Hidden Havana

By David E. Thigpen/Havana

At an open-mike session in the yard of a run-down stone house in Havana's Vedado neighborhood, several hundred fans waited in the blazing sun for an hour as a crew struggled to get the sound equipment working. The walls of the house were scrawled with vivid slogans--VIVA CUBA, FREE MUMIA and NO MORE PRISONS, next to a painting of the Cuban flag. It was easy to spot the trappings of American hip-hop in the animated crowd--baggy pants, and T shirts splashed with the names of American artists (Mos Def, the Notorious B.I.G.) or record labels (Bad Boy, Rawkus). Nearby, fatigue-clad soldiers--an ever watchful presence on Havana's streets--eyed the proceedings.

When the sound system finally lit up, the crowd erupted in glee as the rap duo Grandes Ligas (Big Leagues) sprinted onstage hurling raps as sharp and rousing as any of those by American rap star Method Man. "!Manos arribas!" (Throw your hands in the air!) shouted Grandes Ligas. The audience let out a roar and answered in English, "And wave them like you just don't care!" Unlike American hip-hop audiences, who usually keep their feet planted on the floor, Cuban hip-hop fans frequently break into wild dancing. "Salsa is everywhere in Cuba, but it is a vision of life that is not ours," says Jorge, 21. "Hip-hop expresses the details of our lives so well. Everything about it is real."

Cuban hip-hop is brimming with a we-can-change-the-world idealism, the sort of idealism American rappers cashed in long ago when rap became about Big Business and acquiring homes in the Hamptons. At outdoor block parties in Havana, in the basement of darkened theaters or in nightclubs that throw open their doors and go bust a few weeks later, raperos touch on themes ranging from racism to ecology. The city's hip-hop scene is alive with the kind of resourcefulness needed in a place where nightly electrical interruptions and the unrelenting tropical swelter can turn music making into a sweaty test of will.

One of the first popular Cuban rap groups was Orishas. In a nation that has long moved to the pulse of son and salsa, the upstart group delivered the kind of musical shock that young Cubans may one day remember with the same fondness that American baby boomers feel when they recall first hearing Chuck Berry's Johnny B. Goode. Two years ago, Orishas introduced a new song, 537 Cuba, that transformed the stately Cuban classic Chan Chan (a universally recognized tune among Cubans, like Guantanamera) into a rollicking American-style hip-hop anthem. The song struck a chord; young fans began eagerly trading bootleg tapes of the group and flocking to their concerts. Orishas' fame rose so rapidly that last year the group was invited to the presidential palace to meet Fidel Castro. "So you are the ones who have been making so much noise," said El Presidente admiringly. This from a leader who had once banned American rock music.

Orishas' success has given hip-hop a sheen of legitimacy and energized the island's small but fervent rap community. In the past few years, some 200 rap groups have sprung up in and around Havana, bearing names like Obsesion (Obsession), Reyes de la Calle (Kings of the Street) and Anonimo Consejo (Anonymous Advice). Many of them hail from tough neighborhoods of Havana or Alamar, a town of 300,000 mostly Afro-Cubans living in concrete high-rises originally built to house Soviet laborers in the 1970s. Working with budgets so small they probably wouldn't be enough to cover the cost of gassing up one of Jay-Z's SUVs, Havana's raperos have scratched their own thriving world out of nothing, much as America's first rappers did in the Bronx in the early 1980s.

Rapper Alexei Rodriguez, 28, who with his wife Mahia Lopez, 28, forms the highly popular duo Obsesion, says that "hip-hop is growing quickly. It's a way young people have of expressing what's inside." Many of the new rappers grew up in the so-called special period. After the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, Cuba was economically squeezed, leading the government to crack down on small-time black marketeers, a move some felt hit Cubans of color harder than whites. One of Grandes Ligas' raps asks, "Why do you stop me, Mr. Policeman? Is it because my skin is black?"

