In this article we argue that Brazilian hip hop has opened up and become transgressive in terms o... more In this article we argue that Brazilian hip hop has opened up and become transgressive in terms of commodification practices, spaces of performative occupation and racial and gendered identification. Such expansion has meant not only an ideological broadening of what counts as hip hop and Black but also where such expressions are recognized as legitimate. This article focuses on the work of Emicida, Linn da Quebrada, Rico Dalasam and Jup do Bairro.
The following text is a transcription and translation from a conversation with Eduardo Santos, a ... more The following text is a transcription and translation from a conversation with Eduardo Santos, a Brazilian tagger and street artist who currently lives in Lisbon, Portugal. Santos, more widely known as Shp (‘sheep’), member of the group Pregos (literally translated as ‘nails’), responded to questions about identity, life philosophy and art through a series of WhatsApp audios. In addition, Shp and Xiên, another Brazilian migrant, provide a voice-over for a ten-minute video that shows a ‘night in the life’ of a pixador, the name given in Brazilian Portuguese to a street artist who practises the Brazilian variant that mixes elements of tagging and graffiti. Topics broached include: a comparison between pixo and Brazilian funk, marginalized arts, the street, the origins of pixo in Lisbon, respect and the presence of Brazil in the tuga (Portugal). English subtitles were done by Mariana Gil, a Brazilian photographer and migrant living in Aarhus, Denmark (video link: https://www.instagram....
The city of Lisbon has scar tissue, a reminder of pain and trauma that administrations often glos... more The city of Lisbon has scar tissue, a reminder of pain and trauma that administrations often gloss over as urbanization. The demolition of dozens of neighbourhoods has been documented in cinema, both documentaries and feature-length conventional films. Even more stark is the footage from grassroots archivists, who have accompanied since the beginning the raw despair of displacement, an internal uprooting after a generation or more of Luso-African migrants making place in the Lisbon area, especially in the adjacent municipality of Amadora. Over a decade ago, I followed a few of the displaced former residents of Fontaínhas to Casal da Boba, a social neighbourhood, to inquire and record memories about such scars. In late 2020, I reconnected with these interlocutors and discovered more storytellers who have a curious relationship with the former improvised neighbourhood of Bairro de Santo Filomena. This article is a piece of ethnographic fiction based on those experiences.
Abstract The Cape Verdean rap scene is a site of convergence, yet for most it is the antithesis o... more Abstract The Cape Verdean rap scene is a site of convergence, yet for most it is the antithesis of “world music” and its accompanying creative hybridity. While Cape Verdean musical genres such as morna, koladera, and funana fit well into cosmopolitan tastes of Euro-African creolization and postcolonial dance parties, Cape Verdean rap reveals a side of globalization where the contradictions of territory, identity, and migration are not easily resolved by a lilting voice, a studio recorded string section, or a call simply to “move that body.” By 2007 the term kaçubodi, the Kriolu pronunciation of “cash or body,” had become a catch-all phrase to describe the rise of urban violence and the emerging youth aesthetic strongly associated with rap music and a hip-hop clothing style. In this article I sketch out the contextual factors of crime, deportation, and neoliberalism in order to focus on the multiple rivalries of territory as they play out in the city of Praia and throughout the Cape Verdean diaspora. I argue that Cape Verdean rappers’ “beefs,” or heated rivalries with other rappers, actually place Cape Verdean rap in the world and provide general insight into how the spatiality of popular culture practices influences what languages such as Kriolu, Portuguese, and English really mean.
In this article we argue that Brazilian hip hop has opened up and become transgressive in terms o... more In this article we argue that Brazilian hip hop has opened up and become transgressive in terms of commodification practices, spaces of performative occupation and racial and gendered identification. Such expansion has meant not only an ideological broadening of what counts as hip hop and Black but also where such expressions are recognized as legitimate. This article focuses on the work of Emicida, Linn da Quebrada, Rico Dalasam and Jup do Bairro.
The following text is a transcription and translation from a conversation with Eduardo Santos, a ... more The following text is a transcription and translation from a conversation with Eduardo Santos, a Brazilian tagger and street artist who currently lives in Lisbon, Portugal. Santos, more widely known as Shp (‘sheep’), member of the group Pregos (literally translated as ‘nails’), responded to questions about identity, life philosophy and art through a series of WhatsApp audios. In addition, Shp and Xiên, another Brazilian migrant, provide a voice-over for a ten-minute video that shows a ‘night in the life’ of a pixador, the name given in Brazilian Portuguese to a street artist who practises the Brazilian variant that mixes elements of tagging and graffiti. Topics broached include: a comparison between pixo and Brazilian funk, marginalized arts, the street, the origins of pixo in Lisbon, respect and the presence of Brazil in the tuga (Portugal). English subtitles were done by Mariana Gil, a Brazilian photographer and migrant living in Aarhus, Denmark (video link: https://www.instagram....
