Close to the Edge Read online

  The sampler was a godsend for Cuban hip hoppers. Until that moment they had just made do with whatever materials were available to them. For improvised backgrounds Cubans made “pause tapes.” They would record the break beat on a cassette and then manually loop it over and over until they had a complete song.

  Cuba’s first hip hop DJ, Ariel Fernández, improvised a set of turntables with Walkmans as the decks. His cassettes contained music recorded from CDs and FM stations. At bonches, the block parties, or local gatherings in the barrio, Ariel would set up two Walkmans. He would play a cassette in one Walkman while searching for the song he wanted on the other. Then he would flip to the other song. He didn’t have a mixer that would allow a seamless transition from one song to the next, but he made do with volume controls. The important thing was, as he said, to preserve the principle of the turntables.1 It was yet another example of the creative spirit of inventando.

  The MPC in the hands of Pablo meant that rappers who worked with him could now actually have beats that used Cuban rhythms and samples. I pulled out the lyrics for my rap song “You’re My Shadow,” and I sang a few lines for Pablo. It was a song about heartbreak and betrayal, and the comfort one could find in female friendships. Pablo pondered it for a minute. He extracted an old Cuban bolero record by Blanca Rosa Gil from his vinyl collection, put it on the decks, and sampled one line from the track “Acerca el oido” (Bring your ears closer). “Dejame contarte el olvido, Dejame decirte el olvido” (Let me tell you the forgotten, Let me say to you the forgotten). The sample added a plaintive suggestion of memory, perhaps an older voice imparting wisdom to a younger person. Pablo recorded this phrase on the MPC, along with a drum loop and a bass line. Turning to the keyboard, he began tapping out a few simple melodies. He finally settled on a quick ascending triplet that led into the melody and then a three-note riff that played off the bass line. He copied these to the sampler, too. Pleased with the beat so far, he sampled an alluring female voice saying, “Escuchala” (Hear it) from another album. He added the sample with a jarring syncopation slightly after the end of the phrase.

  Afterward Pablo walked me out to the street to flag down a cab. He slipped on an Ecko t-shirt with the words “Ecko Unltd, NYC” printed on the front. He looked at me sheepishly. “An American producer was here last week, and he offered me all this clothing. I wouldn’t have taken it, but I really needed some new clothes.”

  Maybe protesting capitalist consumerism was just a luxury for those of us in the West. Here in Cuba sometimes necessity had to come first. With clothing hard to find or priced in dollars at the fancy Carlos Tercera shopping mall, hip hoppers like Pablo couldn’t always turn down the offerings of the foreign labels. And, no doubt, Pablo knew that turning up at the next block party in an Ecko t-shirt would turn some heads.

  Cuba seemed not to be as isolated from global music trends as I had thought. Producers, tourists, and relatives brought hip hop gear from the United States. Many people had VCRs, so aspiring hip hoppers could see prerecorded video clips. And they could listen to Miami radio station 99 Jamz FM.

  Soon after I returned to Cuba for the third time in May 2001, I sat out on the balcony of the casa particular in Vedado with Magia and Alexey. Alexey related that, when he was growing up in the eighties, he was attracted by the energy and soulfulness of the rap music that came along the airwaves of 99 Jamz FM. As a kid he would build antennas from wire coat hangers and dangle his radio out the window, “crazy to get the 99.” On episodes of Soul Train beamed in from Miami television, Alexey saw b-boying for the first time. He copied the steps and then showed them to the kids in the neighborhood. Alexey remembered the dance cyphers in the park El Quijote. Kids would form a circle. In the center the b-boys would polish the concrete with their back spins and windmills, while others broke into a beatbox or rhymed.

  Alexey liked to work with his hands, whittling pieces of wood into elaborate statues and religious objects. He was working as a sculptor when he met Magia and they decided to get married. Magia shared a one-bedroom apartment on Calle Jovellar in Central Havana with her mother and sister. She moved in with Alexey’s family, which had a small rooftop terrace apartment in the industrial suburb of Regla.

