Paper short abstract:

This presentation of an annotated playlist of Afro-Cuban rap, reggaeton, and reparto songs explores the relationship between recent urban music and Afro-Cuban socio-political protest in Havana.

Paper long abstract:

The rise of Havana rap duo Los Aldeanos around 2004 was pivotal in the transition from the aesthetically black and racially charged Vieja Escuela rap to the Rap Cubano Nueva Escuela era. The fall of the Cuban Underground Movement after the government's creation of the Cuban Rap Agency was also the fall of early Cuban rap's heavy discourse on race. Many of the newer songs protested the Cuban government in the manner 'the people' thought of the Cuban government. Rappers, poets and fine artists members of the San Isidro Movement, more recently, have trailed on the legacy of Hiphop concerts and sounded public interventions. How have racially and politically loaded rap songs transformed the tone through which the arts establish public platforms for citizens' exchanges with the Cuban state? Through an acoustemology of a selection of songs by Explosion Suprema, Papa Humbertico, Los Aldeanos, Omni Zona Franca and Maykel Osorbo, this presentation analyzes the relationship between local rap and the evolution of recent socio-political protest in Havana.