“Aldeanos” rap as political praxis from the void

Abstract

Several researchers carried out the analysis of our subject matter, including Yesenia Selier Crespo, Charlie D. Hankin, Lara Lopez de Jesus as well as others. The disciplines and perspectives from which rap has been approached are also varied. However, after contrasting these interpretations within the
historical-concrete conditions in which it has emerged and developed, we suggest a different interpretation of rap. This interpretation does not arise from the society of the spectacle nor as a criticism or social protest against the capitalist
regime but as political praxis from the void. Louis Althusser, in Machiavelli and Us, says that any political movement that aspires to transform the prevailing production system needs to be placed on the “outside” and, at the same time, generate the objective conditions (means) for that enterprise (end). And since Cuban rap arises from the contradiction between communality, marginality and
blackness, it is, therefore, a movement with specific interests, “external” to the system and, in itself, political. Thus, Los Aldeanos, one of the main rap groups in Cuba, are the most valuable example of this: they maintain a critical stance towards capitalism and US imperialism, while remaining in an “external” position of the Cuban regime; but, at the same time, they generate the objective conditions for the attainment of their ends, with a specific characteristic: the underground, that is, the fight for the non-institutionalization of this cultural
expression by the State