The active role of black and indigenous women rappers in the production of counter-narratives in Latin America

Abstract

Born in 20th-century Jamaica and migrated to the United States in the 1970s, rap has established itself as a counter-narrative of black, Latin American and Caribbean young people. Outside official political institutions and representations, rap groups sought to denounce stereotypes to which they were subjected and create political awareness into their listeners. Strongly influenced by the culture of orality, they proposed, through their lyrics, active and powerful ways of survival in violent and segregated territories. This is what black and indigenous women do today, taking over the musical genre to reveal their pain and share their struggles towards power structures that silence their identities and subjectivities. Thus, this work seeks to study how female Latin American artists make use of rap with its emancipatory potential, to bring invisible problems to the public sphere, problems which affect a large part of the indigenous and black female population.