Krudas Cubensi
| Krudas Cubensi | |
|---|---|
| Origin | Havana, Cuba |
| Genres | Hip-hop music, dancehall, cumbia, funk, spoken word, rap |
| Years active | 1999–present |
| Website | Official website |
| Members | Odaymara Cuesta (Pasa Kruda) Olivia Prendes (Pelusa Kruda) |
Krudas Cubensi, also known as Las Krudas, is an activist hip-hop group with black feminist, queer and vegan politics. Born in Cuba in the 1990s, it is part of the Caribbean diaspora in the United States since 2006.
The three original members of Krudas Cubensi began working together in Havana in the 1990s. In 1996, before officially joining the Cuban hip hop scene, Odaymara Cuesta and Olivia Prendes started the street theatre group Tropazancos Cubensi in collaboration with other Cuban artists. Odaymara’s sister, Odalys Cuesta, joined the collective in 1998. Mixing community theatre, rap, and visual arts, Tropazancos was an educational and experimental performance group.
After performing at the annual rap festival of Alamar, a Havana district known for its importance in the Cuban hip-hop movement, Odaymara, Olivia and Odalys decided to shift gear in their art activism. Krudas Cubensi emerged in 1999 as a response to what the group considered a huge lack of representation of women in the movement: The three artists wished to “incorporate a feminist discourse to the unrestrained posture of the masculine majority.”
Their first non-Tropazancos performance took place in 2000 at a Havana hip-hop festival. Because of their artistic work in the previous years, the members of Krudas Cubensi were already known by influential artists and producers in the underground hip-hop movement when they started rapping as Las Krudas.
In 2005, Krudas Cubensi participated in the birth of the female rap collective Omega Kilay with artists such as Danay Suarez, wishing again to circumvent the lack of representation of women inside Havana's music scene.
As their popularity grew, Krudas Cubensi members started receiving invitations to perform at music festivals abroad but their travel requests were always rejected by the Cuban government.
Wishing to share with activists outside of Cuba more freely, the group moved to the United States in 2006 by crossing the Mexico–United States border using the Wet feet, dry feet policy. The group's decision to leave Cuba was motivated by its desire to fight for social justice in other parts of the world, especially in terms of bringing awareness to the isolation of Black Latina and Caribbean lesbians.
...
Wikipedia