Unit 14

Unit 14: Hip Hop Goes Global 

São Paulo Hip Hop Lecture 1: Reading Assignment: Putting Mano to Music The Mediation article; Ideologies of Marginality in Brazilian Hip Hop by Derek Pardue. Pg. 1-33 under the Course materials tab.

Prompt: Hip hop has been exported to countries throughout the world. Write a 500 word response that discusses why this music has become in countries outside of the USA? Are there certain cultural or artistic threads that unite these different regional styles of hip hop? Describe in detail any similarities or differences you observed between American hip hop and Brazilian hip hop.

British Forum for Ethnomusicology

Putting Mano to Music: The Mediation of Race in Brazilian Rap
Author(s): Derek Pardue
Source: Ethnomusicology Forum, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Nov., 2004), pp. 253-286
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology
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Ethnomusicology Forum

Vol 13, No. 2, November 2004, pp. 253-286

Putting Mano to Music: The Mediation

of Race in Brazilian Rap
Derek Pardue

In this article I demonstrate how Brazilian hip-hop participants mediate marginality

through discourses and practices of n?gritude. By taking a historical approach, I analyse
the competitive processes with which S?o Paulo hip-hoppers articulate sound and story
to a dynamic sense of personhood and social collectivity. The article contributes to

general theories of music and identity as well as to the present literature on the

“reterritorialization” of hip-hop culture throughout the contemporary world.

Keywords: Brazil; Hip-hop; N?gritude; Historiography

if you pay attention to what is being said in rap music, then you’ll know that there is

something wrong going
on out there, because rap is reality.

(CC, a resident of FEBEM youth correctional facility and
a student of hip-hop street

dance, 1999)

“Reality” in the quote above indicates a complex set of conditions, including race,

class, gender and geography, that hip-hoppers mediate through the use of narration

and music. This process is one of performance and order as hip-hoppers profess a

desire to transform “reality” by opposing o sistema (“the system”).1 In this manner,

local hip-hoppers emphasize the dynamic aspects of musical mediation, i.e. music

not simply as a conduit for expression but also as a mode of representation through
which performers can potentially change their sense of self and suggest alternative

models of social stratification and value. In this article I focus on how hip-hop

participants understand Brazilian society as a particular kind of racialization, one that

Q Routledge I ̂ ^ Taylor & Francis Grot

Derek Pardue is currently
a

Visiting Assistant Professor at Union College in Schenectady, New York.

His dissertation, “Blackness and periphery: A retelling of marginality in the hip-hop culture of S?o

Paulo, Brazil”, is the first full-length ethnography written in English that depicts Brazilian hip-hop
culture and the social networks that mobilize it. Contact address: Department of Anthropology,

Union College, 207 Union Street, Schenectady, New York 12305, USA. Email: pardued@union.edu

ISSN 1741-1912 (print)/ISSN 1741-1920 (online) ? 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd

DOI: 10.1080/1741191042000286211

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254 D. Pardue

motivates hip-hoppers to link sound and story to a dynamic sense of personhood and

collectivity.

Hip-hop has been one of the most influential forms of cosmopolitan youth culture

for the last decade. I use “culture” to refer to a set of practices which generates

meaning and power for a dynamic group of people. “Culture” is what hip-hoppers do

to comment on daily life or “reality” and in so doing create their own “system”. In

general, hip-hop culture in Brazil is an ideology of representation and personhood

positioned in relation to a cluster of primarily national hegemonic discourses and

practices embodied in the following local terms: cordial society,2 racial democracy,3

progress4 and poverty.
There are four basic elements to hip-hop, which act as areas of expression: rap

music, DJ sound production, graffiti art and B-boy/girl or street dance.5 In Brazil,

hip-hoppers are particularly aware of these four elements and stress their integration

during performance rhetoric and informal conversation. The overwhelming majority
of participants in Brazil are Afro-Brazilian teenage boys and young men from the

shantytown suburbs,6 for whom style is emerging as a personal agenda. Through it,
these young people conjoin individual maturity, expressive arts and empowering
rhetorics of the self, community and social change. They commodify these practices
and relations through their hip-hop products and make hip-hop culture in Brazil

an

effective social force.

In this article I focus primarily on rap music and draw from fieldwork experience
and paradigmatic lyrical and sonic “texts” to take account of competing processes of

mediation in the articulation of diasporic sensibility and general identity formation. I

am wary of the fact that lyrical interpretation tends to decontextualize rap’s effective

and affective meanings (Forman 2002, 40; Kelley 1997, 16-17; Schloss 2000, 40-4).
Unless otherwise marked, phrases enclosed by quotation marks refer to either

repeated conversation pieces in fieldwork or repeated parts of recorded lyrics. Simon

Frith rightly warns that content analysts “treat lyrics too simply: the words of all

songs are given equal value; their meaning is taken to be transparent” (Frith 1988,

107). However, it is my intention to analyse hip-hop critically by turning on the

very banality they themselves employ. Informed by localized experience and post
fieldwork conversations with particularly reflective consultants, I aim to persuade the

reader in a methodological and epistemological fashion not unlike so many S?o Paulo

hip-hoppers. In S?o Paulo rappers propagate and create mantras that centre on

collectivity and oppositionality. In academia, social scientists create and propagate
mantras of representation and explanation. Hip-hoppers and I take turns in the

iteration of the recognized essentials of hip-hop culture.

Furthermore, I historicize n?gritude and hip-hop in the Brazilian context into four

“moments”. I connect hip-hop’s major narrative and aesthetic components to the

long-standing overarching themes of periferia as a socio-geographical concept and

n?gritude as a diasporic and potentially resistant racial discourse. I argue that such

keywords become particularly salient upon consideration of the current divide in

local hip-hop culture. Namely, over the past five years a new trend called “rap

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Ethnomusicology Forum 255

positivo” has emerged within hip-hop and stands as an alternative to the

more

prevalent umarginaF7 hip-hop. I conclude the article with an analysis of “positive

rap” in relation to periferia and n?gritude. It is in the present moment that hip

hoppers join blackness and universal spirituality in contradistinction to the extreme

locality of periferia reality.

Race and Rap: Ethnomusicology Walks Gingerly

Understanding hip-hop’s constructions of “reality” gives key insights into persistent
and unresolved issues of authenticity, especially as it relates to music and race. During
2002 an interesting debate occurred among members of the Society for Ethnomu

sicology list serve population concerning the definition and analytical value of terms

such as “black music”. The positions taken during this virtual conversation reflect the

recurring uncertainty about race as it relates to musical practice. As Philip Tagg

explained almost 15 years ago, the musical content of what have been labelled “black”,

“Afro-American” and “European” musics overlaps to such an extent that, as

musicological tools of analysis, the labels are worthless. Yet, in my opinion, there

are particular “articulations” of sound that practitioners uphold in musical

communities as stylistic distinction. These articulations refer to social, historical

and political objectives, thus making the music black. The legacy of “whiteness” as

unmarked, especially in popular music performance and scholarship, motivates

“other” performers to distinguish their performances as “black”, “Afro-Latin”, etc. In

the US, these lines of demarcation are reinforced in media structures as music,
culture and film channels continue to be organized along categories of race, e.g. BET

(Black Entertainment Television) and Black Starz Movie Network. In reference to

Tagg, Frith writes:

the difference in value judgments espoused by music analysts concerning African and

European (and “derivative”) musics is still rooted in “ideology rather than musicology,”

(Tagg 1989) that is racial formations in musical practices are understood less through
musical principles

as such and more via the uses of such principles.

(Frith 1996, 133)

Music, understood as a mode of human discourse, has always been intimately tied

to theories of human difference and social hierarchy. Race has been fundamental to

the “ontologies of music”, that is, the very conception of what music is (Radano and

Bohlman 2000). Likewise, people have repeatedly used music to demonstrate

hierarchical differences in human capabilities with regard to sound production and

conceptualization.
The problem with race and music, whether silently presumed or explicitly

deconstructed by consumers, critics or commodifiers, is that the fit never sits still

(Potter 1999). Discourses of musical authenticity, which rest on racial arguments, are

always a struggle because persuasion must come in matching cultural authority to

biological essence. The leaps are too far and it is for this reason that ‘race and music’

necessarily implies ideology. Yet, scholarship, as has been well known for decades

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256 D. Pardue

now, cannot profess an end of ideology. Ideology is not the business solely of

politicians and evangelical priests. Scholars are all invested in certain larger

ideological formations through theory-making, pedagogy and other public

activity. The danger lies in engaging in ideological arguments without reflection

and debate.

To return to Tagg’s observations concerning the weak hold musicology has on

the representation of race in musical understanding and explanation, I would

argue that musical principles of race involve ideological investments, be

cause

musicians, consumers, critics and recording engineers want certain social

connections to manifest themselves in the process of musical exchange. Musicology
and ideology should not converge on presumed evidence. For example, musicologists
have used evidence of polyrhythm, call-and-response, and improvisation to support
claims that a particular musical practice is essentially African and thus constitutes a

matrix of black diasporic musicality (Tagg 1989, 288-92). Rather, reflexive

musicology on race should concern the historical formations and pragmatic

consequences of music as social acts. That is to say, productive analysis should

consist of clarifying how participants connect a dynamic historicity of race, i.e.

conceptualizations of the past and temporality, to current daily activities and

collective organization processes through the expressive medium of music.

N?gritude or blackness is a heterogeneous set of experiences, rememberings
and styles that persons create, reinvent, repeat and put to sounds, words and

moves. What makes it black is an aggregate of cultural particularities, such as the

Brazilian formation of nation around the concept of mesti?agem (racial mixture), as

well as translocal or cosmopolitan commonalities in general experience and

contemporary imaginations of community. Blackness and music is part of

what Carvalho termed a “mythopoetic” (1994, 187) articulation of identity and

aesthetics within sound structures. While certainly not fixed or even predictably

consistent, black music is a viable category because it translates personhood
into an effective discourse. Black music, just as white music (though rarely named

as such), does things; it reminds those who do not feel it already that race matters.

Bastardo, one of the rappers in the group SNJ (Somos Nos A Justi?a: “We are

justice”), explains his nickname:

Bastard is a shadowy form {vulto) that lingers importantly
over history ever since

slavery. Bastard is the experience of growing up in
a

fragmented family without
a father

figure. Without sponsorship, but with
a warrior-like mother, I Bastard studied the

dictionary, the book, and the Word [of God]. Bastard is the shadow of fortitude (vulto)
who is here to cause controversy.

(SNJ 2000)

The SNJ rapper reinvents his name “bastard” to represent his view of Brazil’s racial

history from a critical perspective as opposed to a position of conventional

celebration.

