Description
Book SynopsisAfro-Colombian Hip-Hop: Globalization, Transcultural Music, and Ethnic Identities, by Christopher Dennis, explores the impact that globalization and the transnational spread of U.S. popular culturespecifically hip-hop and rapare having on the social identities of younger generations of black Colombians. Along with addressing why and how hip-hop has migrated so effectively to Colombia's black communities, Dennis introduces readers to some of the country's most renowned Afro-Colombian hip-hop artists, their musical innovations, and production and distribution practices. Above all, Dennis demonstrates how, through a mode of transculturation, today's young artists are transforming U.S. hip-hop into a more autonomous art form used for articulating oppositional social and political critiques, reworking ethnic identities, and actively contributing to the reimagining of the Colombian nation. Afro-Colombian Hip-Hop uncovers ways in which young Afro-Colombian performers are attempting to use hip
Trade ReviewDrawing on extensive interviews, song lyrics, and a detailed history of black Colombians’ embrace of hip hop, this important book takes contemporary black musical expression in Colombia as its guiding thread, along which the author traces the mixed loyalties and competing authenticities through which young Afro-Colombians articulate themselves as black, as Colombian, as local, as global, as hip-hop “real.” Not only does the book provide insight into the Spanish-speaking world’s largest Afro-descendent population, the words of its Afro-Colombian protagonists and the author’s analytic insights shed light on issues of cultural authenticity and the political mobilization of expressive culture that are of central concern to black popular musicians the world over. -- Michael Birenbaum Quintero, Bowdoin College
In this wonderful and insightful book, Christopher Dennis describes the complex ways in which young Afro-Colombians have taken hip-hop musical culture to negotiate a transnational sense of belonging that rises above the marginalization they have traditionally experienced in their country. Afro-Colombian hip-hop shows how, within the contradictions of globalization, music allows neglected communities to actively participate in the re-imagination of the nation state. -- Alejandro L. Madrid, Cornell University
Afro-Colombian Hip-Hop: Globalization, Transcultural Music, and Ethnic Identities offers a fresh and innovative approach to discourses on national, cultural and ethnic identity within a Colombian, yet globalized, context. Through an analytical study of contemporary cultural materiality and the producers of such, this critical examination renders relevant, present-day articulations that add to the historiography on revolutionary, social justice efforts on the part of Colombia’s marginalized brought forth by a new generation of social activists utilizing the artillery of the spoken-word through rap and Hip-Hop music. A truly provocative read. -- Antonio D. Tillis, Dartmouth College
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Hip-Hop Afrocolombiano: Origins, Production, and Distribution Practices Chapter 3: Afro-Colombian Hip-Hop: Resistance and Political Protest Chapter 4: The Afro-Colombian Hip-Hop Narrative and Emerging Identity Constructs Chapter 5: The "Afro-Colombianization" of Hip-Hop Chapter 6: A(n) (Afro)Colombian Hip-Hop Nation Chapter 7: Conclusions: The Two Sides of Globalization Notes Selected Discography Bibliography
