

“analysis of both lyrics and music” (23).

While Weller and Paz Tella do a strong job analyzing the lyrics of “Fim de

Semana no Parque,” what’s missing here is any attention to sound, which is an important element to any song and the world it creates, including this one. In “Fim de Semana no

Parque,” Racionais MC’s choose what most funk listeners would label a laid back groove, strongly rooted in a simple bass line the likes of which US producer Dr. Dre is famous for. Comparing “Fim de Semana” and Dr. Dre’s “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang” we can see some interesting parallels. Lyrically both songs are stories, “Fim de Semana” more of the observation type of rhyme about the goings-on of life in the São Paulo periphery and “‘G’ Thang” more braggadocio in style with both Dr. Dre and Snoop

Doggy Dogg offering ego-stroking boastful rhymes and a few warnings about the

142 potential dangers of sexual endeavors. Musically the songs have very similar structures.

Both songs have one bass riff that is repeated for the duration of the song. Atop the bass

“‘G’ Thang” has a two-chord guitar riff during the verse and a high-pitched synthesizer riff to mark the chorus while “Fim de Semana” uses a high-pitched synthesizer riff throughout, interrupting the standard groove of the song by adding some record scratches or quick samples to mark a change between verses before returning to the standard groove. With such similar song structures and musical components it would be easy to think Racionais MC’s lifted their vibe and style from Dr. Dre, given an expectation for hip hop’s transcultural flow to most often go in the direction of leaving from the US in transit to other places. But interestingly, Raio X do Brasil, the Racionais MC’s album on which “Fim de Semana no Parque” appears, was released in 1993, the same year that Dr.

Dre’s famous The Chronic was released, featuring the popular song “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’

Thang.” That album cemented the use of laid back, funk bass lines as a signature style of

Dr. Dre. Meanwhile, it was happening concurrently in Brazil. What is it about that laid back funk groove style that resonated simultaneously in two countries?

“Fim de Semana no Parque” begins with a dedication, “A toda comunidade pobre da Zona Sul,” or “to the entire poor community of the Zona Sul.” Immediately the tone is set that this is a song for the urban poor. The aforementioned synthesizer line matches the descending pattern of the bass line on bars 5 through 8 of the music, building on the tension created by the combination of the bass and synthesizer sounds and the additional persistent snare drum hit, not coincidentally with enough reverb that it conjures images of a gun shot. That high-pitched synthesizer sound runs almost uninterrupted throughout the

143 song. Sometimes it is the most prominent sound, and other times it runs in the background, behind a sample that says “Vamos passear no parquinho!” This sample is rather lighthearted, and indeed some of the songs’ lyrics are simply about trying to enjoy life. For example, Manu Brown raps:

Chegou fim de semana todos querem diversão

Só alegria nós estamos no verão, mês de janeiro

São Paulo, Zona Sul

Todo mundo à vontade, calor céu azul

The weekend has arrived everyone wants to have fun

Happiness only, we’re in the summer, the month of January

São Paulo, South Zone

Everyone does as they please, heat and blue sky

But the high pitch of the synthesizer pitch creates a tension. Perhaps the sound of the synthesizer emulates other tensions in the Zona Sul of São Paulo, often prominent, and sometimes in the background behind more pleasurable aspects. These tensions are revealed as the song continues. The version of “Fim de Semana” from Racionais MC’s, the eponymous 1994 compilation of several of the group’s recording projects begins with an introduction that musically is best described as a U.S. 1970s-style police drama music, complete with bongo drums and a low-pitched piano riff. A different high-pitched

144 synthesizer plays throughout this intro, and a member of the band welcomes listeners in a manner of speaking akin to a US police drama, speaking the date and laying out what is happening and what you are seeing. He says:

Mil novecentos e noventa e três

Fugidamente voltando

Racionais

Usando e abusando nossa liberdade de expressão

Um dos poucos direitos que o jovem negro ainda tem nesse país

Você está entrando no mundo da informação, auto-conhecimento,

denúncia, e diversão

Esse é o Raio X do Brasil.

Seja bem-vindo.

Nineteen Ninety Three

We’re fucking back

Racionais

Using and abusing our freedom of expression

One of the few rights a black youth still has in this country

You are entering a world of information, self-awareness,

denouncement, and entertainment

This is Raio X do Brasil (X-Ray of Brazil)

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Welcome.

Again, Racionais make clear the tensions that exist for them in their communities, as well as in their country. The tension I have described that is present in the musical components of the song reflects real tensions at work in these rappers’ lives. The album title Raio X do Brasil informs us that this is an x-ray of sorts, a look at the inside of Brazil and what is really happening, especially for the poor communities. Album artwork makes this apparent too. On the band’s eponymous compilation, the cover image [FIGURE 11]

FIGURE 11. Racionais MC’s cover art 146 is a drawing of an incarcerated black man gripping his cell bars. This image appears in a live MTV Brasil performance11, both on a t-shirt of a guy standing next to Racionais’s DJ

KL Jay, but also on a Brazilian flag that hangs in front of the turntables. Rather than the blue circle with stars and the “ordem e progresso” banner, the drawing in question appears in that space in the center of the flag, as if at the center of the nation. The album artwork for the original release of Raio X do Brasil is also illuminating [FIGURE 12].

This cover is a photograph of an overcrowded jail cell filled with black men, their eyes blacked out as if to protect their identities. If so, perhaps this is one of the few moments of their identities as individuals being recognized as existing. But to the contrary, perhaps

FIGURE 12. Racionais MC’s Raio X do Brasil cover art

11 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GAwB9te_yl 147 by obfuscating their eyes the idea here is to render these men as anybodies, or nobodies as the point may be, just more black males behind bars. While the flag image with the drawing of the incarcerated man sits towards to bottom, the main graphic atop the photo of these men is a giant letter “x.” The band logo and the album title are worked into the graphics, and the font of the giant “x” conjures connections to Malcolm X. Beneath everything the cover reads “Liberdade de expressão,” or “freedom of expression.”

Through the words, images, and even actions of Racionais MC’s their objectives of freedom of expression, improved social conditions, and diasporic connections become clear. But the musical component is the fundamental element since this is a musical project. As such, the musical side of their production needs to be considered.

In Brazil Racionais MC’s are revered as the premiere hip hop group due to their socially conscious lyrical content, more reserved musical choices such as those detailed above, general disregard for fame as demonstrated in their remaining as residents of their favela communities and only granting the occasional interview. The sounds they create remain an important element of their image as local heroes representing the periphery, the people, and truth. Those sounds are very similar to West Coast sounds like those of Dr.

Dre, who may or may not have served as a point of reference. Regardless, these sounds are more minor key-based and produce a lot of tension. The synthesizer sounds add a haunting feeling at times. I asked MC Rashid, of the current generation of emcees and a huge fan himself of Racionais MC’s, about his own musical choices on his album Hora de Acordar. He singled out specific tracks and how they sounded like west coast US rap, such as Dr. Dre and other gangsta rappers, and how others sounded like east coast

148 production styles, such as Puff Daddy, Notorious B.I.G., and others. I pressed him on the point, asking why he made these choices as opposed to, say, a mixture of beats and samba like Marcelo D2 has done. Rashid responded that east coast and west coast styles are points of reference and he had no qualms about using these types of sounds or production styles. For him they are quality styles and are simply part of the broader world of hip hop, and therefore an important entry point or connecting point. Such a conception of these sounds is notably not a characteristic of the famed East Coast vs. West Coast divide in the U.S. that birthed the production styles in question and resulted in much rivalry and violence. Upon reflection, Rashid was saying that these regional sound styles were like major musical tropes or common elements of hip hop musical language. He obviously considers them available to him as part of a larger cultural phenomenon and not as some element of copying or aping of international styles. Returning to the discussion of antropofagia from chapter 1, Rashid’s use of these styles and subsequent refashioning to put forth his own musical production is what is really at work here. This idea of points of reference reveals a lot about listening practices of Brazilian hip hoppers and producers and what they are listening for and hearing. It also speaks about hip hoppers’ understanding of their work within both Brazil and a larger cultural sphere that extends beyond national and ethnic boundaries.

Kun also anchors his audiotopia concept in listening. He examines non-musicians as well as musicians to ask how what it is that they were hearing allowed them to find their own space, their own agency. He posits that in that sonic discovery and agency, these listeners were able to expand the definition of America beyond the geo-political

149 borders of the United States as well as the white European-descendent ethnic imaginary.

That notion has dominated this country’s self-conception for centuries and as such has further defined notions of nationality and borders, among others. Kun’s audiotopia is largely posited from the perspective of the individual. For example, Langston Hughes as a listener was hearing Spanish in his visits with Nicolás Guillén in Cuba and in visits to

México where his father was living. He was listening to blues, son, and cha-cha-cha, crossing geo-political borders, but also racial borders when he was mistaken for Mexican while returning to the US, and discriminated against for being black when he confirmed this identity when asked inside the United States en route to Mexico (155-7). He was thinking about what it means to be American whilst engaging with other American cultures and thinking about his own position(s). Hughes’ Ask Your Mama, Kun demonstrates, was an Afro-Cuban jazz poem, complete with Cuban musical patterns, among other influences (172). As Kun sets up his book with his own personal listening experiences to introduce his concept, and as the listening practices of other individuals are subsequently analyzed such as the case of Langston Hughes, we can consider the audiotopia from the perspective of the individual. We can consider it this way within

Brazilian hip hop as well. But the case of hip hop I think also enables a rethinking of the audiotopia concept from the perspective of the community. What is it that the community is hearing and engaging in that enables them to enter into this audiotopia, or these audiotopias if thinking of the capacity of individual songs to function as such, and expand boundaries whilst building community?

150

Weller and Paz Tella make a strong argument about blackness attracting hip hoppers of all ethnicities, and that blackness becomes representative of shared experiences of segregation, discrimination, and other forms of marginalization. While it is impossible to say what goes on inside the head of every listener when they put on a pair of headphones or otherwise engage in listening to music, we can imagine based on

Weller and Paz Tella’s research, as well as Kun’s and that of others, that hip hop communities are hearing aspects of this blackness, in the shouts and bouncing rhythms of

James Brown to the blues to the music of other hip hop artists. What appeals to a given individual will of course vary, but as a whole, trends in musical interests can be identified. And in the case of Brazilian hip hop, while the aforementioned references are relevant, the likes of MPB, bossa nova, samba, and other Brazilian genres are also on hip hoppers’ radars.

As mentioned above, Kun sets up his book with personal listening experiences, both at home and in the record store. Many a music enthusiast will cite these two spaces as important ones in their formation as a listener. Both serve as spaces that allow the listener to fully immerse himself or herself into the music, allowing the lyrics, tones, instrumentation – the sounds—to envelop herself or allow her to enter into the world of a given song. Kun mentions listening to music at both the record store and at home as a practice that was fundamental to his learning to listen and jump into these sonic worlds

(1-3). Brazilian hip hoppers too might consider these two locations of home and record store, perhaps those in the Galeria do Rock and other shoppings in the old downtown area among others, as important to their listening experiences. Nino Brown and his generation

151 would also cite the bailes black dance parties that they attended in larger groups and their exchanges of LPs that enabled a deeper listening on home turntables.

MC Rashid offers a perfect example of considering the possibilities of sonic utopias or living in sound. Ever active in social media, he posts many pictures to his Instagram feed, usually offering a comment or nugget of wisdom in the form of a caption to the photo.

The photos are from all walks of his life, including his family, dogs, or vacation spots or other locations. Many are selfies, or pictures he takes of himself or himself with others as they work, skateboard, or hang out. In a selfie from January 31, 2013 [FIGURE 13],

Rashid sits on a curb with his headphones on, looking at the camera. Behind him, and noticeably visible in the negative space between his head and the headphones is a cement block wall the bottom of which holds a molded steel plate he sits in front of. His caption reads, “Isso é que me move, o que me inspira… Agradeço a Deus por permitir que eu viva essa caminho. SOM… MÚSICA… VIDA.” [This is what moves me, what inspires me… I thank God for allowing me to live this path. SOUND… MUSIC… LIFE.”]

Ironically, with no sound present by which to view the photo, both image and text combine to offer a glimpse of Rashid’s sonic world, which through the popular use of

ALL CAPS, or all capital letters to express importance, he signals is his life. Albeit a staged image, Rashid here promotes the idea that his world exists between these headphones and through the sounds they emit and which travel through his ears and into his brain. Josh Kun touches on this physical component when he notes the ringing of ear drums and other effects of vibration on the listener. I would add several additional

152 elements to the understanding of the audiotopia and to sound’s importance in identity creation, including a metaphorical or symbolic element, an imaginative one, and an

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153 emotive one. Such a world exists due to the symbolism, meanings, feelings, imaginings, and perceptions the given listener takes and makes from sound and song. It is through those components that agency is most apparent, suggesting an element of choice that contributes to an audiotopia. Rashid, and all listeners, chooses to put his headphones on and enter into sound and music, finding his path, his life. Motion and stimulus stand out for him as the “this” in “this is what moves me” is clearly the act of listening, of putting on the headphones and stepping into a new space, sound pushing him, moving him, affecting him, indeed, transporting him, as if to suggest at the level of his soul, inspiring him as if to suggest a motivation to pursue, to write, to make music, to be. That space is in part a head space, as indeed there is no physical space passing through the sound and into Rashid’s head. But the metaphorical and symbolic attachment to physical space that music can carry, and that varies from listener to listener based on so many factors ranging from previous experience to cultural background to politics, etc, is an important one in the creation and understanding of identity. Here the cement block wall is representative of the urban street. While we can see in the image that the wall is behind Rashid, interestingly, as an image, part of the wall is visually between the arms of the headphones and his head, sealed in by the speaker on each ear, the connection between sound and the urban ever-present for Rashid, and by extension his peers in hip hop as well as other hip hoppers.

In addition to the home and record store as important sites of personal listening investment and music education, today’s hip hoppers indeed also cite the street. In São

Paulo, like in many other parts of the world, hip hoppers, among others, walk the street

154 wearing headphones and listening to music through their iPods, cell phones, or other digital media players. The street is often referenced in songs, interviews, and elsewhere in the common phrase “A rua é nóiz,” or “the street is us,” analyzed in chapter three. The street is imagined as an important space to be in touch with, and one lives in the streets, as several hip hoppers told me in São Paulo, both in solidarity with the homeless but also with those who work in the streets as vendors or other workers. The street becomes imagined as a sort of holy place, a true space of real values and real people in the minds of many hip hoppers. While all these conceptions can be envisioned outside of the listening space, they are certainly imagined within the listening environment, and so the street becomes part of what Brazilian hip hoppers are listening for and to.

The between-the-headphones, or deep listening, part of the equation necessarily draws on one’s personal imaginings. But a collective imagining of a world and entering into that world through sound and listening are also deeply important in the imagined and lived hip hop communities, both local and global. To belong to this community is to listen for sounds of blackness, sounds of connection to that larger community, rooted in blackness and a sense of responsibility to other marginalized peoples to connect and build in an effort to stand up for social, political, and cultural rights both at home and more globally. This is their collective “trabalho.” These are acts of citizenship.

Idelber Avelar examines listening practices, musical choices, and citizenship in mangue beat music, specifically that of Chico Science and Nação Zumbi (CSNZ) [2011].

Avelar argues that CSNZ challenge notions of citizenship by rooting themselves in local sounds while incorporating international sounds. According to Avelar, this combination

155 shook up the expectations of listeners and forced them to become familiar with at least one or two others they did not previously know. In this way, concepts of the “national,” in this case of Brazilian genres, were problematized. Through the act of having to learn about new genres and of engaging the global in conversation with the local, Avelar argues that citizenship becomes something new (321, 326-7). Specifically, Avelar analyzes the song “Cidadão do Mundo” (Citizen of the World), which is an interesting choice for such a grouping of styles. The fact that CSNZ refuses to actually mix the genres points to an interesting coexistence that works to maintain difference and expose it, not erase it. Mixing local and regional sounds with international ones yet maintaining a sense of each one as its own style is no easy task in music. But this song gives us an insight into what it means to be a citizen of the world. Chico Science and Nacão Zumbi are continuing the tradition of antropofagia by consuming and absorbing and putting out something new. That that something new strives to maintain the integrity of the individual component styles demonstrates an awareness of maintaining a local identity, but also constructing something beyond the local that enters into a larger conversation that extends beyond borders.

While hip hop in Brazil most often does not seek to enter several musical styles into conversation with one another, by using various styles as points of reference and in fact creating new sounds within hip hop vocabulary, not to mention addressing local concerns and telling local stories whilst building global connections, Brazilian hip hop enters into this type of conversation, simultaneously considering home and a broader definition of what it means to be in the world. Such attention expands notions of

156 citizenship through the activation of freedom of expression and voice, one of the few rights remaining for black youth in Brazil according to Racionais MC’s. Enacting this right lyrically, musically, individually, communally, is certainly standing up for other rights and for the fact that they need to be exercised. These bodily acts, as Rygiel might suggest, demonstrate a lack of citizenship, as Bezerra da Silva would also have, and a need to think outside of standard notions of citizenship. Hip hop creates a more active citizenship, then, as it contests these lacks to demand more, nay better, for itself, for its collaborators, and for all.

157

Chapter 3

“A Rua É Nóiz”: Brazilian Hip Hoppers Creating Urban and Digital Spaces

The Ephemerality and Permanence of Sound, Movement, Writing, and

Ethnography: Setting the Scene

Michel de Certeau’s statement that “space is a practiced place” (117) offers a definition of two terms of supreme importance to hip hop culture and rap music. In short, de Certeau explains that a place is “an instantaneous configuration of positions. It implies a sense of stability” while a “space occurs as the effect produced by the operations that orient it, situate it, temporalize it, and make it function in a polyvalent unity of conflictual programs of contractual proximities” (117). In other words, a space is made from a place depending on the convergences and activities that happen within that place. This allows for a given location, or place, to be different spaces, depending on those “operations” that occur there. Understanding place and space in this way enables different people to define the same place as different spaces, for example, a street as a space of violence for someone who was attacked or harassed could be the space where someone else performed music for passers-by or where still someone else strolled by whilst shopping.

The simultaneous occurrence of these three examples in the same place would create an even different conception of that space.

158

All of these examples are stories, whether told, revealed, or written. That is to say, either that happened to someone or that someone sought to make happen or actually enacted. Spaces can be created for or created by. Perhaps they are always both. De

Certeau considers the story and space, noting that “in a pre-established geography, which extends (if we limit ourselves to the home) from bedrooms so small that “one can’t do anything in them” to the legendary, long-lost attic that “could be used for everything,” everyday stories tell us what one can do in it and make out of it. They are treatments of space” (122).

Also commenting on the everyday and its relationship to building spaces, Henri

Lefebvre notes how:

Everyone knows what is meant when we speak of a ‘room’ in an

apartment, the ‘corner’ of the street, a ‘marketplace’, a shopping or

cultural ‘centre’, a public ‘place’, and so on. These terms of everyday

discourse serve to distinguish, but not to isolate, particular spaces, and in

general to describe a social space. They correspond to a specific use of

that space, and hence to a spatial practice that they express and constitute.

Their interrelationships are ordered in a specific way. Might it not be a

good idea, therefore, first to make an inventory of them, and then to try

and ascertain what paradigm gives them their meaning, what syntax

governs their organization? (16).

159

“Treatments” is a great word choice by de Certeau. There is a deliberateness to the word that captures the agency of the people doing the treating and the very crafting of meaning and syntax, or capacity for creating order, that Lefebvre conjures here. How might a person take a given place and treat it, or craft it into his or her own space? How might a community transform a place into a space? How this plays into, or perhaps more in line with the deliberate direction that de Certeau suggests, how this can be used to understand the day-to-day lives and cultural production of hip hoppers, and the production and existence of hip hop culture and community, is of interest.

De Certeau’s discussion of narration and stories as shapers of space and

Lefebvre’s discussion of spatial practices connect to the core of rap music and hip hop culture. Rap songs are always stories, and stories are necessarily spatial practices. The decisions their creators make as to how to treat a particular topic, both lyrically and musically, and how to musically treat lyrics and lyrically treat music, shape songs and albums and therefore stake positions. Stories and how they are told help define individuals and communities. And hip hop culture is built from stories of struggle and resistance. “The story’s first function is to authorize, or more exactly, to found” (123), de

Certeau states, later adding that “this founding is precisely the primary role of the story. It opens a legitimate theater for practical actions” (125). The key words highlighted by de

Certeau in italics are worth exploring. To “found” rings of foundation, base, structure, support, creation, establishing, stabilizing, and making meaning. To articulate. A

“theater” is a place within which one articulates and defines and performs. Performance itself offers definition. If stories create a theater for action, then indeed they create spaces

160 within which to perform, an action in its own right that defines or founds, articulates and shapes. Everyday stories. Everyday performances. Everyday articulations used to define spaces from places and to therefore make meaning and build one’s life. There is a self- defense at work in these stories and in this action. It is a self-defense that pushes against

“other”-ing and towards recognition. Perhaps “seeking recognition” does not allow for proper agency and instead puts down a person or community shaping their own space.

