"I WAS THERE": the organization of women experience in Rap in Salvador
experience, rap, gender studies, genre studies, performance
This dissertation analyzes the participation of women in rap, in face of a visible growth of
female production in the Brazilian and Soteropolitan hip-hop scene in the last ten years. The
research proposal is to understand the organization of the political-aesthetic experience
(RANCIÈRE, 2005) in Salvador's rap events based on the articulation of gender x genre
studies, exploring the specificities of rap as a musical genre and how it can determine or
indicate certain practices. Based on research on the performance of women in the events, and
on the experience involving artists and the public, it articulates with the transformations in the
practices of communication related to the rap genre and the hip-hop motion in order to
apprehend the experience situated and embodied by women (HARAWAY, 1995;
SHUSTERMAN, 1998 e BERGER, 1999), which are manifested in the performance
(ZUMTHOR, 2007; SCHECHNER, 2006 e FRITH, 1996) and power relations of musical
connections (CARDOSO, 2014, LUHNING, ROSA, 2010 and JANOTTI, 2005). The
research starts from the hypothesis that there is a power of social transformation in rap and
that the strengthening of the women scene occurs from the context of visibility of the feminist
struggles. The course of analyzes gather different aspects of the phenomenon, starting from
the active observation of the researcher and passing through the ethnography of the digital
environments to explore the use of social networks on the Internet, the analysis of the
trajectory of the agents involved in the event, the content of songs and the repercussion of the
event. As conclusions, it indicates that the protagonism of women is related to the fight
against the machismo in both scene and society, and the rap genre is a decisive issue for the
organization of these aesthetic-political experiences. Together, they destabilize dominant
notions and potentialize the transformation of gender relations, with echoes of experience
reverberating beyond the performances.