Cuba Represent! Cuban Arts, State of Power, and the Making of New Revolutionary Cultures by Sujatha Fernandes (review)

TheLatin Americanist, Fall 2007 CUBA REPRESENT! CUBAN ARTS, STATEOF POWER, AND THE MAKING OF NEW REVOLUTIONARY CULTURES. By Sujatha Fernandes. Duke UP, 2006, p. 218, $21.95. For the past two decades, visual arts such as Hip Hop, film, photography, and sculptures has risen tobecome oneof the main artisticformsof expression and culture in Cuba. During and after the ”SpecialPeriod,” which refers to the economic collapse in Cuba that began after the fall of the then Soviet Union along with the imposed United States embargo on Cuba, many of the artists using these media began to address issues that were prevalent in Cuban society (e.g.Alejandro de la Fuente, A Nationfor A Z Z :Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba. U North Carolina P, 2001). Despite the imposition of the decades-long United States embargo, Cuban society continues to be influenced by Americans in developing its own movement and culture which has produced annual Hip Hop festivals, symposia, stateaffiliated artists, and albums. Whereas Cubans have chastised artistic forms such as Hip Hop culture in the United States, many Americans still remain completely unaware of Cuba’s growing Hip Hop community. This is after the fact that many academics, documentary filmmakers, and journalists have reported the importance and symbolism this movement along with other forms of performance and visual arts have placed in Cuba in the past two decades (e.g.: Joshua Bee Alafia, Cuban Hip Hop A Z l Stars, DVD-Video, 2004; Pedro Perez Sarduy and Jean Stubbs, Afro-Cuban Voices: On Race and Identity in Contemporary Cuba, UP Florida, 2000). However, despite these works, many have not explored the importance these artistic forms have placed on the relationships between the state and society in the post-Soviet period. Helping to educate the reader about this relationship is professor and musician Sujatha Fernandes. Fernandes, in Cuba Represent! Cuban Arts, State Power and the Making of New Revolutionary Cultures,analyzes how the Cuban state power has shaped these artistic public spheres on the island. The book does not focus on the Cuban state or its political leader Fidel Castro, but instead seeks to find a voice of the Cubans during a time of social, economic, and political change. Fernandes, intrigued by Cuban arts and how they relate to what socialism means to Cubans, looks and examines more in depth what occurred during the “Special Period.” For her, this era in Cuban history was an important turning point in the arts because the poverty and reorganizing policies affected many sectors of Cuban society such as the Afro-Cubans. Prior to the “Special Period,” various musical styles such as the underground Hip Hop and Rap scene were contained, and generally were composed of breakdancing competitions, corner performances, and block parties. As pointed out in Cuba Represent! the ”SpecialPeriod” fostered the growth of rapping in various Afro-Cuban working-class neighborhoods. According to Fernandes, this growing underground Hip Hop community began as a fundamental communication link that shaped and provided many disadvantaged Afro-Cuban youths a platform to discuss and share their experiences and Book Reviews stories. For example, Anonimo Consejo in his song ”A veces“ draws on how corruption impacted Cuban society. He raps “they shout We Resist! and they drive around in fancy, cars day and night, robbing the public like the scorpion her young” (101). Consejo concludes that the sources of these problems are within the government (101). What is important and what Fernandes exercises here is that rappers such as Consejo deployed their messages through the microphone by expressing how the history of exploitation and racial inequality continues to exist in Cuba during and after the “Special Period.” Moreover, Fernandes continues by assessing how Hip Hop is used as a platform of expression in terms of feminism and calls for gender equality. Artists such as Instinto and Magic MC had always been a part of the Cuban Hip Hop movement. Cuba’s female Hip Hop artists, like their male counterparts, rap about issues that are affecting their community such as male machismo and femalesexuality.For instance, Fernandes points out how Cuban female Hip Hop artists utilized their voices by demanding inclusion within the ranks of the Hip...