But self-recognition, the building of self—this act is crucial towards existence and in the case of Brazilian hip hop, of resisting marginalization, which I will examine further below.

I actually see an important difference between “to authorize” and “to found,” the latter of which de Certeau offers as a more precise version of the former. “To found” implies a decisive, generative action of establishing or creating. Yet authorization implies a permission granted. But who is granting this permission? Permission, or authorization, for whom and to do what? If the story serves to permit anyone to do anything, it is permitting the author to shape, in this case a place into a space. I prefer to see the authors not in this passive way of being granted permission, but instead in the active way that “to found” suggests. Instead of the stories permitting the authors, the authors are using their stories to give shape and create space. Indeed, the authors are authoring, creating their narratives and defining spaces from places. In this way, agency is more deeply recognized.

De Certeau continues his comment that “space is a practiced place,” noting that

“thus the street geometrically defined by urban planning is transformed into a space by

161 walkers. In the same way, an act of reading is the space produced by the practice of a particular place: a written text, i.e., a place constituted by a system of signs” (117). The walkers define through their use and decisions about how to traverse a given place. The written text as a place built as a system of signs produces the act of reading, which like other spaces is open to varying perspectives and experiences dictating how one act can mean differently for different people and how a person can use that act as agency and new foundation to build on.

As Murray Forman (2002) has stated, rap and space and place are intricately related. Physical space has always been an important referent and marker in rap music and hip hop culture in general. Shout outs (mentions of names/name checking) to street corners, neighborhoods, cities, and even regions are common and expected. Graffiti artists tag city and building walls and other objects, claiming that space by labeling it with their “signature” or with a mural. Deejays, emcees, and producers create sounds that are then transmitted through speakers that add a sonic element to the cityscape, altering its face and shape. Break dancers define spaces like subway stations and sidewalks by creating elements of spectacle and competition and by forcing passers-by to stop, or at least walk around them, as they pop, lock, spin and otherwise move their bodies through the air and shared spaces. All of these facets of hip hop have aspects of permanence and ephemerality, lyrics and music reverberating in the air until they are no longer heard or felt, graffiti tags and murals that seemingly leave a permanent mark eventually getting painted over, and dancers’ bodies moving through air only to return to a standing, sitting,

162 or walking position as the cardboard gets folded up and the music is turned off to return or move on to other activities.

However fleeting, ephemeral, or impermanent these activities might seem at times, their permanence lies in the cumulative effect of these practices as elements of the larger hip hop culture, and of the cumulative effect they have on memory, identity, and definition of self and culture. The consistent practice of hip hop elements create individual and group memories that combine to forge histories that are used to locate and define self and support feelings of community. As de Certeau would suggest, the consistent practice of hip hop elements defines spaces from places. It is in these definitions and senses that a real sense of permanence is felt. Nelsão Triunfo’s Funk &

Cia. (Funk & Co.) dance crew performed in many parts of São Paulo, forced by police to move from spot to spot in the urban center and eventually to the neighboring town of

Diadema. That crew disbanded, but Triunfo reassembles it from time to time. Its history and its connections to geographic points in the city live on and make meaning for hip hoppers. Triunfo’s dance crew, among other groups, hold important places in the collective hip hop mindset that bolster pride and a sense of community and permanence within the culture. Racionais MCs’ commitment to remaining connected to the favelas where they are from and in some cases still live is another example that is drawn on to support a sense of pride and permanence. There are many other examples. And space plays a critical role in building this feeling, both in the creation and use of physical spaces and in the ways they are traversed or moved through. I want to examine these connections to space in Brazilian hip hop, analyzing how urban spaces are interacted

163 with, moved through, and otherwise used to connect to building and performing community and claiming citizenship. I will expand upon previous scholarship, limited to physical or urban space, to examine how digital space plays an important role in these areas as well.

I have traveled to São Paulo several times and lived there in 2010, in a small apartment on Rua 7 de Abril overlooking the Praça da Republica. The augmentative syllable at the end of the term “o Centrão” would make this part of the city center seem large, but in fact it is the old center, now replaced by the center of Brazilian national commerce, the Avenida Paulista, which is just a few blocks away. The Praça da

República is where the Secretary of Education office is, and every weekend there is a popular open air market on the plaza where wares of all sorts are sold. Oscar Niemeyer’s

Copan building is just two blocks away, and I enjoyed visiting New York transplant

Victor Rice at his studio there. He is a producer of note that has worked with Brazilian artists of all genres, including hip hoppers such as Emicida, among others. This is not the grittiest part of town, but its proximity to a neighborhood locally referred to as

Crackolandia, and the kids I saw smoking crack pipes outside of my building one Sunday did not disqualify this neighborhood as a gritty one. While apartment hunting, we were chased by a man in Crackolandia who told us in English, to “get away! Get away from here!” We had no idea what the neighborhood was like but had responded to a Craigslist ad. Many department stores, electronic stores, bookstores, and a few vegetarian restaurants are in the immediate surroundings of the apartment we rented on Rua 7 de

Abril. Men sold pirated DVDs and CDs using sandwich board style displays that sat on

164 the ground so they could easily and quickly fold them up and run when a police car was nearby. I saw some of these men use radios to communicate police sightings. Also a few blocks away was the opposite of Crackolandia, Higienopolis, or Hygiene City, a section of posh apartments, doctors’ offices, and a luxurious shopping mall. During a show at a club between our neighorhood and Higienopolis, Gaspar of Z’Africa Brasil noted how at one point that area was a black neighborhood, and that it had been “cleaned up” in the most negative sense. “Eles limparam o bairro,” he said, insinuating the racism at work in city planning and gentrification.

I want to be careful to not paint my neighborhood as a terrible place. It is wonderful for many reasons, but has its gritty elements, such as homelessness, drugs, and intense traffic. It has its great elements too, such as proximity to many amenities in the area and to other parts of town. Among the local places of note are Rua 24 de Maio, which runs parallel to Rua 7 de Abril and is just one street over. It was the first street where Nelsão Triunfo and his Funk & Cia crew performed. Their subsequent location outside of the São Bento metro stop is within walking distance. Also nearby are the

SESC-Consolação, where hip hop critic and anthropologist Derek Pardue and I caught a concert by famed chorinho player Altamiro Carrilho. The non-profit Acão Educativa, a hip hop center in this old downtown area, was easily accessed within fifteen minutes on foot. I attended a baile black there and danced along side Nino Brown and many others as they enjoyed mostly US funk and soul music one Friday night. Just down the street from my apartment were the galerias, or shopping centers dedicated to small independent shops. Among them was the Galeria do Rock and a few others where rock and rap music

165 and assorted goods like hats, shoes, and clothing were sold. I spent some time getting to know a few of the shop owners as I dug for records and CDs. I found out about a few shows and groups I had not otherwise heard about, so it was nice to have some places nearby that served as sources of goods and information. Finally, the proximity of my apartment to Rua Augusta, where several important clubs and galerias are located, and

Praça Roosevelt, an important site for hip hop in its early years and the location of a venue called Club Sattva that hosted a show by Rashid while I was there, among other shows, was advantageous. I lived in an area both central to the city and to hip hop culture there. This positioning gave me some important insights into the inner workings of hip hop culture, hip hop commerce, and hip hoppers’ and hip hop’s connections to the city and its spaces.

São Paulo is unfathomably big. As a consequence, hip hoppers are scattered across many parts of the city and travel all over it to perform, promote, support their peers, and otherwise participate in their culture and community. They use buses, subways, cars, motorbikes, and their own feet to travel the city. One might perform one night, do a guest appearance at a show or two the next night, and perhaps some interviews or other events thrown in for good measure. As a fan, one might catch a show or two each weekend and take classes at the Casa do Hip Hop in Diadema.

Whose Urban Space? Performance, Culture, Institution, Race and Class

Between República and Sé sits the Banco Cultural. I caught a performance there by Rappin’ Hood and Nelsão Triunfo. It took place in the atrium of the building. Later,

166

Triunfo and King Nino Brown sat down for a panel discussion and question and answer session about hip hop in São Paulo and Brazil. Both performance and panel discussion were informative and passionate. Nelsão Triunfo did his signature hair flip, and Rappin’

Hood played some of his hits. The panel discussion touched on a range of issues, and each one highlighted the focus on the overall well being of hip hop.

On another night I attended a concert at the ITAU auditorium on the Avenida

Paulista. Gaspar of Z’Africa Brasil performed as a guest. ITAU is a bank and the

Avenida Paulista is home to Citibank and many other financial institutions as well. It is a main center of Brazilian finance, let alone simply of São Paulo.

Hip hop’s presence in both the Banco Cultural and at ITAU stands out. These are two spaces representing two spheres, official institutionalized culture and global finance, that in the past had shunned hip hop. Hip hoppers are not often welcome in places like these, considered high class and therefore in contrast to people claiming the street as their primary place of endeavor.

In 2007 I attended a concert by Lenine at Citibank Hall in São Paulo. It was

Lenine’s Carnaval de Recife, featuring a frevo act and other attractions from the

Northeast. Banks and BBoy Brenu, then also a member of Backspin Crew, invited me to the show. I arrived with one of my professors and his wife who already had tickets.

Banks and Brenu spoke with the security guard as instructed by their contact who was organizing the show and had told Banks to just ask for the tickets at the door. Brenu later told me that the trouble we had getting in was because the security guards saw that he and

Banks had arrived on motorbikes, saw how they were dressed, and knew they were from

167 the periphery. The host of assumptions that comes with this class divide led to our almost not getting in to the show, but luckily the promoter came out to let us in, not without chastising the security team as we walked in past them.

An important question arises in whether we would have been admitted had we already had the tickets with us and not had the advantage of the connection with the show promoter. As Brenu and Banks explained it, this was not the first time they had dealt with such discrimination. While the promoter responding as she did felt like a good and just response to the security’s assumptions and refusal to admit us, it is doubtful that the security’s practices changed after that. Who told them to discriminate as they did? Was it

Citibank Hall? If so, did that order come from Citibank itself, or is that venue only nominally connected to the bank, perhaps in a sponsorship deal much like sports and entertainment venues in the United States, and thus under the command of some other group or person?

In late 2013, the popular practice of “rolezinhos,” which prior to this was just a term to describe hanging out with friends, taking a stroll, window shopping, and the like, gained notoriety, further exemplifying this same type of class and race-based discrimination and limiting of who can enter into certain spaces, again those representative of commerce and capital. Teens and young adults from the peripheries of

São Paulo used Facebook and other social media to organize large gatherings in shopping malls strictly with the idea of spending time with friends and making new ones, buying ice cream, and other typical activities of a shopping mall. But when one of these gatherings got too big for the liking of consumers and store owners and a few thefts

168 occurred, police were called and they used rubber bullets and tear gas to get the large group of teens to disperse. As a result, large rolezinhos popped up in protest throughout

Brazil as a result and what once was just a term for day-to-day gathering and movement through the spaces of commerce became a sort of socio-political protest that caused fear in the wealthier classes and store owners. The prejudice and assumption that large groups of urban poor will ruin the good of what the wealthy own, and what they have access to, created a tension that young people played against by further organizing their “little strolls” as a way to resist the exclusion they were facing from the malls. Exclusion from these sites of commerce symbolically further marginalizes by telling those who already know they are poor and separate from the wealthy that they cannot even enter the same spaces as those with money. Teresa Caldeira notes that shopping malls, luxury apartments, and other structures are being built with these restrictions in mind, in many cases with walls, barred windows, security systems, and other “protective” measures that wind up worsening the perceived threats of loss feared by the wealthy and threatening the very democracy of cities (Caldeira 2000). In the U.S., this attitude has recently played out even in terms of who can pass through what neighborhood, young teens such as Trayvon

Martin, who was killed in February 2012, being killed by those who without knowledge of his actions but simple assumptions based on clothing, race, and geographic positioning try to defend their neighborhoods from those they think “belong” elsewhere and are therefore only where they do not “belong” to cause problems or otherwise interrupt the standard operations of that place.

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Discrimination in Brazil is often said to be based on class but race has also been a factor in spite of the differing opinion of many Brazilians. In July of 2010 then President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed the country’s first anti-racial discrimination law. The law was opposed by some who thought it would encourage Brazilians to start thinking about race in ways that were deemed particular to the United States and not congruent to the history of race relations in Brazil (Brice 2010). As Edward E. Telles

(PBS 2009) has documented, the incidence of over three million enslaved Africans being brought to Brazil and the fact that Portuguese settlers largely colonized Brazil on their own and not as families led to a higher occurrence of miscegenation in Brazil than in the

United States. In the U.S., racial separation was the order of things. But in Brazil, racial hatred is said to not exist. Also, the ethos of racial democracy, which as I mention in chapter 1 is a term coined to note Brazil’s connotations as a paradise free of racism, synthesized this idea of a lack of racism into a slogan that still has its affects on the country’s self-conception. Instead, discrimination based on classes is said to be the problem. As such, measures such as Affirmative Action, which Telles demonstrates is criticized in Brazil for being imported from the United States but really has its origins in the caste-laden society of India, are said to create problems where problems do not exist.

But Brazilians have long considered whiteness preferable to blackness. In the

United States, a person is considered black if he or she has any amount of African heritage. The “one drop” rule, meaning just one drop of African blood, of the U.S. is notably reversed in Brazil, where having one white ancestor in the eyes of many warrants a claim to whiteness. The preference for whiteness can be linked to class or not. But the

170 trend towards preferring whiteness, or wanting to claim whiteness, proves that whiteness is held as a gold standard against blackness. This is racism, whether issues of class are linked or not. If people feel inclined to lean towards racial classifications of lighter skin colors on censuses as Melissa Nobles demonstrates in Shades of Citizenship (2000), then clearly blaming discrimination solely on class is denying that discrimination already occurs based on race.

Hip hoppers themselves will tell you how misguided is this idea that racial discrimination does not exist, which is evidenced in their desires to connect with other hip hoppers through the diaspora circuitry I detail in chapter 2. Emicida, an important voice in the current generation of Brazilian emcees whose work I examine below, discusses racism in a 2012 interview with Roberto Cabrini on the television program

Conexão Repórter, a show produced by Brazilian news outlet SBT Online. Asked directly if racism exists, he responds, “violentamente.” When asked if he has experienced it himself, he states, “inúmeras vezes.” Emicida then relates a tale from one or two months before this interview of a security guard outside of his building assuming the emcee was in the wrong place and pointing a gun at him, only to realize it was Emicida and then apologize and ask for forgiveness. The emcee goes on to point out that the situation may have played out differently if it had been his brother or his cousin. His brother is his producer, but his face is not known like Emicida’s. The assumption that a black man was in the wrong place, and then the recognition that the situation was indeed okay because this was a famous black man, demonstrates the ingrained expectations of how Brazilians of varying ethnicities, specifically of African descent, behave and of where they belong

171 and do not belong. Spaces, then, are racialized. This is racism plain and simple, just as

Emicida points out. For this to have been a class-based response only diffused by the realization that this famous person was not a criminal because of his financial stability, the question as to what signals triggered the guard to draw his weapon would need to be examined. It would be difficult for those signals to have not been related to race because the guard was going on looks and gut instinct. What could inform his response then other than an expectation, or better said an assumption of how black people behave?

Yet class would not go unmentioned in discussions on discrimination, as the poor are frequently marginalized for their class. While I have not discussed their ancestry with

Brenu and Banks, they appear to be of European descent. But as Weller and Paz Tella have demonstrated, and as I discuss in chapter 2, both race and class are connected to blackness, poor Brazilians of varying ethnicities facing discrimination and lack of opportunity and so feeling a sense of connection to Brazilians of African descent (197).

Blackness is lived as a mode of resistance against discrimination and systemic lacks for the socially and racially marginalized.

Following Weller and Paz Tella’s analysis then, and as statistics such as the two to one income disparity between white and black Brazilians that Brice cites demonstrate that darker skin color in Brazil correlates to lower incomes and economic opportunities, there is an intricate connection between race and class in Brazil. And in spite of a person of African descent being famous and no longer poor, as in Emicida’s case, discrimination exists on both fronts, and one might imagine even more so for Brazilians that are both poor and of African descent.

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Examples such as Emicida’s experience of having a security guard pull a gun on him and Brenu and Banks’ experience at the Lenine concert illustrate the ingrained assumptions of race and class. In each case appearance, both physical and dress, play an important role in others’ reactions. Browner skin, style of dress, and mode of transportation (motor bikes) are all signifiers of the potential for the undesirable, and so made undesirable traits themselves.

Regardless of whether the discrimination Banks and Brenu faced at the door of

Citibank Hall was a directive from any level of management or just a reaction based on socially ingrained responses to visual cues, the venue is connected to the bank by the name, and the messages cannot be any clearer. First, certain people, on the basis of class, can access entertainment, and others cannot. Importantly, within our group we had a mix of classes. My professor and his partner had bought their own tickets. It is unlikely Brenu and Banks would have attended were they not to have received tickets from their friend. I would have been somewhere in the middle as a graduate student, budgeting my time and money. Furthermore, dress and mode of transportation were the clear signals of class here. No one asked my professor where he came from or how much money he had. No one asked Brenu or Banks, either, yet somehow it was clear to the security team that these guys represented trouble, or the potential for it.

Second, returning to the message behind this incident, Citibank Hall, its location and the actual entertainment of the evening, Carnaval de Recife, are important factors in the question of access put forth in this example. Carnaval is one of several elements of

Brazilian culture that is used to promote the country and has become emblematic of it.

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Samba, soccer, beaches, the Amazon, and physical beauty are the others. While Recife has an important role in the foundation of Carnaval, Rio de Janeiro remains the principal city symbolic of the event, with the largest parade taking place in the Sambadrome there.

The Carnaval de Recife tour was a chance to introduce audiences to other elements of

Northeastern culture, among them certain styles of dance as well as the musical genre frevo in its one hundredth anniversary that year and deemed a Patrimônio Cultural

Imaterial da Humanidade in 2014 (Prefeitura do Recife). The Northeast is often revered for its music and its connections to Africa. Lenine and his popularity as an MPB and rock artist from the same region carried the night, helping connect audiences with these other elements. But in putting these cultural aspects on tour at the Citibank Hall in the wealthy neighborhood of Moema near Parque Ibirapuera, not too far from the Avenida Paulista, questions about the institutionalization of culture and who has access to that culture arise.

Lenine being a major artist of the broad MPB genre, or música popular brasileira, and here celebrating one of the earliest forms of Brazilian popular music, the question is then, who has access to the popular? Who is included in that term?

Often created in the streets and by poorer sectors, music is co-opted frequently. In a venue under the moniker of Citibank, there is a certain packaging at work that takes culture from the street and into a more sterile environment. The performers did a wonderful job energizing the crowd that night, but the tour itself was a particular packaging of culture. The Carnaval de Recife that actually occurs in Recife is a free, open-air annual event featuring major and minor acts for all ages, and over one thousand of them in total. While also an organized and orchestrated event, the aim of providing

174 free entertainment is in stark contrast to the touring event that charges for tickets and thereby limits who can come in the door.

The third message of that night lies in the fact that periphery dwellers or those of lower economic strata cannot access institutionalized culture, which ironically is often culture that began in the street, within those poorer classes, or in regions with a large percentage of ethnic or economic minorities. Big finance’s message about culture is that it must be packaged for sale to those that can afford it and consume it with money. All

“others” are not welcome to partake. What is more, all “others” should understand that big finance wants to exclude them, and perhaps incorporate some of them as employees in order to do so.

Returning to Gaspar’s performance on the Avenida Paulista and the performance and talks by Triunfo, Brown, and Rappin’ Hood, the irony is again clear, and they will point it out too. In these places of cultural institutionalization, and bear in mind that the

Banco Cultural is located quite close to where Triunfo was harassed by police and told to cut his hair in the early 1980s, hip hop is welcome to participate as part of official initiatives or other artists’ shows, as was the case with Gaspar. But hip hoppers’ participation as consumers of culture can be limited by their economic standing and assumed behavioral patterns based on that status. The power relations at work in these examples are worth noting.

