Buena Vista in the Club

List of illustrations; Preface; Acknowledgments Introduction; 1. !Hip hop, Revolucion! Nationalizing Rap in Cuba; 2. The Revolution of the Body: Reggaeton and the Politics of Dancing; 3. "La Habana que no conoces": Urban Music and the Late Socialist City; 4. "Cuban Hip Hop All Stars": Transnationalism and the Politics of Representation; Conclusion Bibliography

Geoffrey Baker is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Music at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author of "Imposing Harmony: Music and Society in Colonial Cuzco," also published by Duke University Press.

"This masterful portrait of the rap and reggaeton scenes in modern Cuba surpasses existing work in its level of insight, depth, and contemporaneity. Geoffrey Baker offers a thoroughly original street-level ethnography of the local rap scene and illuminates the often contradictory workings of the various bureaucratic institutions involved in popular music. He also develops a significant critique of foreign portrayals of contemporary Cuban music culture and of the local/global dynamics of 'imitating' foreign rap (or another genre) as opposed to 'nationalizing' it with sprinkles of local musical flavor." Peter Manuel, author of Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae "A careful, incisive examination of the cultural politics and history of hip-hop in Havana, including its contentious relationship to reggaeton's insurgent populism, blatant commercialism, and avoidance of explicit politics, Buena Vista in the Club gives readers a lucid tour of the complex spatial and ideological ground occupied by rap in Cuba. Foregrounding the interplay between state institutions, local artists, and foreign intellectuals, Geoffrey Baker provides a necessary and nuanced account of the myriad negotiations involved in nationalizing hip-hop in a place with such a fraught but close relationship to the United States. This book offers a crucial historiographical contribution to studies of hip-hop's global resonance and local meanings." Wayne Marshall, co-editor of Reggaeton