The city of Lisbon has scar tissue, a reminder of pain and trauma that administrations often glos... more The city of Lisbon has scar tissue, a reminder of pain and trauma that administrations often gloss over as urbanization. The demolition of dozens of neighbourhoods has been documented in cinema, both documentaries and feature-length conventional films. Even more stark is the footage from grassroots archivists, who have accompanied since the beginning the raw despair of displacement, an internal uprooting after a generation or more of Luso-African migrants making place in the Lisbon area, especially in the adjacent municipality of Amadora. Over a decade ago, I followed a few of the displaced former residents of Fontaínhas to Casal da Boba, a social neighbourhood, to inquire and record memories about such scars. In late 2020, I reconnected with these interlocutors and discovered more storytellers who have a curious relationship with the former improvised neighbourhood of Bairro de Santo Filomena. This article is a piece of ethnographic fiction based on those experiences.
Abstract The Cape Verdean rap scene is a site of convergence, yet for most it is the antithesis o... more Abstract The Cape Verdean rap scene is a site of convergence, yet for most it is the antithesis of “world music” and its accompanying creative hybridity. While Cape Verdean musical genres such as morna, koladera, and funana fit well into cosmopolitan tastes of Euro-African creolization and postcolonial dance parties, Cape Verdean rap reveals a side of globalization where the contradictions of territory, identity, and migration are not easily resolved by a lilting voice, a studio recorded string section, or a call simply to “move that body.” By 2007 the term kaçubodi, the Kriolu pronunciation of “cash or body,” had become a catch-all phrase to describe the rise of urban violence and the emerging youth aesthetic strongly associated with rap music and a hip-hop clothing style. In this article I sketch out the contextual factors of crime, deportation, and neoliberalism in order to focus on the multiple rivalries of territory as they play out in the city of Praia and throughout the Cape Verdean diaspora. I argue that Cape Verdean rappers’ “beefs,” or heated rivalries with other rappers, actually place Cape Verdean rap in the world and provide general insight into how the spatiality of popular culture practices influences what languages such as Kriolu, Portuguese, and English really mean.
Programme of the 3rd international conference of REBRAC (Rede Europeia de Brasilianistas de Análi... more Programme of the 3rd international conference of REBRAC (Rede Europeia de Brasilianistas de Análise Cultural)
In the late 1970s and early 80s, as the grip of the Brazilian military dictator-ship loosened sli... more In the late 1970s and early 80s, as the grip of the Brazilian military dictator-ship loosened slightly and civil society transitioned into a more favorable position, artists were at the forefront of defining a new society. Musical artists RitaLee and Roberto de Carvalho asked foreigners to rethink their homeland paradisein the first quote, taken from their 1982 recording. On the other hand, fellow mu-sical artists Aldir Blanc and Maurício Tapajós saw the essence of the country as a“quarrel”, an existential conflict over the debt due to Brazil’s indigenous roots andinsistent presence. Two contrasting perspectives expressed through music withone underlying commonality. Brazil is a product of the encounter, one enmeshedin complex and violent hierarchies.Currently, Brazilians find themselves in a distinct but comparable moment ofunrest, violence and contestation. This bi-lingual thematic issue, with papers inEnglish and Portuguese, stems from a panel organized by members of the RedeEuropeia de Brasilianistas de Análise Cultural (REBRAC) on occasion of the first international conference of ABRE (Associação de Brasilianistas de Europa) at Leiden University (The Netherlands) in late May of 2017.The scope of the thematic issue emergent from our panel discussion is to reflecton the place and potentialities of culture in Brazil at this time of crisis, mindful of the dramatic erosion of progressive social initiatives currently underway and thethreat to democracy itself.
