"El Proyecto ⁄ The Project is a three-day, international event held in mid-April, 2008 on the campus of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA. The event centered on the social and political impact of Cuban Underground Hip Hop locally and globally. As an art-form and social movement, the Cuban Hip Hop movement is illustrative of the fact that Hip-Hop has become a worldwide cultural movement... there is a burgeoning body of scholarly literature, independent film and theater that analyzes Hip Hop as a global social movement." - African Studies Program, Lehigh University | Read More.
PopMatters - From its modest roots in the South Bronx in the 1970s, hip-hop culture has become an international, multi-billion-dollar phenomenon. Originally a tool for social expression, rap music opened a window onto inner-city ethnicity, fashion and politics. Its primal, mesmerizing beat was hard-edged and male-dominated. Yet long before commercialism poisoned its lyrics with violence, drugs and misogyny, it had a social consciousness.

By the 1990s, that consciousness started incubating in an unlikely place: Cuba. During the island’s economic downturn, many social restrictions were relaxed, including prohibitions on makeshift TV and radio antennas on the roofs of buildings. Especially in Havana, Cuba’s youth began hearing signals from New York via Miami. Even if they didn’t understand all the English lyrics, they instantly identified with old-school videos like The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” or Queen Latifah’s early rap.

“They had an immediate connection with the music,” says Tanya Saunders, a pre-doctoral fellow in Africana Studies at Lehigh University. “Cuba is a revolutionary country and its youth have been taught to be socially critical. They wanted to know what this music was, and where it came from. They started learning its history, its ties to disenfranchised and marginalized blacks and Latinos in New York.”

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