A couple of days ago, I was at the Romerías de Mayo, perhaps the biggest event for young artists in Cuba. And although I'm a fervent admirer of all the arts, I traveled over a hundred kilometers with a clear objective: Rapnarok. This is perhaps the most important freestyle event in the country with a fixed date on the calendar.
While most events in Cuba tend to be inconsistent, every May, the "children of the end" return to this space. Arriving from all over the country, participants come to the city and stay with other participants, friends, or in the few rooms that are available in the city at that time. All with the goal of competing or sharing with fellow artists, because at Rapnarok there are no prizes or financial compensation. Those who go do so out of pure passion, although if the venue charges admission, those on stage leave with nothing, only the roar of the crowd or the post-traumatic stress of their emptiness.
Without a doubt, it's one of the most-watched shows, drawing the biggest crowds at the entire festival, with just a couple of buses and the stage practically on fire. Even so, the participants in this event are usually the ones who have to manage their own resources, accommodations, etc. ("They don't even give us water," one of the participants commented.)
Despite all this, the event goes ahead and is one of the most compelling examples of how alive the art of improvised verse remains, albeit in a modern, urban style, but ultimately one of the treasures of national culture. Even so, there are those who doubt freestyle as an art form, reducing it to mere spectacle, nothing more than a few kids hurling insults at each other.
From this perspective, they ignore the poetic constructions crafted in half a second, the ingenuity, the staging, the literary devices employed, etc. A very complex framework that can be translated into street slang, which in turn makes it accessible to all kinds of audiences. Perhaps it's simply a lack of time, even though freestyle events have been around for over 20 years. Perhaps it's simply a lack of commitment, even though there are young people who travel for more than twelve hours, without any compensation, using their own resources. Perhaps it's a lack of will on the part of the organizers or a lack of understanding of this culture. But despite everything, freestyle continues to draw people in as a spectacle, an art form, a way of life—those moments where glory seems just a rhyme away, while the world crumbles around us.