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Ethnomusicology Forum 257

Hip-hop Culture and Racial Configurations in Brazil

Hip-hop culture in Brazil is a form of politics and pleasure, which reveals the

solidarity (uni?o) and the conflicts within the making of race and working-class
blackness. As is the case throughout Latin America, in Brazil race is strongly
associated with blackness while ethnicity indexes indigenous cultures and more

recent immigrant communities.9 In S?o Paulo, a metropolitan area of over 17

million residents located in the south-eastern region of Brazil, blackness as a

significant cultural concept emerged during the middle of the 20th century as

massive waves of domestic migration from north to south occurred to provide a

labour force for the intensified industrialization project. Consequently, new forms of

urbanization and racialization took place as S?o Paulo emerged as an economic and

cultural centre of Brazil and South America as a whole. In addition, the increased

access to US, Caribbean, and West African social, cultural and artistic movements

beginning in the late 1960s greatly influenced the manner in which Afro-Brazilians,

particularly in S?o Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, saw themselves and conceived of music

making.
The concept of n?gritude has taken hold in a number of diverse ways in

urban Brazil over the past 30 years. The “fact of blackness”, to resituate Fanons

famous phrase (1967, 109-40), is in its very utterance and conceptualization
remarkable considering Brazil’s assimilationist society (Fontaine 1980, 133). Hip-hop
culture stands at the centre of how black working-class persons apply n?gritude as

individual attitude, collective philosophy, diasporic imagination and political

strategy.
The “making of race” in hip-hop culture involves becoming consciente (conscious)

and enjoying togetherness. While in the US scholars and rappers alike have

argued that hip-hop’s rearticulation of the “ghetto” is a central and essential

factor in the identity formation of “nigga” (Kelley 1994; McLaren 2000; Dyson

1993; Ice-T 1991; Spice-1 1993), in Brazil the centrality of periferia has influenced the

currency of preto, negro (both meaning “black”) and more recently, mano

(“brother”) as alternatives to traditional notions of blackness in Brazil. Part

of the “making of periferia” involved a “blackening” of S?o Paulo during the

mid-20th century as millions of domestic immigrants flocked to S?o Paulo

from the north-east. In particular, the second and third generations began
to blacken the S?o Paulo periferias culturally and aesthetically through

consumption and performance. Urban Brazilians refer to this as estilo black (black

style).10
One test to gauge the relative scope of race in hip-hop culture is to track

how participants deploy race to signify more general situations of place and

condition.11 And, while significant groups within US hip-hop have succeeded

in making such articulations through the term “nigga”, the expansion of race

within Brazilian hip-hop culture is best depicted as a series of ebbs and flows.

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258 D. Pardue

Figure 1 Remnants of slave quarters on a fazenda (plantation). S?o Carlos, S?o Paulo

State. Photo by Derek Pardue, April 2002.

Putting Mano to Music

The word mano (brother) is a ubiquitous term among hip-hoppers. It is the essence

of hip-hop collectivity, a delicate and often misunderstood process of recuperating

marginality into positivity. Mano as a concept works to transform the exclusion

indexed in the above markers (“senzala” and “C. S. Mateus”) into a sense of inclusion

and distinction. As a technique of thematic foreshadowing, I introduce my argument

concerning n?gritude and music-making by historicizing one of the basic keywords of

hip-hop culture in

S?o Paulo.

The historicity (a collective sense or representation of history) of mano begins with

Afro-Brazilian political activist Solano Trindade (1908-1974). My inquiry into mano

emerged from a coincidental meeting with Nino Brown, a long-time fieldwork

consultant and highly respected figure within both the soul/funk and hip-hop
movements in the S?o Paulo metropolitan area, at a neighbourhood hip-hop event in

the S?o Paulo industrial suburb of Diadema in July of 1999. On that day Nino was

wearing a t-shirt with a picture of Solano Trindade on the front. He confessed that he

knew little about Trindade other than a couple of his short poems and complained
about the difficulties in gaining access to his literature. Nino quickly changed
the topic to Eldridge Cleaver, since he had recently finished reading a translation of

Soul on Ice.

Years before there were soul or funk movements in Brazil and decades before the

concept of hip-hop proliferated through the periferias of S?o Paulo and Brasilia,

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Ethnomusicology Forum 259

Figure 2 Ubiquitous street sign pointing towards the East Side neighbourhood (C)idade
(S)?o Mateus. Photo from De Menos Crime album, 1998.

Solano Trindade talked of mano as an achievement marked by difficult and tense

negotiation. For Trindade, the Renaissance black activist from the north-eastern state

of Pernambuco, whose texts cut into the eyes and ears of his audiences through a

caustic language of reflection and critique, to circulate mano requires a labour of

forging commonality and not simply assuming it.

What have you done brother (mano) to talk so much like that?

I planted sugarcane in the Northeast

And you brother, what have you done?

I planted cotton in the southern fields

For the blue-blooded men

Who paid for my labour

With whippings and lashings
That’s enough, brother,

So that I don’t cry, and you Ana

Tell me your life story
In the senzala in the candomhl? spaces (terreiro)… .12

Whoa black man!

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260 D. Pardue

Who was it who said

That we are not people?

Who was this demented soul,

who has eyes and doesn’t see.

(Trindade, from “Conversa” 1961, 40-1)

The tone of Trindade appears 40 years later in the voice of pioneering hip-hopper
Tha?de. Solano Trindade remains virtually unknown in the hip-hop community.

Apparently, only those hip-hoppers who move in activist, scholarly or literary circles

are aware of Trindade’s importance. Here I assert a dialogue between Trindade and

Tha?de, two leading figures of rhetoric and racialization in popular culture.

For me it’s not enough to have
a dominant [skin] color

No, no there’s no way to escape what we are

Either you accept it or you’re
an eternal slave

Inside the bus, I’m gonna tell you one time

I confess I’ve had to count to three many a time to not go crazy

A black girl (pretinha ) says to her friend:
Eeeee! Date a black guy (preto) never, not

even as a
joke…

I’m right in what I say

My intention to offend you

Step off! I’m too black for you
(Tha?de e DJ Hum, from “Sou negro D+ Pra Voce”, 2001)

Moments of Blackness in Hip-Hop: The “Ebbs and Flows” of N?gritude

In this section I delineate four periods of rap music with respect to n?gritude. These

moments refer to historical periods of discursive trends within rap music. Of course,

there is significant overlap and there are exceptions within each n?gritude period.

Through an informal periodization I show that n?gritude is dynamic in its

formulation and I provide a more specific tracking of the force of the “racial

democracy” ideology. The critical voices of rapper Tha?de and poet Trindade are rare

and fall in and out of favour among hip-hoppers.

My analysis of the first two periods is based exclusively on documents (lyrics and

recordings) and consultants’ memories. For the final two periods I offer a perspective
informed by personal experience in addition to consultants’ remarks, and documents.

In moments 3 and 4 I fold in more detailed explanation of the relationship between

n?gritude and periferia.

Becoming “Informed”: Early Efforts at Rap and N?gritude (Moment 1)

Today hip-hop in Brazil is a form of mass culture with thousands of practitioners and

millions of consumers.13 Hip-hop culture arrived in urban Brazil in the early 1980s.

In particular, S?o Paulo and Brasilia were the early centres of Brazilian hip-hop. As

mentioned above, since the late 1960s diasporic cultural channels widened and

intensified as a result of development in informational technology, especially with

regard to media sources. These included cassettes, vinyl, magazines and Hollywood

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Ethnomusicology Forum 261

movies. By 1990 Brazilian television had established MTV Brasil and by 1998 internet

access had reached a level of functionality with regard to popular culture

dissemination and consumption.

Consequently, urban Afro-Brazilians reckoned hip-hop culture as a contemporary
link in the new Brazilian category of estilo and cultura black (black style and culture).

While the first local, commercial recording of rap music in Brazil occurred in 1984

(Black Juniors, CBS), it was not until 1987 and 1988 that rappers and DJs joined
forces with graffiti artists and B-boys to create a hip-hop “movement” with socially
oriented objectives. Rappers in Brazil14 were known as tagarelas (babblers, yappers)
in the early days, for they elaborated on the basic points of identification

–
the arrival

of Brazilian hip-hop as well as “who you are and the place to be”.

In addition, the years of 1987 and 1988 were important in national history: 1988

marked the centennial celebration of the abolition of slavery. A great deal of

literature, scholarly and popular, was published and the federal government and state

agencies subsidized conferences, symposiums, cultural events and other public events

to take account, at least rhetorically, of o negro no Brasil (the black man in Brazil).

Hip-hoppers began to establish a working infrastructure of performance venues

and commercial production. Just as a decade earlier, when periferia nightclub

managers hosted weekend parties featuring local funk and soul performance groups
and dance troupes, a similar circuit emerged in the late 1980s with regard to hip-hop
culture. Club managers employed a common strategy of sponsoring contests, which

ultimately resulted in a series of vinyl compilation recordings.
The combination of hip-hop “attitude” and general style during this period of

national remembering of abolition inspired some rappers to make their own inquiries
into hip-hop as a form of n?gritude. Yet, hip-hop in Brazil has always upheld an ideal

of uni?o (unity) and most early hip-hoppers, as did most Brazilians, interpreted the

centennial discussions as productive with regard to African heritage. The issues of

racism or a race-first perspective on identity were overlooked in favour of “racial

democracy”.

Rapper Tha?de began as a B-boy in the mid-1980s and later joined Humberto, his

B-boy partner turned DJ Hum, as one of the pioneering hip-hop groups in

Brazil.

While Tha?de grew up in Cambuci and Vila Mission?rio, periferia neighbourhoods
on the south side of S?o Paulo and DJ Hum came from a more middle-class

neighbourhood of Mooca, the two came together as consistent B-boy performers in

the downtown public space outside S?o Bento subway station.

In particular, Tha?de has consistently discussed Africanity as a constitutive part of

hip-hop culture. In the excerpt below Tha?de includes deities from the Afro-Brazilian

religion candombl? and refers to his own strength in the candombl? terminology of

having a “closed body”. It is important to note, however, the change in Thaide’s tone

as the years progressed. In the early years Tha?de and DJ Hum were more conciliatory
and tended to emphasize community-building and syncretism over direct critique as

represented in “Negro D + pra voce” above.

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262 D. Pardue

For their part, C?digo 13, a group included on the first major rap compilation

(1988) along with Tha?de e DJ Hum, and the Neps, a pioneering rap group from S?o

Bernardo do Campo, demonstrate a more conventional perspective on hip-hop as a

culture that includes the common knowledge of “racial democracy” as integral to

periferia camaraderie. The lyrical excerpts from C?digo 13 and the Neps reveal that

most rappers configured race in urban Brazil as essentially about mixture (mistura).
The legacy of “racial democracy” is reinforced here as rappers reduce n?gritude to fate

and victim status. N?gritude thus loses any sort of traction as a self-sufficient

discourse; it presumably exists as a temporary problem that miscegena?ao (“racial

mixture”) ultimately will remedy.
With regard to sound production, the early rap DJs were not yet interested in

signifyin(g)15
on local or cosmopolitan blackness. Early Brazilian rap contained no

references to the great soul or funk stars of Tim Maia, Toni Tornado, Black Rio or

even Gilberto Gil, the now world famous MPB (Popular Brazilian Music) artist who

had popularized reggae and samba rock during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Nor

did early DJs and producers utilize much of international funk stars James Brown or

Funkadelic and Parliament.

