As the interlinked crises of contemporary capitalist culture deepen around the globe, it’s clear that today more than ever we need strong forms of internationalist thinking and organizing. One of the most compelling theoretical frameworks offered in this regard by intellectuals over the last few decades has been that of diaspora. For writers such as Paul Gilroy and Hazel Carby, the diasporic world of the Black Atlantic communicates through circuits of culture that challenge narrow nationalism and help cohere powerful international networks of solidarity. Hip hop is probably the primary vehicle for such cosmopolitan cultural exchanges that we have today. It is also, of course, a commodity form that sometimes flaunts and trades in reactionary stereotypes. To what extent are hip hop cultures around the world today in communication with one another? Do they offer us concrete examples of the kind of internationalism evoked by writers such as Gilroy and Carby? Is a commodified cultural form such as hip hop commensurate with the massive challenges facing us today? In her recent book Close to the Edge, Social Text collective member Sujatha Fernandes explores these and many other questions through the lens of global hip hop. This Periscope presents readers with a selection from her book as well as a series of engagements with her work and with the culture(s) of global hip hop by interlocutors of hers from various parts of the world.
Introduction: The Making of a Hip Hop Globe Pedro Alberto Martínez Conde, otherwise known as Perucho Conde, was probably the first rapper to compose a hit song outside the United States. A poet and comedian from the inner-city Caracas … Continue reading “Close to the Edge: In Search of the Global Hip Hop Generation (Book Excerpt)”
As plenty of proud nostalgic discourses locate the residues of hip-hop culture circling the drains of sample exhaustion, scene fatigue, patched-in cameos, or the same old cushy R’n’B, people world over just keep going about inventing new worlds of musical … Continue reading “"In One, All": Senegalese Women Freestyle Artists Unify the Global Ghetto”
Kabu verdi / Nu bai / Gosi nu sta na Portugei / Nu bai / Es ta ben y sai / Chullage “Cape Verde / Let’s go / Now, we’re in Portugal / Let’s go / They [my people] … Continue reading “Bearing Witness and the Challenges of Community in Global Hip Hop”
Sujatha Fernandes’s Close to the Edge explores a variety of contexts in which hip-hop is practiced around the world, and draws them together with the thread of Fernandes’s personal experiences. My own work has been based on the ethnographic … Continue reading “"Wherever I Bless a Microphone": Ethnographic Perspectives on Hip-Hop's Transnational Flow”
One of my earliest recollections of the contradictions inherent in hip hop’s global spread happened in July 1995 when I, rather suddenly, noticed my friend Marwan’s younger brother Samir pointing at me and singing “I said Hello Everybody” from … Continue reading “Leaping Towards The Edge”
