Mass Appeal

Right now in Cuba it's 1981 in terms of hip-hop. They're just getting started. They don't even have turntables in Cuba, but they have hip-hop.

The Roots' Amhir "?uestlove" Thompson, The Believer, August 2003

HAVANA'S CLUB ATELIER is usually a reggae and salsa spot, but this August night is different. It's 11 p.m. the air conditioner is broken, and at least 150 young Cubans are packed into the smoky, windowless basement. It's hot in here, but there's no Nelly in earshot. Politically charged Brooklynites Dead Prez weave hypnotically out of ragged speakers, and the crowddecked out in FUBU, Ecko-, and Kangoldrinks Cristal. Not the champagne favored by blinged-out rappersthe national beer, which resembles watered-down Heineken. Living on $15 a month and maybe hustling for supplementary cash, you drink what you can afford. Papo Record, a rapper-producer highly regarded in the Cuban underground, is in the club tonight, scouting talent, while a group of raperos lingers near the John Lennon statue outside, relaxing with a pre-show blunt. The night's first group, Sindikto, bursts onto the stage, lead rapper Nativo's youthful rhymes cutting playfully through Papa Flow's low growl; the whole room stands up, fists in the air, with such emotion and vigor that Fidel himself might as well be spitting rhymes (He rapped onstage with premier Cuban group Doble Filo at the 1999 national baseball championship). By the time third Sindikto member Maligno takes the stage, the group is barely visible over the bouncing, fist-pumping mob.

Welcome to hip-hop a lo cubano.

Hip-hop first impacted Cuba when rooftop-rigged antennae picked up the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" and other early U.S. hits from Miami radio stations in the early 1980s. But the production of hip-hop there is a relatively recent development: Between 1989 and 1991, young Cuban producers began emulating N.W.A.'s Straight Outta Compton and Public Enemy's Fear of a Black Planet. "By 1995, there was enough hip-hop to throw a festival," says top Cuban hip-hop producer Pablo Herrera.

That year, poet Rodolfo Rensoli organized the first Cuban Rap Festival on the streets of Alamar, an East Havana housing project and the recognized birthplace of Cuban rap. The early festivals were crude, with rappers performing over simplistic, canned beats on rudimentary sound systems without turntables and selling rough, homemade cassettes of their material. But for a youth subculture in a Cuba still suffering the Special Periodthe economically grueling time after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, a major former Cuban ally and trade partner, and before increased tourism and access to other foreign markets began to ease economic pressure in the late '90sa festival providing an outlet for expression was invigorating and culturally important. No one has to eat cat anymore in Cuba, but despite its relative economic upswing, there are new waves of social and economic problems spurred by increased tourism. The rise of hip-hop in the country over the past decade reflects this. Herrera estimates that there are currently around 800 rap groups in Cuba, and the hip-hop festisval has been held every August for nine consecutive yearsfirst solely amongst Alamar's seaside grid of dilapidated high-rise apartment buildings, then spreading to venues in other parts of Havana. These days, the festival gets a boost from a sponsor, the infant Cuban Rap Agency, an unprecedented government bureau formed less than a year ago, marking hip-hop's acceptance as a part of Cuban national culture.

The festival has come a long way since its boom-box-on-the-street-corner days. Most modern audio equipment is still rare, but it's getting easier to access, with decent sound systems, recording software, and CD burners all helping make the festival something more overtly professional. This year's program, held Aug. 11-17, featured panels ("Feminist Social Activism as an Alternative Movement in U.S. Hip-Hop," "Cuban Rap: Redefining Afrocubana"), daily movie screenings (8 Mile, 1984's Beat Street, the 1964 Cuban documentary We Are the Music), and concerts by 70 groups from Cuba and elsewhere with nine all-female Cuban groups closing the festival. (An American hip-hop presence was prevented by the New York City blackout.)

Despite government attention, hip-hop remains just outside the Cuban mainstream; outside festival week, it's a smaller, quieter scene. In the dominating presence of Cuba's more traditional musical styles, you have to seek it out. Salsa is still the pulse of generations, but if the embargo can keep soap and toothpaste out of Cuba, it can't stop Beyonc鮠The island's mainstream pop is often exactly the same as that of the U.S.: This past July, I heard Nelly and Kelly's "Dilemma" more frequently than at home. "Here, we listen to music with our bodies," said a Cuban friend. "If we can dance to it, it's good."

That's one reason hip-hop has prospered in Cuba. For a decade, young Cubans tried dancing to the music, emulating the break-dancing they glimpsed on television before picking up microphones. By the early '90s, young black Cubans began to find hip-hopan often inherently political style with a built-in connection to a community of discontented youth around the worldmore relevant than the salsa their parents listened to.

"A generation of people born after the revolution are expressing themselves through art, expressing their African identity through culturedoing a lot of things that hip-hop initially started out doing here in the United States," says Monifa Bandele, coordinator of Black August Hip-Hop Collective, a Brooklyn-based advocacy group that sends U.S. hip-hop artists to Cuba to perform. But while young Cubans embraced hip-hop, older generations didn't: Early rap shows were frequently shut down. It wasn't until fall 2002 that the government finally created its rap agency in response to artist requests, facilitating mucho hookups for artists and their fansaccess to EGREM, the state-owned recording studio; state sponsorship for the hip-hop festival and the production of a national hip-hop magazine, Movimiento; and state-sanctioned shows in some of Havana's premier venues.