A handful of young Havana natives are roaming the corners of Telegram, Instagram and Twitter. Mam\u00e1 estoy Brillando, Aranda, Unedukated and Chezca Zana, swell what these same artists and their fans have named \"the new generation\". A friend of mine referred to the fact that the capital's public is eager to experience the \"next big thing\". Precisely, few like those of \"the new\" have known how to package their proposals in the style of that great event that everyone seems to be waiting for.<\/p>\n
Influenced by figures mainstream<\/em> such as Bad Bunny, Rosal\u00eda, Travis Scott or Playboi Carti, dabble in all variants of urban music, but far from the conventional ways of approaching these styles in Cuba. A consistent work of promotion, as well as the care for the image and the good management of the networks, has turned them into one of the most interesting events of the underground<\/em> recent Cuban artists. Although most of them stumble in the typical mimesis of those who do not know how to detach themselves from their referents, there is no doubt about the connection they establish with their contemporaries, finding an audience of their own, one that can host in their cell phones, without scares, the playlists<\/em> more eclectic. Thus \"la nueva\" covers the cultural needs of those with converging tastes between alternative music, pop and urban music of national origin. Young people who can make headbang<\/em> and bitching all the way down, as circumstances warrant.<\/p>\n These musicians are also not far from the lyrical forms of the urban. The flexing, the sex and the beef<\/em> are the central axes of their productions. The culture of confrontation, of the exacerbated demonstration of superiority, has not prevented them from falling into controversies. Chezca Zana, with the most peculiar sound among all of them, suffered a regrettable episode of cyberbullying<\/em>He became the target of homophobic and sexist epithets. In response, and adding fuel to the fire, he launched as a single<\/em> El repa es el nuevo punk<\/em>a song that, more than twenty days after its release, still raises hackles among a small but very vocal group of those who, alarmed by the outrageous analogy, defend the \"purity\" and \"superiority\" of punk (emphasis on the sarcasm of the quotation marks).<\/p>\n Beyond the true scope of the controversy, its transcendence or the accuracy of the parallel, the case of Chezca Zana and \"la nueva\" redirects the attention to two issues worth pointing out: the sectarian and dogmatic character with which we usually assume the music, and how the context of this wave of new artists, far from simply adding them to the rest of the urban artists on the island, makes them appropriate these styles to re-signify them in the process. But...<\/p>\n Who is Chezca Zana?<\/strong><\/p>\n Daniel Sanchez Carrazana was among the finalists in the Minors category of the Primera Base 2021 contest. Those who have seen his presentation in that virtual edition of the contest within the Havana World Music festival, will remember a geek<\/em>with Pink Floyd pullover, midi keyboard and Ibanez guitar. Despite the \"greenness\" of their music, an identity could be traced: urban influence, progressions, subtle, almost atmospheric harmonies, and lyrics that oscillated between the cryptic and the colloquial.<\/p>\n Since then, Chezca Zana would explore his possibilities as a producer and composer. At Biting the Sky<\/em> achieves a marriage between trap and electronic textures, including an unusual sampler<\/em> by Night Icarus<\/em>by Havana singer-songwriter Fito del R\u00edo. The subsequent Nothing Happens<\/em> change the focus: this is a social critique lite<\/em>to the rhythm of synthpop<\/em> and witty lyrics. It was not until the release of Pa'Jaloween<\/em> that Chezca Zana would radically move away from his previous experiments to realize the sound that, until now, defines him: hyper-reparto.<\/p>\n Of \"hyper\", hyperreparto has nothing. Chezca Zana is aware of this. As she stated in an interview for Social TV, she used the term only to label her music in some way. What's new in tracks like El Palito<\/em>, Blankito del Vedado<\/em> or Pa'Jalloween<\/em>The main idea is to take the rhythmic base of the cast to play with new sound effects, to resort to abrupt changes in the beat<\/em> or modify the pitch<\/em> of the voice. He doesn't come close to the excesses and sound pastiches of artists like 100gecs or Food House, nor does he break away from the commonplaces of repartee lyrics. On the other hand, what he does achieve and makes him stand out among his peers, is to abandon the rigid frameworks of trap and imbue an authentically Cuban sound with other qualities that no other producer has ever dealt with.