What is the advantage to Gaspar, Triunfo, Brown, and Rappin’ Hood participating in these ways? Is there a way to gain within such power relations? There is always space to represent and put forth a positive image. Brown says on “A Voz do King” that “a

175 mídia reforça essa imagem,” that is, the image of hip hop as socially negative and hip hoppers as troublemakers. This is another instance in the world of blackness being discriminated and made “less than” under the guise of frustration against socially frustrating behavior like graffiti and loud noises, such as the vignette that Tricia Rose examines in her seminal Black Noise, in which the chair of a music department dismisses the musical component of rap as worthless and just loud noise that wakes up his family in the wee hours of the morning (62-3). So often hip hoppers are dismissed as non- musicians and rap music as devoid of skill for not playing “actual” instruments, a term I critique in chapter 1. This dismissal, much like the media’s dismissals which Nino Brown is criticizing in “A Voz do King,” fail to recognize what Rose would call the “sonic force” of black culture (63) and what I would simply call the creativity, intelligence, and competence of black musicians. Hip hop is part of black culture, so stigmatization of it cannot be divorced from a stigmatization of blackness.

Why is it that some urban spaces are welcoming and others are exclusive? How has hip hop worked within those limits to function as a space of community and inclusiveness? Certainly the metaphor of “a rua é nóiz” is empowering. Believing that one is part of the main arteries of urban life creates a certain feeling of control and ownership, as well as responsibility to define those spaces. It is a stance of defiance towards exclusions such as those experienced by Brenu and Banks at Citibank Hall and towards the negative imagery put forth by media and musical expectations based in notions of the “correctness” of musicianship and music-making.

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“A rua é nóiz!”: Identity and Corporeal, Musical, and Digital Connections to Urban

Spaces

Emicida is one of the most important and prolific emcees in Brazil. He performs constantly, has released several important records, and is a critical thinker about space, art, culture, citizenship, and society. His 2009 mixtape Pra Quem Já Mordeu um

Cachorro por Comida Até que Eu Cheguei Longe (For The Person Who Has Already

Bitten a Dog for Food Until I Made It Big) is a collection of songs Emicida had written years before and decided to record and release without alterations in order to “respeitar o momento em que foram escritas.” The songs touch on themes of race, social position, and citizenship (including the song “Cidadão”), among others. The cover [FIGURE 14] is constructed from a brown paper bag and stamped with the album title, the rapper’s name, and a figure that has become his symbol, a man dressed in a suit and with a cassette tape for a head. The back [FIGURE 15] includes song titles, contact information, and the

FIGURE 14. Emicida Pra Quem Já Mordeu um Cachorro front cover

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FIGURE 15. Emicida Pra Quem Já Mordeu um Cachorro back cover

names of different entities involved in the production, such as Laboratório Fantasma, or

Ghost Lab, the name of Emicida’s production studio and merchandising company. Inside the package is a white CD or CDR with the album title and the name Emicida again in stamp form, and a number. An insert [FIGURE 16] reveals much about the intentions of the project, its construction, and about Emicida’s motivations as an artist and person.

For starters, the mixtape was produced “de forma artisanal novamente, para que cada cópia seja única e ressalte a importáncia de cada um dos que acreditam em nosso propósito.” This approach towards listeners is fundamental to an overarching attitude about the importance of the people, both in general, and in terms of his music. He continues:

A música deve estar junto das pessoas, fazer parte da vida de cada um de

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nós como sempre Fez, essa é nossa prioridade no momento, develover as

canções ao povo, develover tudo isso pra rua, tudo que faz parte deste

projeto foi confeccionado por mim e por minha família para baratearmos

os custos e conseguirmos colocar este trabalho na rua com o preço mais

acessível que der. Cada cd é numerado como prova da exclusividade do

material, cada capinha é carimbada e dobrada e colada manualmente para

transmitirmos o Maximo de nossa energia aos que nos derem um voto de

confiança e levarem este cd para suas casas.

FIGURE 16. Emicida Pra Quem Já Mordeu um Cachorro liner notes

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While I did not purchase my copy of Pra Quem Já Mordeu um Cachorro por

Comida Até que Eu Cheguei Longe directly from Emicida, but from the member of the band opening for him at a show at the SESC-Pompéia, a branch of a state-funded series of arts centers, the purchase was memorable. I had just seen Emicida perform with his band, and the opening act, whose name I never caught, was supporting at the merchandise table. I hung around just observing the interactions in the square little room between the door to the outside of the building and the door to the main room of the venue. When I bought the album, the bass player of the opening act (a fellow I would later see play in his other group at an event at the Casa do Hip Hop), talked to me about the record and how it was really good. Of course he was not going to undersell it, but he gave me a few supporting details connecting with the show I had just witnessed and affirming that indeed the record was strong.

A vignette of every step I made while in Brazil is of course not important or relevant, however, offering some information about this purchase reflects the nature and intent of the project. In the above quote from the liner notes, Emicida states that this project was made by hand, which gave them three advantages. Firstly and secondly, it lowered production costs so they could sell the album to people for the lowest cost possible, R$2,00 or roughly $1.00 to $1.25 USD at the time. The first advantage is that they did not have to spend much to make the album, a cost that can be prohibitive to making one. Saving listeners money, really, making it affordable to all, including those that struggle with basic costs like transportation, is the second advantage. Third, in making the album with his friends and family, literally stamping the images on either side

180 of the cover and on the disc itself, changing the number on the stamp for each disc, folding and gluing the cover, and folding the liner notes, written by Emicida himself and inserted by hand to be sold by hand, he feels he and his team have transmitted both love and appreciation in creating a unique disc through their energy which they invested in the project and in the labor of constructing it. Emicida produced ten thousand copies of this album. For a machine to make such a production would not take long. One can imagine a conveyor belt passing along each plastic CD and some type of stamp attached to a piston, or more than likely a computerized spray brush to “paint” the graphics and lettering on each copy. Some sort of automated paper cutter and folder might take care of the cover and liner notes, perhaps with printing done en masse, several hundred, a thousand, or all ten thousand at once.

But in doing the labor as a team of people, wetting the stamp with ink then pressing it on each cover and CD itself, folding and gluing and inserting, interesting factors are part of that equation that machines are at best less prone to. For example, while it is possible that a machine print might vary from one copy to the next, those types of variations are guarded against by machine calibrations and maintenance or replacement of any failing machine parts. But a person cannot replace their wrist or shoulder in the midst of such a homemade production. If each person on the team rotated from one job to the next, such wear could be prevented or postponed. But even in an assembly line type of process, after many repetitions pain and varying levels of energy can set in. These factors, as well as the possibility that the person working on the covers made a crooked fold or the person stamping tilted the stamp, not letting it fully soak up

181 the ink from the pad or not laying it completely on the CD or cover, are more likely to happen in the scenario of a small team of people creating a run of an album like in this example than in a more mechanical production process. And the reason, of course, is that these production “mishaps,” which might be called “human errors,” are caused by human characteristics like energy, fatigue, and body movements never being able to be as consistent as the motions of machines. These are human characteristics that lead to production characteristics unique to the process of human beings producing things by hand, and so each individually numbered disc has the potential for some variation unique to itself and to this process. Some of these variations in print consistency, some ink appearing faded in the same image, word, or title and some logos cut off at the bottom, are visible in the lettering of the front and back covers of my copy of Pra Quem Já

Mordeu um Cachorro por Comida Até que Eu Cheguei Longe shown in Figures 1 and 2 above.

This idea of wanting to transmit energy through a cultural production is akin to

Walter Benjamin’s theory of the aura of the cultural production in the age of mechanical reproduction. Emicida’s production of Pra Quem Já Mordeu um Cachorro por Comida

Até que Eu Cheguei Longe has its element of reproduction to it. But Benjamin’s critique on reproduction is more about the divorce of the artist from the process of transmission of a cultural expression. So for example, he is concerned with film never being able to transmit the same spirit as an actor acting in a play because the camera replaces the audience in the immediate creation of the film versus a play. Mechanical reproduction, fears Benjamin, takes away something of the spirit of the performance or expression and

182 cheapens the experience, taking away the aura of the piece of art, of what the artist puts directly in to it. A poster or acopy of a painting offers the same problems. Reproduction makes the expression not as special according to Benjamin (Benjamin, “The Work of

Art…”).

But what about when the production of a small run of CDs, but still a production en masse, is reproduced by the artist himself as well as his team? Emicida’s intention with this record, as he explains it, and even in recording the songs as they were originally composed to respect the moment in which they were written, would appeal to Benjamin on the level of the aura. The collective craftsmanship, the variations in printing, the energy and labor put in by the artist and his team, indeed the physical and human traces of the production all confer a certain authenticity to each individual disc that steals back a sense of individuality from the reproduction process. While each disc amongst the ten thousand disc run contains the same music, the nature of the production process of the album creates individual discs that are part of the same production en masse, at once achieving reproduction, but maintaining the aura through the unique character or each disc that a more machine-based and less-humanized production might do.

One might critique the fact that the recording of these songs took place in a moment far enough into Emicida’s career that he could look back with enough time passed and make this claim of respecting the moment in which they were written. But he was not releasing this as something from the archives or some type of cash grab based on nostalgia. He talks about the moment of this record and its title in an interview on the show De Frente com Gabi. Asked about the album title, he notes how when he was

183 young and his widower mother would leave her four children enough money for two breads while she went to work, he remembers his dog biting his half piece of bread. In response, he bit the dog out of sheer frustration at losing his food. Looking back, he gave the album its title and saw the production of these songs written over the course of several earlier years as a proper reflection on his own life, saying “Eu queria mostrar as pessoas da onde eu vinha e a onde eu estava” (SBT Online De Frente com Gabi). Indeed, he is and will always be someone who bit a dog for food. But as he says in a separate interview with Conexão Reporter in reference to those who wake up at 5:00 a.m. to go to work to support their kids, those people like his mother whom he refers to as “guerreiros” and “guerreiras,” he invokes this warrior spirit in his effort to “chegar longe,” or literally to arrive far from that point (SBT Online Conexão Repórter). Pra Quem Já Mordeu um

Cachorro por Comida Até que Eu Cheguei Longe then, Emicida’s first mixtape/album, is a demonstration of this journey and was released at a point in which he was either almost living off of his music or had just reached such success. In producing the album, Emicida wanted these songs to reach people and for them to hear them and think about them.

Producing the album, from the production of the music to the copying of it on to CDRs to the printing and stamping and folding and gluing and selling of the record with his small team, and with such a reflection on his own trajectory and connecting it to others in similar situations, Emicida has instilled some special energy in this album, the spirit of which configures the album’s aura, of which Benjamin speaks.

This basic premise about music reaching the people, about transmitting energy to those that support him, is one that many rappers and hip hoppers share in Brazil. They

184 feel deeply linked to where they come from, to people they are close to and to people in general. All of these sentiments get rolled into a love for the street, “a rua,” and a fascination with it as the heartbeat of the city and the space where life occurs. The phrase

“A rua é nóiz,” or “the street is us”/”we are the street,” is absolutely central to hip hop in

São Paulo, and by extension all of Brazil. The phrase, or the shortened version “é nóiz,” is used as both a greeting of arrival and exit and as I analyze in depth below, connects the hip hop community verbally, physically, and metaphorically. Emicida strives to keep costs low with this production in order to accommodate people in the streets. Rappers feel a kinship with those that work and live in the street. He notes that:

Esta frase nasceu nas batalhas de mc’s da santa cruz, ela sintetiza o

pensamento de poder e união dos que estão nas ruas constantemente,

sejam eles artistas de rua, músicos, trabalhadores formais ou informais ,

mendigos, transeuntes, etc.

A rua é a verdade, a vida, as veias e artérias de um mundo confuso em um

processo de auto destruição contínuo, porem nós estamos nas ruas e cabe a

nós pensar e agir para contribuir de forma expressiva a favor da mudança

e melhoria de nossas vidas.

Se as veias e artérias desse organismo estiverem desligadas , havera um

colapso e dentro de algum tempo a morte do mesmo, mas se o respeito e a

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sabedoria reinarem em nossos corações iremos nos aproximar e nos tornar

“um só”, nos tornaremos senhores do destino do ambiente em que

vivemos.

Esse poder esta na rua.

E a rua é nóiz.

Some important ideas surface here about the relationship of art to space and place and about the conception of the urban. The metaphor of the street as the truth, the life, and the veins and arteries of a confusing world in the process of self-destruction is a powerful one. By extension, the people traveling the streets, or these veins and arteries, would be the blood and healthy cholesterols keeping the veins and arteries open, functioning, so that the organism itself, perhaps the world, perhaps truth, does not die.

The street as conduit of respect and wisdom and positivity, of unity (“um só”), is

Emicida’s proposition, to the end that through such an approach, the people can take control of their own destiny and existence, indeed creating their own space from the places they traverse and into which they emit this energy. Walking with Cabrini through the streets of the favela where he grew up, Emicida notes that in the streets, people carry the mantra of “Levanta a cabeça, respira fundo e segue em frente. Você vai sorrir. Cê vai chorar. Só é que você vai ter que encontrar saída. Só depende de você encontrar essa saída” (SBT Online Conexão Repórter). The phrase, then, “a rua é nóiz,” functions as a reminder, and a proclamation, that it is up to the people to build their own existence. The

186 phrase’s popularity throughout Brazilian hip hop suggests the community’s belief in hip hop as a space within which to build this existence and destiny. And the connection to the street, to the physical space of it as well as to the street as a metaphor and a literal conduit through which to travel towards that destiny, highlights the importance of urban spaces in

Brazilian hip hop.

One might criticize this conception of connection to the street as a packaging of the street done as a marketing technique such as that referenced in the above discussion about Citibank and its packaging of frevo and street-originated culture. Hip hop is no stranger to this type of commercialization and corporate packaging. Emicida has designed a shoe for Nike and Rashid has done advertisements for Nike and for the headphones company Beats by Dre. While it is not certain a hip hop artist would turn down a collaboration with a financial institution, the examples at hand are at the very least collaborations with companies already connected to hip hop, Nike for reasons of style, and Beats by Dre for its connection to audiophile culture, and because their headphones are designed by hip hop producer, engineer, and emcee Dr. Dre, a major reference in hip hop culture and rap music the world over. Indeed, much of rap music in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s is directly produced by him or influenced by his production style and his production work (he produced Snoop Doggy Dogg and Eminem, most notably, among others). So these collaborations, if not natural for hip hop at this point, are at least common enough to be considered somewhat expected. These collaborations certainly package hip hop, but not in the same ways in which Citibank packaged frevo.

The products Emicida and Rashid advertise and design most definitely feed into the

187 production of desires. Shoes and headphones are staples in hip hop culture and lifestyle, and not always attainable by everyone, especially by those who cannot afford the transportation fare to reach the Casa do Hip Hop or other sites. But these artists are still releasing their music for free online at the same time as they release the physical copies of their CDs. They are trying to make money, but not at the expense of disconnecting themselves or others from hip hop culture. They are packaging street culture, but they are still producing street culture and remain connected to the street on this metaphorical level but also on a physical level.

Thinking about the urban physical component of hip hop, the connection to the body becomes important. How is the body used to travel these conduits, these streets?

How must the body perform in order to benefit from the street and use it for the end of reaching a better collective destiny? What must the body endure to reach that destiny?

Living in São Paulo and traversing its streets I experienced some of what Brazilians and

Brazilian hip hoppers experience. Living in the Centrão section put me in a central location for many sites, but it still put me over an hour from the Casa do Hip Hop, a main center of the hip hop community. From my apartment, I boarded the red line metro train, traveling two stops to the blue line at Praça da Sé, from where I would travel twelve stops to Jabaquara. At Jabaquara, I would board an EMTU trolley bus to Diadema. Exiting after a few stops, I would walk up a hill and around a corner. The walk up the hill always revealed much graffiti, murals, and political campaign posters. A community vegetable garden always stuck out as unique within the neighborhood.

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While bus, train, and minimal walking hardly amount to rigorous physical activity, the round trip still took some energy and required over two hours of time. Using both train and trolley bus cost five reais in each direction. At ten reais, roughly five to six dollars in 2010, the trip does not seem terribly expensive at first thought. But just as in

New York City, five dollar round trips on the subway add up quickly. In our neighborhood of República, and throughout São Paulo, we saw many graffiti protests of subway and bus price increases. Prices were already considered high for many. I met one young hip hopper, the fellow reading the “Ciclo de Cultura” pamphlet in the artwork for

Nino Brown’s Uma Só Voz album, who told me that he could not afford the trolley bus fare of five reais round trip, so he walked over an hour each way to get to the Casa do

Hip Hop for classes and events. Affordability of course depended on the person and their circumstances, but the cost of travel was always a factor.

The graffiti protests we saw around our neighborhood were phrases spray-painted on construction zone walls built from sheets of plywood. The tags would denounce the higher prices, and make claims that costs were already too high. By 2013, these frustrations grew into the massive protests of public transportation fare hikes that developed first in São Paulo and then spread around Brazil, drawing over a million people into the streets around the country, organized by groups like the Movimento Passe

Livre (Zylberkan).

Time was another factor. Nelsão Triunfo also took the red line, blue line, trolley bus method I took, and he had even more stops than I did on the red line. One young woman would travel two and a half hours in each direction to attend Casa events. The

189 travel time only allowed her to come once per month, but she goes every month. The sense of community amongst hip hoppers is strong and draws people in spite of competing circumstances.

The physical, time, and financial costs of travel are all tangible factors for hip hoppers. Hip hop’s physicality and rhythms compete against the stresses the body and mind endure. Break and other street dances, rhyming, deejaying, and graffiti writing are all physical acts that interrupt daily tensions to mark individual and collective existence.

Pichação graffiti in Brazil is a perfect illustration of this presence. It is ugly graffiti.

Words are stretched tall and difficult to read, and as such said to mimic the cityscape itself with its tall buildings creating a confusing, sometimes ugly and harsh reality.

Emicida has always been a strong proponent of the ethos behind “a rua é nóiz.”

The linguistic tie between the street and “we” creates a connection between the people and the street that is solidified by this phrase becoming a mantra for hip hop, repeated over and over between people as a greeting of reunion or departure or at shows both between songs or in lyrics. The physical connection to this “we are the street” notion is furthered by a hand signal performed by rappers and fans alike at shows. That hand signal is demonstrated and explained in the Para Quem Já Mordeu Um Cachorro liner notes

[Figure 3]. The explanation is worth examining at length:

COMO FAZER O “N”

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O sentimento de “a rua é nóiz” esta presente no coração de diversas

pessoas espalhadas pelo globo. pessoas que acreditam em si e em seu

papel dentro de uma rede de iguais.

O “n” significa “nóiz” de “a rua é nóiz” ,única e exclusivamente isso.

Levantando a mão direita você faz o número 1 com o dedo indicador, esse

simbolo significa um só caminho;

Levantando a mão esquerda você faz o número 2 com os dedos indicador

e médio simbolizando a paz e o amor e tambem o “v “ da verdade.

Unindo-os em um só encostando a ponta dos indicadores está formada a

letra “n”de nóiz. pronto, você fez o “n”, fazer o “n” é gritar “a rua é nóiz”

com as mãos.

“Shouting with the hands,” and making this symbol of “n” to represent the unity of “we” and the unity of “street” creates a corporeal reflection of and linkage to the urban. The performance of this hand gesture acts as a stance of communion, which resists any tensions that would try to tear down people economically, culturally, politically, or otherwise. As the right hand represents the stem of the “n” and the idea of “um só caminho,” it draws on ideas of collectivity and community, rather than a number one ranking as the pointer finger is so often used to signal. The left hand pointer and middle

191 finger in the shape of a “v” for “verdade,” or truth, signals the community as a truth when brought together with the right hand pointer finger. One community, one path—that of being unified—this is the truth they know and the collective “nós” or “we” that both left and right hands come together to signify. An important distinction to be made here, however, is that the hands are not coming together, but are brought together. The bringing together of the hands, the act of having to bring them together to form this letter

“n” symbol, is a powerful gesture of choice each time that reflects the choosing to create this community and participate in this unity. At this seemingly very basic level, a simple hand gesture, a very powerful statement is being made about the power of union and the act of coming together. This hand signal is an important reminder as well of the physical connection of hip hop and the body to the street. The hands as symbols of “we” and the statement “we are the street,” the street as “verdade” and the “v” for “verdade” in the left hand, this hand signal is a way to use the body to represent and connect to the urban, or perhaps to reflect a connection felt from deeper within at physical and metaphysical, or even spiritual, levels.

