{"id":34001,"date":"2023-06-01T01:37:00","date_gmt":"2023-06-01T01:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=34001"},"modified":"2023-07-02T07:52:00","modified_gmt":"2023-07-02T07:52:00","slug":"street-scrolls-the-beats-rhymes-and-spirituality-of-latin-hip-hop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/street-scrolls-the-beats-rhymes-and-spirituality-of-latin-hip-hop\/","title":{"rendered":"Street scrolls: The beats, rhymes and spirituality of Latin\u00a0hip-hop"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Alejandro Nava<\/a>, University of Arizona<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a first-generation college graduate and a Latino from a family that constantly scrambled to make ends meet, there was very little in my upbringing that foreshadowed my current life as a religion professor and scholar<\/a>. I didn\u2019t grow up surrounded by books, and I spent many more hours in childhood dissecting hip-hop and shooting hoops than doing schoolwork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t until late in college, when a couple of teachers lit a fire in my bones, that I became hungry for the stuff of books and ideas. Learning about the world\u2019s religions instilled in me a newfound passion for all the existential questions and conundrums of the human condition, connecting me with a truth beyond myself, a sublime pattern that brought the world into greater focus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if the study of religion swept me up into the stars, hip-hop brought me back down to earth. It was my first love, and its beats and rhymes schooled me in things closer to home. Hip-hop had its finger on the pulse of Black and brown lives on the frayed edges of the Americas, lives like my father\u2019s and his father\u2019s before him: cleaning trains, floors and toilets, doing whatever they could to support their families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Teens<\/a>
Rock Steady Crew members break-dance in the yard of Booker T. Washington Junior High School in New York on May 8, 1983. Linda Vartoogian\/Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There is an unstudied wisdom in the defiant, dirty beats of hip-hop, and even religious dimensions \u2013 a focus of my research today<\/a>, which explores the prophetic and even mystical elements in the genre. Its lyrics can be sweet like honey, as the biblical prophet Ezekiel describes the scroll of the Lord<\/a>. Yet they can also be bitter, like the herbs of Passover \u2013 a remembrance of pains and indignities. Hip-hop turns 50 this summer, and throughout its history, Latinos\u2019 experiences have been important threads in this music\u2019s cries for justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Latins goin\u2019 platinum\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Back in the day, my brother was a b-boy \u2013 a break dancer \u2013 and his group, the Royal Rockers, convinced me that in this fresh new culture, Black and brown youth had a story to tell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Making their feet flutter like centipedes, their tails rise up like scorpions in a battle, these Tucson kids thrust themselves into public view, refusing to remain invisible. Their body language flipped the prevailing narrative about our battered neighborhoods, turning them into places of pride rather than shame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Latinos beyond the U.S. borderlands were also very much part of hip-hop\u2019s history<\/a>. While there is no doubt that its inventors were Black Americans, Latinos added new colors<\/a> to the prevailing palette of hip-hop. Whether in the South Bronx or East L.A., brown-bodied youth embraced hip-hop as an ingenious instrument of self-expression<\/a>: a perfect medium to assert, define<\/a> and even reinvent ourselves. https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/playlist\/6QQMRgqK5kFp5yaDUVFC4p?utm_source=generator&theme=0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it came to emceeing, rap in Latino circles started experimenting with Spanish words and slang by the 1980s. Artists peppered their verses with shouts of Latin pride, and my friends and I heard it loud and clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/a>
Kid Frost, born Arturo Molina Jr., in New York City in 1991. Al Pereira\/Getty Images\/Michael Ochs Archives<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Kid Frost, to take a West Coast example, put in rhymes what we felt but didn\u2019t have the courage to say. While he had the thuggish pretense of the gangster rap era, his body teetering to the side like the Tower of Pisa and his mouth riddled with threats, Kid Frost\u2019s bars were also filled with cultural knowledge<\/a>. Echoing the unruffled cadences of Latino subcultures around him \u2013 from kids cruising in lowrider cars to the street speech of cal\u00f3<\/a>, a coded argot from zoot-suit culture in the 1930s and 1940s \u2013 Kid Frost used barrio language to rewrite the story of hip-hop<\/a> with Indigenous and Chicano lives as significant characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile on the East Coast, the Panamanian reggaeton pioneer El General<\/a> brought even greater visibility to Latin-accented hip-hop, as did Fat Joe and Big Pun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCause everybody\u2019s checkin\u2019 for Pun, second to none \/ \u2018Cause Latins goin\u2019 platinum was destined to come,\u201d he announced to the world, like a boxing ring announcer before a prime event, in \u201cYou Came Up<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both Fat Joe and Big Pun were big in stature and big in lung capacity, but Big Pun was the better rhyme-spitter; his flows spilled off his tongue in torrents of alliteration and assonance, rarely pausing to take a breath or gulp, as if he didn\u2019t require as much oxygen as other humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his hood, the South Bronx\u2019s Soundview Projects<\/a>, social and psychological stresses seemed to weigh heavily on residents. In one memorable rap, \u201cTwinz<\/a>,\u201d he painted a picture of himself holding his \u201crosary as tight as I can,\u201d fingering it to keep evil away on streets that swallowed the weak. Big Pun and his rap progenitors \u2013 from Big Daddy Kane and Fat Joe to Wu-Tang and Mobb Deep \u2013 projected violent images of oversized badness: of being the predator, not the prey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/a>
