Havana takes the rap for Daddy Castro

Havana takes the rap for Daddy Castro
MARC LACEY IN HAVANA

IN A country like Cuba, where the state has its hand in just about
everything, it is perhaps not surprising that there is a governmental
body that concerns itself with rap music.

Alarmed by the number of young people in baggy clothing and ill-aligned
baseball caps rapping around the island, the government created the
Cuban Rap Agency to bring rebellious rhymers into the fold.

The person chosen to lead the agency was Susana García Amaros, 46, who
studied Latin American literature at the University of Havana,
specialising in the writings of Afro-Cubans. She said that when
officials from the Ministry of Culture approached her for the job, she
told them that she was not a rap expert. But she said she appreciated
the music and its underlying messages.

"Rap is a form of battle," she said. "It's a way of protesting for a
section of the population. It has force. It's not just the beat - the
boom, boom, boom - it's the lyrics."

The rap agency became a co-sponsor of an annual hip-hop festival that
began in 1994, and it started promoting rappers and helping them to
produce occasional albums. But only artists whose rap does not veer too
much from the party line qualify for the government aid.

"We don't have songs on a record that speak badly of the revolution,"
García Amaros said. "That doesn't make sense."

Not surprisingly, most rappers, who are by definition a rebellious lot,
are averse to joining forces with the government. Only nine groups are
working with the agency. Of the remaining 500 or more across the island,
some voice discontent with Cuban society in language that is as blunt as
the accompanying beat is loud.

"We are not in agreement with any political system, the one here or the
one you have," said Aldo Rodríguez Baquero, 23, who teams up with his
friend Bian Rodríguez Gala in a popular group called Los Aldeanos, or
The Villagers. "We want liberty and freedom."

While rap appeals to just a subset of Cuba's youngsters, many of the
five million Cubans under the age of 30 similarly question the system.

The government's own surveys have found that the bulk of the unemployed
in Fidel Castro's Cuba are young and that many youths are uncertain
about their future. The blame, the government argues, lies with the
United States trade embargo.

Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque raised the disenchantment of many of
Cuba's young people in a speech last year. "We have a challenge," said
Pérez Roque, who is in his early 40s and is considered one of the next
generation of Cuban leaders. "These young people have more information
and more consumer expectations than those at the start of the revolution."

He added that young people were more likely to hear their elders telling
stories about social progress under the current government and respond,
"Oh, please, don't come to me with that same old speech."

The situation among Afro-Cubans, about 60% of the population, is
especially acute. They are considerably poorer than whites, who are more
likely to have relatives sending remittances from the US and who hold
the bulk of the jobs in the profitable tourism industry.

Afro-Cubans complain that they have inferior housing and are more likely
than whites to be hassled on the streets by the police.

The rappers speak of these and other problems, often bluntly. "What we
sing, people can't say," said Rodríguez Baquero, wearing a blue bandanna
to pull back his braided hair as he raps on the pavement outside an
overflowing club. "They think we are crazy. We say what they only whisper."

He acknowledged that his mother and his rap partner's mother worried
about their outspoken ways. "They don't want to lose us," he said. But
they keep rapping, even though some of Havana's club owners have banned
them for their lyrics.

Rodríguez Baquero dismissed the rap agency with a wave of his hand. "We
don't want to be in any agency," he said. "It's the same as slavery for us."

But not all that many people hear what he and other independent rappers
have to say. They produce albums in their homes in bare-bones studios
and distribute them by hand.

"It's very difficult to do rap in Cuba," he said.

One of those working behind the scenes to aid Cuba's rappers is Cheri
Dalton, an American who goes by the name Nehanda Abiodun. She is a black
militant who is wanted by the FBI in connection with a string of
robberies, including a 1981 holdup of an armoured car in New York state.
Now living in exile in Cuba, she has formed a Havana chapter of Black
August, a grass-roots group that promotes hip-hop culture.

"There's always been a love for music from the States in Cuba," said
Abiodun. "You can go back to Nat King Cole, Earth Wind & Fire and Aretha
Franklin."

Rap, first heard in the 1980s by those in eastern Cuba who picked up
Florida radio stations, is no exception. "They spit out rhymes on
everything from race to gender to police harassment," she said of Cuba's
hip-hop generation. "They point out contradictions in society that were
taboo to talk about."

But despite the disenchantment of many young people with Cuba's system,
rap appears to be losing some ground. The hip-hop festival, held every
August, was a flop last year and was cancelled this year. Nobody seems
sure why. Some rappers say the culprit was not so much the government as
another musical genre. Reggaetón, a blend of reggae, rap and Latin music
that was born in Puerto Rico, is now the rage.

The governmental rap agency has begun promoting reggaetón artists, whose
messages are often intended more to get people on the dance floor than
to protest. It is harder than ever for rappers to find a stage.

"Reggaetón is about sex and girls and that's it," grumbled Mario
Gutiérrez, 19, who criticises his fellow rappers who have speeded up
their beat and moved to reggaetón. "We are singing for change. We want
freedom. We want a better Cuba than this one."

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