Cuban Hip Hop artists visited the seventh Summit of the Americas this weekend hoping to change policies in their homeland that don’t allow them to express themselves freely.
David Escalona (a.k.a David D’Omni) made the trek from Cuba to Panama alongside his rap group Omnizonafranca, a Hip Hop collective consisting of six other rappers.
During their visit to the Central American country, Escalona spoke to The PanAm Post about the struggles rappers face within the communist country of Cuba.
“When you do Hip Hop in Cuba, you already know you won’t be able make a living from it,” Escalona said. “If someone does Hip Hop in Cuba, it’s because that person has something to say.”
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For Escalona, even traveling to the Summit to discuss Hip Hop was risky. Rappers in his country have been marginalized and forced to perform secret shows in houses or small venues. Many of his peers have faced censorship and government persecution.
Still, Escalona and others crave the right to pursue their craft openly. After the Fidel Castro regime tampered with the traditional folk-music within the country, many Cubans have taken a liking to Hip Hop.
“I believe that freedom should be part of your being: one must be free first, and everything else comes after that,” he said. “Being free has consequences. To feel free has consequences. But that’s like a river. You might come across a rock, but you carry on past it.
“What we come across are natural obstacles, that we ought to view these, to a point, in a relaxed way,” Escalona continues. “Given that we live in a society, sometimes these natural obstacles can be censorship. Especially when we have a totalitarian government that controls the radio, the television, the economy. In that case, what’s left for the river is to evaporate and rain elsewhere. That’s what we’ve done.”
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In December, reports surfaced shedding light on the United States’ botched attempt to spark anti-government sentiment towards the Cuban government by secretly infiltrating the country’s Hip Hop scene.
