Abstract: Known as Black Rome, Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, is a predominantly Black city. The local art, food, and dance are closely linked to the population’s African roots. Yet many Black Brazilian residents are politically and economically disenfranchised. Based on years of ethnographic research, this presentation illuminates how Black hip-hop artists and their circles contest structures of anti-Black racism by creating safe havens and alternative social, cultural, and political systems that serve Black people.

Bio: Dr. Bryce Henson is a Black diasporic cultural studies scholar who focuses on Black social life and cultural politics in the Americas. Currently, he is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication & Journalism at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Emergent Quilombos: Black Life and Hip-Hop in Brazil (University of Texas Press, 2023) and a co-editor of Spaces of New Colonialism: Reading Schools, Museums, and Cities in the Tumult of Globalization (Peter Lang, 2020). He serves on the Advisory Board for the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD).