Arivu’s Dalit Rap: Cultural Resilience and Harnessing Hip-Hop for Cultural Assertion

Abstract

The emergent pan-Indian phenomenon of Dalit rap is championed by Arivu and other Dalit rappers, such as Ginni Mahi, Sumeet Samos, Duleshwar Tandi and Vedan. They draw from the wellspring of Dalit musical traditions. These musicians are successors to pioneers who utilized music and poetry in the anti-caste struggle such as Jyotirao Phule, Savitribai Phule, Poykayil Appachan, Bhimrao Kardak, Gaddar and Vilas Ghogre. Arivu’s music utilizes the cultural capital that developed as forms of self-expression and those sustained as cultural labour in the Dalit communities for political activism, sensitization of the public sphere and asserting the Dalit identity. He reimagines art that had been deemed symbols of denigration by the dominant savarna sensibility as those of pride and protest. His lyrics and music generate a discourse of resistance that alters the equations of the casteist public sphere through wider acceptance via new media. Arivu engages in contemporary sociopolitical commentary through rap infused with the stylistics of folk forms such as oppari and gaana. He integrates hip-hop aesthetics and Dalit aesthetics to cure cultural amnesia, challenge epistemic injustice, expose cultural appropriation and assert the Dalit identity. Arivu employs hip-hop in building counter-narratives of Dalit pride, Dalit environmentalism, historical injustice and social justice.