Saturday is gloomy, raw, and pouring, as promised. The afternoon workshops and presentations are well-attended considering the weather but a bit uneven. A documentary on Cuban hip-hop is subtle and insightful; a presentation on homosexuals in hip-hop, on the other hand, ends up just being a middle-aged, white, gay guy talking short-sightedly about other white, gay rappers.
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There is a little more hustle and bustle today — artists selling their wares, weaving their way through the audience. There are families here — kids in cute pink dresses and Spiderman outfits, breakdancing and drinking smoothies from the organic Alchemy juice bar in the corner. It’s funny how the hug-a-tree, crunchy-granola style has shifted to fit hip-hop’s political message. Other student advocacy groups are there, too, including a table filled with Darfur genocide information. “Hip-hop is a global movement,” I remind myself, “with politics all its own.” Regardless of how played out the “peace and positivity” vibe always seems to me, I catch myself feeling ashamed of my cynicism. The sound of Anonymous, Inc. — led by Puerto Rican-Italian brothers Ceschi and David Ramos — tears me away from the Darfur vigil. The band’s jarring, metallic jazz is cut with harsh Spanish and English rhymes. I recognize David Ramos, a guy who went to Wesleyan with me and sat (usually bored) in my sociology class. ¡Zapata Vive!, his t-shirt asserts. “Uh-oh,” I think to myself. “Another one bites the dust.” I can just picture Ramos laying the shirt out the night before, selecting the perfect radical movement to rep at the festival. But the group’s flow is tight, their instrumentals full and intricate, spilling a seemingly endless number of influences. I forgive the Zapata T-shirt and buy two CDs.
LF
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Still mostly Hartford residents. Magee McIlvaine, a Trinity senior and one of the organizers of the event, told me earlier that he had wanted to unite Trinity with Hartford — where Puerto Rican, Brazilian, Cape Verdean, West Indian, and African immigrant and refugee communities thrive. He told me that this concert was inspired by a mini-version they held last year where all types of Trinity students — even the frat kids — showed up and loved it. Visibly stressed between walkie-talkie conversations, McIlvaine commented that Trinity was “way too small of a school to organize a huge event like this.” He was suddenly bombarded with three questions from staff. I thanked him and slinked away. The night brings pleasant surprises; finally, we sink our teeth into sounds we haven’t heard before. The Bataka Squad from Uganda greets us after our dinner break, eager and fresh. LF, an artist from Brazil, almost shows them up all by himself. With DJ Laylo spinning apocalyptic beats, he brings forth an infectious, flawless cadence. His words, which I can occasionally make out thanks to my beginning Portuguese class at Wesleyan, are slow, clear, commanding. “No Brasil, quasi todos pretos,” I manage to catch — “In Brazil, almost all are black.” DJ Laylo translates LF’s love letter to the audience. All around me I hear shouts of ebullience, but the auditorium is still half-empty.
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The most hyped this crowd ever becomes is during La Bruja’s set. A tiny beauty takes the stage, purring to her fellow females, “The estrogenomics are potente in here.” She wears gold and green, her skin almost iridescent. She radiates sex, yet seems composed, wise. “Welcome everybody!” she declares in her rich alto, “to the most beeyootiful place in tha world… Nuyorico!” Nuyorico, she explains, is “somewhere between the Empire state and El Morro.” More than ever, La Bruja’s message of urgency and pride convinces me of hip-hop’s cross-cultural message — and I feel the global hip-hop vibe that I was supposed to be feeling the whole time. She rhymes, sings, and dances, invoking merengue and even reggaeton (“I know people talk shit about it, but I think it’s fun,” she says with a smirk). Picture a smarter, smaller, more ironic J-Lo, or Rosie Perez if she transformed her shrill sassafras into a far more velvety, boricua accent. “She’s the queen of the concert!” my friend proclaims with glee. It’s true; she has the audience in the palm of her hand, building a momentum that her successors fail to sustain. Narcy from Iraq and Troubador from New York ain’t bad, but the climax is done did. Bettina is entranced by the breakdancers. They have all been tirelessly breaking for hours, in their own world. Their shoulders practically dislocate from their bodies, jerking in perfect time with the music. * * * Sunday is subdued, full of presentations legitimizing hip-hop culture as a genuine movement — an intoxicating means of social change. Dazed from the past two days, I stumble from the unrelenting rain into a panel about women in hip-hop. An eloquent woman outlines the business skills necessary to preserve the art. Another suggests a coalition with male rappers, remembering the hoodies and tims recounted in Nas’ “New York State of Mind”. With a thick Brooklyn accent, she confesses, “I was trooping to the same places also. Even though they’re men, I still relate to them.”
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The most riveting part of Sunday is Favela Rising, a documentary about Afroreggae, a large-scale musical movement formed in Rio de Janeiro’s slums to offer kids an alternative to the outlaw lifestyle. “Afroreggae is like a parachute,” speaker Eric Galm explains, “for many Brazilian youths who feel like they are falling out of a plane.” Galm’s tone is only slightly less singsongy than a kindergarten teacher’s, as he takes 45 minutes to present Brazil 101. But the film itself holds a stunning power, chronicling crime in the favelas and the formation of a collective identity through hip-hop. The vicious cycle of violence tinges every hopeful sliver of the tale, including its (tentative) happy ending. As the credits roll, the auditorium is deathly silent. My friend and I drive home to the gentle sound of steady drizzle. I feel pangs of both invigoration and disillusion, especially as Hartford’s 93.7 drones with inane, monotonous hip-hop beats. Magee knew that he was stumbling upon something bigger than a small liberal arts college could handle. My mind races with visions of a packed state university amphitheater, the grandeur of an overflowing Summer Stage show in Central Park, a sprawling mass of faces at a concert on Miami Beach, all loving and believing in the art of hip-hop. But in a small way, the weekend was perfect — at least for the 7-year-old kid breakdancing in his Spiderman outfit. Perfect for the Trinity student who learned that hip-hop’s birthdate was circa 1979, as Yesod insisted. Perfect for Hartford families with nothing to do that weekend except meet musicians from all over the world. Perfect for artists who wanted to dually represent their unique heritages and the birthplace of hip-hop — New York City. Perfect for a skeptic like me, who was just about to lose her faith in the universal potency of hip-hop. Check out PopMatters‘ coverage of day one of the festival.