Another important distinction to make in this creation of the collective “we” is the incorrect spelling of “nós” as “nóiz,” which I have further transformed in the title of this dissertation for its similar appearance to the English word “noise” and the African-

American slang variant “noize,” but also to exemplify identity construction, voice and agency. The transformation from “nós” to “nóiz” is an interruption to proper Portuguese grammar and orthography and another illustration of how hip hoppers are crafting their own identity, their own version of a collective “we” in the face of official pressures that

192 attempt to deny them access, entry, and dignity. The wordplay also alters potential meanings of the phrase “a rua é nóiz.” Perhaps if “we” are the “street,” or the “street” is

“us,” and “we” or “us” is slightly stylized or “incorrect,” then perhaps the streets are flawed too. Perhaps they are flawed to begin with. At the very least, the intentional misspelling forces reflection about the phrase and its meanings and promotes a deeper understanding of the phrase itself and the concepts of “street” and “we.” The craft of

“we,” both in reality as well as orthographically, is intricately linked to the crafting of the

“street.” In other words, each affects the other, playing into the other’s identity and meaning.

Rashid is an emcee that was just starting out while I was in São Paulo in 2010.

Nelsão Triunfo bought his album for me for five reais on the trolley bus from the Casa do

Hip Hop to the subway at Jabaquara. I had one hundred reais on me thinking I would buy some other merchandise at an event at the Casa but there was none that day. Triunfo offered Rashid’s album as a gift, telling me Rashid was an important emerging voice and that I needed to hear the record. He was correct. I met with Rashid at the food court at the

Shopping Light at Anhangabaú, in front of the Teatro Municipal. He ate some

McDonald’s and we talked a bit about hip hop, lyrics, his own stake in the culture, and more. I saw him perform a few weeks later at Club Sattva at Praça Roosevelt.

Since then Rashid has developed as a performer, writer, thinker, and businessman.

Just a block from Shopping Light he held an official launch of his latest album,

Confundindo Sábios, at Beatz, one of the hip hop shops in the Galeria do Rock. The event was attended by 2,500 people who showed up to get an autograph and a photo and to buy

193 the physical album for five reais (“Tarde de Autógrafos), despite the download being offered for free. In a Facebook post from March 21, 2012 Rashid explained that his album, Que Assim Seja, his album prior to Confundindo Sábios, was also available for free download so everyone can have access to it, saying:

Acreditamos que o Rap pertence a vocês, ao povo, a rua, por isso

liberaremos pra download grátis, porque vocês nos inspiram. E quem

quiser comprar, saiba que vai estar fortalecendo MUITO nosso movimento

e nossa arte.

Que nosso trabalho faça valer a sua expectativa e sua torcida. Foco, Força

e Fé.

QUEM ASSIM SEJA.

21/03 NAS RUAS!

Rashid sells his albums on iTunes and in CD formats, but hosts free downloads of all of his albums on his official website and through websites like MediaFire.com and others. Importantly, then, the digital becomes a space in which artists can enable listeners to participate in consumption, and outside the bounds of the commodity form, by consuming their work for free. The digital realm has become increasingly more important in Brazilian hip hop since 2010. The Google-powered Orkut was an important tool in that sphere, and now many hip hoppers are using Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and other tools, connecting the urban space of hip hop to the digital realm.

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The connections between the digital and the physical are an important new avenue for Brazilian hip hop. Rashid has over 1,000,000 followers12 on his Facebook page alone, celebrating every fifty to one hundred thousand new followers with a thank you and a virtual shout out of “Tamo juntos!” or some other phrase familiar within this community.

Emicida has close to 3.5 million followers. Venues like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others have enabled Brazilians, both those living in Brazil and elsewhere, as well as people of other nationalities that enjoy the music of these artists to follow their goings on with ease and fluidity no matter where they are in the world. While every person following is not part of the hip hop community, those not involved still are exposed to the kind of community building spirit that these artists put forth. Social media becomes a method of advertisement for new projects, but also one that perpetually promotes the attitudes and ethos of artists like Emicida and Rashid, and also of hip hop culture and rap music as espoused and put forth by these artists on their various sites. Considering the circuitry at work in hip hop at the city level, with artists and fans traversing the city through the streets to reach points of performance, practice, and participation, the digital realm becomes a method of reinforcing the spirit behind this circuitry, but also helps to expand it to a virtual and international level. While such a connection already existed from hip hoppers traveling between different cities and exchanging information, music, and performances, the digital space enhances those connections and makes them possible as a daily part of existence and connection.

12 Between February 2014, when he had just over 600,000 followers on Facebook, and November 2014 Rashid gained over 500,000 additional followers, almost doubling his virtual fan base in just eight months. 195

Other media, as well as behavior, are also tools that emcees and other hip hoppers make use of in order to build and expand the spaces of hip hop. On the radio and online radio program Revolução Rap, MC Rashid talks about using his music, and of hip hop as a movement using music to reach people of different backgrounds. He cites seeing São

Paulo emcee and rap nacional icon Sabotage13 on television when he was a young teenager and defends his own choice to go on television when invited because there are certain people that, much like him when he lived in Minas Gerais, do not have internet or access to other platforms. This use of television to create a visual and sonic space for hip hop in mainstream outlets is one method that Rashid and others are using to resist marginalization and, in his words, one way they are trying “to open the minds” of those that had pidgeon-holed rappers and hip hoppers before meeting them. Rashid states that

“if hip hoppers are on these shows and behave well,” then these mainstream folks are going to take pause, realize that their stereotypes about hip hoppers are mistaken, and then encourage others to pay attention to what they are doing. He insists that when invited to any program, you are being invited for who you are, and that by showing up and acting like someone else, in essence he is saying like a caricature, then you are not being yourself (NIKOHD).

In a documentary explaining the meanings and motivations behind the songs and the overall project of his latest release Confundindo Sábios, Rashid explains the front

13 Sabotage, like Racionais MC’s, is considered one of the most important voices of rap nacional, or national rap in Brazil. He was murdered in a drug trafficking incident but like Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur in the United States, especially following their murders, he is revered for his lyrics and thematic content and held as a symbol of hip hop’s resistance, history, and reason to continue building the culture and community. 196 cover of his album [FIGURE 17], a small Afro-Brazilian boy with a ski mask half on, showing his innocent smile while standing in front of a large favela that fills in the background. Rashid notes that the childlike energy the boy emits contrasts with the expectations that people have of both black and poor people, that expectation portrayed here by the ski mask and its symbolic association to thieves and terrorists. The idea with

FIGURE 17. Rashid Confundindo Sábios cover art

this image, much like with his ideas above about presentation within mass media settings, is to confuse those perceptions to create new ones. He sums up the idea by saying that people like to envision the poor and the black with a certain mask, here literally represented by the mask the boy is half-wearing.

Subcomandante Marcos of the EZLN indigenous movement in Chiapas, Mexico has famously used masks to toy with public perceptions of the marginalized as well. In wearing a mask himself, he has concealed his identity and put forth the character of 197

Marcos as the “face” of the EZLN. The group’s intention was to strip themselves of names and identities to present themselves as a collective of equals striving to build and defend their community and its rights to exist democratically, free from the pains and struggles brought on by neoliberal economics. The EZLN famously entered the public

“view” on January 1, 1994, the same day that the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect between the United States, Mexico, and Canada. On masks and on the public’s persistence at knowing why the EZLN wears them, Marcos has said, “para que nos vieran, nos tapamos el rostro” (EZLN “A los hombres…”). Ironically, the indigenous being frequently seen as one mass of people existing outside of the mainstream culture, indeed in the periphery of the Mexican nation and drawn on for tourism purposes as

“authentic,” to be truly seen and have their presence taken seriously, the EZLN had to cover their individual identities, which they are saying here were not taken seriously anyway.

In response to Gabriel García Marquéz’s question, “Si todo el mundo sabe quién es usted, ¿para qué el pasamontañas?,” Marcos responds, “Un dejo de coquetería. No saben quién soy, pero además no les importa. Lo que se está jugando aquí es lo que es y no lo que fue el subcomandante Marcos” (EZLN “Habla Marcos…”).

“Un dejo de coquetería,” or, “a touch/aftertaste of coquetry.” With this statement,

Marcos admits that the ski mask is to “coquetear,” or, to flirt, to draw attention but to leave an impression in the broader social palette. People might think they know who he is, but they do not. And really, in Marcos’s opinion, it is not important to them, or perhaps better said, they should not be concerned about his identity beneath the mask.

198

Playing with the past and the present, he suggests that at play here is not what Marcos was, meaning, prior to becoming Marcos, but what Marcos the masked character is, will, and can be.

Marcos elsewhere expressed this sentiment in saying “no importa lo que está detrás de la máscara, sino lo que simboliza” (Vázquez Montalbán). Indeed, the meaning of the mask is what is in play. It can be signified in many ways and made to mean differently in varying contexts. And that ambiguity, that uncertainty, is what draws attention and gives the EZLN space to choose what Marcos will be. In a broader sense, the character Marcos and the capacity for his identity to be determined is a metaphor for the EZLN’s and indigenous identities as to be determined, especially by those very actors themselves. As unseen, or rather, marginalized people, Marcos adds to the aforementioned quote, saying “…para que nos vieran, nos tapamos el rostro; para que nos nombraran, nos negamos el nombre…” (EZLN “A los hombres…”). In denying their identities, they draw attention so that they can become noticed.

Marcos has noted that in spite of the hype and scandal as to who is beneath the mask, he knows his real face and would be happy to take off the mask if Mexican civil society would take off its mask. In doing so, he says that:

la sociedad civil mexicana se dará cuenta, con un impacto mayor, que la

imagen que le habían vendido de sí misma es falsa y la realidad es

bastante más aterradora de lo que suponía. Uno y otra mostraríamos la

cara, pero la gran diferencia estará en que el "sup Marcos" siempre supo

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cómo era su cara realmente, y la sociedad civil apenas despertará del largo

y perezoso sueño que la "modernidad" le impuso a costa de todo y de

todos. (EZLN “Carta de Marcos…”)

The EZLN would prefer that everyone live without masks, as masks have divided society and veiled the true marginalizing effects of modernity. The conversation between the EZLN and the Mexican government, and how it is approached, must be reconsidered and redefined. In response to another question from García Márquez, Marcos insisted that:

El diálogo significa simplemente acordar las reglas para que la disputa que

se da entre ellos y nosotros sea en otro terreno. Lo que está en la mesa del

diálogo no es el modelo económico. Lo que está en juego es cómo nos

vamos a disputar eso. Es algo que Vicente Fox tiene que entender.

Nosotros no nos vamos a hacer foxistas en la mesa. Lo que la mesa tiene

que construir es que este pasamontañas salga con dignidad y que ni yo ni

nadie tenga que regresar a llenar esto de parafernalia militar. El reto es que

no sólo tenemos que construir la mesa, sino que tenemos que construir al

interlocutor. (EZLN “Habla Marcos…”)

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Marcos and the EZLN, like Rashid, understand that imagery must be engaged as a tool to confuse popular perceptions, in that way serving as an interlocutor to help mediate on behalf of the marginalized, and ultimately retrain expectations.

In presenting the innocence of the boy through his smile and his seemingly playing with the ski mask, Rashid troubles the idea of the mask, saying “não me coloca essa máscara que não quero. Está ligado?” It is this sentiment that Marcos and the EZLN are also putting forth. They would prefer not to live in masks, but feel forced to wear them and use them as tools. Rashid also uses the mask as a tool, further positing that the idea of “confusing the wise,” or those that think they know, is to confuse their expectations of people of color and the poor. “Os sábios,” he says, “são aquellas pessoas que te julgam por algum motivo, motivo de classe, dinheiro, cor. A gente trabalha para chegar onde a gente está. Não é sorte. É trampo. Então isso considero uma confusão para os sábios, está ligado?” (Rashid Oficial. Rashid apresenta). Through this work, Rashid is working to change perceptions.

In another interview, Emicida is asked about his consumption of drugs and alcohol and he points out that he does not use them. He is too focused on his business and just never wanted or needed substances. He notes how promoters and club owners are always shocked that he does not use drugs or alcohol (SBT Online De Frente com Gabi), that perception itself a type of mask put on to musicians, especially rappers. These three examples of television, cover art, and behavior that counters public perceptions, demonstrate an effort to insert new images of hip hop and hip hoppers into the public imaginary of the culture and its community. In doing so, Rashid and Emicida are using

201 media and perceptions to further transform place into spaces where hip hop can stake a position. They are further staking a claim for hip hop and crafting a space for hip hop within the general mediated and public sphere in spite of preconceptions.

In his De Frente com Gabi interview, reflecting on media use, Emicida said “mas o foco realmente está na rua assim. O trabalho ‘offline’, ele ainda é muito maior do que o trabalho a internet. Só tem… tem que ter as coisas ali por quando as pessoas procurem elas encontram.” But even if the focus is in the physical space of the “rua,” meeting people online when they look for information about hip hoppers points to these tools of digital media, television, and other formats as important complements to creating the hip hop space. As Emicida says, people are going online to find information about them, so they meet them there. Obviously this helps them market and spread their messages, but it also helps them maintain and strengthen their base. The street is in the street, in their ears, and now in their digital space. Some might not be able to see them perform live due to where they live or lack of disposable income to attend a show, or for other reasons. But through television and internet they can participate, or participate further, and connect to the community and its music through YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other platforms.

With Que Assim Seja, his follow up to A Hora de Acordar which Nelsão Triunfo gave to me, Rashid had a management company and had developed himself as a self- promoter. Facebook became a principal tool to disperse images, flyers, and free music downloads. But it has also served as a space to produce and reproduce concepts of community using repetition and slang to create some level of intimacy. Phrases like

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“Tamo juntos!” or “We are together!” “Firmeza,” literally a variant of “confirmed” or

“firm,” but used like the English slang version of “word” and “word up,” bring listeners, and readers of his Facebook page, into a collective. The phrases are repeatedly said at concerts, in interviews, or otherwise in public, so the connection to the street and the digital becomes clearer. The digital is used as a complementary tool to the ethos of street, family, and a community built around a connection to the urban.

A visit to Rashid’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or other social media sites on any given day reveals these sentiments. Several examples will illustrate these points:

“Quem puder e achar que a gente merece, vota em noiz no Prêmio

Multishow! Tamujuntão! (Facebook, February 24, 2014)

“E graças a geral a ficou trocando ideia com a gente, entramos nos TTs

BR. Valeu família! Até o próximo” (Facebook, February 21, 2014)

In this first quote, “tamujuntão” is an augmentative and slang version of “estamos juntos.” Here, the sentiment becomes a hyperbolic expression about choosing to work together. In the second quote, the phrase “valeu família” in this statement of thanks uses the concept of family to bring fans, musicians, and others together into one imagined, but lived community. The concept of “trocando ideia,” discussed in chapter 2, is also engaged here. In general, these social media sites are used to repeat these concepts as reminders and invitations to continue participating in, as well as consuming, hip hop.

Connections between the different generations of hip hoppers are engaged, Rashid

203 publicly thanking Nelsão Triunfo and recognizing Triunfo’s distinction as an elder statesman of hip hop and a great teacher, saying “Muito obrigado, mestrão!” Triunfo’s response of “Tamujuntosemisturados!” enacts the supportive togetherness and recognition of being a united movement referenced above as well as a collective of varying backgrounds, the two points cleverly mashed together as one word or collection of letters here and in reference to an anti-racist movement built on further bringing the community together regardless of ethnic background.

In another recent post, Rashid reflects on the Batalha de Santa Cruz, where he,

Emicida, and many others got their start. They and others support each other by contributing verses on songs, performing together, and otherwise. Here, Rashid has some thoughts about this Santa Cruz emcee battle and its connection to hip hop as an urban space. He says:

Esse lugar merece todo o respeito.

Dentro da história do Hip hop, nasceram várias "Mecas" das ruas, lugares

que marcaram tanto o movimento em suas respectivas regiões, que se

tornaram verdadeiros templos da cultura.

Eis que em 2006 surgiu na cabeça de uma banca de moleques a ideia de

fazer uma batalha nos arredores da quebrada deles. Foram então pra

calçada em frente o shopping Santa Cruz, na saída do metrô. E se o

shopping representava o consumo, o capitalismo, a batalha representaria a

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cultura, a resistência de um movimento urbano. (Facebook post, 22 Feb.

2014)

Rashid brings up a number of important points here. The importance of place is engaged immediately in the title of this remark. Places become symbolic sites in terms of their importance to people, or, better said, as spaces where important events or practices occurred or continue to occur. French historian Pierre Nora’s thoughts on memory, place, identity and unity offer some important reflections on the value any space comes to have for a community. He notes that “only a symbolic history can restore to ‘France’ the unity and dynamism not recognized by either the man in the street or the academic historian”

(xi). This is to say that places become important spaces based on the meaning they carry for a given community. And that meaning might not be recognized by everyone, be it the layperson or the institution, a thought that gives further credence to the idea that spaces mean differently for different people or groups of people. Nora comments further that

“only in the eyes of memory do the concepts of cohesiveness, unity, and continuity retain their pertinence and legitimacy” (xii). The importance and meaning of a space, then, only remain important in social, collective memory. Or, better said, memory serves to maintain and produce meaning in places, thereby serving the creation of a space and promoting its continuance or longevity.

The Santa Cruz Battle having produced so many notable emcees, it has lived on and gained the respect of hip hop at large in Brazil due to its significance and due to the memory of that event and it serving as the initial moments in Emicida, Rashid, and

205 others’ careers. The idea of a group of kids banding together to start this battle location in a spot near their own neighborhoods shows a dedication to hip hop culture but also to developing their local scene and banding several urban areas together to do so. In this way, the founders of the Batalha Santa Cruz were shaping their own environment by creating the urban connecting point of the Batalha. Finally, Rashid’s demonstration of the shopping mall as a site of consumption and capitalism, and the battle as a site of culture and this urban movement’s resistance, sets up an interesting connection between the urban as a space of resistance to capitalism, here posited as a force against the people.

Interestingly, urban space is constantly defined and created by capitalism, through advertising, city design to create efficient pedestrian and vehicular traffic flow through city centers and their businesses, and through the construction of buildings by big capital, universities, and other interests. Imminent domain is often enacted to the end of supporting capital growth. Columbia University, for example, is currently constructing new buildings in a section of Harlem that it gained under imminent domain, forcing at least several apartment buildings out of the area. Henri Lefebvre states that “…in the case of power, signifier and signified coincide in the shape of violence…” (162), meaning that through violence, spaces are given shape and their meanings made. If power is the signifier, through force it creates space and injects meaning into them, signifying them. In an early reflection on space and power in The Production of Space Lefebvre points out that “…the space thus produced also serves as a tool of thought and of action; that in addition to being a means of production it is also a means of control, and hence of domination, of power; yet that, as such, it escapes in part from those who would make

206 use of it” (26). The spaces created by power become spaces of control and domination. In the case of a shopping mall, for example, what is made available for purchase and presented as models of how to be, or what is made unavailable due to high costs, create understandings, assumptions, and desires about how to define self and identity and how to approach one’s spending practices.

Lefebvre further comments on capital, power, knowledge, and space, stating:

Many people are inclined to forget that capitalism has yet another aspect,

one which is certainly bound up with the functioning of money, with the

various markets, and with the social relations of production, but which is

distinct from these precisely because it is dominant. This aspect is the

hegemony of one class. The concept of hegemony was introduced by

Gramsci in order to describe the future role of the working class in the

building of a new society, but it is also useful for analyzing the action of

the bourgeoisie, especially in relation to space…Hegemony implies more

than an influence, more even than the permanent use of repressive

violence. It is exercised over society as a whole, culture and knowledge

included…The ruling class seeks to maintain its hegemony by all available

means, and knowledge is one such means. The connection between

knowledge (savoir) and power is thus made manifest, although this in no

way interdicts a critical and subversive form of knowledge

(connaissance); on the contrary, it points up the antagonism between a

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knowledge which serves power and a form of knowing which refuses to

acknowledge power. (10)

Urban space, then, would seem first and foremost for the service of capitalism.

