Hip hop culture is redefining public space. The use of hip hop as public performance has been the most recent occurrence in reclaiming a sense of free cultural expression and immediate communication and interactions with the public. Historically, U.S. hip hop, and the development of its four elements, DJ, breaking, MC, and graffiti, have encouraged street culture and public street performances as a way to reclaim public space, and inform on-lookers to the social inequalities produced with a spatial-temporal awareness (Baker, p. 218). Non-U.S. hip hop has not deviated from this phenomenon, and in many cases has significant, politicized hip hop movements that have flourished. Many Cuban and Brazilian rappers and artists are creating more provocative, street displays of expression that elucidate the contradictions of daily existence in marginalized, neglected communities. For this reason, Cuban and Brazilian hip hop both have the uniqueness of these incorporations and contradictions in hip hop expression, based on the fact that both Cuban and Brazilian governments are promoting hip hop culture This dissertation examines the use of hip hop inspired street performance as both hidden and public transcript. James C. Scott in Domination and the Arts of Resistance defines these two terms as methods that are employed by power entities exercising control over discourse through cultural manifestation. The dissertation will be contextualized in this framework What is of concern for this dissertation is how Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian youth and other hip hop-influenced youth in these countries exert public spatial control under specific historic and contemporary circumstances where social contradictions are growing between whites and non-Whites, artists and governing bodies. I will utilize hip hop street culture and spoken word, performance art as a performative, corporal expression that has received financial support from the Cuban and Brazilian government, while at the same time has remained community-based in both countries. Nongovernmentally-supported hip hop street performance has allowed some artists the liberty to bypass cultural institutions and other avenues of official and national artistic recognition, for instance, seeking other benefactors to support their work. Despite this, artists, participators, and rappers are 'playing' various political alliances and employing both hidden and public transcripts to benefit from the increasing support of the art form, and in the case of Alamar, Cuba and Salvador, Brazil performers, are producing socially 'conscious' artistic manifestations in public places for specific audiences with specific intentions and objectives. In many cases these performers seek not only to produce personal art that usually has an activist intent that also benefits the government sponsored financial support of 'rebel' music culture, but to also allay hidden transcripts to the communities in the audience who pick up on its subtleties I will contextualize these ideas through an analysis of national identity and history, and how culture and identity have historically informed social justice and values in the racially and socially polarized societies of Havana/Alamar and Salvador. Hip hop will then be analyzed as a public resource (Yudice, p. 9). Hip hop culture allows participating communities to share in the global public discourse of social transcendence and power (Pardue, Ideologies, p. 24). Public performance also arms artists with a wider arsenal of material. It also gives a sense to audience members that they are participating in a resource of social integration and increasing political momentum (Baker, p. 240) This dissertation will describe how Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Cuban communities use hip hop to publicly and creatively express their local concerns through a politics of culture in the commercial arena of 'the street'. This cultural politics is then incorporated into other affiliations with the state or socio-political movements and used for specific purposes within these two countries. Many artists negotiate with these institutions, while maintaining a cultural autonomy and a critical quality to their work. (Abstract shortened by UMI.) / acase@tulane.edu
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TULANE/oai:http://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/:tulane_24298 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Contributors | Frazier, Denise (Author), Dunn, Christopher (Thesis advisor) |
| Publisher | Tulane University |
| Source Sets | Tulane University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Access requires a license to the Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest) database., Copyright is in accordance with U.S. Copyright law |
Page generated in 0.0014 seconds