Roma youth in Czech rap music: stereotypes, objectification and ‘triple inauthenticity’

ABSTRACT

The article examines the position of Roma youth in Czech rap music. We focus on the role of cultural translation of hip hop culture in general and rap music in particular and the accompanying notions of authenticity. The findings challenge the romantic notion of hip hop as a platform for oppressed marginal communities to express their lived experiences and opinions; rather, we analyze the invisibility and misrepresentation of the Roma in Czech rap music. Using qualitative research methods (in-depth interviews, discourse analysis of rap lyrics and participant observation at hip hop events) we first look at the attitudes of ‘white’ (majority) Czech rappers towards the Roma community. In the second part of the article, we focus on the Roma presence in Czech rap music, in particular on two case studies of Roma youth groups, as well as on the roles of youth workers and educators and their appropriation of hip hop as a form of Roma integration. Finally we discuss the threat of the burden of a ‘triple inauthenticity’ of Roma youth in Czech rap music.

KEYWORDS:

• Rap
• hip hop
• Roma
• Czech Republic
• authenticity
• integration

Introduction

Why has rap, in the context of the Czech Republic, become the voice of the white middle class rather than the socially excluded Roma community? Does Czech rap have the potential to be used as a platform for marginalized community, similarly to the way in which it is used by African Americans in the U.S.A.? And if not, why, and what are the socio-cultural barriers? The aim of this article is to position the roles and the portrayal of Czech Roma rappers in contemporary Czech rap music, and in response to the international debate regarding the role of minorities in rap music outside the U.S.A., formulate explanations for the marginal position of Roma communities in Czech rap music.

In this paper, we seek to examine the relationship between ethnicity and rap music production, especially the position of young people who identify as Roma rappers. After the methodology section and short introductory section on the situation of Roma minority in the Czech Republic, we will first look at the attitudes of white Czech¹ rappers towards the Roma community, as expressed in interviews and lyrics, shaped by the myth of authenticity on one hand and stereotypes of the Roma community on the other. These stereotypes seem to mirror the overall sentiment of Czech society, in which the whole Roma community is assigned collective blame and is viewed as ‘problematic’ and ‘inadaptable’ due to misconceptions about Roma culture. Based on this discourse supported by media representation, it seems that the members of the Roma community are either very talented musicians on one hand or criminals and lazy individuals living off benefits on the other.

We then move to discuss the objectification of the Roma community in Czech rap music as we analyze selected rap records. The references to the Roma community seem to always serve a specific agenda, as the Roma appear as an object of compassion, solidarity, or for the purpose of rappers’ political programs.

In the second part we briefly outline the presence of Roma rappers in Czech hip hop, and we look at the way hip hop culture and rap music serve as a means of Roma integration, especially in youth clubs in areas with a substantial Roma population, and at the role of mentors and activists involved in this process. We will also point to a particular case in which a Roma rapper gave rise to a local moral panic.

The discursive construction of authenticity (or lack thereof) represents the key concept in our study. Even though the term is highly contested, it is nevertheless of great importance to hip hop (sub)cultures all over the world. As a result of commodification and commercialization of rap music specifically and its crossover to mainstream popular culture, the distinction of ‘real’ or ‘true’ rap/hip hop becomes crucial for the members of hip hop (sub)cultures (cf. McLeod 1999; Rose 2008; Ochmann 2013). This emic concept thus can be used to gain insights into the subcultural values. The analysis of what the members of hip hop (sub)culture consider to be (in)authentic reveals key elements in their identity construction.

We conclude our paper with a discussion of the main argument of our text: while Soysal (2004) identifies the concept of ‘double inauthenticity’ in relation to the rap production of European minorities (as foreigners in an alien culture reproducing an alien art), we argue that members of Roma communities expressing themselves via hip hop in the Czech Republic face a ‘triple inauthenticity’. The first aspect of inauthenticity sees rap as an art form imported from the United States. Double inauthenticity is the result of the artistic expression of each individual Roma rapper being judged not as a unique performance but in terms of the rapper’s role as a representative of and a speaker for the collective Roma community. The third aspect, we argue, is based on the fact that the Czech majority defines what it means to be Roma, which creates a burden of expectations placed on the community.

Methodology

For the purpose of this article we worked with three different sets of data. The first set consists of fifteen in-depth interviews with Czech rappers carried out between January 2014 and June 2016. The rappers were chosen on the basis of their current active participation in the Czech hip hop scene. The sample includes rappers between the ages of 21 and 38. Two of them are female,² four of them identify as Roma and three of the interviewees have experience in working with Roma youth (usually providing rap workshops for youth clubs). Because of the sensitive nature of the questions the rappers will remain anonymous.

Questions concerning topics related to the Roma community represent one part of in-depth interviews, which focused on the construction of authenticity in Czech rap music (including 4–5 follow up questions). Most of the questions were formulated openly in order not to determine answers (for example ‘what role does race play in today’s rap music’ or ‘what comes to your mind when somebody says “ghetto”’ and ‘how would you describe “street life”’). However, in some cases, a proposed parallel with the prominence of African Americans in the US rap music framed the questions regarding race and/or ethnicity. Other specific questions were added during interviews with respondents based on our previous knowledge of their activities (as in the case of Roma youth workers).

We used qualitative content analysis for the data we collected through interviews. We began with the process of open coding in order to identify the themes related to the rappers’ understanding of hip hop and whether they perceive it as a platform for marginalized communities, and their attitudes and experiences with the Roma community. In the second stage, the axial coding, we focused on identifying the relationship between these categories (Corbinová and Anselm 1999). The focus of our coding is clearly visible from our analysis in the next section.

The second data set consists of discourse analysis of selected rap lyrics. While listening to the work of Czech rappers we realized that there were very few rap songs written by majority rappers that explicitly dealt with the Roma minority (besides anecdotal references or stereotypes). The songs we analyzed for the purpose of this article are the most representative ones.

Finally, the third data set consists of participant observation and informal interviews with two Roma youth rap groups (UGC and De La Negra) and their mentors. During our fieldwork, we attended workshops and events in Prague, and we also attended De La Negra’s performances in other Czech towns (Duchcov, Ústí nad Labem). Our field notes included the character and the setting of the performance and interactions with the audience. We also analyzed official interviews (in the press or on the radio) and recorded material related to these two groups.

The situation of the Roma in the Czech Republic

Czech Roma survived centuries of repression, with its peak during the Holocaust, when approximately 5500 of 6000 Czech Roma were killed (Nečas 1999). This fact and the participation of the Czech majority in the concentration of Roma (for example running some of the concentration camps) have caused painful collective memory debates, which are important even today (cf. Sniegon 2014). The ancestors of the majority of the Czech Roma were moved from the Slovak part of common state after WWII. Today, according the governmental report of 2017, there is approximately 250 000 Roma living in the Czech Republic. Half of them are facing some form of social exclusion, which has socio-economic, spatial and educational aspects (Romea 2014). All the Roma also face hostile or openly racist attitudes from the Czech majority, discrimination, as well as violence and hate speech (cf. Toušek 2018; Walach 2018; Belavusau 2013).

Being an object of repressive paternalism of the Czechoslovak Communist party meant forced employment for the Roma community, and also suppression of Roma self-organization and forced sterilization of Roma women. After the Velvet revolution in 1989, Roma faced high unemployment, racist attacks and often even loss of citizenship (after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1992).

Roma citizens appear as news-makers in crime reports, and these negative contexts contribute to ‘a cumulative negative effect in the community mindset’ and mean a ‘disproportionate relationship of association is established between Roma and violent crime’ (Slavíčková and Zvagulis 2014, 167). Other images and prevalent stereotypes supported by media representations include Roma people as lazy, unemployed, uneducated people who abuse the social security system and its benefits (see also Imre 2005).

Even after rise (and fall) of Roma political self-organization, Roma are underrepresented in various segments of politics and culture which corresponds with their low social power and insecurities in their identity constructions. According to Stejskalová (2012, 60) ‘Roma people do not control social definition of their identity because it is the Czech majority who provides the meanings’, filled mainly by superficial and stereotypical notions of traditional Roma culture, generalized social problems, the ‘culture of poverty’ and some forms of behavior attributed to Roma community (criminal tendencies, musical talent, nomadic lifestyle or migration). These meanings create the burden of expectations of what it means to be Czech Roma and how this community should properly behave according to the Czech majority.

Point of view of the Czech rappers: stereotypes and the invisibility of the Roma

During the past four decades, hip hop culture, which according to the origin myth (Krims 2001, 77) was created in the poorest parts of the South Bronx in the late 1970s by black and brown youth, has become a powerful global force. A substantive amount of current scholarship (Alim, Ibrahim, and Pennycook 2009; Terkourafi 2010; Nitzsche and Grünzweig 2013) focuses on the different forms of ‘glocal’ hip hop (sub)cultures. Local youth draws on the aesthetic properties of the original (Afro-American) hip hop culture and uses its elements to express the unique local conditions, circumstances and experiences (Alim, Ibrahim, and Pennycook 2009).

According to most of the studies of hip hop outside the U.S.A., the common feature of hip hop scenes seems to be their ‘multiethnic, multicultural nature as vernacular expressions of migrant diasporic cultures’ (Mitchell 2002, 10). Hip hop in general and rap music in particular are often considered a vehicle for disadvantaged youth (Terkourafi 2010). While this may be the case in the large multicultural cities of Western Europe, the situation in central eastern European countries, which are generally viewed as racially homogenous, is still an area that requires more research.³

The first signs of the nascent hip hop scene in the Czech Republic can be traced back to 1993 when the first graffiti artists started to form the first rap groups.⁴ Fast forward two decades later, and rap music is one of the most popular music genres among young people, with aspects of hip hop culture and its elements (breakdance, DJing, graffiti, beatbox) used to sell everything from pluming services to McDonald’s.

Looking at the Czech hip hop scene and rap music (past and present), one can count the members of a minority group with substantial exposure on one hand. It seems that the Czech Republic is indeed a homogeneous society, and if Czech rap lyrics can be said to mirror the local circumstances, then the biggest concerns of Czech rappers are: other (untalented) rappers, the state of rap in general and making it from paycheck to paycheck. Czech rap music is currently dominated by (relatively) young white, (lower) middle class men (Oravcová 2013).

It is not surprising that hip hop in the Czech Republic was taken up by the (lower) middle classes, since access to technology, disposable income, and travel opportunities were the key aspects in becoming a hip hop fan/subculture member (see also Fernandes 2011, 14). The language barrier and the fact that there are virtually no shared experiences between hip hop’s originators and Czech fans and hip hop artists have given rise to misunderstandings about the origins of hip hop and, in the specific case of our study, race relations (see also Fink 2006). According to Raphael-Herynandez (2004, 6) the acceptance of African American influences ‘does not reveal that these young generations have grown in their understanding of black issues’, and the fascination with black culture ‘often also carries some problematic forms of extreme naïveté’ when it comes to the specific issues of the African American community.