Hip-hop circled the globe during the mid-1990s. Why did it take so long to get a foothold in Cuba, the richly musical culture that gave the world rumba and mambo? "Hip-hop everywhere else has one reality. We have another," explains Ariel Fernandez, 24, a DJ, organizer of Alamar's annual summer rap festival and a central figure in Havana hip-hop. Fernandez couldn't be more right: Cuba's record industry is entirely government run, from the recording studios to the record stores. Which means that raperos, like bus drivers, hotel clerks and doctors and lawyers, work for the state. And state bureaucracies never move quickly; Cuban officials were slow to recognize the commercial potential of homegrown hip-hop. Indeed, the members of Orishas became so frustrated that they relocated to Europe when a French producer offered them a contract. Their album A Lo Cubano sold more than 400,000 copies in Europe and spawned countless bootlegs in Cuba. Orisha member Ruzzo says, "Cuba is still my home, but when you are offered a record contract, you take it."

Part of the cultural resistance to hip-hop has to do with the music's do-it-yourself style. Musicianship in Cuba is traditionally measured purely by formal skill. Even the players working the lounges of Havana hotels are stunningly accomplished. Older Cubans, accustomed to salsa, have difficulty accepting rap as music.

Access to recording studios is also well out of reach for the average Cuban, who takes home about $20 a month. Even the prices for a boom box and a turntable--the two launching pads of the U.S. hip-hop explosion--are prohibitively high. So only a few raperos have had the privilege of actually making a CD. Cuban rap thus evolved first as a live art form. "Hip-hop is not a good business here yet," admits Fernandez. "Very few people can afford to buy the CDs, and most of the clubs can only charge a $1 cover, which doesn't yield enough to pay a rapper and stay in business long." The rappers of Grandes Ligas make ends meet by living at home with their parents.

The few rappers who are lucky enough to get a shot at recording usually turn to Pablo Herrera. Herrera, 33, who studied English and Russian at the University of Havana and wrote his dissertation on American hip-hop, is one of the island's foremost promoters and producers. Herrera was able to persuade the Ministry of Culture to provide a turntable, drum machine, sampler and keyboard for the studio in his aging Spanish-style home in Havana. Thus equipped, he has promoted, produced or managed a dozen or so hip-hop acts, including Cuba's founding fathers of rap, Amenaza, which later reformed as Orishas. Herrera also produced the U.S.-released CD Cuban Hip-Hop All Stars Vol. 1 (Papaya Records), one of the first compilations to capture the new wave of raperos. "Cuba is one of the last places in the world where hip-hop arrived, and that actually gives us an advantage," Herrera argues. "We have a chance to fulfill what it started out to be in the U.S.--a way to strengthen the voice of black youth."

Cuba's leadership has warmed to hip-hop in recent months. While the music still gets more lip service than actual support, Minister of Culture Abel Prieto recently funneled $32,000 worth of audio equipment to rappers through the Young Communists Union's cultural arm, Hermanos Saiz. "In the past, we made some mistakes and had prejudices, like against rock 'n' roll," Prieto says. "Not anymore."

That remains to be seen. Even though there's no money to be made in hip-hop, it attracts top talent. In Havana's lush Miramar neighborhood, Equis Alfonso, a.k.a. X Alfonso, 28, is talking about his upcoming hip-hop/son fusion album titled X-More. He also has some sharp words about the Buena Vista Social Club, the geezer vocal group that popularized prerevolution balladry everywhere but Cuba. "People think because of Ry Cooder and Buena Vista that Cuban music became better known," says Alfonso, who is also a member of the hot fusion group Sintesis. "That may be true, but it set us back 40 years. Now we are fighting against the mythological vision of the old Cuba, the Cuba of the Tropicana Club and old cars. All the musicians today have to fight to find a market."

Once again this summer, Alamar will be the site of Cuba's rap festival, which organizers predict will draw 3,000 to 4,000 listeners and a dozen musicians. Alfonso plans to attend. Even if the electricity cuts off, as it did last year, Cuba's raperos will still find a way to have their say.

--With reporting by Dolly Mascarenas/Havana

With reporting by Dolly Mascarenas/Havana