Afro-Colombian Hip-Hop
Globalization, Transcultural Music, and Ethnic Identities
By (author) Christopher Dennis
Publication date:
16 December 2011Length of book:
190 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9780739150566
Afro-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 culture—specifically hip-hop and rap—are 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-hop and digital media to bring the perspectives, histories, and expressive forms of their marginalized communities into national and international public consciousness.
Afro-Colombian Hip-Hop uncovers ways in which young Afro-Colombian performers are attempting to use hip-hop and digital media to bring the perspectives, histories, and expressive forms of their marginalized communities into national and international public consciousness.
Drawing 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.