How Brazil's Hip-Hop Culture Looks to Redefine Race a Dissertation Submi
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Sabotaging Logics: How Brazil’s Hip-Hop Culture Looks to Redefine Race A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Spanish by Maria Teresa Moulin June 2010 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Freya Schiwy, Chairperson Dr. David Herzberger Dr. Alessandro Fornazzari Copyright by Maria Teresa Moulin 2010 The Dissertation of Maria Teresa Moulin is approved: ________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside AKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost I would like to thank all the members of my committee for believing in my project and for encouraging me to continue with it. Thank you so much to my advisor Freya Schiwy for her constant support and guidance. Our conversations and her detailed comments helped me stay focused and inquisitive. For her encouragement during very challenging times, both academically and personally. To Alessandro Fornazzari for his always critical comments and insight. For introducing me to the works of George Yudice and Néstor García Canclini which sparked my initial interest in popular culture. To Prof. Herzberger for his guidance and support throughout this entire process. To the University of California's Subaltern-Popular Dissertation Workshop for allowing me to share my work in progress. To the professors and graduate students who participated in the workshop for their valuable comments and suggestions. To the University of California's Dissertation Grant which helped made research possible. I would also like to thank Prof. Helena Couto Pereira of Universidade McKenzie in São Paulo for reading and iv commenting on Chapter Two of this dissertation. Also for arranging my stay in São Paulo in order for me to conduct research and to study at her university. Thank you to my paulista classmates for their comments, suggestions, and insight into São Paulo life. To Alírio for his emotional support throughout this entire process and for his understanding even when that meant putting this project before us. To J'Leen for always being there to listen, encourage, advice, and most importantly for turning these years of study into a life- long friendship. I would like to thank all the members of the hip-hop community I met while in São Paulo. It is them who made this project possible. Special thanks to King Nano Brown, DJ Dan Dan, Alessandro Buzo, Limonada, Robinson, and Sérgio Vaz. To rapper Rappin Hood and author Sacolinha who were generous enough to exchange emails with me in order to answer the many questions I had. Firmeza! v To my father who instilled in me a love for learning. And to my mother, for it is because of her courage and love that I have been able to come this far. vi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Sabotaging Logics: How Brazil’s Hip-Hop Culture Looks to Redefine Race by Maria Teresa Moulin Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Spanish University of California, Riverside, June 2010 Dr. Freya Schiwy, Chairperson My dissertation examines the representation of Afro- Brazilians within the contemporary culture production of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, specifically in three novels, rap music, and the hip-hop community. The novels form a diverse corpus of works. Two were published during the 1990s by middle-class canonical writers, Subúrbio (1994) by Fernando Bonassi and Cidade de Deus (1997) by Paulo Lins. Bonassi offers a homogenous vision of the margins while Lins presents them as diverse. Yet, both draw on a materialist approach that leads the protagonists toward an apocalyptic conclusion. The third novel was published by a resident of a favela in the outskirts of São Paulo, Graduado em Marginalidade (2004) by Sacolinha. This novel vii presents a complex and at times contradicting view of favela life. Graduado offers the possibility for social advancement as the novel seeks to redefine race within Brazil. Rap music and the hip-hop community present a critical view of Brazilian culture and history. Through lyrics, musical form, and activism hip-hoppers look to contest, question, and alter established ideas of race in Brazil. Much like Sacolinha’s novel, hip-hoppers redefine race in order to rewrite their future and in the process break from the cycle of violence and drugs that threatens the well-being of Brazil’s most marginalized. Utilizing materialist and postcolonial theories this study explores how these cultural forms contribute toward understanding representations of race within Brazilian urban culture. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ....................................... 1 Chapter 1: Urban Literature of the 1990s ...................... 