By Adriana B. Rojas, PhD

This originally was a blog entry for the Eastern Mennonite University's Department of Language and Literature in 2015. It has since been edited and updated.

In October 2015, I received an invitation to a performance of Maya Hip Hop at the University of Virginia. I quickly organized a field trip with my students. The subject resonated with the themes in a course I am teaching this semester, SPAN 430 Marginalized Voices. The topics to be covered in class that evening were: Does indigenous art exist? What comprises indigenous discourse and art? Is there a problem of representation? How does modernity affect Native American groups?

The impromptu field trip on Oct. 7, 2015 was to see Tz’utu Kan perform hits from the album, “Jun Winaq’ Rajawal Q’ij: Tribute to the 20 Nawales.” Kan is an artist, educator, and social-environmental activist from Lake Atitlán, Guatemala. He has presented his work, most notably, at the Medellín Poetry Festival (Colombia). 

“The album contains twenty songs that recover and reinterpret ancient calendar knowledge based on the Cholq’ij, the natural frequency of 20 days and 13 energies in which they offer thanks and blessings and invoke the energy of the 20 Nawales,” explains Kan. He and his musicians moved swimmingly through a sampling of Andean winds, indigenous soundscapes, rap, and dancehall beats. He code-switched from Spanish to English to Native American languages, Tz’utujil, K’iche’, Kaqchikel, and Quechua. In between the songs, he spoke about feminine energy, indigenous cosmology, and the natural world. He taught the audience words from K’iche’, like Sapei, which means the Milky Way.

Survival is an underlying theme in Kan’s music. His career begins with the miracle that he, a five-year-old boy, lived to create a project that brings listeners closer to contemporary Maya beliefs. Storytelling is his way of saving his culture from oblivion. 

During the civil war in Guatemala, Kan shared with the audience, soldiers invaded his town and rounded up all the people in the church square. The soldiers wanted intelligence on insurgents, but the community did not provide any information. The commanding officer gave the order to execute all the people. The military tried three times to conduct a mass execution and each time weapons failed. Instead, the soldiers left the town, sparing Kan’s community.

In the field of Hispanic Studies, as I explained to my students after the performance, writers in privileged positions speak for marginalized groups and few Native American writers become part of the literary canon. This subfield of privileged writers, known as Indigenism, has been critiqued by recent scholars because of its treatment of voice. In place of marginalized voices, text’s reader encounters a type of ventriloquism that diminishes the Native American’s subjectivity and turns him or her into an object of study. Contemporary activists, writers of indigenous descent, and scholars have accused the works of Indigenist writers, who write from privileged positions, to be essentializing or romanticizing Native Americans. The Native American thus becomes a mute, ethnically pure and passive figure, perhaps weaving a textile in the natural environment that we might see in an advertisement.

Cultural production is another area of contestation. Indigenous art often reinforces essentializing discourse or replaces the indigenous subject with an object, such as a textile or handicraft. 21st century Consumer society focuses on indigenous art as a commodity—a highly Eurocentric view—because seeks to possess and market romanticized Native American products that reinforce preconceived notions of marginalized ethnic groups.

Discussions in my field center on whether or not one can be a modern individual and Native American. Whereas in Western culture we tend to put ourselves in boxes or live out dualistic discourses, indigenous cultures leave room for practicing different—even contradictory—beliefs in different contexts. 

Kan embodies modernity even as he roots himself in the traditions of indigenous cultures in Hispanic America. During the performance he wore a hat with embroidery and a poncho and later he changed into a baseball cap and T-shirt featuring his band’s logo. 

In a post-performance discussion with my students, Kan explained that his mission was to unify traditional culture and this new globalized culture that his Maya community encounters. By contrast to the essentializing narratives of indigenism, Kan is part of a multiethnic project that actively negotiates its identity in many contexts. The musicians in his band identify as mestizo and white and play indigenous instruments and melodies. On Kanstage and in the audience, many worldviews and tradition coexist.

Kan both engages and departs from stereotypical representations; he wears both Maya and Western clothing and sings in many European and native languages. His art is accessible, encourages audience participation, and is instructive. Kan’s medium, hip hop, is familiar to mass audiences, but the subject matter and language is unique to his Maya heritage and in solidarity with indigenous groups across the Americas.

Students enrolled in SPAN 430 Marginalized Voices expressed feeling more connected and better understood songwriters/activists in our communities. They appreciated how art can raise awareness and promote social justice.