[Mus-undergrad-info] Bayz Tomorrow, 5/21: “Quechua Rap: How Youth Indigenize Hip-Hop in the Andes and Diasporas” (Renzo S. Aroni Sulca)

[Amy Skjerseth]

*2024–2025 Florence Bayz Music Series*
*“Quechua Rap: How Youth Indigenize Hip-Hop in the Andes and Diasporas”*
Renzo S. Aroni Sulca
Assistant Professor of Indigenous Studies, NYU
May 21st, 12–12:50pm, ARTS 157
*miércoles de música (bring your own lunch/buy lunch at The Barn) to follow
at 1pm*

Quechua hip-hop is an emerging transnational cultural phenomenon connecting
Andean communities and diasporas. Artivists such as Renata Flores in
Ayacucho, Cay Sur in Juliaca, and Bobby Sanchez in New York have turned to
rap music as a testimonial, political, pedagogical, and decolonial practice
deploying the most widely spoken Indigenous language of the hemispheric
Americas, also my mother tongue. Following the Bronx hip-hop culture of
resistance, Andean youth in urban contexts embrace hip-hop music to resist
contemporary neocolonial and neoliberal forms of exploitation,
state-sponsored anti-Indigenous racism, and environmental degradation. In
addition to language, Quechua hip-hop also reclaims Indigenous roots and
knowledge to envision more inclusive worlds. Such is the case of Hampiq
Rimay (Heal by Speaking), a multiethnic and non-binary collective
initiative for Quechua language and culture through hip-hop workshops. As a
decolonial practice, Quechua hip-hop promotes gender inclusivity,
Indigenous memory, and healing of centuries of violence and trauma while
rejecting essentialist and static notions of Indigeneity. Instead, Quechua
rappers redefine and reimagine what it means to be Indigenous today by
intertwining their Andean roots with hip- hop culture and mixing and
updating rural and urban artistic, cultural, and linguistic practices of
resistance in contested spaces. This talk will address a new research
project based on preliminary findings in Peruvian Southern Andes and
beyond, combining ethnographic fieldwork and oral history interviews with
young Quechua rappers.

Bio: Renzo Aroni Sulca is a Quechua self-taught musician, historian of
modern Latin America, with a regional focus on the Andes, and Assistant
Professor of Indigenous Studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese
and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) at NYU. He
writes and teaches about Indigenous hip-hop, oral history, Quechua language
revival, and the relationship between memory, culture, and political
violence in contemporary Peru and Latin America. Before joining NYU, he
taught at Columbia University and the Pontifical Catholic University of
Peru. He is completing a book manuscript, *Crossing a River of Blood:
Resistance and Massacre in Peru’s Shining Path*. It explores how, from 1980
to 1992, Peru’s Indigenous Quechua-speaking people engaged and ultimately
resisted the Shining Path guerrilla insurgency, contributing to its defeat.
He has published book chapters in both Spanish and English and co-edited *Una
revolución precaria: Sendero Luminoso y la guerra en el perú, 1980–1992 *(IEP,
2023). His articles have appeared in academic journals and magazines, such
as the Journal of Latin American Studies, Latin American Perspectives,
NACLA Report on the Americas, and National Geographic. He is also the
creator and co-host of *Kuskalla*, a podcast about Quechua and Andean
knowledge. In his leisure time, he refreshes his mind and spirit by playing
the 12-string pumpin guitar from his native Ayacucho in the Peruvian Andes.

Spread the word to your students and friends; Bayz series events are free
and open to the public. For more information about this event, follow this
link: https://events.ucr.edu/event/Renzo-S-Aroni-Sulca.

See you tomorrow!
Amy
*Dr. Amy Skjerseth* (*she/her*)
Assistant Professor of Popular Music
University of California, Riverside

*I sometimes send emails outside of traditional working hours, but I do not
expect a response outside of your own.*
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