Break and Flow - 9780813949826

University of Virginia Press

Break and FlowHip Hop Poetics in the Americas\nAuthor(s): Charlie D. Hankin\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: University of Virginia Press, United States\nImprint: University of Virginia Press\nISBN-13: 9780813949826, 978-0813949826\nSynopsis\nHip hop is a global form of creative expression. In Cuba, Brazil, and Haiti, rappers refuse the boundaries of hip hops US genesis, claiming the art form as a means to empower themselves and their communities in the face of postcolonial racial and class violence. Despite the geographic and linguistic borders that separate these artists, Charlie Hankin finds in their music and lyrics a common understanding of hip hops capacity to intervene in the public sphere and a shared poetics of neighbourhood, nation, and transatlantic yearnings. Situated at the critical intersection of sound studies and Afro-diasporic poetics, Break and Flow draws on years of ethnographic fieldwork and collaboration, as well as an archive of hundreds of songs by more than sixt.