ABSTRACT
Rap in Cuba offers particularly interesting possibilities for analyzing the international circulation of rap and its embedded meanings. Young Cubans acknowledge United States (US) rappers as their models and express their desire to achieve comparable sounds–even as they insist that their rap Cubano is quite distinct. The emergence of rap Cubano coincided with a time when US rap had moved to a new technological plateau of samplers, sequencers, and digital drum machines. A collective of organizers called Grupo Uno, from an East Havana district cultural centre, came up with the radical idea of organizing a Cuban rap festival. The 1995 Alamar festival was a crystallizing moment in Cuban rap, spawning Havana's first performing rap groups. All of Havana's best-known rap groups of the 1990s – Primera Base, Amenaza, Instinto, Grandes Ligas and Obsesion–have appeared at one or more of the Alamar festivals.
