CU rap music
14 Dec 2001

HAVANA - South Florida Sun-Sentinel - It's past midnight at Club Saturno, a smoky basement bar where soulful guitarists and poets take turns at the open mic every Thursday. Young men dressed in FUBU jerseys clink their 50-cent double shots of rum and shout across the room, restless -- after all, it's the rappers they've come to see.  They pump their fists in the air as one rapper, Irak Saens, takes the stage, singing of his Cuban identity. "I'm a rapper, I'm from here, the profit I seek is the smile of my people," Saens says, waving his arms to a burst of applause from the crowd. In recent years nearly 200 Cuban rap and hip-hop groups have found their way into small clubs, youth centers and impromptu jam sessions across Havana. The scene, born in the early-1990s when Cuba's economy hit rock bottom, was fashioned after the lyrics and gestures of American inner city rap groups. However, rappers and hip-hop artists are gradually finding their own voices here.  Alexey Rodriguez and Magia Lopez, the husband and wife team that makes up the group Obsesion, chuckle as they recall the early days of rap in Cuba, when they would rig antennas to the roof to catch WEDR 99 Jamz from Miami or Soul Train on TV. "In the beginning, rap was pure imitation," said Rodriguez, 29. "They would sing about shootings and guns, and we would repeat it. But there are no shootings in Cuba." Along with two other rap groups, Obsesion recently returned from a one-month cultural exchange trip to New York City. One of the rappers, Julio Cardenas of the trio RCA or Crazy Rappers of Alamar -- defected during their stay. Though Rodriguez and Lopez admire the sophisticated sound systems available to their American counterparts, they were surprised that people insinuated they would do the same. "I have a great need to make music," Rodriguez said. "Here it is very difficult because of the lack of resources. But this is where our struggle is."  The rappers say they have the freedom to criticize their island's ills but they do it constructively. At concerts, some rap about the crowded buses, racial discrimination and the growing disparity due to a dual economy. However, access to government-controlled radio and television stations is still touch and go.  Obsesion has just finished a song titled They Call Me Whore, a sympathetic look at a young woman who sells her body to feed her child. Already they know the song won't get much play on the airwaves, but their fans will hear it at concerts and that's what matters, Lopez, 29, said. Ariel Fernandez Diaz, a 25-year-old rap promoter, says the recording studios in Cuba have largely ignored the burgeoning rap scene, preferring to concentrate on nostalgic and easily marketable Son and Rumba groups. Ironically, it's the government that has been most supportive of the music, he said. "A few years ago it was unimaginable to think we were going to insert ourselves in shows with all other kinds of music, that the minister of culture would listen to us, that we would be in a millennium festival called by Fidel," he said. "The thing is not to say there are problems, but to say there are problems and this is how we can fix them. It's about having the courage to say, `open your eyes, there are things that are bad.' That's being a true revolutionary."