Instead, most early rap consisted of stripped-down beats from drum machines,
occasional scratch sequences and unidentifiable bass lines. In rap music engineering

technology influences the range of potential timbres for a particular song. This helps

explain discernible differences in bass drum, snare and hi hat patterns between the

two songs by Tha?de and DJ Hum. The timbre quality has increased exponentially
over the past decade due to increased memory of sampling equipment. In addition,
sound producers use software such as Acid, Sound Edit and Pro Tools to adjust a

wide range of levels of the “original” sonic information with regard to pitch, attack,

sustain, among other aspects and finally obtain a distinct sound.

Early Brazilian rap production reveals a gap in what would become a strong

musical-ideological connection. By the mid-1990s hip-hop sound engineers explored
and fine-tuned the crucial links between sound and idea as performers explicitly

“designed” (Pardue et al. 2002) shantytown identities and diasporic imaginations.
Due to a lack of resources and technological knowledge early Brazilian hip-hop

producers rarely employed melodic samples, thereby leaving the rapper to provide
the primary melodic contours of any particular song through his vocal rhetoric. The

result was a limited presence of musical counterpoint and an underdeveloped sense of

musico-cultural “signifyin(g)”. DJs in live performances and rap music producers in

studio recording included samples as innocent “hooks”. For example, in “Corpo
fechado” a sample of a child’s toy acts as the introductory melody from which Tha?de

begins his rapping. Hip-hop was simply a nascent cultural form and producers
treated it as, in fact, a novelty item. By contrast, in “Sou negro d + pra voce” a sample
of a guitar with sound compressor or “wah wah” pedal effect provides the melody.
DJ Hum, the main producer of all of Tha?de and DJ Hum’s later releases,
demonstrates a sensitive ear for sample counterpoint, historical knowledge of soul

and funk, and a rhythmic sensitivity in beat programming.

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Ethnomusicology Forum 263

The demons protect me and so do the gods

Ogum, lemenj? and other saints
as well16

I’ve already told you my
name

My name is Tha?de

My body is closed and repels all retaliation, Tha?de?

(Tha?de e DJ Hum, from “Corpo Fechado”, 1988)

Everything that exists is inevitable

Aggressive manners, dirty and heavy-handed

Hip-hop style
as it is called

Blacks (negros) and whites
on the same side

[exchanging] ideas around the
same topics

Living in
a mass-commodified world

Watch out, you could be used

Without knowing how or why it happens
Just watch your back, disappear…

(C?digo 13, from “C?digo 13”, 1988)

I want to live without discrimination

Because the black man is a flower

That emerges from the union of two strands

What is called miscegena??o (“miscegenation”
or “racial mixture”)

That is why I say
We are all brothers

Forget the violence against the black skin

Which shows the racism for he who seeks it_

(Neps, from “Ritmo Negro”, 1991)

The first historical moment of hip-hop culture in Brazil (1987-1992) is

characterized by a conventional critique of racism and celebration of racial mixture

as part of the overarching discourse of uni?o (unity). In the first historical moment of

Brazilian rap music, n?gritude appeared only an inescapable fact of self. The very
utterance of negro was significant as these young men attempted to articulate

experiences of marginality to a new sense of collectivity in the form of a new “hip

hop movement”. Yet it would take time before local hip-hoppers became informados

(“informed”) about what sort of identification processes and performative strategies
were possible in hip-hop culture. Tha?de and other older hip-hoppers acknowledge
the significance of differences in sound sampling, for example, as part of what they
call evolu?ao (“evolution”). This process of “improvement” entails

a greater

knowledge of “black” sounds and history as well as a gradual recognition that hip

hop performance is about ficar s?rio (“becoming serious”).

Afro-centricity and Nation: Moving away from “Racial Democracy” (Moment 2)

The second historical moment of hip-hop development involves an expansion of the

term “black” (left untranslated in Brazilian Portuguese) to include a greater and more

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264 D. Pardue

descriptive level of social critique. This period from 1992 to 1996 marks a relatively

high level of consciousness symbolized in more systematic involvement with MNU

(United Black Movement) and other black political groups in addition to a more

acute sensibility to diaspora and Pan-Africanism.

Beyond the influence of the US hip-hop and notions of Black Power, Brazilian

hip-hoppers engaged West and Southern African cultural identities. It is important to

note that after 1980 the rate of immigration from Angola, Mozambique and Nigeria
to S?o Paulo specifically increased significantly. Nigerians had begun to establish

local, commercial strongholds in S?o Paulo’s underground economy as well as

important ties to local cultural institutions in areas of language (predominantly

Yorub?), expressive arts and Afro-Brazilian religious practices. For their part,

Angolans and Mozambicans looked towards Brazil as a relatively comfortable place
in terms of language17 and

a viable haven away from their homeland’s civil wars. The

majority of these immigrants dispersed into the suburban hinterlands of the S?o

Paulo periferia.
Their influence was made manifest in the growing movement within hip-hop

culture called posses, many of which included references to Bantu, Hausa, Zulu,

Jamaica, N?gritude, X and other Pan-African symbols. Posses are hip-hop social

organizations, which vary in size from approximately 10 to 200 members. Posses

act as cultural intermediaries between the neighbourhood and the various levels of

government. Posses cultivate the formation of hip-hop performance groups as

B-boys, rappers, DJs and graffiti artists exchange experiences and strategize to

promote public events and effect social change in the periferia. Membership
fluctuates usually in accordance with event schedules and ideological tendencies.

The latter come to the fore in my discussion of Posse Hausa located in the industrial

S?o Paulo suburb S?o Bernardo do Campo.

Structurally, initiatives of the departments of Culture and Education under the

term of Mayor Luiza Erundina (PT
–

Workers’ Party) from 1989 to 1992 laid an

important support system for NGO and hip-hop posse work. In addition, a few

recording compilations of the late 1980s sported names like Consci?ncia Black

(“Black consciousness”), volumes 1 (1989) and 2 (1991). This style of nomination

was taken personally as dozens of black teenagers took on simply “black” as their

name.18 In the following I contextualize the musical efforts of Posse Hausa, Posse

Mente Zulu and mid-period recordings of Tha?de e DJ Hum.

In order to appreciate the second historical moment, one must recognize the

significance of the MNU (Unified Black Movement). Brazilians have continuously

organized themselves into groups of black militancy and race politics. Throughout
the 20th century groups have invested in a number of projects revolving around the

place of Brazil within the larger scope of Africanity and the place of Brazilians of

African descent in the Brazilian nation-state.19 The MNU is important to understand

in some detail, because it remains an organization of some influence on a sector of

the S?o Paulo hip-hop community.

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Ethnomusicology Forum 265

The MNU, originally named MNUCDR (The Unified Black Movement against
Racial Discrimination), was founded on 18 June 1978 in response to a wave of police
violence against blacks. In particular, the death of Robson Silveira da Luz, a black taxi

driver, on 28 April served as a rally cry for the nascent organization. He was tortured

to death in the 44th District Police Department in Guaianazes on the East Side of S?o

Paulo municipality.
MNU members took advantage of the so-called abertura (“opening up”) period of

Brazilian politics (1979-85) to organize “black consciousness” groups at the local

level. According to Damasceno (1988), by 1987 there existed 138 organizations that

identified themselves as part of the movimento negro in the state of S?o Paulo.

However, the overwhelming majority of these groups were short-lived and suffered

from an inability to connect with the black, working-class masses, whose interests

they purported to represent. Especially in terms of providing popular forums of

culture and community, the black political movement has had its difficulties in

demonstrating any considerable amount of capital (Silva 1998, 107). As Andrews

(1992), 169) summarizes, the “gap” between the middle-class militants and the poor
and working-class blacks has been a common problem of “black consciousness” since

the First Republic in Brazil.20

The dispersal of black militancy into isolated pockets of the S?o Paulo periferia did

not spell a disappearance or an end to activist n?gritude by the mid-1990s. Hip-hop

posses in the S?o Paulo neighbourhood of Cidade Tiradentes have had a tradition of

Marxist reading and organizational practices. In field conversations (1999), Ice-Boy, a

member of For?a Ativa and CEDECA hip-hop advocacy groups, explained to me that

a number of rappers and DJs read Marx in order to grasp the “class struggle”.

Interestingly, Ice-Boy argued that Marx’s own knowledge of class came from readings
about African histories and forms of social organization. In this way, Ice-Boy

attempted to link class with race as foundational to “consciousness” and to avoid the

pitfalls of what rap group Sistema Negro (Black System) called the “mistake of

sociologists who forget us”, i.e. class explains all social difference and power relations

(Sistema Negro 1997). Similarly, in S?o Bernardo do Campo, there has been a

tradition of community-based activism and labour union organization.21 This

environment proved hospitable to the MNU and hip-hop culture and created a

rare moment of working-class blackness engaged in political militancy, local

community and diasporic aesthetics.

Posse Hausa

In S?o Bernardo do Campo, the Posse Hausa emerged from the events sponsored by
the municipal department of culture during the early 1990s. The above excerpt from

the Neps rap group (“moment 1”) comes from ABC Rap, a collection of rap lyrics

published by a group of department officials and researchers. Activists circulated this

book around S?o Bernardo and Posse Hausa members repeatedly recalled the

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266 D. Pardue

importance of “ABC Rap” events in the conception and realization of Posse Hausa

(Borges 2001).
Posse Hausa was founded in April of 1993. In 1995, it consisted of 20 members

at the time including performers from four rap groups, two graffiti artists and one

B-boy. Nino Brown and Marquinhos Funky Soul presided over meetings, occasionally

offering historical information about musical references and personal experience

regarding negotiation with government agencies. Both Nino and Marquinhos were

born in the state of Pernambuco in the north-east of Brazil in the early 1960s and

migrated to the suburbs of S?o Paulo in the early 1970s. In fact, they exemplify a

small but important sector of hip-hoppers, who represent the transition from earlier

funk and soul musico-cultural movements in S?o Paulo to the present era of hip-hop.
When I first attended a Posse Hausa general meeting in December of 1995, I

realized that there were multiple interests present among posse members. In part,
these differences were cultivated through relations between members and the State,

local community radio stations and the local chapter of the MNU. Such alliances

would eventually lead to the fragmentation of Posse Hausa along ideological lines of

representation and administration; however, for a few years Hausa hip-hoppers

organized events jointly and proposed a more radical perspective on n?gritude

together.22

An important ally of Posse Hausa was the S?o Paulo-based rap group Posse Mente

Zulu (“Zulu mind”), featuring the charismatic rapper Rappin’ Hood. The name

“Zulu” refers to the first recognized hip-hop organization founded by Afrika

Bambaataa in November of 1973 in the South Bronx of New York City. According
to both Nino Brown and Rappin’ Hood, “zulu” connotes a warrior attitude, on which

black and other subaltern resistance depends. Posse Mente Zulu was rare in that they
were able to produce a CD recording with songs that emphasized diaspora, blackness

and the trope of quilombo.23 The following lyrical examples represent n?gritude in

S?o Paulo rap. The first excerpt comes from Mira Direta (“Direct Aim”), a rap group
of Posse Hausa organization.

