ABSTRACT

This chapter shows how hip-hop, an urban popular art in which poetry, music, dance, and graffiti are included, has been one of the channels of expression and political action of the youths harassed by the despotic power of the State in Mexico. It deals with the perspectives of Benjamin Shepard, Hannah Arendt, and Jacques Ranciere on the relationship of aesthetics and politics in contemporary societies. The chapter focuses on three dimensions in which the relationship between hip-hop and politics is expressed: as a way to do and practice an aesthetic creation; as a space for reflection and repertory of collective memory; and as a place of enunciation, subjectivation, and political participation. The historic development of the recording and broadcasting technologies in the last hundred years has produced a radical change in the making and enjoying of music in contemporary societies, giving way to the emergence of new forms of work, aesthetic expressions, and political practices.