But Rashid’s remark about the Batalha de Santa Cruz sets up an interesting riff and a counter to the violence and weight of capital and power. In referring to an urban movement, he posits culture and the act of building community, here defined as a small group of young rappers, as the tools to battle, pun intended, against capitalism and consumption. A lyrical battle then, set in front of a large shopping center, becomes a tool in a battle against consumption and capitalism, specifically against the presence of consumption and capitalism in the urban setting. The very concept of an urban movement, then, is rooted in urban location and existence, yet against the overwhelming force of capitalism, which continues to rule and define that same urban space. This resistance redefines urban existence by working to shape it in its own ways, such as through community building activities like a recurring emcee battle. Occupying that space for the battle marks it in the minds of many as a space of hip hop, and physically takes over the space, resisting capitalism by interrupting traffic flows and altering the typical rhythms of commerce at the Santa Cruz shopping mall by creating an-other culture. Power is most certainly acknowledged in terms of its existence and weight, but it is interrogated and resisted through this act of refashioning the street and metro stop in front of the shopping center into a space of hip hop. While not hip hop, the 2013 and

2014 rolezinhos, or “little strolls” by the young urban poor, posed a similar resistance

208 inside shopping malls in protest of their exclusion from such places. The mass protests against transportation price increases in 2013, which also took on issues such as funding for World Cup soccer stadiums taking away from funding that could have supported basic needs of the people, also marked moments of urban resistance towards a declaration of space (Salatiel). All of these examples demonstrate how groups of people can create their own spaces out of varying places and use those spaces to fashion their own identities and create spaces for themselves. In the case of hip hop, that often means a use of the street, and urban environment in general, as both physical location and metaphor.

Rashid further reflects on the connections between rap and hip hop and the street in his song “R.A.P.” The chorus is a beautiful call and response that connects the listeners and performers to both of those entities. He sings the call and he and a group of others sing the response:

“R.A.P.” / “R.A.P.”

“Quem?” / “Who?”

“R.U.A.” / “S.T.R.E.E.T.”

“Nóiz!” / “Us!”

Rashid quite literally spells out the words “rap” and “street” and through the call and response play of “Who?” / “Us!” he spells out just who really composes them and enacts several lines of questioning. “Who?” is a basic question of identification and identity formation. Who is the street? Who is rap? The answer is, “we” are rap and the

209 street. Who are we? We are rap and the street. As I demonstrate in chapter 4 through analysis of DJ Dandan’s statement about “our work,” the “we” here refers not simply to those present in the studio on the day Rashid recorded this song. Listeners and performers are all invoked here, as is the entire hip hop community. The song serves as an anthem for all of those people and demonstrates the importance that the street plays in identity formation, here in particular at the collective level. It also importantly uses the spelling of the words “rap” and “street” to enact the acts of writing, spelling, and the use of words as integral components in the defining of space and creation of identity, exemplifying how

“we” are the “street” because “we” make the “street.” This act of spelling harkens similar notions of stylizing and fashioning the street into a hip hop space that Emicida’s spelling of “nóiz” brings up, that spelling also engaged by Rashid in “R.A.P.”

The street, and rap, exist then, because of the people that make them and the energy they put forth to create them. Lefebvre further comments that “it seems to be well established that physical space has no ‘reality’ without the energy that is deployed within it. The modalities of this deployment, however, along with the physical relationships between central points, nuclei or condensations on the one hand and peripheries on the other are still matters for conjecture” (13). First, Lefebvre equates reality with deployed energy, again stating that spaces and realities are created by what people do in them, how they define them. The conjecture he notes here importantly reflects how a place can be a different space depending on the individual, the social group, and their experiences.

There is no one definition of a space. Furthermore, the points of connection between the center and the periphery, indeed notable word choices by Lefebvre for an analysis on

210 marginalization and space, are also to be determined, again realities based on the energy put forth by the people to create them.

In an interview with National Public Radio in August of 2014, Emicida commented on words and energy and place, saying:

I’ve always been fascinated by words because they were my door to the

world. I had a terrible TV at home; it never worked. There were some

books at home, which my mother read, so I started discovering the world

by reading. I never detached from that. For me, words have a fascinating

strength, they make a connection. They create the energy of places. They

are the most wonderful tool human beings created, because it makes that

connection. (Garcia-Navarro)

If words create the energy of places, “nóiz” for example, then they indeed define those very places, creating connections to places for people and cultivating a space.

“Discovering the world through reading” exemplifies this connection to another person’s articulation of the world and of a place, inviting others to connect to that author’s ideas but also participate in a larger conversation and in the very creation of the space in question. Rashid’s call and response, spelling out that it is “we,” the hip hop community, that are both rap and the street is a sometimes written but always spoken word that is more heard than it is read and for that reason puts forth these very types of energy and points of connection that Emicida mentions here. The slogan of “a rua é nóiz,” which

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Rashid is drawing on in his song, also articulates this energy and connection. His slogan

“foco na missão,” or “focus on the mission,” conjures a collective, directional energy as well. “To focus,” or “articulate,” “a missão” can mean differently for the individual, but points towards dedication towards a goal, whether on an individual level such as Rashid working to build his career but always through a dedication to the community, or on the community level working towards larger goals of creating spaces for itself and establishing the culture’s space within the broader national culture as well as building international diasporic connections.

Considering these slogans of words and energy aimed at creating connecting points and defining spaces, Lefebvre’s questions on language and space become important. He asks:

…does language—logically, epistemologically or genetically speaking—

precede, accompany or follow social space? Is it a precondition of social

space or merely a formulation of space? The priority-of-language thesis

has certainly not been established. Indeed, a good case can be made for

according logical and epistemological precedence over highly articulated

languages with strict rules to those activities which mark the earth, leaving

traces and organizing gestures and work performed in common. Perhaps

what have to be uncovered are as-yet concealed relations between space

and language: perhaps the ‘logicalness’ intrinsic to articulate language

operated from the start as a spatiality capable of bringing order to the

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qualitative chaos (the practico-sensory realm) presented by the perception

of things (16-17).

In talking about the geographical, urban, peripheral community and other spaces, in proclaiming “a rua é nóiz,” these emcees agree with Lefebvre’s supposition on articulate language as a spatializing, space creating tool, as they are indeed creating an order to the chaos that the urban environment and the racial and political environments have put on them or in which they find themselves. In repeating this mantra, people have come to believe it. Emicida says to Cabrini that “auto-estima” is his priority, and what he feels can be his brand of social work for his “irmãos.” Here Emicida is more so invoking the meaning “siblings” than the strictly masculine “brothers,” either way a common example of family terminology to include everyone living a similar experience. This means for the poor, the underrepresented, the periphery-dwellers, the black, amongst all of whom he continues to include himself in spite of his financial success, which is sometimes a marker of whiteness in Brazil. As he mentions to Cabrini, the important thing is to always stay connected to where you are from and tell them about where you have gone. Go to Porto Alegre, or go to New York, he says. That’s great. Then return to the periphery and tell people about it, share it with them and show them how “o mundo não é de este tamanho, o mundo é pouco pá nóiz” (Conexão Repórter). He is saying here that in doing his work and in returning, he is demonstrating that dreams are possible, hope, working together, and hard work can yield results, and in returning he demonstrates that he does not consider himself as better than the people who also live where he grew

213 up. He says, “só sou eu porque sou daqui”, in response to Cabrini’s question about whether Emicida could lose his “street essence” (Conexão Repórter). “A rua é nóiz,” and in Emicida’s opinion, he is nothing without the street. Indeed, these are acts of going and returning, of using articulate language to craft space and identity and create order from chaos felt and lived due to people’s perceptions of things. This chaos felt based on the

“perception of things” is based on the way people are treated, which should be understood as the political, social, geographical, and other ways they are “treated.” De

Certeau’s idea of “treatments of space” rings out in this context as well. How people are treated, that is, positioned, creates these feelings of chaos. Putting some order to that, demonstrating focus and union as methods to break the chaos, shine as examples of how to create new perceptions and create new spaces.

Lefebvre continues to ponder the connections between language and space when he asks what codes exist in an already produced space, how space is signified, and how spaces can be understood. He wonders:

To what extent may a space be read or decoded? A satisfactory answer to

this question is certainly not just around the corner. As I noted earlier,

without as yet adducing supporting arguments or proof, the notions of

message, code, information and so on cannot help us trace the genesis of a

space; the fact remains, however, that an already produced space can be

decoded, can be read. Such a space implies a process of signification. And

even if there is not general code of space, inherent to language or to all

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languages, there may have existed specific codes, established at specific

historical periods and varying in their effects. If so, interested ‘subjects’,

as members of a particular society, would have acceded by this means at

once to their space and to their status as ‘subjects’ acting within that space

and (in the broadest sense of the word) comprehending it. (16)

The members of the hip hop community most certainly are making meaning in their crafting of space and decoding, reading, or understanding meaning from already crafted spaces. The words and slogans used to make hip hop in this current moment are decoded and understood to mean in the ways already analyzed above, in sum, as unifying. Returning to the concept of “a rua é nóiz,” then, one can understand how such a phrase is decoded and therefore helps create space as listeners extrapolate meaning and understanding of that space, here, hip hop in Brazil as an urban space of inclusion and therefore one that contests their own marginalization.

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Chapter 4

Flows, Nodes, Bridges, and Circuits: Brazilian Hip Hoppers Enhancing Citizenship

within Globalization

Codes Decoded: Understanding “a rua é nós” on the Brooklyn Bridge

I ended the previous chapter by examining digital space and with a brief example of Jay Z’s Decoded, which I argue that is an example that demonstrates how rap lyrics and music are used to create meanings and therefore space. Growing up, the Marcy

Houses in the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn were Jay Z’s principal space. But in New York, the subway and other forms of transportation and urban structures create connecting points throughout the city, enabling people to transport themselves to varying locations for whatever purpose with relative ease. As I mention in the previous chapter, Jay Z’s name is in part a reference to the subway lines of the J and

Z trains that were close to his house. The Williamsburg, Manhattan, and Brooklyn

Bridges also serve as connecting points between Brooklyn and Manhattan and are all roughly equidistant from the Marcy Houses. The Brooklyn Bridge is the most iconic of these bridges. On the Manhattan side, it is close to city hall, Chinatown, Little Italy, and more, all of which is a short distance to other major areas like Union Square and other sites in lower Manhattan.

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I begin this final chapter with a photo taken by cell phone camera (Kowalski,

McLaughlin). A friend was visiting and as we walked around the aforementioned sites he took the photo at my request on the Manhattan side of the pedestrian walkway of the

Brooklyn Bridge in February of 2013. The bridge was then under construction and so cause for the corrugated metal walls seen in the photo. The graffiti tag in the image, done in Sharpie marker, shows an image of the Brazilian flag with a three-dimensional version of the Portuguese word “Brasil” to the left of it. To the right, a shortened version of the phrase “a rua é nóiz” analyzed in the previous chapter here reads “É NÓS!”

FIGURE 18. “É NÓS!” graffiti on the Brooklyn Bridge

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Notably, “nós” is here spelled the way it would be found in a standard Portuguese dictionary, and not as “nóiz.” While an important difference, it is not necessarily an indicator of education, social class, or other markers of the person who wrote this on the

Brooklyn Bridge. For all I know, Emicida himself could have written this, and in the moment simply written this dictionary, “proper” version rather than the “nóiz” version previously discussed. While unlikely, especially given that he now sells hats and shirts with the phrase “É nóiz” on them, it is still possible. After all, Emicida’s good friend

Rashid wrote “É nóis,” a kind of combination or in-between of “nóiz” and “nós,” in his

Facebook post about the Batalha Santa Cruz analyzed in chapter 3. Also possible is that someone who simply likes Brazilian rap, but is not a Brazilian, wrote this tag. This possibility and the possibility that it was Emicida himself are perhaps the extreme ends of the spectrum of who might have drawn this flag and written these words. Any Brazilian hip hopper or Brazilian might have also done this art. So might a pair of people, as the “É nós” tag here is notably not written in three-dimensional block lettering like “Brasil” and thus might have been written by someone else. The “uhu!” here might prove the idea that a second person was involved, as if “Brasil” was a statement, and “Uhu! É nós!” was the response. “Uhu!” might have even been written by a third person given the different direction in which the word is written. And so, this may represent a cultural dialogue amongst persons unfamiliar with each other, yet connected through affinity for hip hop.

Interesting, also, is the question as to who wrote first, the “É nós” writer or the “Brasil” and flag artist. Regardless of the background and social position of the person who wrote this, or who wrote first, those facts do not distract from the purpose of this present

218 discussion on the evidence of the phrase “É nós” in New York City. Clearly the person at the very least pays attention to Brazilian hip hop in some way. This phrase started with

Brazilian hip hop culture and with Emicida’s widespread popularity throughout Brazil will surely be used across class and other spectrums if it is not already. But the impact of the phrase, its meaning and potential meanings, are all at work in this image and the phrase’s presence on the Brooklyn Bridge.

The Brooklyn Bridge. It is a bridge, literally a connector of one place to another, and a substitute, easier route over a path that is slower, cumbersome, and/or more difficult to travel. In this case the Brooklyn Bridge connects Brooklyn to Manhattan, creating a faster and easier path between the two by allowing travel over the Hudson

Rivers instead of through it. No issues of economy or class can limit its use by people, citizens and tourists alike, so long as they can walk. The phrase “a rua é nóiz” is also a connecting point as I demonstrate in the previous chapter. Said in Portuguese, one might understand it as limited to Portuguese speakers, or perhaps even limited to the Brazilian black and poor communities. Certainly the phrase is a rallying point for these groups. But here, manifested in New York, the phrase becomes a connector for a broader hip hop community as well as a broader Brazilian community, both Brazilians and Brazilophiles alike.

In thinking about who might have written and drawn these images, I am asking a larger question that is the inverse of the question with which I began my research and which opens this dissertation, that is, how did hip hop make its way to Latin America, specifically to Brazil in this project, and how and why does it remain there? The inverse

219 question then, presented by the evidence of this graffiti, is to ask how did Brazilian hip hop make its way to the United States, here specifically, to New York City? And in the instance that this tag was performed by a non-hip hopper, that is to say, simply by someone who heard the phrase and thought it was cool, how did a phrase that harnesses such fundamental topics in Brazilian hip hop arrive to that person, and again, to the

Brooklyn Bridge? While the specific graffiti writer or writers of this tag and their motivations may never be known, it is fair to use this example as insight into larger tendencies and processes, namely globalization, and consider how Brazilian hip hoppers and their work at defining themselves and their citizenship can be understood and also more easily achieved through this global reach and connection.

Locations and Sounds, Locations in Sounds: Varying Approaches and Motivations

While I was living in New York Emicida played a show in July of 2013 in

Brooklyn as part of the annual Brasil Summerfest music festival in the city. I found out about the show only that same day, and with a then newborn daughter was unable to attend. But Emicida’s presence in New York inspired some additional searching on his travels and history of performance. He first came to the United States in 2011 to perform at the Coachella music festival and has returned several times since then. On that first trip, he visited New York to work with producers K-Saalam and Beatnick. He had contacted Gandja Monteiro, a Brazilian American filmmaker living in Los Angeles, about making a video for one of his previously released tracks. As Monteiro tells it, though, shortly after mastering the song “Sorrisos e Lágrimas” in the producers’ Queens

220 studio they all hit the subways and the streets of New York to film what the filmmaker called “a New York video for a New York song” (Kaganskiy).

But is this really a New York song? There are several components to the song, the video, and their production that require deeper reflection than simply assuming this is a

New York song because it was made there or because someone involved with it promotes it that way. It is not that the location of production is not an important component. So many jazz, rock, or blues musicians have put out records recorded in what listeners and consumers are supposed to believe are special locations, perhaps a theatre or recording studio, perhaps a city or a neighborhood. Often these albums are called “sessions,” as in

Charlie Parker’s Savoy Sessions and Dial Sessions, Charles Mingus Live in Paris: The

Complete America Session, and Mary J. Blige—The London Sessions. Whether the location or studio in which these recordings were made plays into their actual sound quality and message is worth discussion. Certainly location affects mood, and mood affects performance through energy, audience’s empathy, and other factors. But is there something particularly English, or linkable to London, in the transference of that energy to record by Mary J. Blige? Or is it more that this artist enjoyed that city or otherwise found the circumstance to record a batch of songs in that location. Best New Artist

Grammy Award Winner for 2015 Sam Smith contributed to this Blige album. He is one in a recent line of London neo-soul artists, Amy Winehouse and Adele being other notable names. So does his presence on Blige’s album make her album more authentically London, or do Detroit (Motown) and Memphis (Stax) still play a role given where these London artists are drawing their influences?

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I suppose the previous discussion on the Batalha de Santa Cruz, among other places turned spaces, gives weight to the idea that indeed location is important, but most importantly it is what the artist and their team does with the location, and in this sessions example, what they create from and within that location is what matters. Does an artist like Jack White, from Detroit, suddenly become a Tennessee musician because he found inspiration and built his own studio and record label in Nashville? Do the bands that regularly record with him there as they pass through Nashville on tour suddenly make

Nashville music? Or does what the artist herself bring to the production ultimately influence the outcome beyond what any geographic or studio influence could have? After all, it would not be that artist’s record without them. While I contend that location is important it is certainly not the only factor in most cases.

The U.S. rock band Foo Fighters’ most recent album, Sonic Highways, attempted to capture the sound of each iconic “music city” and recording studio they visited, recording one song for the album in each location (Foo Fighters). Ultimately, though, due to the songwriting and the sonic palette of the band, it sounds like a Foo Fighters’ album and not like representations of songs from the various noteworthy locales in which they recorded. In Emicida’s case, while the beats were created by the two New York producers it might be possible then to call the instrumental, non-lyrical portions of the song themselves New York music. But with Emicida rapping in Portuguese and Rael da

Rima singing in Portuguese, and perhaps more importantly knowing that these two are both anchored in São Paulo and very much representative of that city, its quebradas, as well as of Brazilian hip hop, the tone of the songs becomes different. Is this New York

222 hip hop? Is it São Paulo hip hop? Or is it just simply hip hop? And if it is just hip hop, can we accept it in this case as at once both New York and São Paulo hip hop, and something more…or something else? I contend that indeed the song “Sorrisos &

Lágrimas,” as well as its video, can be understood in this multivalent way and that it furthermore exemplifies what hip hop has been able to achieve in the increasingly globalized world.

Examining the beats and music of the song, one can understand the music as from anywhere despite the information that it was indeed made in New York. While the pace and groove might remind listeners of A Tribe Called Quest or similar New York outfits, it also might not. Had this been produced in São Paulo itself it would not be surprising.

As I discuss elsewhere in this project, while some sampling of samba and other genres for which Brazil is known for occurs in Brazil’s hip hop scene, and Emicida has sampled samba and other Brazilian genres himself, producers are often apt to create their own beats using MIDI and other systems. Just as Rashid took me through a track by track run down of each song on his first EP Hora de Acordar to tell me which tracks felt like East

Coast (understood as New York) and which like West Coast (understood as Los Angeles) and which were something else entirely, he was talking about points of reference available to him as someone making rap music. Producers like Rashid and the other producers on Hora de Acordar and his other albums think this way as well, creating beats and sounds inevitably influenced by music they have heard before but that are their own

“original” work. Referring back to the discussion on transculturation, sampling, and antropofagia from chapter 1, “original,” like “authentic,” are categories that need to be

223 understood for the cultural meetings and flows that come to influence a given artist. In hip hop, these sonic points of reference represent these types of crossings and travels.

These movements are enabled by technological advances that cross borders via satellite and other developments that allow people and artists to build these bridges and access, ever more easily, sonic, visual, and other referents from cultures outside of their own.

Sonically, “Sorrisos e Lágrimas” begins with a brief clip of the clicking of subway cars as they roll along the track. It ends with the sounds of city traffic and a siren.

These are classic city sounds, not unique to New York, but used so frequently in New

York-based television, film, and other media that the listener might first think of New

York when hearing them. But they could be from any major city in the world. The subway sounds are abruptly cut off by the synthesizer, bass, and drum beats that are soon accompanied by some guitar melodies. The song is in 4/4 time, standard for rap. The bass and synthesizer chords enter on the downbeat of beat one, resting on the upbeat and hitting on both the down and upbeats of beat two, only to rest on beats three and four, creating a bounce and pulse complemented by the other sounds here. Those sounds are dropped or otherwise altered at varying moments to make room for the vocal delivery and at times to complement it, the introductory high pitch synth line re-entering for each chorus to create a swell of sound that fills the sonic space and somehow builds urgency.

The lyrics speak to an array of experiences that Emicida is positing as common to people of African descent. In the first verses, he says:

Somos pais agora/ antes da hora/ como nossos pais

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Ora tanto faz

Rimos de lutas perdidas

Brindando bebidas misturadas, coloridas

Tempos contam

Vocês só notam crianças depois que elas aprontam

Me renovo no ofício, povos ao precipicio

Novos com velhos vícios sacou? Fim, inicio

Se adaptar sem escolher

Mano, a 400 anos plantamos sem colher

Sabe o lugar da pele negra?

