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This book examines the history of rap music expressed in Cape Verdean Kriolu in Portugal. Kriolu is a hybrid language spoken by all Cape Verdeans, either native to the archipelago or located in diasporic communities. It emerged in the late fifteenth century through Portuguese colonialism in West Africa and as a result of the Iberian expulsion of Jews and Muslims under the purview of the Spanish Inquisition. Drawing on fieldwork and archival research in Portugal and Cape Verde, this book offers an account of Kriolu rappers in Lisbon and their roles in challenging and potentially transforming metropolitan Portuguese identities. It extends Christian Joppke's interpretation of citizenship in terms of migration by making the encounter the theoretical focus. To this end, the book highlights Creole and grounds the theory in the unique experiences and histories of Cape Verdeans. Through its study of Kriolu rappers in Lisbon, the book illustrates the importance of creolization to identity formation and cultural production.

This chapter examines the new challenges of identity politics that arose after 1974 with the official end of Portuguese colonialism and the implosion of the Salazar-Caetano fascist regime. More specifically, it considers the ways that Cape Verdean Kriolu's conflicted essence both reinforces and interrupts the national paradigm of Portuguese belonging and inclusion represented in a host of Luso categories and discourses. The chapter first argues for the importance of Creole by using history, theory, and ethnography. It then discusses the power of Lusotropicalism as an organizing ideology that continues to inform Portuguese notions of national identity. It also looks at Kriolu rappers and their challenges to lusotropicalism and other Luso discourses, such as Lusofonia. Finally, it highlights the manners in which Kriolu has become a vehicle for difference and discontent in the former metropole of Lisbon.

This chapter examines the relationship of the microstructures of Kriolu phonemes and morphemes to Kriolu rap's narrative themes of discontented diaspora and unfulfilled membership. After providing a background on Kriolu language, the chapter explains how Kriolu rappers use language and how this might shed light into their identity work by highlighting Kriolu as an alternative to tuga (white Portuguese). It then asks why some Lisbon rappers sing in Kriolu rather than Portuguese, and how their use of language is effective in drawing attention to Cape Verdean projects of place-making and belonging. It also looks at Kriolu rappers' adoption of Hezbollah or favorable references to Palestine by citing the LBC/Soldjah song “Liberta Palestina.” It argues that the local language practices evident in Kriolu rap music illuminate an essential component of identity formation, namely, the ideological force of timeplace articulation, or chronotope.

This chapter examines the ideas and policies of interculturality in relation to Kriolu. Building on the argument that there exists something like “Creole citizenship” and that it influences what it is to be “Portuguese,” the chapter explores migration as a shaping force in the “host” country. To this end, it juxtaposes a set of life stories from Cape Verdean Kriolu rappers and their families against policy documents from the European Commission and the Portuguese state agency ACIDI. More specifically, it considers what Kriolu tells us about the state of multiculturalism and interculturality as examples of European community ideals and whether Kriolu might offer important insights into “intercultural competence.” The chapter makes the case that discussions of citizenship and migration necessitate a dialogue between experiences and policies.

This chapter provides historical depth to the claim of a Creole citizenship by analyzing the spatial presence of Africanity inside Lisbon as well as Portugal's special relationship with Cape Verde. It first discusses Creole's historical presences in Portugal before turning to state representations of Africanity and space. It then considers Creole citizenship in Cape Verde, along with Lisbon spatiality and colonial management of space, language, and education. It also examines Kriolu as a language and identity and as a unique formation in Portuguese colonialism. Finally, it assesses the link between racialization and labor practices in the context of citizenship. It argues that Creole has been a significant presence in the formation of “Portuguese” identity, created by encounters and displacements that occurred between Portugal and West and Central Western Africa.

This chapter examines the politics of space of Kriolu presence in Lisbon by focusing on the demolition and relocation campaigns engineered by city urbanization agencies. Space is an irreducible dimension of presence. Kriolu presence refers to the various manifestations of Cape Verde and Cape Verdeans in the metropole. Ths formation is one signifcant influence in the sentiment and management of what it means to be Portuguese and, by extension, European. Cape Verdean presence is historical and linguistic in nature, and forms part of a grounded politics, a struggle for recognition and enfranchisement based in the everyday realities of improvised infrastructure, state campaigns of relocation, and dynamic views on belonging. This chapter argues that there is a “Creole citizenship” emerging in Lisbon and that Kriolu plays an important role in elucidating the differences between autoconstructed neighborhoods and social or state-sponsored project housing. It emphasizes the significance of migration and housing by focusing on the processes of displacement and “emplacement.”

This book has shown how migration, citizenship, and identity—entangled in the tensions between agency and structure—converge in the rap music of Cape Verdeans in Portugal. It has explored how Kriolu rappers and Cape Verdeans have struggled with Manichean ways of viewing the world and categorizing its people, as seen in the repeated tension between Kriolu and tuga, between diasporic migrants and cultural nationalists. The book ends with a set of theoretical conclusions and policy deliverables that bring together anthropological concepts and life experiences of Kriolu. It argues that the distinction of migrancy must be taken into consideration in the current debates on citizenship. It describes Kriolu as a Creole citizenship inside Portugal, as opposed to “Portuguese” or Portuguese iterations of interculturality. It also challenges the current ideas of “Portuguese citizenship” and instead calls for “citizenship in Portugal,” as articulated by Kriolu rappers and advocates of Kriolu identity politics. This would make Portugal a vibrant place of Creole citizenship, where trajectories of language, labor, and exchange intersect.