Derek Pardue (left) in São Paulo, Brazil, in May 2007 with Roger, the DJ for the rap group Potencial 3. Roger is also the producer (sound engineeer) for dozens of other underground groups trying to release CD recordings.

My primary research takes me to urban Brazil, where I have been conducting fieldwork with hip hoppers over the past 12 years. In a lesser capacity, I have been involved in research related to Brazilian soccer, to restaurant design, and to experience in the United States.

Latin America has never been far from U.S. and “western” European imagination. As the original “noble savages,” Latin Americans have fulfilled a myriad of images of pure and natural beauty as well as brute and cannibalistic heathen. A relationship of interdependency was thus created. From colonial times to the present, Latinidad and its dynamic manifestations in economy, language, politics, and expressive culture have shaped, in part, the contours of capitalism, the nation-state, and “world beat.” In the realm of popular culture, Latin America has exerted an undeniable impact on the United States in particular and thus, by extension, on global art, music, and fashion. Unfortunately, most of this impact has been understood as one Latin thing.

The role of Brazil, the largest Latin American nation in size and home to approximately one-third of all Latin America inhabitants, has been generally downplayed or simply subsumed as “Hispanic.” Not only is the language Portuguese, not Spanish, but the Brazilian crioulo is not the “Creole” of political icon Símon Bolívar or the “Creole” of New Orleans or, for that matter, the kreyol of Haiti. A cursory look at Brazil whets the appetite of anyone interested in race, identity, and globalization.

My research focuses on the vibrant culture of hip hop in Brazil’s largest city of São Paulo, a metropolis of 20 million people. I have concentrated on analyzing the ideologies of “reality” and “marginality” in Brazilian rap, DJ-ing, and, to a lesser extent, graffiti and street dance. I argue that hip hop, while certainly a product of globalized flows of information and technology, is by no means homogenous. Culture, in general, and pop culture, more specifically, should be understood as generative and thus meaningful as a set of practices. When interpreted in this manner, local hip hoppers become closer to what they claim to be - subjects rather than objects of history and everyday life.

In my work, I have highlighted the analytical categories of race, class, gender, territory, and visual/sound design. In the summer of 2007 I embarked on a new project in Lisbon, Portugal, related to the connections between hip hop and current notions of Portuguese citizenship.