Última, vítima da primavera que nunca chega

Emicida’s father was killed in an alcohol-related fight and he notes how most of the men on his father’s side of his family died of alcohol-related causes (Antunes). So he is drawing on personal experience here, but clearly referencing themes that have affected others as well and that weigh heavy on poor black communities. He includes himself via the conjugation “somos,” although he had his own daughter after he married and was in a stable financial position. But connecting himself to his peers, and their generation to their parents, illustrates familial cycles and patterns, like alcoholism here referenced in the image of “toasting colorful, mixed drinks.” Emicida distances himself somewhat with two lines, now addressing “vocês,” here those who “only notice [their] kids after they are ready/are up to something.” In other words, when it is too late. “Times will tell,” he says,

225 meaning over time it will become clear how bad things get with each cycle, each person, each behavior in question here. Emicida uses the verb “contar,” meaning here “to tell,” but it also carries the charge of “to count.” Indeed, times add up, habits add up, and with more repetition cycles become more difficult to break. He has seen these rhythms in his own life, and in the lives of others both close to him and not. As for his part, Emicida renews his efforts in his work, he says, noting again but with new metaphors that his focus is on the “people on the brink, the new generations with old vices” and on the cycles of beginnings and endings, on adapting by force and not by choice, and on the four hundred years of planting without being able to harvest what they sow. Black skin is last place, he says, “victim of the spring that never arrives.” Spring as a metaphor for renewal, life, transition from the cold and darkness of winter equates to a time of hope and dreams fulfilled. Black people, says Emicida, by and large are stuck in cycles of habit and vice and centuries of fruitless hope.

By invoking these topics as issues for black people in general, Emicida is using his music, and hip hop at large, to make diasporic connections and make statements on issues that affect the African diaspora. Doing this through a song recorded in New York connects to an important transnational urban node that is still considered the most important one in the greater global circuitry of hip hop. The prevalence of New York

Yankees ball caps, more than any other, in hip hop communities around the world is but one example of this. Using New York as a recording location and as the backdrop for his video brings the song to this level however, and locates it both in New York, but with the purpose of speaking to a hip hop community that has spread out across the world, to

226 different but similar circumstances like those evidenced in Emicida’s opening verse in

“Sorrisos e Lágrimas.”

The video itself shows but does not dwell visually on areas unique to New York, interestingly. A skyscraper is shown briefly, and one of the bridges between Brooklyn and Manhattan is shown (Monteira cites filming on the lower East Side), but it is unclear which bridge it is. The bridge lights, like much of the scenery, is briefly blurred through camera focus, each shot cutting to another too quickly for anything uniquely New

Yorkian to really step into focus. Emicida stands on the stairs of a subway platform and a deli/convenient store is visible in the background, but the language on the sign is unclear due to the quick cuts. The clearest visual New Yorkian moments are on an F train subway platform as the train leaves that stop, and inside a subway train car. Identifying the train as an F train took several viewings and some pausing. In some underground subway stops, the exit signs are visible, so it is clear this is an English-speaking location.

Monteira notes adding post-production effects to add “texture” to the video (Kaganskiy).

Most notable of these effects are some Technicolor-esque light blips over Emicida’s body, and then a brief moment where his outline is visible but his body is filled in with blurred city lights until those effects fade and Emicida is seen walking on the street.

Monteira claims that the aim of the video was to capture the feeling of solitude in a big city, so they shot the video at night to add to this feeling (Kaganskiy). While several things stand out as typcially New Yorkian, there is not much of a sense that this is a New

York video, song, or experience. Emicida speaks to the sense of loneliness, or sense of being alone, saying “…solidão euforia, tão fria quanto abril, New York, vento assobia e

227 tal…” New York is made into a point of comparison and a point from which to draw comparisons. The blurring effects through focus, editing, and light effects contribute to this concept of solitude in that Emicida’s identity is visually abstracted at points, blended into the nighttime urban landscape, much like that of any individual in a big city as passers-by zoom past on foot and in many modes of transport. One might remember an individual face or clothing item if it stands out as someone passes by, or not remember anyone at all. While solitude and disconnect are feelings that are definitely felt in New

York, these are feelings that are applicable to any big city, such as São Paulo, Paris,

Mexico City, Tokyo, Mumbai, London and even smaller cities. The blurriness and other effects that bring New York mostly out of focus connect to this idea that this could be anywhere in the world, and importantly connect to the themes seen in Emicida’s rhymes in “Sorrisos e Lágrimas” as topics of diasporic importance, and not just permanent to

Afro-Brazilians and African-Americans, to São Paulo or New York.

In this way, then, Emicida uses New York to both draw on its resonance as a major world city, perhaps the major hip hop city in the world and definitely the cradle of hip hop, and to deflate it at least somewhat in order to make these larger-reaching points about experiences in black and poor communities in major cities around the world, stating in the second verse that “miséria sim é algo global.” A New York video or not, the song itself, and the video, are speaking to something that extends beyond the city. Is it important for these themes the song addresses to be said there and from there? Yes. But the same could be argued of any major city. Knowing that the song and video were done in New York to address these issues, one might suggest the importance of the location as

228 a way of speaking to hegemony and other power issues that are causes of marginalization and poverty. But the lyric referencing slavery and its continued effects (“a 400 anos plantamos sem colher”) is the closest critique of these global power issues and there is no direct citation or critique of the United States or New York in spite of their being central locations in these sustained wealth, political, and power differentials.

While the video arguably does not portray overtly New York due to the blurring, the darkness, and quick cuts that keep the sense of place somewhat unstable, indeed without knowing the background it might still be identifiable as New York. But it is this ambiguity that convinces me that this video made in New York is about something other than making a New York video. It is about making a larger comment on issues of global importance for marginalized sectors. Speaking from the locus of power and cultural production that is New York is important, but more important is the connection that these issues affect a broad-reaching community in the world. Bringing attention to this very idea that hip hop communities are connected, that marginalized people are connected, promotes the idea that through hip hop people in similar situations can find a sense of common experience. This sense, this validation, can be used to stave off disconnect and feelings of isolation which are inevitable with such exclusion. Talking about these themes in a song brings the issues discussed in “Sorrisos e Lágrimas” into a more public discussion and lets listeners know they are not alone. Promoting these types of connection then is another example of building self-esteem in black and poor communities and demonstrating another mode of how to perceive of life. This fits with

Emicida’s objective of increasing people’s self-esteem, hoping he can get people to look

229 up, take in what’s around them, understand what is happening around them, and thereby be able to move forward in a more constructive way on individual and community levels, like he cites in his interview with Cabrini for Conexão Repórter (SBT Online Conexão

Repórter). Self-empowerment is the objective in the end.

And his “N” hand sign signifying “a rua é nóiz,” as mentioned in the previous chapter, is another complement to building this sense in people. In the “Sorrisos e

Lágrimas” video, at 49 seconds Emicida’s hands are shown in a closeup performing this very “N” hand sign, the right pointer finger raised alone to represent the one path, as in one path forward. It is joined with the left hand, the pointer and middle fingers forming a

“V” like a peace sign. The hands brought together, as I demonstrate in the previous chapter, speak to the effort of rallying people around these concepts of togetherness, working together, forming partnerships to work on mutually beneficial projects. Moving forward together, working together peacefully, is the one path in Emicida’s eyes. Peace, coming together, one way forward, all wrapped up into an “N,” into “nóiz,” a stylized community connected through the streets and connected globally through digital platforms, through hip hop, and through a like-mindedness surrounding common points of both suffering and celebration, of “lágrimas,” or tears, and “sorrisos,” or smiles. Those very responses, perhaps productions on some level, are what Emicida and guest vocalist

Rael da Rima point out in the chorus can never be taken away, saying “sorrisos e lágrimas / o que nunca poderão tirar de vocês.” Affect is real and is recognized and encouraged here. Performing this hand sign in New York incorporates the marginalized of New York and of the United States. Flashing this “N” sign in New York is a way of

230 stating that despite differences there are common experiences to the streets and to urban life, no matter where you are. The hand sign performed here is a way to say there is motivation for marginalized communities to connect, and for hip hop communities to connect and address these issues. Loneliness has a counter.

Emicida released a single called “Bonjour” with French rapper Féfé in February

2015. Here the collaboration lends itself to something seemingly different than that of

“Sorrisos e Lágrimas” given that both emcees incorporate the language of the other into their own verses. Féfé raps his verses in French, peppering them with a few Portuguese words and Emicida does the same, also performing several complete lines, including an entire stanza, in French. The two emcees met when Féfé performed at São Paulo’s Virada

Cultural in 2014. The Virada Cultural is an impressive city-wide concert series that lasts twenty-four straight hours and presents Brazilian and international musicians of varying genres on outdoor stages set up for the event as well as on existing indoor stages. While I was in Brazil, I caught a portion of the Buena Vista Social Club’s set on a stage set up at the Praça da Luz in front of the Estação da Luz train station and watched Booker T. and the MG’s play on a stage near the Vale de Anhangabaú. The event draws widely and international artists are well received. The Virada Cultural started in 2004, and is an example of the city government drawing on São Paulo as a point of global convergence.

On his European tour a few months later, Emicida met Féfé in Paris and was able to spend time in the favelas there. With production from Nave, a producer from Curitiba, the two emcees recorded “Bonjour” in São Paulo and shot the video in the Jardim Maria

Elisa favela in the Zona Norte of São Paulo. As the song is Emicida’s, one might call it a

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São Paulo song following the logic put forth about “Sorrisos e Lágrimas” as a New York song and video. But with music constructed by a Curitiba producer, the song has a connection outside of São Paulo. And with Féfé rapping in French while visiting from

Paris, and with the title of “Bonjour” rather than “Bom dia,” an international component is brought in, so even calling this a Brazilian song is debatable, though the almost scratch like effects and rhythms of the high-pitched cuica play a sonic counter. At least half of the lyrics are in French, so asking whether this is a French song then becomes a legitimate question.

The song is billed as “um salve audiovisual às quebradas do mundo” (Ribeiro) and so the focus on São Paulo and Paris favelas is representative of the more broad- reaching issues referenced in “Sorrisos e Lágrimas” from the node of New York. Being

Emicida’s song, São Paulo is automatically referenced by his presence, so again two major urban centers, indeed nodes in the globalized world and nodes in the global hip hop circuitry are connected here through Féfé representing Paris, not to mention representing migrant communities and first generation French-born being the son of Yoruba parents from Nigeria. The song is a way to bring mutual awareness to the conditions and resiliency of the marginalized in two major urban nodes, and therefore by default to others, where people of African descent are living in difficult conditions, to say the least, and using hip hop to build their lives, build community, and create hope, a more palpable one than the unrealized spring Emicida references in “Sorrisos e Lágrimas. In “Bonjour,” meaning “good morning” of course in English, the emcees address these connections between the urban poor throughout the world and offer the chorus of “every ghetto

232 knows, that the ghetto is in bad shape, but we will prevail nevertheless.” This sense of hope, like that put forth in “Sorrisos e Lágrimas,” is again connected to Emicida’s efforts to motivate self-esteem and a greater understanding of the social, political, and economic logics that have marginalized these very communities. In a 2009 interview with Rolling

Stone Brasil surrounding the release of Para Quem Já Mordeu Um Cachorro Por

Comida Até Eu Cheguei Longe, he speaks of this idea even then, saying "É importante dar moral para a miséria. Quando não se tem nada, é ela que está lá ao seu lado"

(Balloussier). He continues this effort even now, beginning “Bonjour” with greetings of empathy:

Bonjour pros mano no posto

Trampando a contragosto

Feliz ou o oposto? Aposto

Que sei da dureza que é a tristeza

Deformando seu rosto

Se estalos parrassem

Se calos falassem, talvez

O mundo escutasse

O olhar do impasse

O olhar se limpasse

Brilhava vocês

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With this verse Emicida confirms that he understands the struggles that are leaving people feeling defeated and visibly sad (“deformando seu rosto”). These are the people who are working like crazy (“trampando”) in jobs they would rather not work in

(“a contragosto”). If only calluses could talk, maybe the world would listen and the situation could change for people. He continues, this time addressing women specifically, saying:

Bonjour

Pras mina no front

Que dor pra contar tem de monte

É tipo uma fonte dela

De front ela

Sonha com um novo horizonte

…

Trancada na cela ou numa favela

Gueto é foda

Pobre menina

Sofre de verdade

Por toda cidade

Ainda mais porque a palavra

Liberdade é feminine

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With so many pains to speak of, women, especially the urban poor, says Emicida, truly suffer in the fucked up ghetto (“Gueto é foda”). The listener is left to envision the specific details of this suffering, but one imagine themes that surface in other songs, such as drugs, violence, loss, and other problems. Locked in a cell or in a slum is the same in many ways according to Emicida, women are suffering. Women have a ton of pains to tell about, those same pains adding much weight to their lives (“dor pra contar tem de monte”). What is more, the feminine gender of the word “liberty” is cause for further suffering, as if a slap in the face by the gender of a word that like “equality” often escapes the realities of the working poor. Emicida further reflects on these themes by talking about what he was able to see in Paris, noting:

Paris fui, vi cidade luz

Guetos, becos e pretos

Tristes como um blues

He engages dichotomies. First he plays with Paris’s nickname, City of Lights, at once engaging the dichotomies of light and dark but also of city centers as representative of tourism and economy and ghettos as the opposite extreme. He notes that he saw city, light, ghettos, alleyways and black people. Emicida deliberately posits these latter three examples in contrast to the first two, separating them as a distinct series on a separate line of the stanza to demonstrate their disconnect, or their opposite position from “cidade” and

“luz,” included and connected, but not. These extremes, says Emicida, are sad like a

235 blues song, notably another African-American musical form that has traveled and become a reference point available to musicians everywhere. He mixes French, Portuguese, and

English later to suggest a black revolution rooted in equality of people, here exemplified by equal wages, living in peace, and having what is necessary, but not too much:

L’Egalité pour mon people

S’il vous plait

Mil pra mim, mil pu cê lek

Ma revolucion est black

Noir, check in my chair

Meilleur qu’ hier

…

Ma terre me manque, c’est ma place

E o velho sonho viver em paz

Com necessário, sem ter demais

Verde mais, flerte mais, ver-te mais

Família

A shout out to the urban poor of the world by representatives of the urban poor of

São Paulo and Paris, “Bonjour” offers a sense of hope through connection and is itself the result of a meeting of artists and their respective cultures, facilitated through the connecting point of the Virada Cultural. Both Emicida and Féfé traveling to visit the

236 other in his respective city, a mix of languages and the encounter of cultures by both emcees further demonstrating connection and collaboration, “Bonjour” is the result of cultural flow and exchange.

“The Jay Z of Brazil”: Towards an Understanding of Direction of Flows

In her article referenced above, Julia Kaganskiy refers to Emicida as “the ‘Jay Z of Brazil’.” Comparing the two emcees is an interesting proposition. I have already laid out Emicida’s modus operandi of working to build the self-esteem of the poor, black, and marginalized communities of Brazil, but more broadly of the world through the diasporic connecting point(s) of hip hop. Arguably, building self-esteem is also a fundamental ethos for Jay Z. In his song “Izzo (H.O.V.A.),” a song title that plays with one of his nicknames, Hova, by saying “H to the Izz-o, V to the Izz-a,” the emcee sets the stage by relating tales of his neighborhood where he grew up and his experiences dealing drugs like crack cocaine and marijuana. He talks of his successes there, but admits that he hopes others will not “have to go through that.” On his career and agenda as an emcee, he rhymes:

I do this for my culture

To let them know what a nigga look like when a nigga in a Roadster

Show them how to move in a room full of vultures

Industry is shady, it needs to be taken over

Label owners hate me, I’m raising the status quo up

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I’m overcharging niggas for what they did to the Cold Crush

Pay us like you owe us for all the years that you hoed us

We can talk, but money talks, so talk more bucks

Interestingly, Jay Z is at once interested in shaking up the status quo of the music industry, in demanding reparations for what can arguably be understood as musicians being taken advantage of by the industry, as black musicians in particular being taken advantage of, and by black people being sold and used for others’ gains. The metaphor of

“hoed” acts dually here, conjuring images of pimps selling black people in prostitution and the word also conjuring the image of the hoe, a tool used in planting and crop production, one of slavery’s primary industries. He wants money for these wrongs, and not just for himself. “Pay us,” he says. He wants to demonstrate how people can stand up for themselves in the midst of a situation where they are being attacked or taken advantage of, as in the metaphor of “show them how to move in a room full of vultures.”

The opening lines to the verse also speak to this purpose of “showing” members of his culture, understood here as black and/or hip hop. Showing people what a black person looks like when driving an expensive car like a Roadster both promotes the idea that it is acceptable for black people to achieve financial success, but the image also posits financial success, like in the final lines of the verse promoting “more bucks,” as the desirable end result of work and what will promote a sense of reparations for the aforementioned practices. Indeed, desire is engaged here. This is a hyper-capitalist world

238 from which Jay Z is operating, and so capitalist desires are promoted as positive signals of cultural achievement.

Cut to Emicida’s ideas of self-esteem and community empowerment and the signs and measures of success are different. Like Jay Z he has his own clothing, hats, and other products for sale and so is no stranger to participating in capitalism for personal gain.

While some items are more blatant advertisements for his record/clothing label, most clothing items carry a message first, such as “a rua é nóiz” or “ainda bem que eu segui os batidos do meu coração,” and the small Laboratório Fantasma label second. Granted these slogans become sales pitches on some level, but they still represent a deeper message geared at instilling self-esteem. Notably, Laboratório Fantasma employs twenty people full time, puts out Emicida, Rael da Rima, and two other artists’ music, and takes a “fazer você mesmo,” or do-it-yourself, make-it-yourself attitude. Contrast this approach with Jay Z’s company Rocawear which distributes its clothing made in China and other cheap labor markets, and differences become clear. Emicida is employing a team of people, not trying to find the cheapest labor. Emicida’s lyrical messages are not about imagining what it is like to be able to consume luxury items, but about encouraging people to lift up their heads and learn to understand their own circumstances, as well as their connections to others suffering similarly in other parts of the world. Still, Jay Z puts forth an image that demonstrates, both to blacks and non-blacks, that black people can be successful. Despite the odds stacked against them such as the staggering rates of imprisonment for black males, interestingly a problem in both the U.S. and Brazil, black people have other models. Statistics such as these or cyclical habits or practices that for a

239 large percentage of black communities have proven detrimental to health and to other endeavors, can be avoided and changed. Emicida’s reference to children having children and to alcoholism in his opening verse on “Sorrisos e Lágrimas” are two other examples of paths, cycles, or choices to hope and work against.

Emicida demonstrates that consumption is not the only narrative nor the only possibility of empowerment. As in the “Bonjour” lyrics, Emicida addresses the larger issue of equality for his people, here broadly defined as demonstrated by his use of three languages in this very verse, saying that he wants one thousand for himself, and then speaking directly to Féfé says, one thousand “pu cê lek,” or “para você moleque,” meaning “for you, kid.” “Moleque” is commonly used as a pejorative for male youth in particular but it is often reappropriated by youth and young men and women to conjure feelings of proximity, such as the colloquial use of the English words “kid,” “man,”

“dude,” “bro,” or “brother.” So both the people at large, and money are directly referenced, but in the sense that everyone should have equal access to it regardless of where they come from, such as Brazil, or France via Yoruba immigrants from Nigeria.

Emicida begins in a macro way much like Jay Z, the former referencing his “people” and the latter his “culture” and “them.” But when addressing the micro Emicida turns directly to his new friend in the video. Outside of the video, the “pu cê lek” can also be in reference to the individual listener, although especially the young male listener. In contrast, in the above verse Jay Z speaks about himself as an example and about speaking to his culture, a step removed from addressing “them” directly as Emicida does with

“vocês.” He invokes the braggadocio-mode of emceeing to detail what he is doing, how

240 he is better or in this case getting over on (“overcharging”), and only speaks directly to those he takes issue with (“label owners,” etc) to make demands (“pay us what you owe us”). Emicida details the problems men and women are facing in ghettos around the world, but in speaking about his people (“mon people”), he connects to communities of varying linguistic backgrounds and geographical locations through use of multiple languages, but immediately draws the listener and Féfé into that fold through the use of the word “lek,” or “moleque.” He talks about what he wants, but any bragging and boasting here is just to call attention to his revolution as a broad cultural endeavor amongst black people and to demonstrate his desire to “não ter demais.” This runs in contrast to narratives of consumption that are prevalent in much of rap music and hip hop culture, even when conjured as they are here as motivators for cultural uplift.

Monteira’s characterization of “Sorrisos e Lágrimas” as a New York song and video (Kaganskiy) immediately rings as problematic, even from someone so intimately connected to the project and to Emicida’s conception of it. Considering a New York artist like Jay Z making a song in São Paulo, even if the music were samba with drum beats underneath it much like the music of Marcelo D2, would the song be Brazilian? I argue that it cannot be, perhaps especially in the case of a well known, established artist. Kanye

West produced the song “Izzo (H.O.V.A.),” meaning he constructed the music, or the non-vocal component of the song. West is from Chicago but lives now in multiple locations. But the song is unquestionably a Jay Z song. He rhymes it, taking ownership of its message, putting his name on it and in this case using one of his nicknames as the title.