Brazil, a divided country that others formed

and because they
were white,

they think my people have to pay the bill.

Clowns.

We are the essence of this country, black women and black men are the essence of

Brazil…

A question mark
on top of the black man’s head has been sighted…

questions without answers_

These fights between whites and blacks.

They just remain in the category of “why?”

For over 400 years, no one knows how to respond_

Stop, think, wake up, act_With
a strong will,

We can change all of this.

(Mira Direta, from “A supposed racial democracy”, 1996)

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Ethnomusicology Forum 267

Most importantly, rappers from Mira Direta actively question racial unity as a

problem not as an assumed position of fact. This marks a significant conceptual
difference between historical moments 1 and 2. Mira Direta never recorded any of

their music beyond a demo-tape format; however, they did perform quite extensively

throughout S?o Bernardo do Campo and Diadema cities during the mid-1990s.

During a commemoration event for the Posse Hausa organization in April of 1996 I

caught their act.

Mira Direta’s performance was effective and appreciated, because they demon

strated an important hip-hop style of the period. As Brazilian hip-hoppers considered

themselves more “informed” about what hip-hop knowledge and performance

entailed, they began to explore more into hip-hop aesthetics. By the mid-1990s many
Brazilian rappers experimented with the high-speed rhetorical delivery akin to Das

EFX or even early Busta Rhymes in the US balanced with an authoritative voice

modelled on Chuck D from Public Enemy. The explosive and fast-paced sound

production of The Bomb Squad (production team of Public Enemy) inspired
mid-1990s hip-hoppers in S?o Paulo to become more animated in performance and

asumir (“assume”) a didactic posture of relating experience and showcasing

knowledge. Mira Direta embodied this spirit as they screamed at the audience on

that day in April to “stop, think, wake up, and act.. .with a strong will, we can change
all of this.”

For their part, Posse Mente Zulu recorded the song “Sou Neg?o” (“I’m [really]

black”). They garnered important attention, but it would not be until 2001 when

Rappin’ Hood remixed and re-released the song as part of his first solo album that the

song’s popularity would contribute to a recent move to incorporate hip-hop into the

national cultural canon along with samba and soccer.

Blacks!! We are black!!
You can call me whatever you want, I don’t care

I’m not a rebel racist and I know that.

I belong to an oppressed, resilient
race

That believes

That there’s still peace

That smiles to life
Who digs rap, samba, blues and

more

Afro-Brazilian culture [we] never give it up

Be yourself, a black warrior

Posse Mente Zulu!!!

100% Black
November 20th, we need to rethink it

The freedom of blacks who have fought hard?
In the past it was funk, now it’s rap.

That’s carrying the movement
as “black”

The legend is that only smiling blacks
are nice

But as Jorge Ben says, “blacks are beautiful”

And because of all of this, we’re here on point
If y’all put down blacks, I’m not even hearing that.24

(from “Sou Neg?o”, Posse Mente Zulu, 1994, Rappin’ Hood, 2001)

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268 D. Pardue

While he maintained the words in the two versions of “Sou Neg?o”, Rappin’ Hood,

the leader and main rapper of Posse Mente Zulu, changed significantly the tone and

context of the song. The more recent recording is part of a solo effort, in which

Rappin’ Hood attempts to link his stories not only to S?o Paulo but to Brazil as a

unified nation. He calls out places and people from many states of the republic;

Rappin’ Hood includes various musical genres such as samba, MPB,25 reggae26 and

embolada.27 In addition, Rappin’ Hood consistently works futebol (soccer) as a

metaphorical mine for introductory sound bites and sing-a-long refrains. I have

argued elsewhere (Pardue 2002) that futebol is a powerful hegemonic formation in

terms of Brazilian nationalism not only in the form of institution but more effectively
in the form of discourse. Rappin’ Hood and others have recently invested greater
efforts in linking hip-hop to futebol as a form of national culture and legitimate
narration.

Futebol is not the only national frame involved in “Sou Neg?o”. As part of the 2001

version, respected sambista Leci Brand?o from Rio de Janeiro introduces rap as a new

“partido” and Rappin’ Hood as a new “partideiro”. These terms relate directly to

samba de partido, an informal style of samba made famous by Bezerra da Silva

and the group Fundo de Quintal in the early 1980s. The instrumentation of the

“Sou Neg?o” is typical of samba de partido alto with the cavaquinho providing

melodic, harmonic and finally settling into rhythmic support for the battery of

percussion including pandeiro, tarn- tarn and repique de m?o.2S Rappin’ Hood, in

fact, begins the song with a tribute to samba form Rio de Janeiro with a few verses of

sung rhymes directed to the malandros e pivedada dos morro (“the hustlers and the

little schemers in the shantytown hillsides”) with intermittent chanting by the

instrumentalists of “rap ah, rap ah”.

All of this samba fanfare stands in significant contrast to the original version from

1994. Posse Mente Zulu then laid down a sparse “jazzy” groove with a sample of

repeated piano chords moving from tonic to dominant providing both rhythm and a

general pulse. The mild counterpoint can be heard in the strategic placement of the

bass line and the bass drum pattern against the hi hat pattern and 1970s’ soul brass

samples used during the refrain sections.

Posse Mente Zulu’s original sound production for “Sou Neg?o” reflects a general
trend during the second historical moment. Hip-hop producers began to experiment

more with the distinct timbre of capoeira, the Afro-Brazilian form of martial art,

dance and ritual. In an unprecedented moment of Brazilian hip-hop, Tha?de and

DJ Hum produced the song “Afro-brasileiro” (1996). In their attempts to articulate

hip-hop identity to a complex set of histories and cultures indexed in the term “afro”,

Tha?de and DJ Hum acknowledged both the fairly recent n?gritude of Rio/S?o Paulo

soul movement (1970s and early 1980s) via the brass horn samples and the

long-standing n?gritude of Brazilian slavery resistance by sampling the distinct

sound of the berimbau, the characteristic instrument involved in capoeira. Two years

prior, the rap group Potencial 3 from Diadema, another suburban city within the S?o

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Ethnomusicology Forum 269

Paulo metropolitan area, produced an album using the berimbau. The introductory
cut, “In3duc?o” frames the album and the group’s ideas as a ritual experience.

Caught between Death and Invisibility: Violence and Marginality (Moment 3)

The third historical moment (1996-9) emerged as part of the rising prominence of

Racion?is MCs, a group of three rappers and one DJ. The group first appeared during
“moment 1” on the compilation vinyl release Consci?ncia Black in 1988 with two

songs “P?nico na Zona Sul” (Panic on the south side) and “Tempos Dificeis” (Hard

times). Racion?is members have historically emphasized their loyalty to the south

and north sides of S?o Paulo, respectively. Their 1990 release Holocausto Urbano

(“Urban Holocaust”) and 1993 album Raio X do Brasil (X-ray of Brazil) set the stage
for their remarkable commercial success Sobrevivendo no Inferno in 1997. The 1997

release, literally translated as “Surviving in hell”, sold more than a million copies,
which is indeed remarkable considering that Racion?is MCs refused to appear on any
mainstream media and did little formal promotion. Mano Brown, the enigmatic
front man, became a periferia idol in part because he focused his stories on the

extreme locality of shantytowns. He honed his considerable narrative skills to depict
the marginal and the crente.29 In addition, with the decline of posse and NGO

influence, the S?o Paulo hip-hop community began to figure race as ultimately

secondary to socio-geographical realities of the periferia. To some extent, periferia
and the marginal have always been dominant in hip-hop, but during these years the

shantytown report of violence and poverty (denuncia) became the unshakeable

paradigm of hip-hop narratives. Hip-hoppers explained n?gritude as part of the banal

nightmare that is “reality” and replaced a focus on Afro-centricity with brief

qualifiers of discrimination, thus depicting blackness as a mere side-effect of the

sistema (“system”).
The dominant faction within S?o Paulo hip-hop uses a “culture of violence” frame

to make themselves and their concerns visible and recognizable. “Crime offers a

language for expressing the feelings related to changes in the neighborhood, the city,
and Brazilian society more generally” (Caldeira 2000, 31).30 Hip-hoppers maintain

the marginal, the historical figure ascribed to residents of Brazilian urban periferias,
as the narrative protagonist and the aesthetic style of performance. Curiously,

hip-hoppers seem to achieve resistance to stereotypes associated with the marginal by
the general Brazilian population only through its very utterance. In my discussion of

“moment 4” I analyse this in detail.

The ubiquity of talk intersects with social practice. As a proliferating discourse, talk

about crime both tries to resolve fear and reproduce it (Caldeira 2000). In S?o Paulo

hip-hop, rap’s central focus on crime and violence exposes the essential basis for

periferia reality manifested in crime syndicates, police activity and the miseducation

of o povo (the people). Violence and crime are results of living under the “system”
in the periferia. To change the system requires a kind of violence that disrupts or, in

common talk, “revolutionizes” normal social relations. Hip-hoppers express this

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270 D. Pardue

sentiment both in purely metaphorical terms by taking on individual or group names

with “crime” (translations: Of Little Crime, Targets of the Law, Criminal Command,

Point of Trafficking) or “violence” (translations: Verbal Violence, Rhythm Trauma) as

part of the actual name. The explicit adoption of “criminal” is evident in everyday

greetings among hip-hoppers. To call someone “ladr?o” (thief) is not necessarily

negative; in fact, it can be construed as positive and inclusive. In this way, Brazilian

hip-hoppers’ use o? periferia as a discourse of criminality is similar to US rhetorical

tradition of recuperating derogatory terms of race. For example, US hip-hoppers have

recuperated and popularized the terms “nigga”, “negro” and, in relation to the slander

of equating African-Americans to animals, “dog”.
More commonly, rap groups and hip-hop cultural posses mark their “criminality”

nominally in opposition or in relation to “the system” (translations: Rational System,
Black System, Faction Anti-System). According to Bob Jay of local rap group RDM,

“the periferia is totally affected by the system_The system hides; the rhyme
denounces” (Jay 2001). Even C. O. T. Fus?o (Fusion of Original Concept in

Triplicate), a so-called “positive rap” group, frequently refer to themselves as the

“squadron of peace” (C. O. T. A Fus?o 2002). Rather than trying to establish distance

from discriminatory stereotypes, S?o Paulo hip-hoppers actually embrace them and

emphasize an intimacy with criminality.
In the early 1990s the Racion?is MCs invested greater effort in explicating daily life

as “black drama”. At that time the rappers Mano Brown, Edi Rock and Ice Blue still

experimented with n?gritude as a comparable force along with banal violence. In the

early 1990s song “black drama” they juxtapose explicitly o preto and negro with both

positive and negative connotations of violence; in Sobrevivendo no Inferno the term

“negro” disappears and “preto” is reduced to just its assumed impoverished banality.
In the hit song “Rapaz Comum” (Common kid), Racion?is rapper Edi Rock tells a

story in first person of a young man who experiences elevated anger and violent rage.
He realizes that he and his situation of conflict are completely commonplace. Even his

imagined death, like so many he has seen, is banal. The fact that he, just another

“preto”, would end up in the cemetery is “serious” (s?rio) but mundane.