  At this time Alexey was writing lyrics and rhyming in a rap group with two other guys. But the other two stopped coming to rehearsals, and Alexey was writing and rehearsing by himself. Eventually, he asked Magia if she would form a group with him. Magia initially joined the group as a way of supporting her husband and creating a space outside the daily routine of married life that wasn’t just about cooking, cleaning, home, and work. “I began with the group just singing the chorus,” Magia said. “But later Alexey began to give me room so that I could rap about issues relating to women. Eventually, I earned my position within the group as a rapper. To be honest, I never thought I’d ever leave the bedroom and perform in front of an audience. I’m actually a very shy person, but I’ve overcome that bit by bit.”

  Magia and Alexey, like other Cubans of the hip hop generation, had little or no memory of the early years of the revolution. They’d heard stories from their parents about the literacy campaign that mobilized 1.25 million Cubans or about the desegregation of whites-only spaces during the 1960s. As the younger generation, they had benefited from the extension of education, housing, and health care to black families. But they came of age during the Special Period, as the revolutionary years gave way to times of austerity, and racism was visible once again.

  In a society where it was taboo to talk about race publicly, racism was the elephant in the room. Fidel had attempted to create a color-blind society, where equality between blacks and whites would make racial identifications obsolete. But in redrawing the geography of Cuba’s racial landscape, the state simultaneously closed down Afro-Cuban clubs and the black press. As racism became public once again during the Special Period—it had never really gone away—blacks were left without the means to talk about it. When called on their racism, officials trotted out the same tired line—en Cuba, no hay racismo (in Cuba, there is no racism). My trusty manual, The Cuban Revolution and Its Extension, had referred to racial prejudice in Cuba as “no more than a disappearing legacy of the past.” But I saw how my black friends were harassed by police and asked for ID. I saw that they had a harder time getting jobs in tourism than their white peers.

  Alexey Rodríguez

  It was at this juncture that hip hop culture appeared and took root. While the black nationalism espoused by an earlier generation of visiting black radicals like Marcus Garvey or Stokely Carmichael never had much appeal in Cuba, African American rappers spoke a language of black militancy that resonated with Cuban youth. It spoke to their experiences of racial discrimination in the Special Period. Young Cubans of African ancestry proudly referred to themselves as black.

  “I am what my image shows, a black woman,” declared Magia, in her rap “Niche niche,” the Cuban slang for dark skinned. “Representing those women who dare to get out there My skin is the color of night, it reveals secrets already known To show that which is hidden is seen by all.”

  Cuban rap was bold and rebellious. But, after all, isn’t that what you would expect from a generation of young people raised under a revolutionary government? The daily youth periodical was called Juventud Rebelde (Rebellious Youth). In daycare centers and schools, children repeated the motto “We will be like Che.” We’re talking about a place where the evening news called for resistance to US imperialism and global capitalism. But, with Cuban rap, it was different. It was different because the children of the revolution were turning the tables on the establishment revolutionaries. The younger people were taking the slogans and analysis they were taught and were using them to question the changes going on around them. If the birthright of the revolution was to make all Cubans equal, they asked, why were some more equal than others? Why were blacks not treated the same as whites?

  Magia was part of a new breed of emcees, agnostic and irreverent, the vo
ices of an urban culture that was—as the chorus to her song went—made in Havana City. But she didn’t see herself as a dissident. Although she never was affiliated with the Communist Youth League, Magia had a strong sense of identification with the revolution. She often found herself defending the government in conversations with her more skeptical peers. I wondered how it was possible to be both a fierce critic of race relations and a defender of the revolution. Wouldn’t there come a point where you would have to choose sides?

  The question of being original is not pretending to be original. It’s simply to be original.” Alexey’s voice swooped climactically on the last two words in his usual theatrical style. Obsesion was performing on stage at Cubadisco, the annual music contest sponsored by the Cuban music industry and held in the beachside district of Playa. Waves were crashing in the background on that late spring evening as floodlights lit the makeshift stage. Alexey wore his hair in short locks, a beaded black-and-yellow chain around his neck. On the front of his t-shirt was the image of the African American journalist and death-row prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal.

