Matti Steinitz, Universidad de Bielefeld, Alemania:
This article takes a closer look at the 1960s and 1970s dialogues between Afro-Cuban and African American activists, musicians, and intellectuals that preceded the emergence of Cuban hip-hop. Arguing that there is a continuity between Black Power and hip-hop, it sheds light on episodes of mutual identification and solidarity between the Cuban Revolution and the African American freedom struggle, but also addresses the contradictions that arose when African American exiles and Afro-Cuban activists voiced their criticism of the persistence of racism under socialism. The entanglements between Black Power, Cuba and hip-hop are analyzed here as manifestations of a black transnationalism that has been shaped by the interconnected mobility of critical discourses and afro-diasporic musical genres throughout the Americas.