The sound production matches the banality of narrative. In “Rapaz Comum”, just
as with much of Racion?is MCs music, there are no catchy melodies or even

attractive, bouncy bass lines. Rather, the group engineers an everyday soundscape

through what I call “dramatic” composition. Periferia ubiquity is
a drama of violence;

therefore, many songs contain droning high pitches from synthesizers or repeated
close-voiced piano chords to provide the feel of horror and impending tragedy.

“Rapaz Comum” foregrounds a relatively high-pitched piano chord shot through
with minor seconds, which occasionally and only fleetingly resolves after Edi Rock

finishes a verse.

In rap production the rhythm section (drum and bass patterns) is normally the

centre of the groove. This is the objective of sound engineering and along with

the rapper’s voice the focus of audience participation. In “Rapaz Comum” it is
not

the refined timbre that shines through but rather a muddled but “quantized” groove.

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Ethnomusicology Forum 271

Quantization refers to the process used by sound engineers of aligning rhythmic

patterns of multiple tracks. This is a basic but debated topic of hip-hop production.

Quantizing is basic because the sampled and/or digitally composed tracks must line

up rhythmically to produce a cohesive unit. Quantizing is also quite variable and thus

becomes part of production style. Too much quantizing gives the sound a robotic or

overly mechanized quality. If the producer doesn’t quantize at all, the sound appears

messy or “off”
– an aimless backdrop plodding through time.31

The musical orchestration translates the general feeling of urban life within the

“system” of Brazilian society. The drum pattern is a basic rock sequence with the bass

drum, snare and hi hat pattern consistent throughout the song. The bass line is

almost indistinguishable by pitch; it rather acts as another line of rhythmic

punctuation. The bass line acts as a relentless body blow, systematic and quotidian.
Edi Rock accomplishes the main objective of the “marginal” hip-hop style in that he

calls out the “system” and reveals its everyday innards. N?gritude is neither

particularly salient nor worthy of specific reference. It is simply an underlying fact

of periferia misery.
Edi Rock has been particularly interested in this line of sound production. In a

2001 compilation Movimento de Rua (Atra?ao Records), he produced the song “N?o

seja mais um pilantra” (Don’t be just another scoundrel). The song has no melody to

speak of and yet achieved popularity through a dramatic high-pitched drone

combined with Edi Rock’s deep, ominous voice.

The dominance of periferia or what I have called elsewhere the “marginal”
aesthetic of S?o Paulo hip-hop (Pardue et al. 2002) limited the space for groups that a

few years prior had had more influence and community resonance. In the following
I narrate my memories of an event held in Diadema during July of 1999 featuring a

female soul group, a B-boy crew from the countryside of S?o Paulo state and a former

Posse Hausa Afro-centric rap group, Banzo Banto. This piece of ethnography
demonstrates the extent to which n?gritude has been pushed aside within the general

hip-hop imagination.

Remembering Diadema, S?o Paulo, 17 fuly 1999

I had been to Diadema many times to meet with Nino Brown and others at

the Canhema Cultural Center, which later became the Casa da Cultura Hip-Hop
or simply “a casa”. The neighbourhood of Canhema is easily accessible by “trolley
bus” departing from the southernmost subway station of Jabaquara. Yet, on this

day I needed detailed directions to arrive in the right place. Sam from the rap

group Banzo Banto patiently explained to me over the phone to ask the ticket

taker (cobrador) on the “inter-urban” bus to notify me when the bus passed
the second bakery on the way up the hill. This was the recognized landmark.

”
Todo

mundo conhece” (“everyone knows this place”). I could then yank the chain

and signal the bus driver to stop. “Cross the street and walk through the gas
station to the other side and look down. Then you’ll see it”, he told me. Following

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272 D. Pardue

Sam’s directions, I found myself with a bird’s eye view of that day’s place for

hip-hop. On this gloomy and blustery Saturday afternoon, many adolescents

from Jardim Paineiras and Vila Campanario, two adjacent neighbourhoods in the

middle of the large periphery area of south-east S?o Paulo metropolitan area,

gathered in the public park. One of the organizers of this particular event,

Akan OADQ (acronym meaning “of African origin and directly descendant of

the quilombos”) described at length the profile of Jardim Paineiras. He summarized

his depiction by stating that it is a “neighbourhood where blood and drugs run

freely and often” (Akan 1999). A member of the postal service by trade, Akan

has lived almost his entire life in Jardim Paineiras and believes that hip-hop
culture is a way of self-affirmation and a road to a “better (life)” (“[to no] caminho

procurando o melhor”). As he prepped the modest crowd for the upcoming group
Banzo Banto and the ensuing three-on-three basketball tournament, Akan reminds

the audience:

It’s like this. We need to transform our community, take
on this attitude. Right? Enough

complaining. You’re unemployed, without
a

place to stay, look for alternatives. But

where are you at? Pay attention to what’s coming up next. I’ll be out there with ya.

Peace.

Levi, a representative of the Municipal Secretary of Culture from the city of S?o

Paulo, who promotes various neighbourhood events every weekend throughout the

metropolitan area, echoes Akan’s sentiments: “Check it. The real deal is the following:

peace, lots of peace. Violence for us ain’t got nothing going for it. Dig? Without

further adieu_Banzo Banto.” For their part, members Ketu and Honer? of the rap

group Banzo Banto32 introduce themselves as “caretas” (squares, not hip) for not

falling prey to drugs and senseless violence.

Despite the fact that throughout the show the whole park reeked of marijuana
from seemingly invisible smokers, Banzo Banto and Akan continued to try to

mobilize the crowd around keywords of nobility and fortitude within a common

racial history as well as around the presumed benefits of following the path of

self-education. Honer? performed a series of vinyl scratching and concluded his

introduction to the song “A Era do Zumbi”33 with bombastic finales reminiscent

of the characteristic sounds of a few years prior at the height of Posse Hausa (i.e.

“moment 2”). Banzo Banto had hoped to create an atmosphere of power and

positive energy against the supposed apathy indicated by the marijuana. Summariz

ing Banzo Banto’s message, “dope makes one a dope and hip-hop allows
one to rise

above and transform the ‘periphery’ into the ‘centre’ of black knowledge and

subaltern pride”.
It is not an easy crowd out there, as this event made clear. Many hip-hoppers

complain that the majority of the periferia and even the hip-hop community itself are

woefully “uninformed” and “alienated” from “reality”. However, as is the case with

most if not all cultural groups who utilize popular music in conjunction with social

messages, participants in hip-hop culture in S?o Paulo take up a number of different

and sometimes opposing positions with regard to how exactly the “reality” of

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Ethnomusicology Forum 273

blackness and periphery should be represented in words, sounds and visual
cues.

Banzo Banto’s performance of n?gritude appeared disconnected from the “reality”
circulated by Racion?is MCs. The significant difference lies in the fact that Racion?is

not only directly addresses the drug trafficking
scene but also meticulously describes

the rise and fall of os neguinho servindo (“the black pushers serving [the clientele]”).

Leaving the Quebradas Behind? Positive Rap’s Challenge to Periferia (Moment 4)

Finally, the present moment of hip-hop and n?gritude involves
a competitive and

creative struggle between the aesthetics and ethics of the “marginal” and the

“positive” hip-hoppers. Differences between these
two major tendencies manifest

themselves in graphic, sonic and spatial dimensions. The
common ground among

“positive” hip-hoppers is the belief that denouncements of periferia daily life
are not

enough. They argue that hip-hop needs to provide concrete solutions beginning with

sharper strategies of collectivity built on education and entertainment. In this section

I discuss the various ways in which “positive” hip-hoppers seek discursively to leave

the periferia behind.

For all their attempts to speak to the general human condition of suffering
and enlightenment, “positive rappers” continue to depend

on the specifics of

S?o Paulo (sub)urban locality in the quebradas (neighbourhoods). However,

“positive” hip-hoppers configure universalism in different
manners and part of

this difference involves the reckoning of n?gritude. N?gritude has become
a point of

debate not only between “marginal” and “positive” hip-hop camps, but also among

“positive” hip-hoppers. “Evangelical” rappers are those most active in the current

recuperation of n?gritude as an empowering semiotic element, while other “positive”

rappers hearken back to earlier eras of Brazilian hip-hop as a form of community and

leisure.

The emphasis on uni?o (unity) brings many contemporary “positive” hip-hoppers
to a position of universalism, which signifies essentially an erasure of

race. This is

certainly the case with group Sistema Racional (Rational System), whose leader F?bio

F?ter claims to have coined the term rap positivo (F?ter 2002). F?bio and I met during
a community radio station interview in February of 2002. DJ Jair from Radio Everest

on the east side of S?o Paulo had invited me to hang out during his Friday night

hip-hop show. F?bio and I quickly became friends and
met several times over the

subsequent weeks to discuss his group’s upcoming CD release, the Labour Party (PT)

in his hometown of S?o Paulo suburb Santo Andr?, musical composition and CD

cover design. In fact, F?bio helped me administer the questionnaires used in
a

fieldwork project related to graphic design. He covered a series of music stores in the

galer?as (downtown malls) and I covered another set. When
we met to exchange

notes and collect the questionnaires, I noticed that few participants from his stack

actually had answered the “social profile” question concerning “race”. F?bio

explained that there is only one race and that the question
was bogus. This

perspective appears to go with his idea of “positive” rap.

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274 D. Pardue

Groups such as Sistema Racional (Rational System) and Xis understand

“positive” as a general quality of life where entertainment and independent thought
are the keys to restructuring the periferia into a harmless and palatable product for

outside audiences. Sistema Racional reworked the legendary mantra “that’s the way it

is” (assim que ?) popularized by the west side group RZO into “it should be like this”

(? assim que tern que ser) and, in so doing, at least rhetorically offered a “solution”.