When performing ‘authentic’ hip hop in the Czech Republic, ultimately an alien art that is not an organic home-grown cultural expression but an imported and appropriated art form, the imperative to be ‘real’ and believable becomes the most important feature. There is a strong emphasis on personal and representational authenticity (Barker and Taylor 2007, x) in Czech rap music. Making authentic rap music also means creating a sincere relationship with the audience (Jeffries 2010). Czech rappers use their mother tongue to express their attitudes and experiences while condemning anyone who tries to imitate a reality that does not reflect the Czech circumstances.

Besides the ever-present myth of authenticity, permanent themes in rap discourse such as the ‘ghetto’, gang violence and drug distribution, are portrayed with a dose of romanticism, especially when referring to Western metropolises. These narratives are appealing as a source of a specific style. They are ‘cool’ because they represent the West, and they are also non-threatening because of the geographical distance. On the other hand, the Roma community does not represent anything related to coolness and there is nothing romantic about the socially-excluded localities of the Czech Republic, heavily populated by Roma and a possible equivalent to the American ‘ghetto’ (cf. Wacquant 2012; Stejskalová 2013).

It is quite rare for a rapper representing the majority population to point to the situation of Roma people, because of the performative imperative of how ‘real’ rap is done. For a rapper representing the majority to rap about something that is not his lived experience (e.g. living in the heavily Roma-populated excluded localities) would be viewed as highly inauthentic. Furthermore, rappers representing the majority (and the middle class with aspirations to move towards the upper middle class) have no real understanding of the complexities of life in Roma ‘ghettos’ on one hand, and nor are they really aware of their own white privilege. The living conditions and oppression that the Roma community faces in the Czech Republic are not seen as a parallel to the experiences of the African American community in the birthplace of hip hop, with the romantic overtones that the Czech rappers ascribe to them (see also Imre 2005, 83).

On a similar note, when Czech rappers do write about racism and race/ethnic relations, they tend to formulate broad moral (or less often political) proclamations. Even though the anti-racist stance is a substantial part of the Czech rap mainstream, it most often consists of general statements. The question is whether this stance can be interpreted as a way of following the standards of rap discourse, a mere copy of the foreign model, or as a way of expressing one’s experience with racist skinheads and neo-Nazis (prominent Czech rappers refer to these groups as they are, on occasions, supporting militant anti-fascist events).

The attitudes of Czech rappers towards the Roma minority seem to mirror the overall sentiment of the Czech population.⁵ Proximity to the Roma community and personal experiences are the leading factors in shaping the attitudes of Czech rappers. Based on the interviews, Czech rappers tend to misunderstand Roma history, Roma traditions, and living conditions (as does the general public in the Czech Republic). In some cases the negative feelings towards minorities are not connected to actual negative experiences, but the ‘proof’ is based on second-hand experiences (something that a friend has witnessed), or collective blame is assigned to the whole Roma community on the basis of one experience or of media representations (Horváthová 2002, 58).

The rappers we interviewed all agreed that hostility and indifference towards the Roma minority could be found among members of the Czech hip hop subculture, including other rappers. When asked about the relationship between the portrayal of hip hop culture as a platform for the voiceless from the margins of society and the apparent lack of Roma rappers in Czech rap music, they came up with a fairly broad spectrum of possible explanations. Their attitudes ranged from seeing no apparent connection between Roma and hip hop and suggesting that race and ethnicity were not understood as one and the same (‘I don’t think that hip hop has anything to do with Roma people. They have their culture, their music, and I don’t see why they should be involved in hip hop’ I 10) to expressions of latent racism, racial prejudice and stereotypes (sometimes conceived as positive characteristics: ‘maybe they should be the ones to do hip hop, they have music and dance in their blood’ I 8). Including the perception that Roma youth’s lack of ambition and education is down to personal failure rather than being a matter of institutional racism. The rappers interviewed also referred to violence and criminal activities attributed to minority as its specific characteristics as well as ‘reverse racism’ whereby the majority supposedly faces oppression because it does not have access to the benefits that Roma people have. It seems that in Czech rap music there is a lack of awareness of the issues that pertain to the Roma minority, their struggles and living conditions remain an invisible one.

Race and ethnicity play a major role in establishing authenticity in hip hop. In the context of American hip hop, blackness is a standard of authenticity (McLeod 1999) and white rappers have employed different strategies to negotiate a perception of their position as authentic (see for example Hess 2005; Rodriquez 2006). The construction of authenticity in Czech rap music, which is remade and remixed to suit the local circumstances, does not require a rapper to have an ethnic or racial minority background. As Westinen (2014, 67) notes in her dissertation on the discourses of authenticity in hip hop in Finland, another country considered racially homogeneous, race and ethnicity are not a ‘particularly highlighted issue in local rap topics, perhaps because whiteness has been somewhat unmarked’.

Even though authenticity is always a discursive construct, with permeable barriers that indicate what is, or is not ‘real’ or ‘true’ hip hop depending on whether one claims to be ‘underground’ (in tune with the roots of hip hop culture) or ‘mainstream’ (part of the commercial music industry) it is also a concept with real consequences. Authenticity in the Czech Republic is closely tied to whiteness – without being explicitly stated, it is presumed that a Czech rapper will be ethnic (that is white) Czech, which tacitly puts Roma youth in a position of inauthenticity.

According to Soysal (2004) and his study of the Berlin hip hop scene, Turkish hip hop artists in Germany and Beurs in France have to deal with ‘double inauthenticity’ as foreigners in an alien culture reproducing an alien art (see also Franz 2015a, 98). The Roma community in the Czech Republic is considered ‘the other’, representing an alien culture, and Roma youth do not and cannot fulfill the criteria of whiteness. The Roma community has its own, traditional style of music, and therefore it is liable to be seen as inauthentic if it tries to actively engage in rap music. Part of this has to do with the portrayal of Roma in Czech rap music.