Big Pun and Fat Joe performing on May 13, 1998. Hiroyuki Ito\/Hulton Archive via Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

La nueva relig\u00edon<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Fast forward a couple of decades, and today\u2019s Latino rappers and reggaetoneros are breaking new ground, frequently adding more sensitive, introspective and socially conscious touches to hip-hop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the most-streamed artists in the world today<\/a>, the Puerto Rican hitmaker Bad Bunny, is representative of this new style. Raised in a Catholic home, his voice nurtured in a church choir<\/a>, Bad Bunny\u2019s breadth \u2013 reggaeton, cumbia, boogaloo, trap, bomba, salsa \u2013 owes a lot to the musical diversity of the island<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like so many artists of Latin American and African American heritages, he slips on religious sentiments, then drops them for bawdy ones in a beat, changing his mood like a stage performer between acts. Unlike R.E.M., Bad Bunny hasn\u2019t exactly \u201clost\u201d his religion<\/a> as much as he\u2019s reformed it, adding in dance rhythms, folk motifs, feminist sensibilities, LGBTQ rights and barrio experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEl diablo me llama pero Jesucristo me abraza \u2013 am\u00e9n,\u201d he sings in his verse for the viral hit \u201cI Like It<\/a>,\u201d a trap version of Pete Rodriguez\u2019s 1967 \u201cI Like It Like That<\/a>\u201d: The devil calls me but Jesus Christ holds me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He named his first major tour \u201cLa Nueva Relig\u00edon,\u201d a fitting name for the eccentric combinations of spirituality<\/a>, sexuality, dance and pan-Latin motifs in his music. Since the tour in 2018, the term has endured, referring not only to Bad Bunny\u2019s fans \u2013 devotees of this \u201cnew religion\u201d \u2013 but also a generation that is questioning traditional gender roles, chasing new spiritual experiences and raising their fists in support of human rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/a>
Rapper Bad Bunny (holding flag), singer Ricky Martin (black hat) and rapper Residente (blue hat) join protests against the governor of Puerto Rico in 2019. Joe Raedle\/Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ever since Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria in 2017 \u2013 when over 300,000 homes in Puerto Rico were damaged or destroyed<\/a> \u2013 Bad Bunny has produced anthems and rally cries as much as songs. Take \u201cEl Apag\u00f3n,\u201d \u201cThe Blackout,\u201d a rebellious condemnation of the government\u2019s inaction<\/a> on power outages that have swept the island since Maria, and locals\u2019 sense that their own needs go unmet while wealthy outsiders flood in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s not alone: Many of today\u2019s rappers are sampling some of the more righteous trends in the history of hip-hop. The Cuban rap song \u201cPatria y Vida<\/a>,\u201d for instance \u2013 a collaboration between Gente de Zona, the Orishas, Descemer Bueno and other artists \u2013 appeared in Cuba like a storm in 2021. Capturing feelings of widespread discontent with the Cuban government, the rap reclaims and revolutionizes<\/a> the classic slogan from the Cuban revolution of the 1950s, \u201cPatria o Muerte\u201d (\u201cHomeland or Death\u201d). In the hands of these Cuban rappers, the phrase becomes \u201cpatria y vida\u201d: \u201cWe no longer shout homeland or death, but homeland and life instead.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further south in the Americas, consider MC Millaray, a 16-year-old Indigenous rapper<\/a> from Mapuche lands in Chile, whose fierce raps swing between Spanish and Indigenous languages. She wields her words like incantations to summon Mapuche ancestors and defend the dignity of Indigenous lives<\/a> throughout the Americas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/a>
Chilean Mapuche rap singer MC Millaray records at a studio in Santiago on March 25, 2023. Martin Bernetti\/AFP via Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Romp and grace<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Now 50 years in the making<\/a>, hip-hop continues to be a powerful amulet against powers that try to silence the young and underprivileged. It\u2019s eloquent proof of an enduring truth: that hardship can fuel ingenuity and cunning, and that poetry can be fashioned out of society\u2019s scraps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For my brother and his breaking crew, hip-hop was a lesson in grace: how the body can find the still point in the midst of spins, leaps and flying arms and legs. For me, always drawn by the rapping, it was also a lesson in grace: the emcee\u2019s adroit arrangement of syllables and syntax, the way they sculpted their bars, making language bounce, dance and romp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For both of us, it was like a first love, making us feel rapturously free yet connected \u2013 liberating and revelatory at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alejandro Nava<\/a>, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Arizona<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alejandro Nava, University of Arizona As a first-generation college graduate and a Latino from a family that constantly scrambled to make ends meet, there was very little in my upbringing that foreshadowed my current life as a religion professor and scholar. I didn\u2019t grow up surrounded by books, and I spent many more hours in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":34002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293,8025],"tags":[1427,7809,10806,14145,14146,14144,53,10380,1686,6610,10163],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34001"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34001"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34292,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34001\/revisions\/34292"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}