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travel doesn’t mean I live a better life in Cuba. I
suffer the same as everyone. That is my reality,”
he added. He has been subjected to persecution
and has had many encounters with the state police.
David said he likes to empower his community
through music, as no political system has the right
to give and take away freedom. This empowerment he sings enables people be aware of those
around them, whether they are a dictator, a loving
person, or someone filled with hate. “It’s not a
specific human being, as there will always be dictatorships and revolutions, poets and musicians,
and issues will always exist in the world,” he says.
David believes that the power to overcome one’s
situation is within each person.
Through his music he wants to teach people to
transcend their situations. His song “Warrior for
Peace” carries the call for people to focus on their
common goal to overcome: “Listen up, my people/don’t take sides/get the heck out of those divided groups/we are united like it or not . . . I’ve
been struggling for a long time to bring peace to
people. . . Where are my warriors for peace?/I
know I’m not alone/come on over/we are now going to win.”
Raudel “Escadron Patriota” Collazo
This similar message is also heard in the lyrics of
Cuban rapper Raudel “Escuadrón Patriota” Collazo. When he took stage I was mesmerized. His
performance was an experience I would describe
as fierce and powerful. It was like the sweetest of
air inhaled. He is what is missing in American
rappers: not only musicians but the conviction of
American Black males to take the risk and make
their community better.
He is what the poetry of the Black Arts Movement
was to Black America in the 1960s and early
1970s. I said to myself, “the warrior has been delivered.”
Collazo calls his music urban hip-hop, urban poetry. Underground and political. To him, political

is not government but instead social. When I explained that “political” in the USA is government,
or any entity of oppression, he smiled and continued, “Yes, definitely. I am the people who belong
to this group. With the music and with our rhetoric, there is a lot of criticism of the government;
we also sing about the social problems within the
community. We definitely sing against oppression. We sing against the Totalitarian system.”
Collazo shares that he came to the form of hiphop because of the social need, not because of a
personal passion. It happened during a certain
time of his life which he calls the awakening. He
felt a strong need to communicate concerns in his
life. “I am part of the Zero/Zero generation. I was
around 24 in [the year] 2000. It was during this
time when our generation started to develop a
critical posture towards the system. There were a
lot of things wrong at that time, and few [people
were] talking about it. We started to become more
involved in the community. We used the arts to
bring the message; poetry, music, visual arts to
talk about the reality.”
When he used the term Zero Generation, it was
familiar: years ago, I picked up an anthology of
Cuban fiction entitled “Generation Zero.” I recall
a short story by Ahmel Echevarría Peré, and I’m
thinking that perhaps Ahmel may be one of those
artists sanctioned by the government, because his
fictional story was a bit boring in a country with
so much happening. Also, I remember it being
said that in Cuba, the musicians and artists who
are sanctioned by government do not write or sing
anything against the government. I was disappointed in the anthology of fiction, as I am always
on the lookout for the ‘real’ stories of people. I
have a different book - a poetry anthology “Island
of my Hunger” - in which I hope to find some
truths.
How else can anyone from the outside get to
know a country and its people unless they can
hear or read the truth from the mouths of those
who live there? The beauty in the revolution are

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