The objectification of Roma in Czech rap lyrics

References to Roma people in the lyrics of Czech rappers are rare. The repertoire of the major rap artists and their bands does not include the topic of Roma people. There are only a couple of references where the Roma are constructed as a means to paint a picture using classic stereotypes (‘I am lazier than a Gypsy’ in the song Lůzr (2009) by Orion and James Cole), or as an expression of anti-racist sentiment. An example is when Vladimír 518 (a Czech hip hop pioneer and front man of the biggest hip hop label, BiggBoss) reminisces about his classmates in the song Planeta Praha (Planet Prague, 2013). One of them was a Roma girl (‘dark as night’), and he regrets the wasted opportunity to offer her a helping hand when she was not accepted by other classmates because of her dark skin. In his lyrics the anti-racism takes the form of the emotions of shame, the feeling of lost opportunity and personal failure. At the same time the Roma are portrayed as the object of ‘help’ which is underlined by the gender aspect of the text – it is the boy from the majority who ought to extend a helping hand to the minority girl.

The three rap songs that deal with the topic of attitudes towards the Roma community were written as a form of reaction to the wave of ‘anti-gypsyism’ and hate marches between 2008 and 2013. The most significant one is probably the manifesto Trvalo tři generace (It took three generations, 2012) by Lipo, Bonus and Kato. Lipo, who hails from the city of Liberec, is the only artist that is currently signed to a major record label (Universal Music). Bonus, on the other hand, is a rapper and poet often considered to represent an alternative scene. He takes part in different projects that mix hip hop with electronic music, and he also mentors a Roma youth group called Cincinaty which was formed during the ‘Music incubator’ project at the youth center Plechárna in Prague 9 (a neighborhood with a significant Roma population) in 2013. Kato is a hip hop veteran who used to be a member of the very first commercially successful hip hop group Chaozz (late 1990s). Now a member of the group Prago Union, Kato is often considered the best lyricist in Czech rap music because of his wordplay and usage of double or even triple entendre. All three of them (especially Bonus) are recognized as alternative rappers rather than big mainstream ‘stars’.

The song Trvalo tři generace puts Roma rights in the context of the history of other recent emancipation movements (especially African Americans, but also women, gay people and migrants). The oppression of Roma people is understood as injustice, one that is historically obsolete, which indicates an implicit modernist discourse. Bonus sees racism as a part of the upside-down ideological worldview of the majority: ‘gypsies call for racist demonstrations/the unemployed are the reason there is no work/and I blame the homeless for the price of apartments’. These lyrics also stress the discrepancy between ‘equal rights on paper’ and their internalization in the actual behavior of society and the attitudes of individuals. The anti-racism expressed here takes on the form of a moral critique that is rooted in the idea of emancipation via history, that the post-Communist countries will eventually reach the level of Western ones, but it will be a long struggle. These attitudes are expressed in the chorus of the song: ‘It took three generations to do/what I wanted to accomplish in two years/said the Roma man when he heard that he was the target of gossip … we are still at the beginning/full of hatred, full of fear’.

The other two texts analyzed are written by relatively marginal rappers who both used the term Inadaptable (Nepřizpůsobiví) as the title of their song. This term is used as an antagonist code word for Roma people, in some cases referring to ‘problematic’ Roma, but also to ‘problematic’ poor people in general. It is this shift from race to ‘problematic’ behavior that is at the core of the term as well as its openness to alternative definitions (cf. the debate on ‘new racism’).

The two approaches are very distinctive. The radically left-wing, anarchist-oriented female rapper Potmě (In the Dark) identifies with the ‘inadaptable-ness’ and tries to re-signify it not only as a positive value, but also as a political program. On the other hand, the horrorcore rapper Řezník (The Butcher, who is the object of major social controversy because of his other lyrics full of violence towards women and homeless people) is very open in his hatred towards the ‘inadaptable’, which leads him to glorify violence and, at the same time, to propose changes in public policy.

The only feature that the songs by Potmě and Řezník have in common, besides their title, are the opening lines depicting and quoting the negative media portrayal of the ‘inadaptable’. Both artists are reacting to the moral panic, the mobilization of the general public against the Roma people and the repressive measures taken by the state. For Potmě it is identification with the negative label that is the key gesture: the whole song (which was to some extent inspired by the song La rage by French female rapper Keny Arkana) is written in the first person, switching from singular to plural – while she is performing an ideological colonization of the life of the excluded minority. The label ‘we’ references a term describing the Roma community, and soon the author extends it to a subject that is identified with an anarchist critique of the society and an antagonistic relationship to this society.

Potmě starts with the problems of society, distancing herself from it by adopting its labels (‘we are socially excluded and inadaptable’). From a critique of consumerism, social inequalities and manipulation the author then moves towards the rejection of social norms and to anti-capitalism (‘because we refused to behave properly, buy, pay, own, produce’) and finally to a declaration of radical protest and revolutionary violence. This way the Roma people in combination with the induced moral panic associated with the ‘inadaptables’ become more of a contemporary romantic backdrop for anarchist ideology rather than a distinctive topic with its own specific nature.

Řezník adopted a completely different stance. He legitimized the attitudes expressed in his song by stating that he comes from the town of Rumburk (in the north of the Czech Republic) and that this was a place where there had been a sharp increase in crime, followed by large public protests. In his lyrics he states that race is an irrelevant category when it comes to the ‘inadaptable’ (‘I don’t care if they are black, yellow, white, what pisses me off is that they don’t adapt’) and he reacts to the media portrayal of the ‘inadaptable’ with a suggestion for a ‘solution’ that will be ‘final this time’ (it is not clear if the author is aware that this statement could allude to the Nazi ‘final solution’).