15 Chapter 2: The Margins Answer Back: Hip-Hopper’s Response to Urban Literature and Mass Media of the 1990s .................................. 71 Chapter 3: Sabotaging Brazil’s Hegemonic Discourse on Race and History, One Rap Song at a Time ........................................... 128 Chapter 4: Decolonization through Hip-Hop Culture................ 181 Conclusion ........................................... 225 ix Introduction Sabotaging Logics: How Brazil’s Hip-Hop Culture Looks to Redefine Race A periferia gritou e a sua voz venho em forma de rap.1 Defiant lyrics; young Afro-Brazilians taking over the street corners of downtown São Paulo in order to hold break-dancing parties; angry lyrics questioning history and criticizing the state and capitalism; young writers from the suburbs of São Paulo selling their books in subway stations and book fairs; rappers founding NGOs. Images that highly contrast with those typically assigned to the suburbanos and favelados of Brazil. Since the late 1980s, the Hip-Hop movement in Brazil has presented young Afro-Brazilians as critical, confrontational, artistic, and socio-politically active. 1 In Casseano, Patricia, Mirella Domenich and Janina Rocha. Hip Hop: A periferia grita. São Paulo, Brasil: Fundação Perseu Abramo, 2001. 1 Rap music criticizes and questions grand narratives of harmonious race relations and economic progress. This representation sharply contrasts to that of complaisance found in traditional literature and of violence within contemporary literature. In addition, the presence of young Afro-Brazilians heading writing workshops, producing documentaries, and promoting their literary works in book fairs contrasts with images of them in favelas leading shootouts and drug deals. Through culture hip-hoppers resignify colonial tropes historically employed to subalternize and marginalized them2. In the process Hip-Hop seeks to decolonize knowledge by adopting a philosophy of negotiation, inclusion, and dialogue. The original objective of hip-hoppers in the early days (and one still important today) lied in changing who recounts history and how it is told. Rap music began with the purpose of becoming the voice of the suburbs and 2 Hip-Hop traces its roots to the ghettos of Jamaica and New York. While the sounds of hip-hop started in the late 1960s in New York, it was a Jamaican DJ, Kool Herc, who introduced the “sound system” technique of sampling. The term hip-hop, which literally refers to the movement of the hips and to jumping, was created by the DJ Afrika Bambaataa. He used this term in order to define the dance encounters that occurred in the Bronx and that brought together break dancers, DJs, and MCs. Hip-hop in Brazil is defined as a cultural movement composed of five elements: sampling (DJ), poetics (MC), visual arts (graffiti), dance (break), and knowledge (Afro-diasporic history, politics, literature). 2 favelas as the main concern became that of deconstructing established knowledges related to race, aesthetics, history, democracy, and economic progress. Today, music along with literature and film share this goal. Unconsciously, rappers allude to Ranajit Guha’s definition of subalternity as a discourse based on relationships of power. Hip-Hop views power as a historical discourse the ruling class, the elite that came to power after independence, has used to obtain and maintain its hegemony. Therefore hip-hoppers believe that Western views of civilization, knowledge, and economic advancement embraced by the ruling class in order to subjugate Blacks shape Brazilian national historiography. In other words, even after independence hip-hoppers believe Brazil continues to narrate its history through a colonial lens. Today Hip-Hop not only seeks to change who writes literature and history but also who reads it. The Movement strongly believes that in order for the people of the suburbs and favelas to mobilize on behalf of their communities they need to make educated choices. As such, hip-hoppers stress the importance of education/learning as a tool for reflection and evaluation, rather than as a tool to serve the state and/or corporations. Learning points 3 more towards a decolonization of knowledge in which the comunidades contribute with their own ideas, perspectives, and solutions. Song writing and writing workshops, concerts, open-mic nights, and festivals promoted by hip-hoppers are venues in which artists share information and ideas. The internet has now become a critical tool for exchanging information and has helped the Movement spread nationwide. Media becomes an educational tool and a network of communication rather than just pure entertainment. In studying this cultural movement, the dissertation explores a series of questions: