Abstract
New York Puerto Ricans have been an integral part of hip hop culture since the creative movement’s first stirrings in New York City during the early 1970s. They have been key players in the evolution of hip hop art forms—among them MCing or rapping, DJing, breaking or “breakdancing,” and graffiti—from the beginning of the movement.1 Further-more, hip hop is as vernacular (or “native”) to a great many New York Puerto Ricans as the culture of their parents and grandparents; in journalist Edward Sunez Rodríguez’s words, hip hop is as much a part of their lives “as salsa and colonialism.”2
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Notes
See Juan Flores, “Rappin’, Writin’ & Breakin,’” Centro, no. 3 (1988): 34–41;
Nelson George, Hip Hop America (New York: Viking, 1998);
Steve Hager, Hip Hop: The Illustrated History of Breakdancing, Rapping and Graffiti (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984);
Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1994);
David Toop, The Rap Attack 2: African Rap to Global Hip Hop (London: Serpent’s Tail, 1991).
Carlito Rodríguez, “The Young Guns of Hip-Hop,” The Source 105 (June 1998): 146–149.
See Juan Flores, Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Identity (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1993);
Bonnie Urciuoli, Exposing Prejudice: Puerto Rican Experiences of Language, Race and Class (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996).
See Manuel Alvarez Nazario, El elemento afronegroide en el español de Puerto Rico (San Juan: Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 1974);
Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993);
Marshall Stearns, The Story of Jazz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958);
Robert Farris Thompson, “Hip Hop 101,” in William Eric Perkins, ed., Droppin’ Science: Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), pp. 211–219; Carlos “Tato” Torres and Ti-Jan Francisco Mbumba Loango, “Cuando la bomba ñama …!: Religious Elements of Afro-Puerto Rican Music,” manuscript 2001.
Thompson, “Hip Hop 101.” See also Robert Farris Thompson, Dancing Between Two Worlds: Kongo-Angola Culture and the Americas (New York: Caribbean Cultural Center, 1991).
For explorations of latinidad as a pan-ethnic category, see Juan Flores, “Pan-Latino/Trans-Latino: Puerto Ricans in the ‘New Nueva York,’” Centro 8, nos. 1 and 2 (1996): 171–186;
Michael Jones-Correa and David Leal, “Becoming ‘Hispanic’: Secondary Pan-Ethnic Identification Among Latin American-Origin Populations in the United States,” Hispanic Jour nal ofBehavioral Sciences 18, no. 2 (1996): 214–254;
Suzanne Oboler, Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives: Identity and the Politics of (Re) Presentation in the United States (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995).
The advantage of using a rather cumbersome term like “ethno-racial” (rather than “ethnic” and/or “racial”) is that it acknowledges the racial dimension of ethnic categories as well as the social constructedness of racial classifications. See David Hollinger, Post-Ethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (New York: Basic Books, 1995);
Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States (New York: Routledge, 1994).
See Edward Rodríguez, “Hip Hop Culture: The Myths and Misconceptions of This Urban Counterculture,” manuscript 1995.
See Linda Chávez, Out of the Barrio: Towards a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation (New York: Basic Books, 1991); Flores, “Pan-Latino/Trans-Latino”; Robert Smith, “‘Doubly Bounded’ Solidarity: Race and Social Location in the Incorporation of Mexicans into New York City,” paper presented at the Conference of Fellows: Program of Research on the Urban Underclass, Social Science Research Council, University of Michigan, June 1994.
See Nazario, El elemento afronegroide en el español de Puerto Rico; Juan Giusti Cordero, “AfroPuerto Rican Cultural Studies: Beyond Cultural negroide and antillanismo,” Centro 8, no. 1 and 2 (1996): 57–77;
José Luis Gonzalez, El pats de los cuatro1iisos y otros ensayos (Rio Piedras: Ediciones Huracán, 1989);
Isabelo Zenón Cruz, Narciso descrubre su trasero (Humacao: Furidi, 1975).
See Coco Fusco, English Is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas (New York: The New Press, 1995); Gilroy, Black Atlantic.
See Frances Aparicio and Susana Chávez-Silverman, “Introduction,” in Frances Aparicio and Susana Chávez-Silverman, eds., Tropicalizations: Transcultural Representations of Latinidad (Hanover, NH: University of New England, 1997).
See Dawn Norfleet, “Hip Hop Culture” in New York City: The Role of Verbal Musical Performance in Defining a Community, Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, New York, 1997.
See Peter McLaren, “Gangsta Pedagogy and Ghettoethnicity: The Hip Hop Nation as Counterpublic Sphere,” Suitcase 1, nos. 1 and 2 (1995): 74–87; Rose, Black Noise.
See Andre Craddock-Willis, “Rap Music and the Black Musical Tradition,” Radical America 23, no. 4 (1989): 29–39; Toop, The Rap Attack.
See Dick Hebdige, Cut N’ Mix: Culture, Identity and Caribbean Music (New York: Methuen & Co., 1987); Flores, “Rappin”, Writin’ & Breakin’ —; Rose, Black Noise.
See Oscar Handlin, “Comments on Mass and Popular Culture,” in Norman Jacobs, ed., Culture for the Millions?: Mass Media in Modern Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968);
Andrew Ross, No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture (New York: Routledge, 1989).
See Juan Flores, “Puerto Rican and Proud, Boyee!: Rap, Roots and Amnesia,” Centro 5, no. 1 (1992–93): 22–32; Norfleet, “Hip Hop Culture” in New York City.
See Cristina Verán, “Knowledge Droplets from a B-Boy Rainstorm,” Rap Pages 5, no. 8 (September 1996): 42.
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© 2003 Raquel Z. Rivera
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Rivera, R.Z. (2003). Introduction. In: New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone. New Directions in Latino American Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403981677_1
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