Řezník celebrates violence against ‘inadaptables’ (‘any robbery deserves a broken hand’ or ‘I quiver with joy when a drug house blows up/gambling house goes bankrupt/useless drug addict collapses’) followed by the repressive measures he would implement. A horrorcore rapper becomes a policy maker and moralist, introducing a detailed list of steps he would take against the ‘inadaptables’, speaking from the position of a ‘good citizen’. Even though he usually portrays himself as an unconventional and norm-breaking hero, suddenly he is concerned with the ‘inadaptables’ because they ‘cannot behave’ and laments that he is ‘worried about his friends, worried about his parents’. In some cases the use of hyperbole is obvious; however, most of the time there is a call for repressive attitudes or a celebration of the repressive measures that were proposed at that time (register of offences, unemployment benefits made conditional upon forced labor).

To conclude, when Roma appear in the lyrics of Czech rappers, they do so in the role of objects related to a solidarity that is tied to historical and spatial analogies (Lipo/Bonus/Kato), sentimental regret regarding personal failure (Vladimír 518), ideological appropriation for the purposes of the rapper’s own political program (Potmě) or hatred and oppression (Řezník). Negative attitudes are expressed solely by an extreme (but accepted) figure on the hip hop scene, and even he distances himself from racism (in line with the frequent public attitude of Czech people who express ‘anti-gypsy’ sentiment using phrases like ‘I am not a racist, but … ’, corresponding to a ‘new racism’).

Most rappers ignore Roma people and their problems, or register them only marginally. When Roma people do become the main theme they are treated as objects of compassion or solidarity. These sentiments are related to the romantic image of their oppression which can be then connected to mythicized emancipation narratives (of Civil Rights Movements that Lipo uses or the anarchist revolution narratives to which Potmě refers). Even sympathetic objectification motivated by an aversion to racism is still objectification. In this case rap about Roma people is not based on communication with the excluded community, and it has no connection to their participation. These kinds of attitudes at best express sadness at the loss of opportunity for such communication (Vladimír 518), while at other times they represent the projection of emancipation strategies while still making the Roma people a depersonalized and stylized symbol of oppression. In this narrative the Roma become not only the object of oppression but paradoxically also the object of their own emancipation.

Czech rap lyrics play a small part in the reproduction and formation of the burden of expectations placed on the Roma community, which we have described earlier. In the following section, we will demonstrate how the burden of expectation influences and forms two rap projects by young Czech Roma.

Roma rappers in Czech hip hop

Rapper and music producer Gipsy is one of the most visible Roma artists in Czech rap music. Gipsy started out in 1997 as a member of a collective of rappers called Syndrom Snopp, with whom he recorded four studio albums. In 2006 Gipsy formed another group called Gipsy.cz which combines traditional Roma music with hip hop, as the title of their first CD Romano Hip Hop, suggests (see also Imre 2009, 121). Besides these collaborations Gipsy recorded solo studio albums, including one in English (Ya Favorite CD Rom) focusing on the so-called ‘Roma problem’ with a dose of irony. Dočkal (2007) who analyzed the relationship between Roma youth and hip hop culture in his diploma thesis, states that Gipsy’s popularity among the Roma community is based on his ethnicity and his fame. The ‘white’ majority also celebrates Gipsy because he is an ‘acceptable’ member of the Roma community (Dočkal 2007, 9) suggesting that his activities and representations may be in keeping with the prescribed role.

The Czech hip hop community sometimes attacks Gipsy for being too ‘soft’ and therefore inauthentic (the rather vulgar lyrics of Supercrooo’s song Dřepim s courou (2007) describe Gipsy as always whining). It appears that a Roma rapper cannot use the same level of vulgarity and violence in his music as a majority rapper, because it would not be judged as a rebellion (or spectacular excess) on the part of an individual young person. Instead it would be considered an affirmation of the stereotype of the abnormality of the Roma community as a whole. In the autumn of 2016 Gipsy publicly protested the success of a group called Ortel, which has textual and personal ties to the far-right movement. When he walked out of a music award ceremony he was applauded by liberal antiracists (his protest made the headlines of major newspapers, and the leaders of the right wing liberal party TOP09 personally expressed their support for him) while his opponents tried to discredit him by pointing to sexist/pornographic lyrics he wrote when he was sixteen years old.

Slovak rapper Rytmus embodies Roma pride probably even more than Gipsy. Because of the shared history, culture and proximity of the languages, Slovak rap is popular in the Czech Republic (and vice versa) and Rytmus, as a solo artist and a member of the group Kontrafakt, is the best-selling rap act in both these countries. The documentary/movie Sídliskový sen (Neighborhood Dream, Drobný 2015) depicts Rytmus’ journey as he deals with his ethnic identity, coming to terms with being half Roma and eventually embracing it after a period of hiding his ethnic background. In the eyes of the Roma community, especially young people, he is someone who ‘started from the bottom’ and now he is recording music videos in Brooklyn and flying a golden helicopter to his old neighborhood. Besides playing at big venues Rytmus is also known for supporting Roma pride events, where he encourages Roma youth not to be put down or stopped by prejudice and discrimination (see also Ruzicka et al. 2017, 223). Hip hop style in general and Rytmus’ style in particular is a source of self-identification for Roma youth (see also Obrovská 2016, 65). In fact one member of the UGC rap group was targeted and accused of merely imitating the style and rap delivery of Rytmus.

Besides musicians, who see rap as a form of artistic expression, rap is becoming an attractive tool for social workers and activists working with the youth. Here the intersection of identity, (anti)racism and expectations of majority becomes particularly important and pressing issue.

