Feminist Hip-Hop?: Conventions of Gender and Feminisms in Salvador's
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DA BAHIA President João Carlos Salles Pires da Silva Vice President Paulo Cesar Miguez de Oliveira Adviser to the President Paulo Costa Lima EDITORA DA UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DA BAHIA Director Flávia Goulart Mota Garcia Rosa Editorial Board Alberto Brum Novaes Angelo Szaniecki Perret Serpa Caiuby Alves da Costa Charbel Ninõ El-Hani Cleise Furtado Mendes Evelina de Carvalho Sá Hoisel Maria do Carmo Soares de Freitas Maria Vidal de Negreiros Camargo Rebeca Sobral Freire Feminist Hip-Hop? Conventions of Gender and Feminisms in Salvador’s Hip-Hop Movement Salvador EDUFBA 2020 © 2020, by Rebeca Sobral Freire. Rights to this edition granted to Edufba. Legal filing complete. Images, Book Cover, and Publishing Josias Almeida Jr. Author’s Photo Gean Carlos dos Santos Barreto Souza Book Cover Image Desktopimages Revision and Standardization Amy Weatherburn Revision of English Translation Monique Pfau Sistema Universitário de Bibliotecas – UFBA F866 Freire, Rebeca Sobral Feminist Hip-Hop? : conventions of gender and feminisms in Salvador’s Hip-Hop movement / Rebeca Sobral Freire. - Salvador: EDUFBA, 2020. 151p. il. color. pdf English Translation: Jeffrey Stewart and Monique Pfau. Available online at: https://repositorio.ufba.br/ri/handle/ri/32146 ISBN 978-65-5630-022-1 1. Hip-hop (Cultura popular) – Salvador (BA). 2. Feminismo. 3. Mulheres – aspectos sociológicos. I. Título. CDD – 305.42 Designed by Geovana Soares Lira CRB-5: BA-001975/O EDUFBA affiliated with EDUFBA Rua Barão de Jeremoabo, s/n, Campus de Ondina, 40170-115, Salvador-BA, Brasil Tel: +55 (71) 3283-6164 www.edufba.ufba.br | [email protected] With much love, I dedicate this book to my beloved power trio, in memoriam, my mother, Socorro Sobral, Professor Doctor Ana Alice Alcantara Costa, and Minister Luiza Bairros. To the female hip hoppers of Salvador! To Salvador, Bahia! To our public university, UFBA! I am forever grateful! I also wish to dedicate this book to all of the families and individuals who have suffered and endured loss during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil, the United States, and all over the world. Acknowledgments This book discusses questions concerning gender conventions and feminisms in hip-hop in the city of Salvador, Bahia, through the prism of young female activists. My particular interest is to determine the possible existence of a feminist hip-hop in Salvador, with the broader intention of understanding feminism in its plurality as a social movement. To this end, I ponder the ways in which feminist rhetoric is appropriated, as well as to what extent my research’s female subjects represent the movement’s ideologies in their activism. I wish to stress the connection between social markers such as gender, sexuality, and race in the political practice under investigation. By adopting qualitative methodology, this ethnographic-based analysis employs semi- structured interviews carried out in partnership with female hip hoppers. Another research method is participatory observation following my own interaction with this group, guided by Gender and Feminist studies. I am grateful to have my master’s thesis, Feminist Hip-hop? Conventions of Gender and Feminisms in Salvador’s Hip-hop Movement, available in English as a publication of Edufba, who supported the idea through my own initia- tive and financial support. The English edition is now a reality as a result of collaboration between many individuals, including Professor Flávia Goulart Roza, Susane Barros, and Josias Almeida Jr. from Edufba. They were the key players who mobilized the publication of this book, and it simply would not have been possible without you all. Many thanks to the translators of this book: Jeffrey Stewart, a US American young black man who worked at the Federal University of Bahia as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in 2019, and Professor Monique Pfau from the Institute of Languages and Literature at the Federal University of Bahia. Thank you both so much for your generosity and dedication in expanding the geographical horizons of this book. The English edition uniquely has a preface from Dr. Gladys Mitchell-Walthour, co-coordinator of the U.S. Network for Democracy in Brazil and professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. I am grateful to the Hip-hop movement and the female hip hoppers who partnered with me in this project: Carla Cristina de Jesus Santos (Kaia na Paz), Simone Gonçalves Santos (Negramone), Ana Paula Conceição Oliveira (Azeviche), Eliciana Santos Nascimento (Lis), Priscila Nayala da Costa Lino (in memoriam), Vivian Quatuni (Olhasse), Dina Lopes, and Mônica Reis (Índia). I want to give a special mention to Rede Aiyê Hip-Hop, and to the groups Munegrale and Hip-Hop Coisa de Menina. You all are the main inspiration of this work, and therefore I express to you all my deep- est congratulations and sincerest gratitude. A special thanks is in order to Jorge Hilton, who ushered me into the hip-hop world of