<\/p>\n Chezca Zana's mere proposal is divisive: a young, white, cisgender, violet-haired, dyed-violet-haired, white, cisgendered man, looking geek<\/em> and aesthetic<\/em> (a lo e-boy<\/em> Internet) that, at the same time, dabbles in the urban genre. His artistic persona seeks to provoke the audience from the -supposed- maxim that the rock and alternative world does not mix with reggaeton, trap, and much less with the cast. However, he belongs to a generation to which the international success of artists like Bad Bunny, as well as the fading of the \"urban tribes\", has positively influenced the expansion of their sound preferences and frontiers.<\/p>\n Footnotes to Much Text<\/strong><\/p>\n Like Social TV, Mucho Texto is a project that seeks to extend the reach of \"the new\", while reflecting on the emerging Cuban art that is bursting into Internet spaces. El repa es el nuevo punk<\/em> is the Mucho Texto video that functions as a sort of manifesto for the Chezca Zana theme.<\/p>\n https:\/\/youtu.be\/2nhx7glhjVE<\/a><\/p>\n Much Text equates punk (especially the style of Cuban punks) to the cast. The video barely scratches the surface of the issue and raises as a central argument the \"exaltation of violence\" of both manifestations; however, and although this last point is highly debatable, it establishes a half-truth. There is room to consider such a comparison.<\/p>\n Both are phenomena that express the concerns and aspirations of the sectors they represent and break with the canons of popular genres that preceded them. But beyond this (except for the fact that they also appeal to minimalist musical elements, with a tendency towards a raw and irreverent lyric) there are no other perceptible points of contact. To state that El repa es el nuevo punk<\/em> is as accurate as saying that hip hop is the new punk, that reggaeton is the new punk, and (anachronistically speaking) that the blues<\/em> and the bebop<\/em> are the new punk.<\/p>\n While the latter has been contentious, with a leaning towards leftist tendencies such as anarchism or Marxism, and originated by mostly middle-class white youths; the cast does not pretend any kind of criticism or explicit social signaling. Fun, partying, flexing and sex are its vocabularies. Its most iconic artists belong to a systematically oppressed class and ethnic group. The content of their music does not incite direct action in the face of injustice; instead, their songs are a sincere apology for lifestyles unknown to those without privilege. As Raymar Aguado Hern\u00e1ndez and Leyla Mancebo Bada put it (in words more intelligent than mine) in the text Effect and concept. From the eyes of a dealer: the cast<\/em><\/a>The \"reparteros\" are \"reporters and discursors of a social reality that the so-called 'high culture' tries to make invisible within a classist and excluding order\".<\/p>\n Although I believe that Mucho Texto and Chezca Zana understand the differences and are motivated by controversy and viral marketing, more than a serious analysis, the essence of this attempt at parallelism seems to respond to the implicit and instinctive need to \"glamorize\" the cast. All this is reminiscent, saving distances, of the whitewashing to which reggaeton was exposed in Cuba, in the ways of the Secret Office. This resignification and appropriation (in addition to the thorniness of using that term) simply responds to the extreme popularity enjoyed by these currents. It is nothing new either. Son or Afro-Cuban music went through similar processes.<\/p>\n The audience and artists of \"la nueva\" come from a different socioeconomic background than their repas counterparts. The memes, the shitpost<\/em>the acidic discussions on Twitter, the jargon of video games, or design trash<\/em>shape their cultural universes. For many, our relationship with the cast has been mediated by the so-called \"ironic consumption\". Perhaps the Chocolate MC directs or a edit<\/em> by By-Us<\/em> provoked a liking for the cast. And this is a good thing, since the cast has the merit, as Rafa G. Escalona states in Cast: <\/a>in the Malec\u00f3n we only dance this son<\/em><\/a>to \"put in a contemporary key\" desire as an unavoidable theme in music; to recover \"(...) the 'popular' condition of Cuban dance music, of the street, by the street, and for the street\". But, although nobody denies the admiration that Chezca Zana feels for figures like Wampi, the context is defining and the approach to the genre by a black teenager from Santa Clara County, with precarious economic conditions, is not going to be the same as the one experienced by a \"blankito from Vedado\".<\/p>\n