Roma youth and activist/youth organizations

In the past few years activists and social workers in youth clubs (especially in Roma neighborhoods) have started to recognize the potential of hip hop and its elements as not only entertainment but also a tool for education (and subsequently integration) in after school programs. In this section, we focus on two case studies of Roma youth groups and their relationship with youth workers and activists.

UGC

United Gipsy Crew is a more or less stable group of young men who live in Prague 3 and frequent the local club Beztíže, associated with the youth center Ulita. The group was formed during the Youth in Action grant project called ‘Slova místo zbraní’ (Words instead of weapons) which started in September 2011. The idea for the project came from Roma activist Ivanka ‘Mariposa’ Čonková, who was inspired by the dynamics of hip hop and its potential to be a platform for the cause of social justice. She was introduced to hip hop pedagogy by African American rapper/poet/social worker/activist Spiritchild who mentored local Roma youth during an intensive weekend workshop. For the rest of the year the young people continued working with Czech rapper/poetry slam artist Metoděj. They met each week and worked on lyrics and delivery, and eventually recorded a couple of songs.

In the first one, Gypsy song, the members of the group expressed their feelings and experiences of being Roma and what this identification means to them. The second single they released was called Nebuď dilino! (Don’t be an idiot!), the theme song for a campaign that was supposed to raise awareness of Roma issues in education, specifically the tendency to send young Roma to establishments known as ‘practical schools’. The music video for this song generated much controversy and discussion. The video, which featured UGC members and other ‘successful’ Roma representatives, was supposed to show the importance of education. However, since the budget allowed it, the bright red Porsche in which they were rapping in seemed to attract all the attention. One of the youth workers we interviewed stated:

Take for example the grassroot things that come out of black communities where the kids are like ‘I am black and I am better than whites’ or ‘I know this and you whites don’t’ and that is where the appeal lies, that is what the community has on its own, what it has to offer. And you will not find that in this music video. The video is telling you ‘be like us and you will get what we have’ and that is wrong. The stupid thing is that it is connected to education and inclusion. And I don’t like the word inclusion because it has nothing to do with emancipation and empowerment, the right to have an authentic culture. It is about incorporation into what is already there. And I guess that the video has served a purpose when it comes to the integration politics. (I 14)

That is not to suggest that the project was not beneficial to the members of UGC. It helped them achieve better economic and social stability. Today the group performs regularly, and they are working on their first studio album. It does, however, bring up the question of the expectations placed on Roma youth and their mentors.

De La Negra

This Roma youth group led by older Roma activist Jožka Miker hails from the small town of Krupka. The recent documentary Because there is hope (2014) provides an insight into their activities. De La Negra frequently performs at demonstrations and/or Roma events. Their close contact with the community of activists and the need to fight against the hate marches in their area makes them more resilient when dealing with the anti-gypsy sentiment of the Czech society and more aware of the misinterpretation and manipulation of information in mainstream media coverage.

When it comes to working with Roma youth the role of a mentor is an important one. One of the rappers/mentors we interviewed suggests:

Hip hop should be first and foremost the voice of the people. But that has to be explained to the kids, because if we don’t teach them, then some mainstream rapper will and all he will say is that you need to be a tough gangster - that is what hip hop is all about. We need to work with kids, or how else will they know? Usually they are bombarded with advertisements, the internet, the television, all that. We need to work with them. (I 4)

Each mentor has a different strategy when it comes to working with Roma youth. While Metoděj does not censor the young people in any major way, seeing his role as being to show them an alternative to mainstream hip hop production, Jožka Miker does lead De La Negra to be more aware of the social circumstances and hopefully to become the next generation of Roma activists. De La Negra visited Radio Spin 96.2 for an interview with their mentor. When asked about the topic of their rhymes, the members of the group first looked at their mentor while answering that their preferred topics include the social conditions of Roma people, the racism they face and the spread of their culture. However, when asked to freestyle, De La Negra started to rap about having a good time, their new glasses and new sneakers and just listening to rap. Similarly, after UGC released their third single, Funky styl with no substantial ‘social’ message, the group was criticized on social media, as though Roma youth were not entitled to just want to have fun.

Coda

Youth workers and activists in the Czech Republic only gradually start to recognize the potential of hip hop. Most of the youth organization employ the elements of hip hop based on the fact that it is one of the most popular music genres of today. Elements of hip hop therefore serve as a means of engaging with the youth as a distraction from other (potentially criminal) activities, as an alternative to just ‘hang out’. In other cases, hip hop elements may serve as a form of integration of Roma youth (cf. Huq 2007). While in the United States hip hop operates simultaneously as a profitable commercial industry, network of grassroot organizations and a platform for political activism (Malone and Martinez 2015, 14–15), Franz (2015b) points out that in central eastern European countries the potential of hip hop for activism is realized much later due to the specific form of cultural translation of hip hop (mostly in its commercialized form). There have been instances in recent years where particular Czech hip hop groups use their voices to support of a specific cause or charity events/organizations (see Oravcová 2018), these do not include fight for social justice, nor are they focusing of specific issues of the Roma community.