Again, location is important, but it does not immediately make a song a New York or São

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Paulo song, especially when it is not only from that physical location from which the artist is speaking. They still carry the charge and perspective they developed from where they came.

While Jay Z does not have a “Brazilian song,” his partner Beyoncé filmed the video for her song “Blue feat. Blue Ivy” in Rio de Janeiro. Her song “Single Ladies,” and several Lady Gaga songs were a fixture of the public setting soundtrack while I was researching in São Paulo. Jay Z participates in the video, “Blue,” but not in the song. The song is an ode to their daughter, the very Blue Ivy featured in the song. Blue Ivy’s contribution comes through a sampled recording of her saying cute things to her mother, including some of the lyrics in the chorus, phrases like “hold on to me, hold on!” and

“hold on, mama.” Blue is mentioned at the end of each chorus, but her name is not very clearly pronounced until the very end of the song at 4:04, less than thirty seconds until the end. In the video, Blue Ivy’s face is not revealed until 4:10. Throughout the video, however, local children are shown playing soccer, sometimes amongst themselves and sometimes kicking the ball around with Beyoncé. The kids do some dances and Beyoncé also performs them, alone in one scene trying to learn the dance the young boy in the previous shot was doing, and with some of the local kids in other scenes. The kids look directly at the camera in medium and close-up shots, and several mothers and their daughters are also portrayed. Beyoncé alone talks to one mother and daughter in a tight medium shot that positions the three in a doorframe, creating a sense of proximity as

Beyoncé touches the baby’s head and speaks to the mother. Mothers and children are one thread in the video and Beyoncé seemingly has access to all of them.

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But Beyoncé and Blue Ivy together are exclusively shown in private, walking up what at least in the video reads as a private walkway from the house in which they are staying to the beach. Blue Ivy only interacts with Beyoncé and never with any other adults or with any of the children in the video. It reads strangely on the one hand. Why would Beyoncé be talking to all of these women and children but not bring her own child with her? On the other hand, the song is being sung to Blue Ivy, so there is a private quality to it in spite of it being available for anyone to hear. Perhaps how Blue Ivy is portrayed here is more about the intimate link between her and her mother, but it stands out as exoticizing in a way. Blue Ivy is made too special to interact with the local women and children, and Beyoncé, trying to connect with other mothers and children, visually delinks herself from her own child to do so.

The video begins with the shot of a wall that has the word “blue” painted on it.

The sounds of an old home movie camera enter, setting the tone of a family vacation video and of Brazil as a space of relaxation, stuck in the past as home cameras have not made such sounds for half of a century. The camera tracks in towards a balcony window to reveal a favela in the foreground and Pão de Açucar mountain and the ocean in the background. It is a beautiful image, but a contrasting one when one understands the tourist dollars at play in the beaches and iconic Pão de Açucar, and the economic struggle that a favela represents.

There is an overt effort made to show Beyoncé fitting in with the locals. Most of the scenes are filmed in favela areas. Beyoncé’s hair is seemingly not done as it would be in most performances, here pulled back into a ponytail when she is wearing workout

243 pants and a t-shirt or Seleção jersey while dancing with children. Her hair is blown out somewhat in scenes where she wears a bikini with a lace camisole-like top, though that costume is exclusively used when she and Blue Ivy are alone walking towards the beach together or when Beyoncé is sitting alone on the steps of their house. Whether with

Cariocas or just Blue Ivy, the effort is geared at making Beyoncé seem more relaxed and as if she fits in to the local culture, here portrayed as various forms of relaxation.

But its these stereotypes of times of relaxation as emblematic of an authentic

Brazilian experience that make this video a much different production than Emicida’s

“Sorrisos e Lágrimas.” The beach plays a prominent role. In one scene Beyoncé wears an elaborate Carnaval outfit while lying on the beach as the water rolls to shore. The next shot shows women in the same style of outfit but actually participating in a Carnaval parade, and people playing what is likely samba music in a neighborhood bar are shown several times, but their music is never audible. Carnaval is never audible either. Instead, the majority of the music is a standard R&B song by Beyoncé, with some light EDM14- style beats that enter into the mix at the halfway mark of the song. Brazil, shown here through beaches, Carnaval, and a nighttime vision of Lapa, a famous music and party sector of the city of Rio, is a visual backdrop. But the song that plays atop it blurs out its sounds. In contrast to the blurring effects in Emicida’s “Sorrisos e Lágrimas” video which help build larger thematic questions on the lives and possibilities for the urban poor by visually playing with New York as a space and node, this erasure of the sounds

14 EDM is the popular acronym for Electronic Dance Music. The term EDM has become the more popular term to classify a broad range of styles, including, techno, house, dubstep, and others. 244 of Rio and Brazil creates a disjointed effect of positing some of the most difficult areas to live in Brazil, favelas, as spaces only of recreation and vacation, connecting them to the other tourist tropes of Brazil. Nostalgia through the old home movie camera sounds and family travel trope is invoked. The sound of the home video camera starting up at the beginning of the video cuts off the only diegetic sounds in the whole video, sounds of water in the opening few seconds. But when the camera sounds begin, all sounds common to the locations shown in the video, to Rio and broadly to the main cultural exports of Brazil, stop. Beyoncé is occasionally portrayed singing a few words of the song’s lyrics, but otherwise the world portrayed in the video is sonically absent, sung for and spoken for in this nostalgia-invoking narrative of a family vacation.

Jay Z is in this video for two and a half seconds. In the first second of his appearance, half of his face is shown and then the camera reveals him wearing blue shorts and a white t-shirt. He walks on the beach dangling a bottle of alcohol in his fingers, clearly adding to the video’s story of Brazil as a space of relaxation. But Beyoncé is sometimes with Blue Ivy and sometimes not. Jay Z is portrayed by himself. The subsequent shot shows Beyoncé on the beach looking at the camera, so it could be that

Jay Z is looking at her and the viewer is now put into his eyes. But this is not very obvious and so is at best a debatable sequence of shots. Regardless, the entire family is never portrayed together, so the mother and child and family themes are visually distorted here into a gaze at other women and their children, and at other families. What could have been used as an opportunity to explore mother-daughter relationships, or family

245 structure within the periphery, is instead left as a tourist video and a look at Beyoncé dancing, posing, and otherwise performing against the gorgeous backdrop.

Global and Local Flows and Positionings

This comparison of Emicida and Jay Z and subsequent analysis of Beyoncé and

Jay Z in Brazil enables a dialogue on hip hop in the globalized world and what people do with it from given nodes or loci. In chapter 1, I used Abril Trigo’s concept of a

“transculturation from below” (2008) to describe hip hoppers’ use of seemingly

“imported” or “copied” forms of expression to create their own cultural productions or forms of expressions in order to reflect on their own situations. It is that process that is possible through the movements and flows that globalization has facilitated. Participating in those flows has enabled hip hoppers to enact their own voices and their own agency as they pursue these expressions and connections outside of themselves. Reaching out to find inner reflection as well as diasporic connection is what is at play here. And the capacity to make these connections and feel a part of something larger than self, a community on local, national, and international levels, is what is at stake.

While cultural “mergers” and flows have long occurred, they have become easier as globalization has intensified. This intensification has been occurring since the 1980s according to Ankie Hoogvelt (2001), who emphasizes the broad scope with which many social and political issues began to be addressed in that decade, noting that:

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We speak of ‘world peace’ and ‘human rights’, while issues of pollution

and purification are talked about in terms of ‘saving the planet’. Thus,

while in Robertson’s view globalization has been going on for a very long

time, pre-dating even the rise of capitalism and modernity, it has

accelerated only since the 1980s because it has moved to the level of

consciousness. (123)

Globalization moving to the level of consciousness. This characterization suggests that identity and state of mind became more in step with globalization in the 1980s. The intensification of globalization created new expectations about self, culture, politics, economy, and connection, new life rhythms in pace with the apparent shrunken status of the world given increased intercultural interactions and the possibilities they enabled.

While the 1980s might mark a time when globalization particularly accelerated because of this shift to the level of consciousness, I contend that if we take this self- referential awareness as globalization’s qualifier, such a process started at least two decades earlier in Brazil and possibly elsewhere, if not before. Music illustrates this point. In Brazil globalization can be seen as accelerating on the cultural level starting in the 1960s with the Tropicalistas’ search for connections with technological advances, pop culture, electric instruments, foreign musical genres and foreign cultures. They reflected a level of consciousness that marked an acceleration through prior cultural restraints and expectations of playing acoustic instruments that bossa nova and samba had created.

While similar in ethos to the modernistas of the 1910s and 1920s, the Tropicalistas’

247 connections with technology demonstrated a consciousness and awareness of a more rapidly connecting world. The popularity these artists gained demonstrates that it was not they alone that had globalized in their consciousness. Their audiences were moving in these directions as well, as new technologies and cultural convergences and productions attracted them.

The 1960s was an important decade of consciousness-building for civil rights in the United States, a movement that was connected to the cultural and political upheaval that shook Western societies—from May 1968 in Paris to the student revolt in Mexico

City—and lighted the flame of postmodern criticism. As I mention in previous chapters,

Nino Brown was an active participant in, and Emicida’s father was a deejay at bailes black. Afro-Brazilian consciousness had much growth in the 1970s with afro-descendent populations in São Paulo gathering at events such as the bailes black to dance and explore fashion they were seeing on record album covers of soul, funk, and other

African-American musical genres, what Brazilians call black music [pronounced “bla-kee me-oo-zik”]. This interest continued into the 1980s, connecting with hip hop and its four artistic elements, Brazilian hip hoppers interrupting spaces of commerce and injecting the day-to-day rhythms with their own body movements, graffiti visions, and musical and vocal constructions to reflect on and construct their own lives. These musical endeavors of the 1960s and 1970s reflected a more globalized cultural and technological consciousness that then only intensified. But indeed, in Brazil, the cultural experience and feeling of globalization was apparent before the 1980s.

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Brazilian critic Renato Ortiz has commented on this feeling and increased awareness of the global comings and goings of culture, and increasingly a type of international popular culture. Ortiz examines Indian cinema, Japanese “enka” music, and

Brazilian soap operas, and more generally other cultural productions to talk about their success or failure as export cultural productions. He argues that unique cultural factors widely understood on the local and national levels do not necessarily translate to other countries and their cultures. For example, Indian cinema includes songs produced in studios and lip synched, often times the actors seemingly singing the same song in locations known to be geographically distant, a verse in the city, a chorus in front of a waterfall. He notes that to the Western or Westernized viewer, this lack of verisimilitude would be frustrating since it is not what they have come to expect of films. “Enka” music works on a pentatonic scale and is intricately connected to Japanese syllabic structure, which Ortiz argues keeps it from leaving Japan and also keeps it dated in an bygone era when youth are looking for something new that speaks to their tastes in pop music. Ortiz notes that for Brazilian soap operas to find success outside of Brazil, their cultural particulars like those that limited the flow of Indian cinema and Japanese “enka” music had to be stripped from the stories, scripts, music, and overall productions. Story lines were shrunk from 180-200 episodes to a more digestible sixty episodes, and all particularly Brazilian elements were removed (485-7). He continues:

Expressed in another way, industrialized dramas, if they are to be

understood as an everyday experience, must adapt to the formats and be

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delivered pedagogically to individuals, molding the audience’s taste and

palate. The construction of the tradition of a world-modernity lies,

therefore, in a broad process of socialization of forms and cultural objects.

In the constitutions of this history, the United States must be seen as

playing a role of the utmost importance. Not so much because of

imperialism, but rather because it has been one of the first countries to

invest in the globalized segments of culture. The experiences put into

practice with soap operas, films, and television serials, globally

distributed, demarcate a model for orienting the public and the producers”

(484).

Models, once established as such, are always for orienting. Ortiz here demonstrates a strategy for what he calls “a mundialização da cultura,” or the

“worldization of culture,” which he argues requires what might be thought of as a bleaching, or a whitewashing, of culture so that something more “universal” is created. In a word, this is a process of standardization.

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer have also commented on this type of whitewashing of culture through their critique on the culture industry and of mass culture.

They point to massification’s effects on plot and form in varying arts, saying:

As soon as the film begins, it is quite clear how it will end, and who will

be rewarded, punished, or forgotten. In light music, once the trained ear

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has heard the first notes of the hit song, it can guess what is coming and

feel flattered when it does come. The average length of the short story has

to be rigidly adhered to. Even gags, effects, and jokes are calculated like

the setting in which they are placed. They are the responsibility of special

experts and their narrow range makes it easy for them to be apportioned in

the office.

Adorno and Horkheimer later reflect on the expectations that such standardized forms and plots create, training the consumer to understand what comes next, and through that expectation making all else seem substandard. They signal that:

Even though the effort required for his response is semi-automatic, no

scope is left for the imagination. Those who are so absorbed by the world

of the movie – by its images, gestures, and words – that they are unable to

supply what really makes it a world, do not have to dwell on particular

points of its mechanics during a screening. All the other films and

products of the entertainment industry which they have seen have taught

them what to expect; they react automatically.

I hope a vignette from my research in Havana helps illustrate this point. When I arrived to the house of the rap duo Obsesión in the La Regla neighborhood to get to know

Magia and Alexei, they asked if we might delay our conversation for a few minutes as

251 they and their friends wanted to see how the film they were watching on television was going to end. As Nicolas Cage and company boarded the prisoner transport plane to fly off into the sunset near the end of Con Air, someone exclaimed, “¡Típico americano!”

Certainly through the Revolution Cubans were taught to be critical of mass culture, as I will examine briefly here, but indeed it was clear that Hollywood tropes left no doubt as to how stories should be told.

These expectations can create a sense that those pieces of art that might break from these standards are of substandard quality. But their difference asks consumers to consider new forms, other forms, which become vehicles of agency and voice. It is this type of difference that Julio García Espinosa, Glauber Rocha, and Fernando Birri, and other film directors in the Américas called for with respect to film production and the motivations for filmmaking and using the art form as a tool to disrupt these expectations that posited the Third World and its misery as objects of pity, as Rocha explained, or as objects in general, ready for consumption and subsumption into the standard(ized) rhythms and formulas of mass culture. García Espinosa’s “imperfect cinema” and

Rocha’s insistence on the use of violence in varying ways both serve the end of shaking up the viewer’s expectations of plot, form, and culture. I want to be careful to not blur

García Espinosa, Rocha, and Birri and their respective locations of Cuba (and in the early years of the Revolution, still very much connected and railing against the years leading up to the Revolution), Brazil, and Argentina. I am also sensitive to the fact that referencing “other directors” of similar ilk can also dangerously serve to lump together each of these directors’ perspectives and projects. But the major projects of García

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Espinosa, Rocha, and Birri (and others) was to enact a rupture, or disconnect, from this clouded, massified vision and expectation of cultural forms that mass culture projects and emits. So it is fair to understand the 1960s and 1970s in particular as decades in which

Latin American filmmakers were indeed working towards this rupture through content, form, mechanics in order to break from the old formulas inherited from Hollywood.

Cinema Novo and Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano are movements with purpose, marked even in their names.

The term “black culture” itself presumes concepts common across the diaspora regardless of an individual’s national or other “origins.” So this universalization concept with respect to the spread of any cultural production is important to consider. In the case of hip hop, indeed there are elements, both musical, philosophical, and otherwise, that are espoused as universally important for black, poor, and all people. As I explore in chapter

2 and further at the end of this chapter, the Universal Zulu Nation advocates principals of peace, unity, love, having fun, and knowledge, the latter of which I demonstrated means an understanding of history, politics, and society and how to locate one’s self and community within those spaces. Whether affiliated with the UZN or not, similar community building ethos are sought by connecting internationally.

But hip hop’s consistent and insistent connection to the local and national communities in which they participate marks a resistance to a simplified, essentialized, universalized version of hip hop. Hip hop is most certainly massified and universalized in ways. But while Brazilian hip hoppers comment on themes outside of their own local situations, there is always a particular point of importance that harkens back to the local.

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Emicida uses New York to comment on important problems faced by the black and poor of the world, and later uses the favelas of São Paulo and Paris to make similar points. A return to some lyrics from “Sorrisos e Lágrimas” illustrates how he achieves this but also maintains focus on the local:

Sem maldade, sempre é tarde

Banzo é explicação pra de onde vem tanta saudade

Vi pelo mundo afora, a vida é uma pessoa boa, você só nota quando vai

embora

me sentindo um nordestino em sampa

Pagando conta, fazendo um som

Leis informais, cruéis demais

E quando cê tromba um baiano, pergunta se isso é bom

But while shooting his video from New York and making the song “Sorrisos e

Lágrimas” there, Emicida’s references to “banzo,” a type of “saudades,” or homesickness or longing for one’s land felt by the enslaved (Raimundo Oda), as well as feeling like a

“nordestino em Sampa,” or someone from the Northeast relocated to São Paulo, are speaking to Brazilians, and importantly to and about those Brazilians who relocated from the area with the highest Afro-Brazilian population and most African influences. Emicida is speaking to feelings of being out of place within the city. But specifically he is speaking to feelings specific to those that have experienced that specific migratory

254 pattern from Northeastern Brazil (Pernambuco like Nino Brown, Salvador, Fortaleza,

Ceará, and other locations) to São Paulo. Economic opportunities in São Paulo made this a common pattern of movement in the 19th and 20th centuries in Brazil. These references speak locally and nationally. Emicida inserts the universal point about life being a good person you only notice after they pass you by. He offers points that speak more universally and those that speak only locally, but help transmit universal feelings. But he posits himself, here located in New York, as someone that feels like a nordestino in São

Paulo. As a Brazilian, and a black Brazilian, reflecting on his location he is speaking to the Brazilian audience, asking them to reflect on the internal movements and cultural flows and the effects those motions have on people and cultures (“E quando cê tromba um baiano, pergunta se isso é bom”).

In considering these local versus non-local references, I am thinking specifically about Ortiz’s point about local particulars having to be stripped from cultural productions in order to find a consistent presence, or in order to be consistently consumed elsewhere.

Rap music and other elements of hip hop culture, while speaking on a universal level to people through sonic and visual (graffiti, fashion, body movement) style tropes, cannot be divorced from the local. Language is an important point to consider in this discussion.

Portuguese has a broad reach in the world, but is simply not going to have the same reach as English given the same longstanding tradition of globalized investments made by various United States entities that Ortiz references in the above quote, which have simultaneously exported and normalized the presence of English anywhere as they have exported their cultural productions.

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That export and universalization as Ortiz, Adorno and Horkeimer discuss, and this increased level of consciousness of globalization, of expectations of the possibilities for connections between different points of the globe, between different countries, cities, and cultures, and the expectation for how that should only become easier and easier over time, explains this intensification of globalization that Hoogvelt and others have discussed. Manuel Castells has noted a type of “timeless time” (406) in which physical and seemingly disparate spaces are connected through easier access to communication and financial exchanges (2000). With such an intensification in connection, businesses have been able to negotiate and invest more easily and regardless of time zone. Increased technological capacities, email for example, and since Castells and Hoogvelt’s writings,

Skype and other platforms, increase proximity through speed and frequency and thereby can help build trust. Emails and Skype chats are much easier than writing letters and awaiting their arrival, that process itself, however once a similar tool of proximity building with the advent and development of national and international courier services.

Castells notes that in these processes of ever-increasing connection, cities have become the major connecting points. He refers to urban mega-cities, saying “…they are the nodal points connecting to the global networks…Mega-cities are the nodal points, and the power centers of the new spatial form/process of the Information Age: the space of flows” (440). He explains this concept of the space of flows, and what is more, the concept of flows saying that:

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…our society is constructed around flows: flows of capital, flows of

information, flows of technology, flows of organization interaction, flows

of images, sounds, and symbols. Flows are not just one element of the

social organization: they are the expression of processes dominating our

economic, political, and symbolic life. …there is a new spatial form

characteristic of social practices that dominate and shape the network

society: the space of flows. The space of flows is the material organization

of time-sharing social practices that work through flows. By flows I

understand purposeful, repetitive, programmable sequences of exchange

and interaction between physically disjointed positions held by social

actors in the economic, politics, and symbolic structures of society.