Bahia and invited me to various events, to Gilmara de Lima Souza (Mara Asantewaa), to the friends of the group Fúria Consciente, and to all friends, colleagues, and artists of whom I am a fan. I also wish to thank Mônica Reis and Jackson Barbosa (Pinel) for the graffiti images. The first edition of this book was approved for publication only in Portuguese in 2018 following the theses and dissertations contest hosted by the Federal University of Bahia’s (UFBA) Programa de Pós-Graduação em Estudos Interdisciplinares sobre Mulheres, Gênero e Feminismo (graduate program in interdisciplinary studies on women, gender, and feminisms - PPGNEIM) for Coleção Bahianas/Edufba. The timing was quite special since it coincided with PPGNEIM’s ten-year anniversary. That project was developed with resources from PROPG/UFBA (Pro-Consolidar 2012) as one of the ini- tiatives of the Projeto de Incentivo à Produção Acadêmica (incentive for academic production project) in the area of Feminist Studies. It was an opportunity to present young female researchers in Feminist and Gender Studies in the state of Bahia and throughout Brazil. To that end, I want to send a huge thank you to everyone from Coleção Bahianas, a paramount piece of the Núcleo de Estudos Interdisciplinares Sobre a Mulher (center for interdisciplinary studies on women - NEIM). I am chiefly grateful to critical partners. I would like to thank all of my professors, especially my master’s advisor, Professor Alinne de Lima Bonetti, for her dedication to her profession which guided me through my studies. You passed on to me imperative lessons for the life of a young female researcher. These lessons then manifested themselves in my mas- ter’s degree program as a scholarship recipient of Capes, which ultimately brought this book to fruition. To Professor Márcia Santana Tavares, a significant supporter of this publication in its first edition and whose introduction is also present in this one. I would like to express my gratitude to all of the women that supported me on this path with their friendship and solidarity. Particularly, I wish to name my dearest Zelinda Barros for her essential tutelage and partnership in embedding decolonial feminist knowledge in my personal and academic education, which played a crucial role in the first steps of this research and its ideas. Also, many thanks to Professor Ana Alice Alcantara Costa who guided me in scientific introductions with her vast knowledge in feminist studies and political science. You brought me into feminism. I am grateful to Professor Jorge Almeida who encouraged my research, and to Professor Cloves Luiz Oliveira, a wonderful academic tutor who believed in this re- search proposal when I was completing my bachelor’s degree in political science. You supported me immensely and provided scientific offerings in guiding me on the subject matter. A big thank you to Professor Paula Cristina Barreto and to O Programa A Cor da Bahia (the color of Bahia program) for starting this research in my un- dergraduate study-abroad program at Vanderbilt University with Professor Kathyne Gines and “Hip Hop and Black Sexual Politics.” To Capes/FIPSE for financing and facilitating an internationally cooperative experience, which Professors Jane Landers and Marshall Eakin so graciously coordinated. To Capes again I express my gratitude for assuming the paramount task of financing my research during my master’s degree in the academic exchange program in Florianópolis (PROCAD), in which I visited the Federal University of Santa Catarina’s (UFSC) Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências Humanas (graduate program in human sciences). I am grateful to the professors and colleagues in the South of Brazil and, especially, to the family of Gleidismara dos Santos Cardozo. To Professor Angela Maria de Souza, who received me in the South and whose preface I am proud to have in my first book sharing Latin-American hip-hop and black feminisms. I want to also thank Professor Tanya Saunders who received me in the Ohio State University, and wrote the afterword. Many thanks to all of my male and female colleagues. Gilberta Soares was essential in her academic and scientific connections. Gean Carlos dos Santos Barreto Souza made photographic contributions with “Blessing by Baia de Todos os Santos” and my personal photo in this book. To all of those who read this work all over the world, whether in Portuguese or English, thank you dearly. I am grateful to have had the support of two very important research groups from UFBA: Feminaria Musical from the School of Music, under the direction of Dr. Laila Rosa, and PORRA from the School of Dance, under the direction of Dr. Lucas Valetim. Both groups were robust sources of in- spiration and truly believed in my research and its potential. Thank you all! Furthermore, I am grateful to have had indispensable support from Coletivo Famílias pela Diversidade in my second book project through Dirce Meire Neves Novais and coordinator Valéria Saraiva, two activists very dear to me who spread positive energy in all colors of the rainbow and taught us with so much love.