What the periferia should be like is a place where one can simply take a stroll around

the block (“dar um role”) and stand on the corner (“esquina”)35 in peace.
Sistema Racional erases race from their version of hip-hop and sharply criticizes

popular Christianity as a group filled with opportunistic entrepreneurs. This latter

point is explicitly demonstrated in the song “A Igreja do Sal” (The salt church), which

is a play on the Igreja Universal, founded by Edir Macedo or, as satirized by Sistema

Racional, Pedir Mais Cedo (“to ask [for money] quick and early”).
In some ways, this current sector of hip-hoppers revives the musical innocence of

the early years of Brazilian rap outlined above under the category of “moment 1” but

now for different reasons. Gone are the samples of everyday violence and criminality
from the quebradas of the periferia so prevalent in “marginal” hip-hop. In their place,

producers place occasional children’s voices in the case of Xis and rappers utilize

clownish vocal styles for satirical purposes. In the song “Igreja do Sal” Sistema

Racional couples a vocal imitation of church leaders’ authoritarian tones with a

strategic use of church bell samples. In the title track to their first CD “E assim que
tern que ser” Sistema Racional employs a high-pitched keyboard melody; however, in

this context it works not to elicit melodrama but a playfulness of simply “dar um role

na quebrada com os manos” (to take a swing around the block with the brothers). The

significant difference in keyboard use between “marginal” and this brand of

“positive” rap is that in the latter the keyboard is more melodic. Rather than

sustained pitches of tension, the keyboard sounds often parallel the melodic contour

of the voice or, as is more prevalent in “positive” rap, voices. In terms of composition,
the keyboard-voice parallel stands as a common point within the “positive” group as

“evangelical” rappers also utilize synthesized keyboards to complement harmonic

singing, usually during refrain sections.

For many “positive” hip-hoppers departure from the periferia is primarily
commercial. Periferia as a generative discourse is intended to expand and cross

over into other entertainment circuits and markets. Yet, most positive rappers
continue to feel a responsibility to include violence, crime and marginality in a

significant percentage of their recorded material. In an interlude section of his CD,

Xis literally answers reporters about whether or not his songs serve as a “defence for

crime” (“apologia ao crime”). Xis employs a typical discourse of marginality in his

response: “violence, violence is reality of the street, the nonsense of people starving to

death, that is violence” (Xis 1999).
Even less commercially successful “positive” hip-hop artists find it difficult to

break away from the semiotic formula o? periferia. Over the course of 2002 I came to

know Limonada, a fanzine publisher and rapper from S?o Bernardo do Campo. We

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Ethnomusicology Forum 275

talked several times on his way to and from recording studios, radio stations and

municipal government departments, as he balanced obligations to his rap group
RU10 (United Races to the tenth degree), to his fanzines Folhas de Atitude (“Attitude

pages”) and Mente Poderoso (“Powerful mind”) and to the organization of the annual

S?o Bernardo hip-hop event.

During one morning on our way to a studio recording session, Limonada admitted

that he felt pressure to include marginality on his CD, because, as he explained,

“people still want to hear these stories” (Limonada 2002). Later, during the session,

Limonada discussed with studio producer Fegato the song structure of “Mente

Poderoso” (Powerful mind), an otherwise “positive” rap about human potential.

Interestingly, he stressed the importance of musically highlighting the passage that

includes the following phrase: “the crime scene is already set” (a cena do crime esta

feito). Limonada argued that the description of reality, as if it were a prefabricated
crime scene, effectively provokes the listener into positive (re)action. Limited in

resources and recording equipment, Limonada suggested the direct sampling of the

descending keyboard line made famous in US rapper Coolio’s version of “Gangsta
Paradise” (1995).36 Ultimately, the drama and tragedy of reality’s “crime scene” are

musically achieved as Limonada feels obliged to include typical periferia stories and

recognizable sounds of everyday drama. Soon thereafter, Limonada succeeded in

convincing a leading FM radio DJ, who is also one of the editors of the two major

hip-hop magazines in S?o Paulo, to include “Mente Poderoso” on an upcoming

compilation sponsored by the magazine Planeta Hip-Hop (May 2002).
There are differences, however, within self-proclaimed “positive” hip-hoppers on

the place of race and periferia in music and collective identity. From a perspective

quite different from that of Sistema Racional, Xis and Limonada, other “positive”

hip-hoppers are, in fact, deeply involved with a number of popular Christian worship

organizations. In my experience with hip-hoppers from this sub-group, a relatively

high percentage of practitioners are of obvious African descent. In his work, John
Burdick (1998a,b) details the disconnection between the movimento negro (black

movement) in Rio de Janeiro and the black, working-class due to a misrecognition of

the importance of Christianity in people’s lives. To simply discount devotees of

Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal religions on the basis of the historical ties between

the Church and institutions of slavery or because of religion’s tendency to distract

worshippers from the recognition of “reality”, i.e. conditions of exploitation, is to talk

past a massive potential audience. The emerging school of “positive” hip-hoppers,
as exemplified by the 7 Ta?as recording artists in S?o Paulo, attempts to connect

hip-hop to n?gritude so as to reach that “lost constituency” (Burdick 1998a).
The Familia 7 Ta?as (7 Chalices Family) expresses departure from the periferia in

explicitly spatial and spiritual terms. Seven Chalices is a recording label directed by

Fregador Luo (Preacher Luo) from the evangelical rap group Apocalipse 16. Part of

the reason for their success comes from recent strategies utilized by contemporary

popular Christian churches. These include opening up spaces of worship to

popular

music performance. Various groups from 7 Ta?as travel extensively throughout the

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276 D. Pardue

periferia thanks to invitations from church organizers. Based on biblical interpreta
tion with the objective of personal salvation, 7 Ta?as rappers attempt to fade out the

periferia by reducing the complexity of life to individual choice. The members

approach representation as universal.

Narratives rarely mention specific place names as national landmarks substitute

metropolitan neighbourhood “shout outs”. In addition, the banal sounds of the

street, such as buses, gunshots, television sets and neighbourhood banter, are

revealingly absent. In their place 7 Ta?as recordings privilege US-influenced

contemporary R&B musical production and choral singing styles. Rappers such as

Professor Pablo and Lito Atalaia utilize samples from orchestral European art

music coupled with composed electronic music motifs in an effort to bring

together the sacred and the secular, the past and the future. The prominent role of

orchestral string samples in evangelical rap speaks to an underlying association

made by producers and listeners between the sound of violins and cellos with

religiosity and spirituality. For its part, the sounds of keyboard melodies, piano or

guitar R&B chord progressions and specific sounds linked to computer use (i.e.
error bleeps and boings) work with the lyrics to create an aura of contemporary

technology and a movement towards the future and ultimately resolution and

salvation. Rather than a nostalgia for James Brown, the non-Christian domain of

candombl? or even the overtly “African” semiotic cluster of capoeira and the

berimbau, these “positive” hip-hoppers express n?gritude in a reworking of the

sounds of R&B and gospel
– a presumably logical point of musical contact between

God and Afro-Brazilians.

“The keys to life [and death] are in your hands.” The imagination of leaving the

periferia is more significant than physical departure. During a phone conversation,

Pregador Luo emphasized the durability and resilience of imagination over the

temporary nature of art and entertainment: “the music passes but ideas stay”

(Pregador Luo 2002). Furthermore, Lito Atalaia, one of the solo artists in the 7 Ta?as

family, dismisses material and space as ultimately unimportant. “Our hope is not

here and not in anyone, [in] who [then]?” The constant development of a

relationship with Jesus Christ removes the individual out of existing material

conditions of violence and crime and into a potentially life-affirming place based

on faith.

Members of the veteran posse Alian?a Negra (Black Alliance) from the Cidade

Tiradentes neighbourhood of S?o Paulo echoed this perspective. Alian?a Negra is one

of the oldest posses in Brazilian hip-hop, yet it was only in December of 2001 that

I succeeded in making contact with them and visiting a monthly meeting. When I

asked about the rise of evangelical rap, long-time member Elton replied that other

genres have been relatively unsuccessful in “spreading information” and “conquering

space.” “[This] has made it clearer than ever that God is the solution” (Elton 2001).
Unlike Sistema Racional, rappers from organizations such as 7 Ta?as explicitly link

spirituality with n?gritude. In the following lyrical excerpt Professor Pablo uses a

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Ethnomusicology Forum 277

discourse of faith amplified by an interesting mixture of violin and electric rock guitar
motifs to relate his version of “reality” as a “black” collective one.

If someone messes with any black brother (preto)

I think then they’re messing with
me

Blacks united (pretos unidos) will never be defeated

Much less so than other subdued races_

Whoever is black like me

Gets disturbed by it all, it’s all wack like that

Look to the side and see a brother totally lost (alienado)
Without a clue, without an idea

About which side to be on

But I hope
our

rhyme
can help the

cause

My people live like this, moved by faith

(Who’s black like me knows the deal)
We get beat down but stay

on our feet

(Who’s black like me knows the deal)
Whether one is man or woman

(Who’s black like me knows the deal)…

(Professor Pablo, from “Quern ? preto” [“Who is black”], 2002)

Whether “moved by faith” or willing to expand uni?o (unity) into revolu?ao

(revolution), as other “positivists” such as local group Afro-Rude urge, hip-hoppers
continue to struggle in the position vis-?-vis a now entrenched tradition of periferia
narratives. Racion?is MCs, Fac?ao Central, along with dozens of other groups

codified the popular phrase “cada um cada um” (every
man for himself) as that

which appears inescapable as part of “reality”. “Positivists” have reacted by framing

hip-hop as ultimately race-blind entertainment, in the case of Sistema Racional,
or by

linking a more aggressive n?gritude, reminiscent of the mid-1990s, to
a kind of

spiritual unity. While Sistema Racional has enjoyed some commercial success and has

garnered state sponsorship through municipal departments of culture, groups like

Professor Pablo, Afro-Rude, Banzo Banto and even Tha?de and DJ Hum (now on

separate career paths), two of S?o Paulo’s hip-hop pioneers, struggle for airtime.

Working n?gritude, as essential to hip-hop culture throughout its history in Brazil,

has had its moments and has produced significant ties to political and community

organizations. In addition, as Tha?de himself stated, n?gritude has become part of

thousands of Afro-Brazilians’ “consciousness” due in great part to hip-hop culture.

He sees this as a more important victory than any political party victory (Tha?de

2002).37 I ultimately believe that the one durable legacy of n?gritude as articulated by

hip-hoppers is to strongly associate terms of blackness in and of themselves with

social critique. This, in my opinion, is a fundamental part of a productive Afro

centric perspective. The mechanisms of capitalism within the music industry provide
a structure, albeit skewed towards hyperbole, for the circulation of social critique.

