Transparent Black / Robe L. Ninho

Alina Herrera Fuentes
12.04.2023
6 minutes Reading

Since I started listening to the intro of Transparent Black by Robe L. Ninho, I felt it was the album we were waiting for, that those of us who struggle on the long and rugged road of anti-racism needed. From the sonority to the lyrics. From the aesthetics of the cover to the acoustics. The almost 44 minutes that the album lasts provoked in me that ethos of joy and resistance. A symbiosis between notes born of black musicalities and the whistles of vindication and Afro-consciousness.

Precisely, Mental decolonization (title of the intro) represents the prelude to the central ideas that inspire the 12 tracks that make up the album:

Transparent black. Ubuntu. Anti-racist resistance. Teaching to unlearn.

Afrosowing. Mental decolonization (4 times).

He who descends from kings shall never be a slave. Anti-racist resistance through art.

We are phototype 6, because being black is beautiful.

Blessed is melanin because being black is beautiful.

I am a Maroon!

This is heard with the force of choruses. A series of slogans that have shaken the struggle of black peoples and, above all, the experiences of people of African descent who are trying to recover a philosophy of life marked by blackness, against marginalization and rejection.

UbuntuThe word of South African origin, which in Zulu means "a person is a person because of others" or, more succinctly translated, "I am because we are", marks the place of enunciation of Transparent Black. Robe L.'s voice springs from a collective, ancestral sentiment. Unlearning naturalized racist dynamics (evident or not) is the titanic task to which we submit ourselves daily as racially conscious people. Blackness as a synonym of beauty reminds us of the Black is beautiful and Black Pride, linked to the U.S. civil rights movement of the 1960s and the Black Panthers. At the same time, these struggles took root in the southern territories of the Americas, particularly in Brazil, although they spread throughout the region.

Maroonage recovers the historical memory of those who rebelled against enslavement, the stocks and the barracks. It symbolizes the escape from oppression, the liberation of enslaved black people as a counter-power, counter-system; the possibility of a new life on the margins (in palenques, hidden in the bush) of the slave order.

While listening to the fourth and seventh tracks (Cimarronaje and Cimarron) I thought of some Cuban singers who have also assumed the symbolism of the cimarrón as their own identity. I think of William Vivanco, of Cimafunk, but, above all, of Kumar. Mere identity does not necessarily imply the realization of a work with narratives and interpellations in line with the cimarronaje, or the question of black emancipation. That is why I rescued Subleva'o, by Kumar and MATE.as I was writing these lines.

Long ago I stopped being enslaved by patterns, which I don't know who implanted them. Long ago I broke the shackles that chained my inspiration. My soul became maroon since the day I decided to be as I wanted to be and not as what is fashionable (...) Subleva'o ando, marooning in this concrete jungle, where thoughts are increasingly violent (...) I escaped and I only know that I have my palenque there where no one sees it and like a jibaro dog, my ideas run free, because the roads, were not made alone ¡Subleva'o!

The inheritance from which it is enriched Transparent Black is vast. Above all, it is fed by the Cuban hip hop movement, particularly by outstanding groups such as Anónimo Consejo, Obsesión and Krudxs Cubensi. All of them have vindicated our Afro memory, from a counter-hegemonic reading. by the Cuban nation, with the contribution of the realities, culture and cosmovision of black collectives. Their cimarronaje, therefore, not only incorporates an Afrocentric identity and narrative, but also musical proposals that escape the mercantilist guidelines of the market and its industry.

In Guarachar Thinking you can hear, to the beat of percussive rhythms to move the body well, that ".you can dance without losing the sense, everything that has been moved cannot be banal, nor because it is conceptual it has to be boring. I came to give you rhythm, but with content". It denounces lyrics that advocate violence, drugs and "musical pornography", in reference to (perhaps) to the sexually explicit lyrics of urban and reggaeton music as a function of sales and not of artistic creation; to which he points out as "homophobic, misogynist and sexist".

Robe L. Ninho's latest delivery points to various social debts with the racialized sectors, especially those centered on economic prosperity and a dignified life. Also, and perhaps as I did not expect, he gives us pieces of a deep love allegory from several dimensions, such as paternity.

Your hitsHowever, they are already making their way through the Cuban music scene. Hair Bello and N.E.G.R.O. highlight Afro beauty as forms of resistance and decolonial and disobedient existence, while integrating the use of the "e" as an inclusive language. By mixing Afro-Cuban rhythms with contemporary sonorities, Both themes manage to challenge Eurocentric aesthetics and whiteness as the epicenter of traditional beauty, from discursive plots that unfold history and culture, and through which famous personalities from sports, politics and music parade from a vision of "black pride".

If anything, I would point out the excessive use of militant referents and banners, so as not to move from consciousness in the struggle to a utilitarianism of those symbols. The borders and frontiers are barely visible. Empowerment" and individual success have little to do with philosophy. Ubuntu. That is why serious work must be taken care of when it has an important social impact.

As a friend told me, we need many Robe L. Ninho's proliferating from different fields and causes, with an authentic, committed and challenging aesthetic at the same time. As I listen to the last track, a fragment jumps out that seems to me to be one of the most powerful:

And this goes to all of us who have been part of this artistic movement of resistance, those of us who have made art for the love of art, without resources, with censorship. To all the hiphopers that have killed us, all of us hiphopers Long live Cuban hip hop!