Book review

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.9.2.0266
• Published date: 01 December 2017
• Date: 01 December 2017
• Pages: 266iv + 284-267
• Author: Daliany Jerónimo Kersh

266 BOOK REVIEWS

InternatIonal Journal of Cuban StudIeS 9.2 WInter 2017

Marc D. Perry, Negro Soy Yo: Hip Hop and Raced Citizenship in Neoliberal

Cuba (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016) pb. iv + 284 pp. ISBN: 978

0 822358855

Reviewed by Daliany Jerónimo Kersh

Negro Soy is based on the hypothesis that Afro-Cubans were marginalised dur-

ing the post-Soviet economic crisis, commonly referred to as the ‘Special Period’.

By focusing on how young Afro-Cubans used hip-hop music and culture to cre-

ate an identity and space for themselves during this transitional period, this

study offers an original and encouraging interpretation of the issue of race dur-

ing the Special Period.

Although hip-hop arrived in Cuba in the mid-80s through the government’s

unlikely transition of North American songs, the re-emergence of racial inequali-

ties and racial discrimination during the Special Period served as a catalyst for the

hip-hop movement. Whereas older generations of Afro-Cuban intellectuals had

been silenced by the revolution’s promise of a raceless and classless society and

the subsequent opportunities afforded to them, market reforms and the overtly

white remittance economy from the early 1990s onwards meant that these ‘con-

ditions’ no longer applied. By observing the daily lives of the main protagonists

of the hip-hop movement, interviewing rap artists, producers and DJs and attend-

ing performances and festivals, Perry skilfully demonstrates how many young

disenfranchised Cubans, who identified as black, turned to hip-hop music and

culture as a much needed vehicle through which to voice their daily struggles and

frustrations and to construct a new politicised and racialised identity.

One of the strengths of this book is how it considers the Cuban hip-hop

movement within the context of the global hip-hop phenomenon that has

empowered African diaspora youth by offering them a strong identity of black

selfhood. Perry argues that with Cuba moving closer to the global market (I’m

not convinced by the term ‘neoliberal’ in a Cuban context) it is no coincidence

that the Cuban hip-hop movement has inserted itself into a space of black inter-

nationalism and shared struggle through creative and intellectual exchanges

with North American rappers, producers, activists and exiles. The book also

examines the complex relationship and negotiations between the hip-hop move-

ment and the Cuban state. Whereas the government initially tried to stifle these

voices of dissent, it later attempted to institutionalise the movement into national

culture by opening a Cuban Rap Agency in 2002. Perry convincingly argues it

was the popularisation of hip-hop music and its counter-narrative to a racial

utopia that created this black public sphere, rather than state paternalism.