Matthew Harrison and Faculty Mentor: Brian Pierce, Spanish and Portuguese

For as long as we have recognized the existence of music, it has been inevitably and
profoundly representative of our world’s many diverse cultures. By chance, just the other
week I had the opportunity to chat with some family members about the origins of
modern hip-hop music in the United States; it was fascinating to not only agree upon
some wide-spread fundamental influences such as the classic rhythm and blues of Ray
Charles and the boundary-pushing synth tunes of Kraftwerk, but also to recognize that
while pulling from these influences, modern hip-hop has become something entirely of its
own. The influences of older music genres in conjunction with the experiences lived by
the artists themselves creates something worthy of our scrutiny.
Hip-hop music, though generally associated with its beginnings and subsequent
developments in the United States, has proven to be a significant means of global musical
expression that resonates especially within youth culture. While preparing a proposal for
our project, Dr. Price and I found ourselves quite fascinated by the prospect of researching
hip-hop music in the Andean region of South America. Through online research we
became aware of a plethora of musicians in El Alto, Bolivia that were expressing
themselves through hip-hop music. Their inclusion of the indigenous Aymara language in
their rapping seemed significant, and we were also interested by the fact that they use
what many people consider to be an American art form to express ideas that oftentimes
are anti-American. Finally, from what we had initially read and seen of the artists, they
seemed to share a unique sense of comradery in commenting on the world around them
and in making their immediate environment a better place in which to live. We believed
that there was still a lot to learn from them.
The study promised to yield results in the field of ethnomusicology, and as such, we hoped
to receive clues and insights into the culture and sociality of the artists in question and the
people they represent. We started to reach out to multiple artists through social media, but
did not have any luck with regards to their reciprocation. However, I planned to directly
arrive in Bolivia, and from there it was not hard to find hip-hop musicians in cultural
centers and gain their trust. We then received contacts of other musicians, and we ended
up with audio recordings of interviews conducted with five rappers, a highly
knowledgeable radio host, and the head of a new hip-hop based cultural center in El Alto
(see Image 1). We also received six local hip-hop CDs from the artists themselves that
contain lyric sheets.
In order to elaborate upon some of our findings, I will detail a specific interview that I
conducted during my visit. Through my interactions with Santos, the host of a popular
radio show on 101.7 FM in El Alto, I was able to receive the contact of Nina Uma, a
prominent voice both in the hip-hop scene in El Alto and in local activism (see Image 2).
For her, the two things go hand in hand. She uses her music to express the concerns of her
community, her worries with regards to the environment, and to take a stand on certain
political issues, though she makes a concerted effort to not take sides. In our conversation,
she argued that there is an “individualistic thinking to which all of modern society is
pushing us, and it is centered around competition and the individual: one person alone.”
Her statements and her music echo a Bolivian motto found on their currency, which
states, “La unión es la fuerza” – unity is strength. However, she also argues that there was a
lacking in the higher education she pursued in her adulthood: “at a certain point you
realize that what they teach you in school, what they teach you in the university, doesn’t
tell you what’s really happening.” She has made it her goal to educate those around her,
and her mindset is contemporarily based.
Nina Uma is not alone; the other musicians interviewed, though many of their opinions
differed, shared the hope that their music can make a difference. They have taken a
particular aspect of traditional hip-hop – its activism – and made it a focal point. They
respond to unique situations that rappers in other contexts have not experienced.
Upon returning to the United States, I began the process of transcribing the interviews
that were conducted, including that of Nina Uma. In total, we now have over 24,500
words of interviews that will help us to better understand the social and political
landscapes in which the younger Alteño population find themselves. Along with Dr. Price,
we are still in the process of analyzing the data we have received in order to submit our
findings to a professional academic journal such as the Latin American Research Review
or Ethnomusicology.