Social intervention rap in Maputo, Mozambique

Abstract

As for many other countries, also in Mozambique rap was introduced as an imported fruit from the United States, during the Eighties. Thus, it became a music style with original messages and with a considerable impact towards young urbanized people. Starting from 2002-2003, Mozambican rap assumed two different tendencies: the first one – carried out by a reduced number of artists, but of greater artistic and cultural significance – more engaged, having developed a blunt political criticism; and the second one more focused on commercial matters, easy to enjoy. Through a historical reconstruction, based essentially on oral sources, and a second part focused on interviews and on the discourse analysis of some songs interpreted by Mozambican engaged rappers, this article aims at analysing how this musical style spread in Maputo and which are its current tendencies. As its theoretical bases, this research  used  the  cultural  industry  approach  by  Adorno,  complemented  by  the reinterpretation proposed by Peterson and Berger, interlaced with the forms of control which characterize those limited democratic regimes, as Mozambique, which exert restrictions to freedom of expression, including in the field of arts.