Pablo D. Herrera Veitia

Pablo D. Herrera Veitia obtained his PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of St. Andrews. He is a scholar-practitioner working at the intersection of Orisa worship, hip hop studies and multimodal ethnography. His research explores what it means to be Afro-Cuban in post-socialist Havana and follows divinatory figures in the Odù Ifá literary corpus as primary conceptual sources. As one of Cuba’s pioneering Afro-Cuban rap music producers, Herrera Veitia proposes that understanding Afro-Cubaneity today may require a focus on recent shifts in the audible character of Havana and how the city’s sonorous dimension presents itself as a site where citizens contest state ideology through loud and discrete amplification practices. Herrera Veitia is a 2018-2019 Nasir Jones Fellowship recipient at the Hiphop Archive and Research Institute, Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Harvard University. His writing has appeared in Revista Casa de las Americas, Metronome's documenta 12 Magazines issue, and OkayAfrica.com. He has also collaborated on several major academic research projects on rap and reggaeton music in Havana, including Sujatha Fernandez's Cuba Represent and Close to the Edge, Tanya Saunders's Cuban Underground Hiphop; Marc Perry's Negro Soy Yo; and Geoff Baker's Buena Vista in the Club.

Teaching Interests

Musical Diasporas, Afro-Diasporic Rhythm, Archival Studies, Multimodal Ethnography

Research Interests

Afro-Cuban Rhythm, Afro-Cuban Lucumi Orisa Worship, Hip Hop Archives, Sounded Ethnography

Publications

Book Chapters

Forthcoming. Rap Cubano in the Archive: The Immaterial Paradox. In Hip-Hop Archives: The Politics and Poetics of Knowledge Production M. Forman & M. V. Campbell (ed). Bristol: Intellect Books.

Forthcoming. Living Archives: Libretas de Santo and Afro-Cubaneity Today. In Black Archives and Intellectual Histories: Cultures of Thought in South Africa and the Black Diaspora Khwezi Mkhize & Christopher Ouma (ed.) Wits University Press.

Consumir música popular y producir rap afrocubano: Una historia a saltos. In Contar El Rap: Narraciones y testimonios G. Hernández Baguer & M. Junco Duffay (ed). La Habana: CIDMUC.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

Herrera Veitia, P. D. & Fernandez Selier 2003. Rap Cubano: Nuevas posibilidades estéticas para la cancion popular cubana. Boletín Música, No. 11-12. Casa de las Américas. Havana.

Self-Published

Herrera Veitia, P. D. & Various Artists. 2019. Habana Hiphop Volumen 2 – Limited Academic Edition (Vinyl & Booklet). Cambridge: Habana Hiphop (available online): https://soundcloud.com/pablo_herrera/sets/habana-hiphop-volumen-2