The rap and the funk in the socialization of youngsters

Abstract

The text proposes to discuss the importance of youngster music bands in the socialization processes experienced by poor youngsters from the outskirts of Belo Horizonte, problematizing the weight and meaning of belonging to a music band in the life of each one of them. The article focuses on the members of three rap bands and three funk duos, attempting to analyze their cultural experiences and the meaning that those practices acquire within the social processes that constitute them as subjects. That entails understanding how they elaborate on their experiences related with their music style and the meanings their attribute to it in their social context of poor youngsters. The discussion points out that young rappers and funkers find few spaces in the institutions of the adult world where they can build up references and values through which they could constitute themselves as subjects. The rap and funk styles take on a central place in the lives of these youngsters by means of the forms of sociability that those styles build, the music they create, and the cultural events they promote. Those styles have made possible to those youngsters practices, relations, and symbols through which they create their own spaces, representing a reference in the elaboration and experience of their situation as youngsters, apart from allowing the construction of positive identities and self-esteem.