This article studies popular culture, both as a platform that is used to negotiate questions of belonging, as well as a gendered space that activates questions of belonging. By discussing such issues of belonging in the work of Chilean artist Ana Tijoux, it sets out to make visible the continuing importance of both the nation, as well as transnational connections as frames of reference in popular culture. The article shows that Tijoux’s experience of exclusion and marginalization in France and Chile prompted her to become a hip-hop artist. In a national, that is, Chilean context, she claims belonging by creating a connection to a specific Chilean past, as well as to the nueva canción movement, and by referring to a collective experience of marginalization and exclusion in her lyrics. Tijoux’s artist identity also draws on several established images and definitions. The article concludes by arguing that studies discussing popular music in connection to identity and belonging should focus on the way in which artists create their work in respect to, and within different transnational and national frameworks, as well as the highly gendered and commercial nature of popular culture that makes certain identities and belongings possible while excluding others.

Begreppet hiphopfeminism myntades 1999 av kulturkritikern Joan Morgan. I sin bok When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost. My Life as a Hiphop Feminist beskriver hon begreppet som en vidareutveckling av black feminism och womanism skapad av och för (framförallt svarta) kvinnor i USA som tillhör den så kallade hiphopgenerationen. Sedan dess har många forskare som har använt sig av ett genusperspektiv för att analysera hiphopkulturen både tagit avstånd från och aktivt associerat sig med hiphopfeminismen som forskningsfält. I denna artikel diskuterar jag framväxten av detta fält mot bakgrund av både hiphopkulturens och den akademiska hiphopforskningens uppkomst och utveckling i USA. För att synliggöra den komplexa debatten kring kvinnors representation inom hiphopen lyfter jag sedan fram några centrala händelser i USA från 2000-talet. Avslutningsvis problematiserar jag hiphopkulturen som politisk motståndsrörelse i en transnationell kontext och diskuterar kortfattat hiphopfeminismen i ett svenskt sammanhang. Begreppen rapmusik och hiphop används i denna text som synonymer.

Denna artikel kombinerar ett entangled history perspektiv med muntlig historia för att analysera förhandlingar av identitetskonstruktioner genom hiphop mellan Sverige och Chile. Artikeln är baserad på intervjuer med hiphopartister i Chile och hiphopartister med chilensk bakgrund i Sverige som konstruerar, använder och fyller olika identiteter med mening inom specifika historiska sammanhang. Artikeln består av fyra analysnivåer. Den första analysnivån lyfter den historiska kontexten inom vilken hiphopkulturen uppstod i båda länder från 1980-talet fram till idag. Denna utveckling diskuteras även mot bakgrund av hiphop som genre med historiska rötter i USA. Den andra analysnivån utgår från en komparativ läsning av dessa historiska kontexter som bland annat tar hänsyn till transnationella maktförhållanden mellan Sverige och Chile. På en tredje analysnivå fokuserar artikeln på influenser och kontakter som har haft en avgörande betydelse för hiphoppens utveckling, medan den fjärde och sista nivån diskuterar hur artister i båda länder skapar kontinuitet eller brott med det förflutna. Artikelns slutsats är att artister i båda länder fyller en chilensk eller latino-identitet med mening beroende på olika uppfattningar och tolkningar av det förflutna. Genom att kombinera ett entangled history perspektiv med muntlig historia hävdar artikeln att dessa identitetskonstruktioner är både baserade på specifika berättelser om det förflutna och föreställd inom och över olika nationsgränser.

This article has used a combined framework of entangled history and oral history to analyze the creation and negotiation of a Chilean or Latino artist identity by Hip-hop artists in Chile, and Hip-hop artists with a Chilean background in Sweden. It discusses the way in which such artist identities are constructed, used, and filled with meaning within specific historical contexts. The article focuses on four levels of analysis. On the first level, it outlines the historical context within which Hip-hop emerged in each country from the 1980s until today based on interviews with the artists as well as earlier research on Hip-hop. This includes discussing Hip-hop in both countries as connected to Hip-hop as a genre with origins in the United States. On the second level, the article engages in a comparative reading of these historical contexts that, among others, takes into account the transnational relationship between Chile and Sweden. The third analytical level outlines influences and connections that have had a significant impact on the development of Hip-hop culture, above all in Chile, while a fourth and final analytical level focuses on the way in which the artists create continuity or discontinuity with the past. As a result, this article demonstrates that being Chilean or Latino acquires different meanings as individual artists change their understanding or interpretation of the past. Thereby, it demonstrates that identities are both based on specific narratives of the past, and imagined within and across national boundaries.