Morten Nielsen é professor de Antropologia Social da Universidade de Aarhus,
na Dinamarca. Um vi... more Morten Nielsen é professor de Antropologia Social da Universidade de Aarhus,
na Dinamarca. Um viajante, teórico e aficionado pela questão urbana, Morten
aprecia a tempestuosa dinâmica da cidade como algo que gera seu próprio conhecimento. Financiado por organizações dinamarquesas e internacionais, Morten
Nielsen tem realizado pesquisas de campo em Moçambique, Brasil, Escócia e
Estados Unidos ao longo dos últimos quinze anos. Seu foco são questões ligadas à
temporalidade, materialidade, cidadania, política urbana com relação ao acesso à
terra, formação do estado-nacional, governabilidade formal/informal, arquitetura
vernacular e as cosmologias políticas. Ele foi diretor da Coleção Etnográfica do
Moesgård Museum, em Aarhus. Além disso, Morten fundou a URO (http://uro.
au.dk/), uma plataforma transdisciplinar para estudar participação cívica e design
colaborativa da/na cidade. A entrevista foi realizada nos dias 1 e 2 de maio de 2018.
A ideia da entrevista surgiu depois de uma conversa que tivemos, antes, em uma
reunião de planejamento do projeto URO em Aarhus. Na conversa a seguir, o leitor
irá se deparar com uma série de questões, entre elas os motivos de investigar, hoje
em dia, a questão urbana e quais as formas possíveis de se engajar com a cidade.
Para além disso, há uma discussão muito interessante sobre as dificuldades de
definir, hoje, termos como “cidade”, espacialidade, temporalidade e globality.
Reflecting on some of Brazil’s foremost challenges, this book considers the porous relationship b... more Reflecting on some of Brazil’s foremost challenges, this book considers the porous relationship between legality and illegality in a country that presages political and societal changes in hitherto unprecedented dimensions.
It brings together work by established scholars from Brazil, Europe and the United States to think through how (il)legalities are produced and represented at the level of institutions, (daily) practice and culture. Through
a transdisciplinary approach, the chapters cover issues including informal work practices (e.g. street vendors), urban squatter movements and migration. Alongside social practices, the volume features close analyses of cultural practices and cultural production, including migrant literature, punk music and indigenous art.
The question of (il)legalities resonates beyond Brazil’s borders, as concepts such as "lawfare" have crept into vocabularies, and countries the world over grapple with issues like state interference, fake news and the definition of "illegal" migration. This is valuable reading for scholars in Brazilian and Latin American Studies, as well as those working in literary and cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, geography and political science.
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Papers by Derek Pardue
na Dinamarca. Um viajante, teórico e aficionado pela questão urbana, Morten
aprecia a tempestuosa dinâmica da cidade como algo que gera seu próprio conhecimento. Financiado por organizações dinamarquesas e internacionais, Morten
Nielsen tem realizado pesquisas de campo em Moçambique, Brasil, Escócia e
Estados Unidos ao longo dos últimos quinze anos. Seu foco são questões ligadas à
temporalidade, materialidade, cidadania, política urbana com relação ao acesso à
terra, formação do estado-nacional, governabilidade formal/informal, arquitetura
vernacular e as cosmologias políticas. Ele foi diretor da Coleção Etnográfica do
Moesgård Museum, em Aarhus. Além disso, Morten fundou a URO (http://uro.
au.dk/), uma plataforma transdisciplinar para estudar participação cívica e design
colaborativa da/na cidade. A entrevista foi realizada nos dias 1 e 2 de maio de 2018.
A ideia da entrevista surgiu depois de uma conversa que tivemos, antes, em uma
reunião de planejamento do projeto URO em Aarhus. Na conversa a seguir, o leitor
irá se deparar com uma série de questões, entre elas os motivos de investigar, hoje
em dia, a questão urbana e quais as formas possíveis de se engajar com a cidade.
Para além disso, há uma discussão muito interessante sobre as dificuldades de
definir, hoje, termos como “cidade”, espacialidade, temporalidade e globality.
It brings together work by established scholars from Brazil, Europe and the United States to think through how (il)legalities are produced and represented at the level of institutions, (daily) practice and culture. Through
a transdisciplinary approach, the chapters cover issues including informal work practices (e.g. street vendors), urban squatter movements and migration. Alongside social practices, the volume features close analyses of cultural practices and cultural production, including migrant literature, punk music and indigenous art.
The question of (il)legalities resonates beyond Brazil’s borders, as concepts such as "lawfare" have crept into vocabularies, and countries the world over grapple with issues like state interference, fake news and the definition of "illegal" migration. This is valuable reading for scholars in Brazilian and Latin American Studies, as well as those working in literary and cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, geography and political science.