While acknowledging that Roma youth are not there to satisfy the expectations of youth workers and activists, nevertheless one of the interviewees critically observes:

None of these groups became part of the movement for social justice. They did become very popular, though. I am not satisfied with this outcome and I think it is because of the mentoring. These mentors who are involved in the hip hop scene, they do not live for social justice. And you can only pass down something that you live, and the end of oppression and fight for social justice is not really their cause. (I 14)

The activists and youth workers we spoke to suggest that Czech hip hop in general has no place for the special agenda of the Roma community, in which they might address their issues and concerns. Therefore, Czech rap music will not and cannot speak to Roma youth. It also suggests there is a need to train mentors when it comes to the principles of hip hop pedagogy. On the other hand this specific notion of hip hop in the service of communities, as a movement for social justice and political empowerment, is marginal even within the U.S.A. The images that have the most exposure are those conveyed by the corporate rap music industry, celebrating wealth, notions of traditional masculinity and sexism. The dissemination of these images equating success with the purchase of the latest car, flaunting stack of cash or having the attention of attractive women, may lead the Roma youth to identify blackness with consumerism and a fast track to fame and wealth.

In addition, some elements of style can bring about contents which are in conflict with the intentions of activists and social workers (not only frivolity and fun, as we have seen in the case of De La Negra, but also drug dealing, hustling, violence and other popular tropes and narratives used in rap music). In the context of stigmatized minority, which is considered to be prone to criminality, these narratives are perceived and judged based on different standards in comparison to the same trope expressed by Czech middle class rappers: not as accepted self-stylization or individual choice, but as a community problem and threat, as we will see in the case of Dario.

Moral panic vs. standards of a subgenre – the case of Dario

In order to see how rap performances are viewed, judged and discussed differently depending on ethnicity we present the particular case of a local moral panic that was set off in Tanvald, a small Czech town. During the autumn of 2011, the eighteen-year-old Roma rapper known as Dario released a diss track aimed at another rapper. On it, Dario raps:

I will torture you until you start to scream … you will end up in the morgue, I will come for your head … then I will call on your mother, put your head in front of her feet and then I will attack her, and cut her heart out of her body.

A few months after the song was recorded and released on YouTube it became the subject of public debate in the context of widely-publicized violent incidents from other Czech cities. Local newspapers and blog sites framed the discussion as a threat from a ‘Roma’ against ‘Czech people’ – an expression of racism. However, when similar lyrical content describing brutal violence is used by Czech rappers (such as the aforementioned Řezník), it is viewed as the expression of an individual, or something that is simply following the standards of the subgenre (in this case, horrorcore), and it is easier to argue that these are just exaggerations and not to be taken seriously.

The mayor of the city, Petr Polák, defended the moral panic, and the acclaimed media psychologist Jeroným Klimeš even described the song as a ‘declaration of war’ (in this context meaning the war of the Roma against the majority) (Sedlák and Vrabec 2011). In the ensuing debates, even when arguments were made using the standards of the genre (translating the lyrics of international artists into Czech), these were used to blame rap music as a whole, not to contextualize the particular artistic expression. In the case of Czech rappers who use similar or even more brutal references in their music, these performances are considered an individual expression, and, quite understandably, the connection between the artists and their ethnicity (from the ‘white’ majority) is not an issue. Řezník, for example, is further legitimized by the rest of the Czech rap scene through his work with key representatives including Vladimír 518 (Nemám zájem Remix). Dario, on the other hand, being a representative of the Roma community who raps about violence, is automatically connected with the highly publicized incidents of Roma violence. These incidents are then held to represent and explain the reasons behind the meaning of his lyrics. At the same time, his lyrics are considered an artistic manifestation of the said violent tendencies.⁶

Discussion

Soysal (2004) refers to a ‘double inauthenticity’ whereby musicians from ethnic minorities are perceived as inauthentic when they try to take up a foreign style. It seems that to gain an accurate description of the situation of young Czech Roma minority rappers we should consider the threat of triple inauthenticity: the two dimensions are joined by a third one where the Roma identity itself is under the control of the majority, which provides its content and expectations. Roma people, who are depicted by a set of stereotypes, are recognized by racist as well as anti-racist discourses as precisely the bearers of these stereotypes. Their identity is ‘filled with meanings’ (Stejskalová 2012, 62) through expectations that they will try to come to terms with. They are expected to declare their determination to tackle the ‘Roma problem’ as it is identified by the majority. In a society which defines itself through liberal individualism and in Czech hip hop (in a sense one of its extreme expressions) white Czech rappers are individuals setting the standards and norms while Roma rappers are expected to be the bearers of what it means to be Roma as defined by the majority and to react to expectations connected to these images.

This way we are returning to the issue discussed by Franz Fanon in the first chapter of his book Black Skin, White Masks (2008): a minority artist is not expected to give an individual performance in a shared cultural code (Fanon refers to language). It is expected that s/he will come to terms with his/her subordination (symbolized by dialect speech in Fanon’s case). In our case the Roma people are the object of racism, in a disadvantaged economic position, and at the same time often portrayed by the majority as a homogeneous group whose only agenda is to collect social benefits. Therefore it is expected that Roma rappers will react to this particular situation.

UGC, in declaring their devotion to the culture of education and work that will bring the desired fruit in the form of high pay and a fancy car, are trying to re-educate the Roma to suit the dominant norms of the majority. De La Negra rise up against racist oppression, but they do so in a cultural code that is not only expected but demanded by the majority because it imitates the experience of successful struggle for emancipation from more developed country that is considered a model for Czech society. There is one basic similarity – rappers are primarily perceived as Roma and their rap is understood first and foremost in the context of complicated relationships between the majority of ethnic Czechs and the Roma minority. To the extent that they react to and embrace these expectations, Roma rappers find themselves in the trap of ‘triple inauthenticity’.

We do not want to suggest that triple inauthenticity is a prison that does not allow individual rappers to step outside it.⁷ We describe it as a general structural condition within which Roma rappers act. The concept of ‘authenticity’ reflects the lived world and power constellations. Rap in the Czech Republic has become the domain of young middle (and lower middle) class people from major cities who are automatically assumed to be ethnically Czech (meaning white skin color).