Consequently, n?gritude becomes part of hip-hop’s cultural capital and thus contains

value associated with knowledge and respect.

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278 D. Pardue

Conclusion

The “hip-hop nation” is not a homogenous set of styles, ideas and practices. An

attention to mediation provides a better understanding of how social groups
“locate” diaspora and “reterritorialize” cosmopolitan expressive forms (Mitchell

2001; Forman 2002). In S?o Paulo, Brazilian hip-hop involves the shifting
axes of n?gritude and periferia as influential forces and inspirational palettes,

with which participants tell their “reality” stories and sound out their “reality”

scapes.

To remember race and to reckon its significance has been a persistent dilemma in

the formation and evaluation of Brazil as an operating nation-state.38 Race is

salient in this case, because hip-hop culture depends on blackness among other

social qualities, e.g. periferia and machismo, for its recognized aesthetic and

semiotic force. The extent to which mass mobilization occurs as part of an inquiry
into contemporary practices of racism varies over time and regional space.

Furthermore, the legacies of “racial democracy” continue to structure Brazilian

hip-hop in its relation to n?gritude. In this article I have analysed S?o Paulo hip

hop’s n?gritude historically and systematically within a range of activities and

conceptualizations that participants have appropriated from near and far and

recreated locally.

My investigation into rap’s narrative strategies around periferia reveals that, while

discourses of crime and violence are generative, they also reinforce historically

grounded and systematically enacted structures of domination. The extent to which

hip-hop practitioners are able to design a more empowering periferia through and

beyond the mediation of marginality is not simply a theoretical issue of academia, but

also constitutes one of the primary pragmatic issues of local hip-hop activists and

intellectuals.

Following Fanon and others I have represented blackness as a formation. I have

demonstrated that Brazilian hip-hoppers engage n?gritude not as a thing or an

essential and static element unquestionably theirs, but one that demands inquiry
or “information”. Brazilian hip-hoppers, perhaps more so than in any other

place within the cosmopolitan topos of the “hip-hop nation”, reveal the complexity
and plurality of race and music. In the case of Brazil, blackness, even among

hip-hoppers, is often polemic. They have inherited a legacy of “racial democracy” and

cultural tropicalia so that the mere utterance of blackness outside cultural

nostalgia draws accusations of gringo imitation and racism itself. By considering

n?gritude and hip-hop as historical formations, I have provided depth to identity

politics. Furthermore, I have analysed how persons mediate, conduct and comment

on social categories such as race through the production and performance of music.

Again, these are not merely discursive projects as hip-hoppers actively concern

themselves with whether or not their “putting mano to music” has had any lasting
effect on the lives of periferia dwellers and on general conceptions of blackness in

Brazil.
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Ethnomusicology Forum 279

Notes

[1] “The system” is yet another powerful but often vaguely defined
term within hip-hop culture.

Names of groups, posses, music titles, CD titles often contain an oppositional position to

“o sistema” usually literally indicting the concept. For the MNU (United Black Movement),

the “system” is
a:

group of persons who are in control of society. In control of communication,

production, industry, residential practices. The system is (re)constructed by the

various levels of government and is institutionalized in places such
as the (Catholic)

Church, banks, property ownerships. The system is naturally inclined towards
a

“Catholic, white” perspective on morality and culture.

(MNU 1997)

[2] The Brazilian historian Sergio Buarque de Holanda, in his paradigmatic monograph Raizes do

Brasil (Roots of Brazil, 1936), characterized Brazilian society
as effective at the level of

intimacy rather than at the institutional level. He argued that Brazilians operated
at the

personal level and it is here that the national archetype of the “cordial”
man was born. Sixty

years later Folha de S?o Paulo, one of the leading daily newspapers in S?o Paulo, published
a

series of articles and an edited volume (DataFolha, 1995) recuperating the theme of cordiality
as the primary mark of Brazilian racism.

[3] An understanding of “racial democracy” necessarily involves the work of Brazilian sociologist

Gilberto Freyre:

the cross-breeding
so

widely practiced here corrected the social distance which

otherwise would have remained enormous between plantation mansion and slave

quarters. What the large-landholding, slaveowning monoculture produced in the way

of aristocratization, dividing Brazilian society into classes of masters and slaves, with

a
piddling and insignificant middle section of freedmen sandwiched between the two

antagonistic extremes, was in great part neutralized by miscegenation social effects.

Indian and African women, at first, then mulatto women, the yallers, octoroons and

so on, becoming the white master’s domestics, concubines and
even

legitimate wives,

played
a

powerful role in Brazil’s social democraticization.

(Freyre 1969 [1933], 34)

Gilberto Freyre must be read in the context of fin de si?cle Brazil (1890-1920),
a period in

which Brazilian elites became fascinated with European theories of eugenics and racial purity.
Educated at Columbia University, Freyre

no doubt read and was influenced by Boas’

scholarship in physical anthropology during the 1890s with Native Americans that

demonstrated that mixture had “a favorable effect upon the race” (Boas 1894 in Stocking

1968, 173). Brazil’s interpretation and reinscription of such racist theories at home would be

the foundational steps in the ideology of “whitening”. In his efforts to affirm the importance of

Africanity in the historical formation of the Brazilian nation, Freyre reinvented the African

person and black culture as a “co-colonizing” force in Brazil, “with considerable acculturating
influence over the Amerindian, who was less culturally developed than the African Negro”

(Freyre 1976, 8). The occlusion of slavery and race-based oppression has been
a

popular

strategy among Brazilian citizens in their attempts to make sense of Brazil as a distinct nation

and society.

[4] “Progress” in Brazil,
as in most of Latin America, has historically referred to

a host of value

terms, such as modernity, modernization and civilization, with which citizens evaluate the

status of the nation. For Brazilians, this is particularly salient, because “progress”, along with

“order”, is one of the keywords of the slogan
on the national flag (“Ordern eprogresso”).

[5] “Break dancing” is the recognized euphemism for hip-hop dance. In the mid-1980s break

dancing became commercially successful through films such as Breakir? (1984). Many

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280 D. Pardue

hip-hoppers in Brazil cite this film as one of the first contact points they had with hip-hop
culture in general. It is important to note that other forms of dance, such as poppin’ and

lockin’, which are significantly different from break in form and technique,
are fundamental to

understanding and performing hip-hop culture in Brazil. This is
a

point made clear to me by
friend and consultant Marcelinho Back Spin in our conversations.

[6] In Brazilian Portuguese “suburbia” refers almost exclusively to the increasingly expansive

periphery neighbourhoods outside the downtown or centro of Brazilian cities throughout the

nation. When I use “suburb” in this article I am referring to such areas, which are sometimes

incorporated into the central municipality, e.g. Cidade Tiradentes as part of S?o Paulo, and

sometimes part of another municipality, e.g. Vila Campanario as part of Diadema city in the

S?o Paulo metro area. It is important to note that suburbs or the periferia house over 50% of

the metropolitan populations in Brazil.

[7] I borrow the word “marginal” directly from its usage in Brazilian Portuguese. Beyond its

similar cognate meanings between English and Portuguese, “marginal” also connotes

delinquency, criminality and violence. Furthermore, in the urban Brazilian context,

“marginal” refers to the socio-geographical process regarding the making of periferia
or

shantytown suburbs
as part of modern urbanization.

[8] In the field of ethnomusicology, see Gourlay (1982) for an early statement on the implication
of the academy in the perpetuation of racial othering through

a new
guise of liberal

objectivity. In Music and the Racial Imagination, Radano and Bohlman state in their

introduction that “these calls [for the ‘end of ideology’ in favour of’cultural egalitarianism’],
however laudable, also revealed a new kind of imperialism consistent with America’s world

dominance rarely entered into the reflections
on the discipline’s mission” (Radano and

Bohlman 2000, 23).

[9] In Brazil, recent “ethnicities” would include Japanese, South Korean, Chinese and Lebanese.

With regard to
race and ethnicity in Latin America, see Wade (1997) among others. The

study of brancos (whites) or better branquitude (whiteness), as Kabengele Munanga
once

whimsically pondered (1990, 109), has received little systematic scholarship. “Studying
whites” did appear briefly after the 1940 census was hailed as definitive evidence that

indeed the Brazilian population was finally “whitening” and turning the
corner towards

“civilization” (see Deffontaines 1945). In addition, Norvell (1992) investigates the inherent

instability of “whiteness”
as utilized by intellectuals from 1928 to 1936. For the most

part, whiteness has remained a silent and unproblematic partner of the “problem” of

blackness. See Fernandes (1972), Piza (2000), Soares (2000) and Andrews (1988) among
others.

[10] See Silva (1998, 122-9).
[11] Kelley points out that “nigga” often refers to

a “condition rather than skin color or culture”

within LA gangsta rap (Kelley 1994, 210). Thus, gangsta rappers, according to Kelley,

“implicitly acknowledge the limitations of racial politics, including black middle-class

reformism as well as black nationalism” (ibid.).

[12] Candombl? is the syncretic religion, which combines Catholicism and polytheistic West
African religions. As

an “invented tradition” candombl? represents the mediation of slavery
and colonialism in the form of a cosmological system. Terreiro refers to the space of

candombl? worship.

[13] While it is virtually impossible to calculate any sort of exact number of hip-hop practitioners
or consumers, any cursory weekend visit to S?o Paulo’s periferia reveals that hundreds of

thousands of people consider themselves hip-hoppers in some fashion. Brazilian record sales,

especially with regard to popular music,
are

notoriously inaccurate due to the rampant

practice of music pirating. The most effective way to gauge the popularity of hip-hop culture

in S?o Paulo is by sampling around the
vast periferia. It is precisely this sense of fragmentation

and dispersal of the periferia and hip-hop that frustrates so many hip-hoppers
as

they reflect

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Ethnomusicology Forum 281

on the community and the movement. That aside,
some statistics are worth quoting. In 1997,

Racion?is MCs’ release Sobrevivendo no Inferno (“Surviving in hell”) sold
more than 1 million

copies without any corporate marketing at all. Considering that the price of
a CD is

approximately 10% of
a monthly minimum wage and that the majority of Racion?is MCs’

audience is from the poor, working classes (total monthly household income is equivalent to

3-5 minimum wage salaries per household, see Faria 2000), the figure of 1 million units sold

is most certainly
a fraction of total units sold via street vendors, etc. In addition, in 1995 I

attended a public concert sponsored by MTV Brasil in commemoration of the death of Zumbi

(see note 33), in which there were well over 300,000 people in attendance.

