IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 5 ENGLISH | Page 96

Cuban Hip Hop and Race
David Escalona Carrillo (David D’Omni)
Musical (Rap and Hip Hop) and Visual Artist
Havana, Cuba

David D’Omni

I

n Cuba, where most people are neither
too black nor two white, exists a senseless racism in the midst of a high degree of miscegenation that has been destroying any kind of pure ethnicity over
time. One wonders how this can be in a
place where white, red, yellow and black
come together to erase cultural limits and
create new expressions and syncretism that
are today internationally known as Cubans,
whether in the arts or in religion. Since it is
impossible to naturally nurture anything in
infertile ground, it would be impossible for
racism to increase in a country without
races. For this to take place, one needs artifice, methodology and science. The fact
that racism exists in Cuba and getting to the
bottom of its cause is absent for the government’s political and cultural agenda. It
controls all the large-scale institutions and
spaces for conversation, e.g., cinemas, theaters, radio and television.

Alternative music, poetry, theater and, in
large measure Hip Hop, have served as
spokespersons for the issue of race in Cuba.
In the spaces for always small-scale conversation, conferences, and workshop have
been created in them, always in the shadow
of official institutions. They suffer from
censorship, anonymity, and defamation.
The large-scale events are institutional in
nature; the subjects covered in them discuss
the Revolution’s triumphs in the areas of
race and culture, but lack any self-criticism
and omit mention or inclusion of cultural
and civic manifestations outside these official institutions, but totally representative of
ordinary Cubans.
The history that is taught in school is white
history; important and essential, Afrodescendant figures are missing from it.

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