  “Is it true or not?” Alexey, aka El Tipo Este, asked as he primed the audience of mostly young black Cubans in baseball caps, Fila sweatshirts, and basketball jerseys. The clothing styles, like the handshakes and the American slang that peppered their speech, highlighted their identity as young black Cubans. There was a sprinkling of noviacitas, young foreign women brought by their Cuban boyfriends. “This is the story that emcees have to take from the loco, loco, El Tipo Este, baptized today, the commentary begins.” The booming beat sounded four or five times in quick succession, and then the rhythm kicked in.

  “Every person In my barrio Every person / In my barrio,” Magia repeated the refrain to the song, over and over. She was wearing a red-and-white paisley head wrap with an African gown, large hoop earrings, and a necklace made of small cowry shells. It brought to mind Afrocentric American rappers like Yo-Yo, Harmony, and Isis.

  Magia began a rap-skit with El Tipo Este. “I was thinking of finding myself a foreigner / One that has a lot of money.”

  “Of course,” El Tipo Este interjected.

  “I don’t care what he’s like I just want someone who’ll resolve my problems. It’s a sacrifice but you get results Love in these times that we live is relative I’m a young woman who has to secure her future, you get me? I’m not the kind to look for work or nothin’ I want to travel, and help my family from abroad My wedding has to be beautiful, like in the Hollywood movies.”

  “Run for the city, a commentary,” they both chanted on the chorus. “Is it a jinetera, a bunch of crazies doing tourism, tell me where, chico?”

  “I was thinking that an intellectual such as myself,” El Tipo Este rapped in a pompous tone.

  “Like you?” asked Magia.

  “Shouldn’t be wasting time with these people Who don’t have a sufficient cultural level To have a conversation that matches my social position I don’t support this language everyone is using ‘Asere,‘qué bolá?’ You find it all over the place / you know, with these people of the solares”

  “Yo, yo, yo, I was thinking,” she replied: “All the hours I’ve studied haven’t served for nothin’ / Whole mornings studying I’m going to leave my career, papa I’m very sorry, I won’t be an engineer My girl just called, there’s a job in tourism Tourism, papa It’s cleaning floors, but who cares? It’ll give me a few bucks and I can resolve some problems.”

  “I was thinking, why don’t I Form a combo and start performing traditional music?” rapped El Tipo Este. “I’ll be part of the fardndula [new elite] I’ll play Son de la Loma, and Chan Chan.”

  “And Guantanamera,” added Magia.

  The song alluded to the contradictions of Havana in the 1990s. Education was no longer a ticket to social mobility. Professional occupations were less remunerative than hustling or performing traditional Cuban songs for tourists. Obsesión was critical of this reality. As the audience laughed and clapped, I sized the people up. Some of the young Cuban men there with foreign girlfriends were jineteros. Wasn’t that a contradiction, I wondered, being at an underground rap concert and at the same time wanting the nice things and trips around the city that came from befriending foreigners? Couldn’t they see that the Obsesión song was actually a parody of the jinetero lifestyle, a criticism of the “easy fix” as a way to acquire material possessions and move up in the world?

  The next group on stage, Explósion Suprema, had a noticeably different energy. Miki Flow wore a t-shirt that read “USA.” Brebaje Man was his co-rapper.

  “Where are my people from Alamar?” Miki Flow called out. “We come from out in the sticks, man, from Alamar.” Alamar was a district on the periphery of Havana that contained a series of low-income housing projects. Miki Flow switched into hip hop Spanglish, a combo of American and Cuban slang. “¿Qué bolà, asere? Wasssssup? Aqui, en Cubadisco, manos pa’ arriba, Explósion Suprema in da house.”

  “Aiiiight. Represent the real hi ho,” added Brebaje Man, truncating his sentences Cuban style. “Manos pa’ arriba. No doubt. Yo, check it out, check it out.”

  Bouncing across the stage, Miki Flow began his song “Mi patria, caray!” (My country, damn!). As a rapper, he said, he represented the essence of Cubania: “Although my lyrics are not mixed with son / Everything that I’m singing here is very Cuban.”