(Castells, 442)

Castells adds that “the second layer of the space of flows is constituted by its nodes and hubs. The space of flows is not placeless, although its structural logic is. It is based on an electronic network, but this network lines up specific places, with well- defined social, cultural, physical, and functional characteristics” (443). Hoogvelt reflects on these electronic networks, saying “but while in earlier epochs space was prescribed by physical contiguity, space is now articulated through the circuitry of electronic impulses

(microelectronics, telecommunications, computer processing, broadcasting systems and so on). This space is fundamentally as borderless as it is timeless” (Hoogvelt, 127).

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From these concepts of flows, the space of flows, electronic networks, and circuitry of electronic impulses, we can understand much of what has been happening in the world in recent decades. Infrastructure on local and regional levels remains important, and perhaps the crux of the success of that region within the larger global network which

Castells and Hoogvelt discuss. But capacity to participate in that larger network has altered the scope of possibilities for businesses of all sizes, for small businesses most especially in recent years with the advent of systems like eBay and Etsy providing platforms for individuals to sell their wares. Being able to communicate more efficiently and easily with customers has broadened potential customer base. In politics, easier communication and connection has increased possibilities for faster responses and solutions. This ease and speed is reflective of the flows Castells denotes. Flows, means to say, the traveling of information, technology, images, sounds, and symbols. It also means the easier capacity for physical travel such as Emicida performing at Coachella in the northern California desert, then flying to New York to record a song and film a video, all of these endeavors arranged via email and cell phone.

It is this increased capacity for connection across borders and time zones that has helped hip hop in Brazil build connections with and increase knowledge of other hip hop communities, but also of broader diasporic concerns. I contend that this virtual connection and flow of information, a theme noticeably similar to the Brazilian notion of

“trocar ideia” that I discuss elsewhere in this project, has had an effect at the local level.

In particular, the growth of the Internet as well as platforms like Orkut and now Twitter,

Instagram, and Facebook have facilitated connections within Brazil, amongst the

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Brazilian hip hop community, and between it and communities and individuals outside of it. Castells cites research on the use of the Internet and its connections to sociability and intimacy, and says that “more Internet use leads to more social ties, including physical ties. Here again, pundits seem to be opposing sociability on the Internet to a mythical notion of a tight community-based society” (389). Indeed the Internet can play a role in strengthening a community-based society, such as hip hop. What is more, connections formed in virtual space can still enhance an individual’s life, and I argue that of a community as well. Castells mentions a theory that North Americans have over one thousand personal ties, six of which are intimate, around fifty of which are strong, and over 950 of which are weak ties. But these weak ties, says Castells, “…create a fundamental layer of social interaction for people living in a technologically developed world” due to the information and sense of belonging they can foster (389).

My discussion of the digital spaces of Brazilian hip hop in the preceding chapter speaks to this point within the community. Using the digital space as they do, to advertise shows, post videos of past performances, distribute their mixtapes, and send messages of gratitude or support, hip hoppers are creating a sense of belonging for their listeners and for each other, everyone involved in these exchanges using community-invoking terms like “família,” “a rua é nóiz,” and “tamujuntos” to contribute to and participate in this community. Hip hoppers believe in their cause of building community and fostering self- esteem, and engaging the community in the virtual sphere is one component of this. It is not that this component is any more important than the urban spaces already discussed.

The Internet is a virtual space in which interactions and their meanings are variable. But

259 they provide another layer of connection between people that already know one another.

The Internet also enables people who do not know one another to meet and develop relationships of varying degrees of intimacy or importance, for example as collaborators, friends, or otherwise. Making connections with other hip hoppers, no matter where they are at in the world, helps foster a sense of belonging to hip hop as something greater than self. The Internet gives a chance to escape the local, should the need arise, without ever leaving it. More importantly, new ideas surface through interactions with other people from other places, and those ideas can be taken, modified, and applied to local situations, much like forms of cultural production can be refashioned to fit local needs, indeed, transculturated from below. The networks one can build and participate in add value and meaning to one’s life and to one’s community.

The capacity for the few representatives of Brazilian hip hop to travel and build these connections in person has also had an important impact at the local level. As

Emicida himself notes in his interview with Cabrini for Conexão Repórter, he returns frequently to the favela where he grew up, saying that without it and the people there, he would not be where he is today artistically or professionally. So it is important to return, he says, to tell about what happened in New York or elsewhere (Conexão Repórter), the implication being that those people still living there deserve to learn from his travels and take something from them.

Zulu King Nino Brown’s travels to Caracas, Venezuela and Lisbon, Portugal resulted from email and online exchanges and the desire to have Brown offer public talks about the successes of the Casa do Hip Hop in Diadema towards community building.

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Both the Caracas and Lisbon hip hop communities sought to use hip hop to build community within their peripheries, and Nino has been called on to help those efforts.

What he is able to share and learn in those spaces, he can bring back to Brazil, to São

Paulo, to Diadema, and now to São Bernardo do Campo where he has recently created a new Casa do Hip Hop. Brown’s travels to Portugal have been as a representative of the

Casas, of São Paulo, of Brazil, and of the Universal Zulu Nation (UZN) from which he earned his title of Zulu King. In previous chapters I have referenced the UZN’s tag line of

“Peace, Unity, Love, and Having Fun,” which is espoused in Brazil and promulgated in hip hop circles. Nino Brown includes it in his song “A Voz do King,” on the “Uma Só

Voz” compilation and Bambaataa’s hype men were using it as a chant to build crowd participation in their performance at a skateboard park in São Bernardo do Campo in

2010. The UZN itself operates in countries around the world, building community through hip hop culture and its various elements. Nino Brown treasures the photos of himself and UZN founder Afrika Bambaataa, and many have come to revere their own photos taken with Nino Brown. He is the principal UZN ambassador in Brazil and is called on to assist other nations in their connecting to UZN but also in the building of their Casas do Hip Hop and hip hop communities. The UZN serves as its own network, then, with nodes all over the world interacting with one another.

Making Use of Technology from Below

Both the increased virtual and physical contact between Brazilian hip hop and other communities, as well as increased access not only to technology, but to better

261 technology year after year, has created new performance and production opportunities for

Brazilian emcees and also made it easier for Brazilians and non-Brazilians to access their music, either in person, on CD, or via an MP3.

Rael da Rima has played with the term MP3 on his album MP3: Música Popular do 3o Mundo. With that title, Rael successfully riffs on the technological format of the

MP3, which made music even more exchangeable within and beyond the cultural and geopolitical borders within which it is made, as MP3 files can be easily attached to an email, burned onto a CD-R, saved on a flash drive, or these days uploaded to a dropbox or another cloud system. The play on words Rael makes with his title is an important one to understand and unpack. The name of the file type, “MP3,” is short for MPEG-1 or

MPEG-2 Audio Layer III. It is an audio coding format for digital audio that uses a process of lossy compression to compress file sizes to roughly 1/11 of the original size of the file on the CD. This compression reduces the accuracy of elements of the sound that are deemed to be beyond the hearing capacity of most people anyway. This component of lossy compression is called perceptual coding, an important name given that it describes actual coding choices based on human perceptions and perceptual capabilities. The word

MPEG is an acronym for the working group, Moving Picture Experts Group, which designed this file type. That working group was formed by the International

Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and the International Organization for

Standardization (ISO), two examples of non-governmental organizations with broad reach and very much reflective of these trends in increasing global contact and international relationships.

262

Rael has taken this file format name and re-envisioned it to be reflective of his own position and that of his community. He unravels the term MP3 saying that rather than be a shortened version of the acronym for this working group, it can be used to mean música popular do 3o Mundo, or popular music of the Third World. As a file type based on compression, unraveling the name into this new vision decompresses the term MP3 to reveal the sounds of huge swaths of the world that so often go unheard, or are packaged by the First World as World Music for a safer, more sanitized consumption available on

Amazon.com or via another giant corporation, much like the people compressed or packaged into the visual backdrop of favelas like those in Beyoncé’s video for her song

“Blue.”

The word play also plays on the fact that the term MP3 looks quite similar to the term MPB, the abbreviation for música popular brasileira, which here becomes another term taken and re-envisioned from the periphery. Both MP3 and MPB are retooled and recoded to insert the periphery back into the perceptions of listeners. As a final riff on the file form and perhaps resistance to it, this album is only available as a R$6.00 CD, and not as a digital download (Laboratório Fantasma).

Brazilian hip hoppers’ use of the ever-expanding technology and flows of culture and commerce in the world takes on shapes other than that of Rael’s re-envisioning of technological terminology through word play. While an MP3 is a compressed file, communication has been facilitated, compressing distance by making connections like that between Emicida and the filmmaker Monteira, and between the emcee and the producers K-Saalam and Beatnick easier, faster, and actually possible. Communication

263 technologies like Internet and cell phones have expanded networks by shrinking the geographical distance between the nodes from which those very networks are built, people now reachable at any time of day and able to respond at a moment’s notice from anywhere in the world.

TIM, the Brazilian cell phone company, has worked to expand these connections technologically within Brazil and internationally. They have also created events that have focused on bringing musicians and bands from around Brazil and around the world together, focusing on the cultural flows and connections possible in a more connected world. With their TIM Festival, an annual music festival, the company built the event around the slogan, “Communicação Sem Fronteiras,” or “Communication Without

Borders.” That very phrase highlights the hyper connected state of the world within globalization, especially in the most recent decades, and most notably connects to technology’s capacity to circumvent political and cultural borders. In 2008, Kanye West headlined the festival, and Marcelo D2 and Racionais MC’s DJ KL Jay each gave a statement reflecting on their admiration for West and their excitement at his performing that year. Marcelo D2 points out in his “depoimento,” or “testimony” as it is labeled on the TIMfest2008 YouTube channel, that West brought back melody into rap music and like Afrika Baambaata and some others West breaks free from stereotypes (TIMfest

Marcelo D2).

Speaking of the TIMfest slogan, KL Jay adds that “a música não tem fronteira também.” This comment points to musicians’ own understandings of the flows of music and its capacity to reach people in varying locations. KL Jay continues, speaking of

264

Kanye West and his versatility as a producer: “E o Kanye West se enquadra muito bem nisso porque ele não está presa a ideologias. Não tá presa a ‘comportamentos’. ...Ele não segue rótulos de ‘underground’ ou de pop ou de comercial. Por mais que o mundo quer a encara-lo com a carga pop.” Reflecting on West’s capacity to work in varying musical styles, and citing West’s talking about human relations in his lyrics, KL Jay considers

West a genius and says of him that “não tem fronteira, meu!” (TIMfest KL Jay).

Imagining the possibilities of conveying such an image, that of someone that breaks with stereotypes, conventions, and labels, on a global level via the circuitry of flows being discussed further illustrates how these channels are used to signify and how they are signified. In the context of diasporic connections, both African and hip hop, and such as those Paul Gilroy discusses as the Black Atlantic, West is here understood as a model of the creative and innovative possibilities available to people. With two of the most well-known Brazilian hip hoppers giddily expounding on their love for Kanye West in these short TIMfest-produced testimony-advertisements—they were filmed in advance of West’s headlining set at the festival, Marcelo D2 ending his spot by noting that “I’m

Marcelo D2 and I’ll be at Kanye West’s show” (TIMfest Marcelo D2) while KL Jay’s final statement that West “não tem fronteira, meu!” is a direct connection to the TIMfest slogan—the impact of West’s presence speaks loudly and exemplifies a moment around which the community can come together and is indeed encouraged to do so.

Access to West’s music is possible through Internet and other media outlets, and it is accessed immediately and analyzed globally in real time. This possibility of immediacy was created through advances in technologies such as Internet and

265 networking communities and platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other programs designed to report instantly what one is doing or thinking, often with encouragement to report from the very moment said action or thought is occurring. A visit to the current website of TIM revealed the slogan “Você sem fronteiras,” the individual encouraged to think of self, identity, and possibilities as limitless, borderless, and by design (TIM Celular). It is curious that rappers would team up with a huge corporation, especially making such blatant connections to TIM’s advertising slogans.

Especially curious is KL Jay’s participation here, as his group Racionais MCs are known for their resistance and skepticism of media and mass culture that is uncritical. They are known for eschewing major label record deals and staying independent, which set an example for many emcees who have recently started their careers. But other corporate connections do exist with Brazilian hip hop, and perhaps rap and hip hop’s connection to

Nike shoes through their Air Force 1 and Michael Jordan models actually goes through its own process of universalization. Made in China for next to nothing, shipped everywhere at low costs to be sold everyone at high costs. In hip hop, the shoes are coveted and collected after having become one of several footwear style markers in hip hop. Timbaland boots would be another. While TIMfest was not specific to rap music and hip hop culture, like the Virada Cultural it was about creating a platform for multiple

Brazilian and foreign artists to perform and for Brazilians to enjoy those performances.

Unlike the Virada Cultural, however, the TIMfest cost money to attend, and so therein many limitations arise based on cost. These types of festivals are becoming part of the normal touring circuitry for popular music, with Bumbershoot near Seattle, Washington,

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Coachella in Indio, California, Bonnaroo in Tennessee, Roskilde Festival in Denmark, and Primavera Sound in Barcelona, which expanded in 2012 to offer a similar festival in

Oporto, Lisbon and is a company that now operates in conjunction with Airbnb to host concerts at youth shelters in Barcelona on top of their other work. Lollapalooza began as a touring festival in the early 1990s in the United States and now takes place in Chicago,

Santiago, Chile, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Of course, Woodstock is important to consider, though it was not connected to the corporate sponsorship that seems not only normal but necessary in recent decades as the prevalence of that type of support seems to suggest. TIMfest could be any of these festivals. If it happened in the U.S. it might be called Verizon Wireless Fest. Or not. Coachella partners with T-Mobile to offer live streaming. For South American cities and/or companies to sponsor such festivals, they compete and participate in this recently developed international circuitry.

Blogs and websites reflect this speed and proximity and borderlessness as well, commenting on music made anywhere and accessed from anywhere one can connect to

Internet or satellite. As a reader of the music websites Pitchfork.com—which hosts its own festivals in Chicago and now in Paris—and Movethatjukebox.com, the latter written in and from Brazil but about contemporary music around the world, I have noticed that

Movethatjukebox often produces similar content as Pitchfork, often reviewing the same album, video, or other cultural production or reporting the same newsworthy occurrence in music and the arts. While Movethatjukebox is not simply translating everything, nor reviewing all of the same material as Pitchfork, it is clear that the producers of the

Brazilian site pay close attention, and in real time, to Pitchfork and consider it as a model.

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This reverence might be considered an illustration of Pitchfork as an example of cultural imperialism. Pitchfork reviews music from all over the world, however it follows certain trends of “cool” and tries to create them as well. So while Brazilian artists will get reviewed on the site, it is not a frequent occurrence. Movethatjukebox, however, reviews the same major indie, hip hop, and other genre releases that are reviewed on Pitchfork and elsewhere, but pays very close attention to music being produced within Brazil, reviewing albums, announcing tours, and discussing other music news related to Brazil and Latin America as well as elsewhere. For example, they have a recent article on The

Ramones’ last show in South America, which took place in 1996 at River Plate Stadium in Buenos Aires (Ramone). Movethatjukebox takes the position of a node within the world of music criticism, that world itself part of a channel of flows and the practice of commenting on the music and its flows. The site posits Brazil as a node within popular music, thinking about Brazil in relation to other nodes, both countries and cities, and the channels of flows and exchanges. Comparing Movethatjukebox with Pitchfork one sees that English language music, and music produced in North America and Europe tends to dominate in terms of where it is present and in what quantities. Brazilian music, for example, is simply not discussed as frequently from the United States as it is within

Brazil nor as frequently as North American and European made music is discussed in

Brazil. Indeed theses channels of flows do not necessarily flow equally in all directions, clearly another sign of the weight that United States and other Western cultural productions carry having early on taken advantage of these globalizing mechanisms as

Ortiz suggests (484).

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But this inequality helps illustrate the point that hip hoppers are enacting their own agency by finding points of connection and taking advantage of increased connectivity whenever possible. Through such choices they build working relationships, knowledge of goings on in communities rooted in other urban nodes, and align themselves with those communities, participating in a larger network and community that connects to an imaginary, an ideal, of hip hop as a global community that reaches beyond borders and national identities to promote a common feeling of belonging. This imaginary is felt in this and in other real ways, which I have aimed to demonstrate both here and throughout this dissertation. I have often referred here to the Brazilian hip hop community, which is a fair moniker to use based on the fact that by and large hip hoppers in Brazil seek to connect to a general sense of building community for the periphery so that they might access points of citizenship as basic as recognition and the capacity to speak up for themselves. This applies to hip hoppers in São Paulo, as well as Rio de

Janeiro, Curitiba, Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Fortaleza and elsewhere. By connecting nationally and globally, they have been able to “trocar ideia” with people of similar backgrounds, gaining new perspectives that have enabled a certain element of repositioning, or capacity to reexamine local situations with new insights. Located in urban environments that they shape to their own needs in physical, verbal, sonic and creative ways and located in a larger, perhaps airier globally and electronically-linked space, hip hoppers in Brazil have been able to approach their own citizenship and community building in ways unimagined prior to the increased flows and connections to

269 pop, rock, and technology demonstrated by the Tropicalistas and prior to black music movements such as the funk and soul to which the bailes black connected.

Flows like these, channels of exchange, increased capacity for networking in digital and in-person spheres, nodes—these are all bridges that help illustrate how the

“borderless,” globalized world has facilitated connections. These metaphors also help illustrate how hip hop has been able to function as a space of community building, self and community promotion, and how they have been able to define themselves as a

Brazilian hip hop community and connect to the larger hip hop diaspora. “A rua é nóiz” is just one example of how Brazilian hip hop has rallied itself locally through an urban, physical, linguistic, and metaphorical connecting point, which is ultimately just a spoken and written expression of desire to connect. “A rua é nós” on the Brooklyn Bridge,

Emicida’s physical presence in New York and use of the city and his connections there to comment more globally and insert Brazil into that global conversation, Nino Brown’s travels and work abroad, and other examples are all evidence of Brazilian hip hop’s presence and connection elsewhere. These examples, among others, speak to how

Brazilian hip hoppers have incorporated that elsewhere into identity, understanding that elsewhere as part of something larger that Brazilians also contribute to and participate in while still looking inward to develop local community and citizenship.

To end this chapter and this dissertation I want to reflect on my final personal encounter with the Brazilian hip hop community before my wife and I were burned and almost killed in Brazil, shifting my research, writing, and career time frame in unexpected ways. That experience has defined our lives in many ways and given us a

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FIGURE 19. Zulu King Nino Brown Honorary Diadema Citizenship Ceremony

glimpse of the anti-poor and anti-people attitudes at work in legal and corporate society in Brazil as well as a glimpse of issues such as poor service, health care, and urban infrastructures that many Brazilians must deal with every day. No human being, neither foreign resident nor citizen, should experience such struggles. Hip hop has functioned in

Brazil as a counterweight to such frustrations.

Three days prior to the manhole explosion that burned us, I attended the June 26,

2010 Hip Hop em Ação event at the Casa do Hip Hop in Diadema. That particular event was different than the other Hip Hop em Ação events I had attended. It was Nino

Brown’s honorary Diadema citizenship ceremony, the same I analyzed in chapter 2. I bring it up again to return to the vignette of Nino asking me to take his picture (“Mais uma.”) with his citizenship certificate [FIGURE 19]. Nino himself migrated as a youth

271 from Northeastern Brazil to São Paulo where he has built a career in hip hop, now participating in its circuitry, traveling to Venezuela and Portugal and dreaming of traveling to New York and various locations in Africa to explore and connect to those hip hop and African nodes, always with a look towards education and understanding on a personal and community level.

This picture speaks to that circuitry and using it to look inwards towards local citizenship. Nino here holds his certificate in front of the Universal Zulu Nation mural at the Casa do Hip Hop. The rest of the walls are updated and altered by graffiti writers and their Casa students at Hip Hop em Ação events, but the Universal Zulu Nation mural is the only mural that is never painted over. It serves as a reminder of the UZN as a global

(or universal as their name implies) space and network of diasporic (as the term Zulu implies) connections. The UZN’s name expands the notion of “nation” as something universal, beyond geopolitical definitions and limitations. As Brazil’s first UZN member and their most revered member for his dedication to hip hop and to the black and poor communities of Brazil, Nino was honored that day with citizenship. It was honorary, but the point was that through his work through global and local channels, through the larger network and diaspora that he identifies with and connects with both digitally and in person he has been able to think about and affect local communities in significant ways, making Diadema, the Casa do Hip Hop, and the hip hop communities of São Paulo and

Brazil a point of reference locally, nationally, and abroad. This image of Nino in front of the UZN mural, then, a positioning and pose he chose, exemplifies how hip hop makes

272 use of urban, digital, and hyper-connected channels to work towards improving daily life and citizenship.

273

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