
doi: 10.26153/tsw/56637
This thesis offers a critical study of rap/urban music by Black and Indigenous women in Cali, Colombia, and Oaxaca, Mexico, from a geographical perspective. Specifically, it focuses on the work of Afro-Colombian singer Cynthia Montaño from Cali, Colombia and Zapotec rappers Mare Advertencia, Yadhii (YBOZ) and Doma Press from Oaxaca, Mexico. Through in-depth interviews, community collaborations and an exhaustive literary, sonic and visual analysis, I argue that rap, as a territorially situated practice, weaves together sound, body, space and ancestral Black and Indigenous knowledges to create what I call geographies of sonic intersections. These geographies are framed in Black and Indigenous ways of producing spaces according to their knowledge and, at the same time, it represents a practice of liberation from geographies of elimination –shaped by colonialism, capitalism and patriarchy. The history of the formation of the Oaxaca City and Cali accounts for different systems of elimination based on the domination, dispossession, and segregation of Black and Indigenous women pushed to the margins of the city. The music of Cynthia Montaño, YBOZ, Doma Press and Mare Advertencia is born from these experiences of violence produced by geographies of elimination in their bodies, communities, and territories inside and outside the city. Through voice, sound and body, these artists seek to counteract these geographies by remapping the city and going beyond the urban spatiality that characterizes rap. Instead, through sound and community activism, they bring to the city Black and Indigenous spatialities born from these experiences, knowledges and territories located outside the urban space. In this way, the work of these artists represents sonic intersections to embody raptivism –rap linked to activism– as a geopolitical practice to produce free and safe spaces for Black and Indigenous women in the hip-hop scene, the city, and beyond. This transnational research employs an interdisciplinary and intersectional approach to the study of rap and activism by Black and Indigenous women, contributing to the fields of cultural and human geographies, critical Indigenous studies, Black studies, and related areas. Using decolonizing and feminist methods as well as cultural analysis it provides new ways of approaching and understanding the relationships between sound, space, and Black and Indigenous women's struggles in Latin America.
Cali, Black women, Sonic geographies, Oaxaca, Indigenous women, Rap
Cali, Black women, Sonic geographies, Oaxaca, Indigenous women, Rap
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