Over 40 years have passed since the coup d’état in Chile on September 11th 1973. Although Augusto Pinochet’s military regime officially came to an end in 1990, the political and societal consequences of the coup and 17 years of dictatorship live on to this day, both in and outside of Chile. In this article I discuss hip hop practice as a form of identity and memory work in, and in-between Chile and Sweden, the country that welcomed the highest number of Chilean refugees in Europe after the coup. I focus on those instances in which rappers in both Sweden and Chile refer to specific versions of the past in their lyrics, music, videos, biographies, and in TV programs. My analysis shows that artists in both countries use hip hop culture in order to create meaning and a sense of shared history by engaging in strategic and self-conscious identity and memory work.

What does it mean when Hip-hop artists in both Sweden and Chile claim a Chilean or Latino artist identity? How can these identities be understood against the background of the 1973 coup d’état in Chile and its immediate and long-term consequences? This study sets out to answer these questions by focusing on the intersection of Hip-hop culture and the Chilean diaspora in Sweden after 1973. Based on a close reading of lyrics, as well as interviews with Hip-hop artists in both countries, it traces the way in which the artists position themselves, and in turn are positioned in different historical narratives in, and in-between the two countries. In terms of a Swedish past, this study discusses their identities in connection to a narrative based on inclusion – the narrative of the good Sweden (det goda Sverige) – and a narrative based on exclusion – the narrative of the old Sweden (det gamla Sverige). In terms of remembering a Chilean past on the other hand, it discusses them in connection to narratives based on either remembering or forgetting the atrocities committed by the Pinochet regime. By using an entangled history approach, this dissertation adds an explicitly historical, cultural and transnational perspective to the study of the connection between Chile and the Chilean diasporization process in Sweden after 1973. 

Det här kapitlet handlar om sista skedet av arbetsprocessen – det faktiska skrivandet av muntlig historia till en sammanhängande akademisk text. Genom exempel från både svensk och internationell litteratur diskuteras här några huvudsakliga konsekvenser av val och formulering av en central forskningsfråga för den slutgiltiga texten. Exemplen är uppdelade enligt deras betoning av vad den muntliga historikern Alessandro Portelli kallar för den muntliga historiens tre nivåer – händelsernas historia, minnets historia, och slutligen samspelet mellan dessa två första nivåer. Fokus ligger på textens övergripande tema, forskningsfråga, struktur samt hur författaren i fråga använder sig av det muntliga materialet. Kapitlet reflekterar därigenom kring hur en text inom muntlig historia kan skrivas fram utifrån en central forskningsfråga.

This article engages in a close comparative reading of the creation of a “Latino” artist identity by two Swedish artists – Fredrik FreddeRico Ekelund and Rodrigo Rodde Bernal. By focusing on the theoretical concept of white Swedish masculinity, it aims to deepen the understanding of how such identities are created within and against the background of specific historical contexts and locations.

This article uses an oral history approach to discuss the Chilean diasporisation process in Sweden after 1973 by focusing on the relevance of a Chilean migration experience within Swedish Hip-hop. Based on an interview with Hip-hop artist Rodrigo ‘Rodde’ Bernal, a member of the Swedenbased group Hermanos Bernal, it outlines the complex ways in which he negotiates difference within what will be called the Hip-hop zone in-between Sweden and Chile. The article argues that strategies for mobilisation that stress Chileans as a group in Sweden become intelligible within the specific historical context of migration and diasporisation in-between Sweden and Chile as well as debates on multiculturalism that took hold in Sweden during the 1990s.