  “Undergroun, almost without possibilities,” rapped Brebaje Man.

  “But with the little that we have we ain’t gusanos [maggots],” he continued, using the derogatory label often given to people who had renounced the revolutionary government.

  “I’m like a magician on the stage,” Miki Flow went on. “Raising a dead public till they laugh with happiness / Making disappear their agony and their sadness.”

  “Shuttup, shuttup New York / Shuttup, shuttup, mothafuka,” they rapped, concluding the song. Miki Flow and Brebaje Man gesticulated and grimaced as they threw in the English expletives “fuck you” and “mothafuka.” It struck me that this in-your-face pose was what resonated with local youth across language barriers. When Cubans heard American music, they didn’t understand the lyrics for the most part. They didn’t speak English. But there was something about the attitude of American rappers that spoke to them, that communicated all the frustration and pent-up anger of a life lived on the margins. I wondered what it was about Alamar that could produce such burning music.

  Brebaje Man

  Following Explosión Suprema, Randy came up onto the stage. Gone was the skinny adolescent who had rapped with his baby cousin about his bicycle. Randy was now a tall, broad-shouldered young man, his hair braided in cornrows. Randy had joined with Jesse Saldrigas, aka El Huevo, and with another rapper they formed the group Los Paisanos. The group had lost the other rapper, who had decided to switch to a commercial genre of salsa-rap fusion and signed a record deal with a foreign label. In a song called “El barco” (The boat), Randy rapped about the life of an underground rapper:

  My form of dress means that in the street

  They ask for my ID, despite the fact that when I was a kid

  I also cried, “We will be like Che.”

  Now I’m found seated on the bench of the accused, Not with crossed arms, but there’s no fokin place in the market

  For people like me, who haven’t taken on the word mixture or

  fusion.

  If rap is rap and tango is tango,

  Then why do we make this “rice with mango.”

  “We’re a boat that’s adrift, in the middle of a storm,” they rapped on the chorus. “We’re a boat that’s adrift, and the captain is called rap / We’re a boat that’s adrift, that navigates without direction / And with no money we’ve lost half the crew.” Cuban rap was penniless and adrift. And so was Randy, trying to navigate his way around sweet-talking label reps and defend himself against cops. He had outgrown his bicycle and was now forced to fend for himself in a boat that was lost at sea.

  One of the la
st acts of the night, the group Hermanos de Causa, came onto the stage. “Buenas noches, Playa,” said Soandry, serious and without the hype of the previous performers. “We’re Hermanos de Causa. We’re from the barrio, from Alamar.” A synthesized beat, overlaid with conga, entered the background. After a four-bar interlude a drum sample brought the rhythm, and Soandry began to rap:

  I have a race that is dark and discriminated

  I have a work day that demands and gives nothing

  I have so many things that I can’t even touch them

  I have facilities I can’t even step foot in

  I have liberty between parentheses of iron

  I have so many benefits without rights that I’m imprisoned

  I have so many things without having what I had

  The tone was understated, quiet yet damning. It was this generation’s answer to the Afro-Cuban poet Nicolas Guillen, who in his 1964 poem “Tengo” (I have) had praised the achievements of the revolution for Afro-Cubans: “I have, let’s see, that I have learned to read, to count. I have that I have learned to write and to think.” There was a striking contrast between the imaginative ideal of the revolution—the one that I had also come to Cuba seeking—and the new realities of hardship and shortage. Young black Cubans were part of a generation who were promised a utopia, and reality fell far short.

  From problems of transportation to jineterismo, racial inequality, police harassment, and the lure of foreign labels, the global art form of rap was speaking directly to very local issues.

  Hermanos de Causa

  But could this localness and directness also make rappers too visible and vulnerable to censorship? After all, Cuban artists had perfected techniques of metaphor, allusion, and ambiguity. Filmmakers like the legendary “Titon,” as the late Tomás Gutierréz Alea was known, or the black director Sergio Giral, had always chosen historical themes like slavery as a way to comment on race. Similarly, sometimes the trick for rappers was making a local theme seem not very local at all.