[14] In this article I use S?o Paulo and Brazil interchangeably to describe and explain hip-hop
culture, because S?o Paulo is presently the unquestionable centre of Brazilian hip-hop

commercial and cultural production. In other words, S?o Paulo and Brazil have
a

m?tonymie

relationship with regard to hip-hop cultural production.

[15] I use the spelling “signifyin(g)”as a respectful gesture towards Gates (1988) and others who

have transformed the verb “to signify” into
a fundamental keyword in African-American

(intended in the continental sense of the term not simply US) discursive performance. The

main idea carried through in this article is that S?o Paulo hip-hoppers to varying extents

reconfigure signs or,
as Russell Potter phrases it, “mistake the meaning” (1995, 83-4). In this

article I use “signifyin(g)” in
a more limited sense of black cultural referencing rather than

playful semiotic jocularity. The latter is the original
sense of the term as demonstrated in the

fable “The signifying monkey” (Gates 1988).
[16] Within the deity system of candombl?, Ogum is the god of war and Iemenj? is the goddess of

the sea.

[17] Portuguese from Angola and Mozambique is much
more akin to Portuguese from Portugal

than Brazilian Portuguese. Linguistic differences are easily discernible in daily speech.

Consequently, Brazilian Portuguese speakers mark these immigrants and native Portuguese

speakers as other. Many periferia youth associate periferia Angolans and Mozambiques with

the Afro-Brazilian religion of candombl? due to the formality of Portuguese from Portugal

coupled with their relative dark skin. Frequently, young people refer to them as preto velhos

(“old black men”), a recognized role within the religion, whether
or not they actually

participate or practise candombl?.

[18] In addition to “black”, many rappers and other hip-hoppers took on “brown” as a last name.

The most well-known examples include: King Nino Brown, Mano Brown and Paulo Brown.

The adoption of “brown” is
a

homage to the “godfather of soul” James Brown.

[19] Research “nuclei” such as the IPCN (Research Institute of Black Cultures) founded in 1974
and the resulting Center for Studies of Brasil-Africa (1976) are important to note with regard
to network formations between Rio de Janeiro and S?o Paulo (Gonzalez and Hasenbalg 1982,

37-9). It is generally recognized that Rio
was more active in black politics and culture. The

pre-eminence of S?o Paulo in national hip-hop culture has in many ways been a mark of pride
for racially “conscious” S?o Paulo hip-hoppers.

[20] See also Moura (1994) and Fontaine (1985).
[21 ] These include the organization of the DDR highway labour camps, Lula and the metal workers

unions of the 1970s, and important community leaders in neighbourhoods like Jardim Beatriz

near the centre square. This is where Nino Brown’s father and grandfather-in-law combined

community mobilization with issues of
race and racial discrimination. In conversations about

his neighbourhood, Nino, one of the most respected member of Brazilian hip-hop and
an

acting “elder statesman”, showed great pride in pointing out these facts and directing my

attention to his collection of media snippets about his in-laws’ activism.

[22] Posse Hausa unofficially disbanded for
a time in 2000-2, but has recently returned to

an

active role within the hip-hop and S?o Bernardo community
scene. In April of 2003 members

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282 D. Pardue

Nino and Guriz sent me a flyer advertising
an event in commemoration of the 10th

anniversary of Posse Hausa.

[23] It is important to note that, unlike the US where hip-hoppers had already established
a

solid relationship with the recording industry and produced hundreds of CD releases by the

mid-1990s, in Brazil the number of hip-hop recordings
was

staggering low. According to

official reports, between 1986 and 1996 just over a hundred rap CDs were released, with 68

recordings in the peak years of 1992-4 (Silva 1998, 110). Therefore, the fact that
a Posse

Mente Zulu CD exists as of 1994 is itself significant.
The word quilombo literally signifies

a
population

or union. Quilombos were communities of

runaway African and African-descent slaves. Presently, they
are rural communities of

Brazilians of predominantly African and African-indigenous descent, who, according to

Article 68 in the Federal Constitution (1988), have been granted “definitive rights to

possession” of the quilombo properties. The majority of these
maroon havens were located in

the north-east, but a significant portion
was established in the state of S?o Paulo (south

eastern region of the country). The recognition of S?o Paulo
as a

significant locale for

quilombos
was

recently documented under the auspices of the state governmental organ of

justice and citizenship (see Andrade 1997)).

[24] 20 November marks the day when the Afro-Brazilian historical icon Zumbi died (??1695).

Jorge Ben is
a

popular musician from Rio Soul Movement of the 1970s.

[25] MPB (Popular Brazilian Music) became the overarching category to include popular music,

which mixed bossa nova with rock and/or international popular musical trends (new wave,

electronic music).

[26] It is important to note that reggae in Brazil has a long tradition, especially in the northern

state of Maranh?o.

[27] Embolada refers to a musical genre from the north-east of Brazil, in which performers

improvise rhymes, often in couplets,
over coco or bai?o rhythms (an eight-count pulse divided

into three parts: 3-3-2) usually played
on the pandeiro (hand percussion instrument similar in

appearance to tambourine).

[28] The cavaquinho is
a small, guitar-like instrument with four metal strings. In samba the

cavaquinho provides rhythmic and harmonic support. Repique de m?o is
a percussive

instrument invented by practitioners of the most contemporary form of

samba

–

samba

pagode. Normally, the player lays the instrument horizontally
across the lap and articulates

basic underpinning rhythms with
one hand (m?o) on the base of the instrument while

the other hand strikes the instrument head in more complicated and periodically

improvisatory fashion. The tam-tam is played in
a similar manner. The difference is pitch,

with the tam-tam providing the low, bass pulse. In essence, the
tam-tam substitutes for the

more conventional surdo instrument.

[29] Crente refers to the so-called “evangelical” believer belonging to
one of the many

contemporary popular, non-Catholic Christian religions in urban Brazil.

[30] See also Da Matta (1993, 180-97).

[31] In the US groups like Wu-Tang Clan
are known for the lack of quantizing, yet, in their case,

were able to become popular
on a massive scale. My understanding of quantizing

comes

primarily from conversations with Black, member of rap group Os Alquimistas in S?o

Bernardo do Campo, Jesse Brown,
a local musician and sound engineer in Urbana, Illinois,

and through reading Schloss (2000) and Th?berge 1997.

[32] Ketu and Honer? are names borrowed from one of the West African peoples located in

Yorubaland in south-western Nigeria and south-central Dahomey (Benin) who constituted
a

significant percentage of the slave population in Brazil. This group has been associated with

the candombl? religion in terms of possible West African origins (B?hague 1984, 222). The

choice of the group name is also revealing. “Banzo” refers
to a sorrowful nostalgia felt by

recent African slaves in Brazil of their homeland. “Banto” is the name of a particular

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Ethnomusicology Forum 283

community located in what is today Angola, another significant point of Portuguese slave

trade.

[33] Zumbi was the charismatic leader of perhaps the most resistant quilombo community during
the colonial period of Brazil. His battles against Portuguese military forces became legendary

and Brazilians have transformed Zumbi into an icon for Afro-Brazilian pride and solidarity

since the 1970s.

[34] “Xis” is the phonemic spelling of the letter “X” in Portuguese. It is pronounced “sheece”.

[35] Xis had his biggest success with the song “De Esquina”. Originally released in 1997 on a

compilation produced by legendary DJ Hum (partner of rapper Tha?de), the song garnered
much attention. Years later in 2001 the alternative MPB (Brazilian Popular Music) star Cassia

Eller included a version of the song with Xis on her widely acclaimed acoustic, “unplugged”

album. The appeal of the song rests
on the desire created in the narrative, which combines the

street action (movimento da rua) with being “deliriously paranoid” (paranoia delirante). Yet,

there is almost no mention of danger. The
scene and the meaning are all under control as seen

through the eyes of the periferia fl?neur “in peace” (na paz).
In his work on US rap Forman

discusses the corner as a metaphorical power point of “street knowledge.” It is celebrated by

hip-hop culture and willingly forgotten by
an older generation

as a horrible reminder

(Forman 2002, 127-8).

[36] Coolio’s “Gangsta Paradise” (Tommy Boy, 1995)
was a

hip-hop rendition of Stevie Wonder’s

“Pastime paradise”.

[37] In 2002, Rio de Janeiro rapper MV Bill along with his colleague and manager Celso Athayde
launched a campaign for a new political party called PMDPPR (Power to the Majority, the

Black People), which limits membership to
an

ambiguous definition of blackness. Their

integration with various communities in the periferia of Rio has been important in the

establishment of libraries and alternative education projects. However, hip-hoppers such
as

Tha?de see some of the practices as unproductive and, for this reason, believe that n?gritude is

more about “consciousness” rather than “politics”.

[38] Andrews (1992) sketches out the dynamics (the “highs and lows”) of black protest in S?o
Paulo from the 1860s to the 1980s. His emphasis

on black agency is important in diverting the

stories of social changes away from governmental grants to popular demands. Balancing his

focus between black political organizations and elite-oriented governmental administrations,

Andrews identifies four particularly revealing moments of black activism: 1) the decades

leading up to abolition in 1888 vis-?-vis the caifazes (abolition agitators) as a “high” moment;
2) the belle ?poque and most of the First Republic period (1889-1925)

as a “low” moment due

to the expansion of “whitening” theories undergirded by social Darwinism, incentives for

“white” European immigration and limitations of suffrage; 3) the interim period
between dictatorships (1945-64), in which political parties provided more access to

political participation in general and thus blackness became relegated to “cultural” activities

(theatre, literature, art); and, finally, 4) the abertura (“opening”) in the latter years of

the military dictatorship (1964-1985). The abertura began politically with the “party
reform” legislation of 1979, which permitted the existence of

more than one oppositional

party.

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• Article Contents

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• Issue Table of Contents

Ethnomusicology Forum, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Nov., 2004), pp. 171-318
Front Matter
Editorial [p. 171-171]
Shoot the Sergeant, Shatter the Mountain: The Production of Masculinity in Zulu Ngoma Song and Dance in Post-Apartheid South Africa [pp. 173-201]
The Class and Colour of Tone: An Essay on the Social History of Vocal Timbre [pp. 203-226]
Music and the Disney Theme Park Experience
[Introduction] [p. 227-227]
“Whole New Worlds”: Music and the Disney Theme Park Experience [pp. 228-235]
Circumnavigation with a Difference? Music, Representation and the Disney Experience: “It’s a Small, Small World” [pp. 236-251]
Putting Mano to Music: The Mediation of Race in Brazilian Rap [pp. 253-286]
Reviews
Review: untitled [pp. 287-290]
Review: untitled [pp. 290-296]
Review: untitled [pp. 296-299]
Review: untitled [pp. 299-306]
Review: untitled [pp. 306-309]
Review: untitled [pp. 309-311]
Review: untitled [pp. 311-312]
Review: untitled [pp. 313-314]
Review: untitled [pp. 314-317]
Back Matter