‘Middle class’ is an important variable – as a couple of our informants noticed, ‘there are no poor whites rapping’ (I 7) and even if they are rapping, they are either still invisible or not talking about their economic situation. Usually the preferred narratives include those that recount the story of a dedicated man who earned his money via hard work. The distribution of visibility and the possibility of claiming ‘authenticity’ in Czech rap culture is fairly unequal. In a sense, Roma rappers have a better position as compared to other white rappers from poor background and less visible regions. Roma youth’s skin color is what draws attention, albeit attention that is colonizing and highly stereotypical. Lot of small city rap formations never receive comparable attention. Likewise, race discrimination, although approached schematically, is a topic addressed in Czech rap music. Other topics including various forms of economic discrimination, other second-generation minorities (e.g. Vietnamese), gender and sexuality, are pushed to the sidelines by the dominant rap narrative, which focuses on accomplishments and individual activity.

On a similar note, the trope of the ‘ghetto’ in Czech rap music is mostly used as a romantic notion of the disadvantaged neighborhoods of Western cities. The living conditions of Roma are not ‘real’ as part of the lived experiences or surroundings of the majority rappers, nor as an attractive romantic projection. Given that rap in the Czech Republic is connected to fascination with the U.S.A. it is logical that for Czech rappers the self-expression of African American rappers makes more sense and is more appealing (at least on the superficial level) than the self-expression of Czech Roma. The expectations towards Czech Roma are defined precisely as using art forms appropriated from African Americans to address the ‘Roma problem’, a set of stereotypes through which the majority society interprets them and which serve as the basis for the majority perception. Even the initial motivation of our research was based on questions that stemmed from the third dimension of this ‘triple inauthenticity’.

There is no such thing as pure ‘authenticity’ or full inauthenticity. For young Czech Roma, rap offers some opportunity for self-expression and self-organization and serves as a means to gain respect. As we show in this article, these opportunities do not and cannot offer the possibility of an imminent leap out of the position the Roma people have in Czech society. These opportunities are very limited and are based on the position itself. In some cases they introduce new and unexpected limitations that relate to the translation of cultural codes and subcultural styles. These limitations, although structural in nature, are not static. They are open to subversion games, challenges, and rearrangement. As the success of Slovak rapper Rytmus shows, even in a society with strong anti-Roma racism a Roma can become a rap star and, to certain extent, co-determinate the rules of the rap game. Our description of what we perceive as highly closed opportunities does not seek to be closed itself. We are aware of the possibilities rap music can offer the marginal groups including the Roma community. However, we believe that the fact that these possibilities have not yet fully realized is not a coincidence but a result of the above-mentioned factors, including racist as well as anti-racist objectification.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by European Regional Development Fund [grant number CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000734]; Grantová Agentura České Republiky [grant number 14-19324S].

Notes

1 The terms Czech and Roma are highly problematic and ambiguous, posing questions of identity formation and identification. The Czech Republic is, according to its constitution, a state with a ‘civic nation’ and Czech Roma, as its citizens are also Czech. Since the Czech National Revival and definitely after 1945 the ethnic conception of the nation has come to predominate, which means the civic Czech nation is actually occupied by the ethnic Czech nation and defined by a combination of specific culture and history, Slavic ethnicity and language and, in the public space, by the opposition between the Roma and the Czech (in some cases ‘ethnic Czechs’) (cf. 1999, 254–299). In this article we refer to ‘Czech’ based on the territory, the borders of the Czech Republic, and the use of the Czech language. While we acknowledge that there are black and brown youth that identify as Czech, when we refer to Czech rappers we mean the ‘white’ majority.

2 Czech female rappers are scarce and do not enjoy the same visibility within the subculture as men do. Women in Czech rap music are portrayed as passive cheerleaders, music video decorations or women who are desperate to date a (wealthy) famous rapper (Oravcová 2013). Romani women have to struggle with two different cultures (with different expectations): the majority which considers Roma people a problematic group (the portrayal of Roma women is, to a great degree, identical to the stereotype of the African American ‘welfare queen’) and their own culture built on traditional gender roles.

3 Cf. Barrer (2009), Pasternak-Mazur (2009) and Helbig and Miszczynski (2017).

4 There is no ‘official’ account of the history of hip hop subculture, with the exception of Overstreet (2006) who maps the development of the graffiti scene since 1989.

5 According to public opinion research conducted in April 2015 on the coexistence of the Romani and non-Romani population, almost 4/5 of the sample perceives the situation as bad in general. The attitude toward the Roma tends to change, and is more positive when a particular person has friends or acquaintances among Roma people or lives in the same area. (http://cvvm.soc.cas.cz/en/relations-attitudes/romanies-and-coexistence-with-them-in-view-of-czech-public-april-2015)

6 Similar approach characteristic by securitization can be observed not only in the discourse of the actors, but also in scholars’ discourse. Thus, Mareš, the leading Czech scholar in ‘extremist studies’, included one paragraph on Roma rap in his article on Roma extremism. The author considers the possibility that Roma rap presents ‘propagation of violent and property criminality’; racism; ‘specific intercourse of criminality with extremism’ and so on. However, even Mareš accepts the possibility that those elements of Roma rap are ‘part of the artistic license’ and that in this context we probably cannot speak about political extremism (Mareš 2012).

7 At the same time, considering the scope of this article, we did not and could not trace the strategies of every single rapper. This leaves space for future research, which can, for example focus on the specificities of Roma rap on social media platforms and networks. The development of the Czech Roma rap within the British Czech Roma migration communities can be also stimulating field of further research (Chodec 2019).