Drawing on extensive interviews, song lyrics, and a detailed history of black Colombians’ embrace of hip hop, this important book takes contemporary black musical expression in Colombia as its guiding thread, along which the author traces the mixed loyalties and competing authenticities through which young Afro-Colombians articulate themselves as black, as Colombian, as local, as global, as hip-hop “real.” Not only does the book provide insight into the Spanish-speaking world’s largest Afro-descendent population, the words of its Afro-Colombian protagonists and the author’s analytic insights shed light on issues of cultural authenticity and the political mobilization of expressive culture that are of central concern to black popular musicians the world over.

Michael Birenbaum Quintero, Bowdoin College

In this wonderful and insightful book, Christopher Dennis describes the complex ways in which young Afro-Colombians have taken hip-hop musical culture to negotiate a transnational sense of belonging that rises above the marginalization they have traditionally experienced in their country. Afro-Colombian hip-hop shows how, within the contradictions of globalization, music allows neglected communities to actively participate in the re-imagination of the nation state.

Alejandro L. Madrid, Cornell University

Afro-Colombian Hip-Hop: Globalization, Transcultural Music, and Ethnic Identities offers a fresh and innovative approach to discourses on national, cultural and ethnic identity within a Colombian, yet globalized, context. Through an analytical study of contemporary cultural materiality and the producers of such, this critical examination renders relevant, present-day articulations that add to the historiography on revolutionary, social justice efforts on the part of Colombia’s marginalized brought forth by a new generation of social activists utilizing the artillery of the spoken-word through rap and Hip-Hop music. A truly provocative read.

Antonio D. Tillis, Dartmouth College