For a couple of months now, I have been trying to interview a rapper from Cuba. His name is Maykel Osorbo. This is a collaborative interview with Freemuse, a non-profit organisation that advocates for and defends freedom of artistic expression worldwide.

The reason why this interview is coming along slowly is because Maykel is constantly being arbitrarily detained by Cuban authorities. We can only deduct that he is being detained for his music, lyrics and activism.

According to Freemuse, Cuba is one of the top 10 countries that detain artists in 2019. More on the repression of Maykel Osorbo and his friend and visual artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara can be read on Freemuse’s webpage.

“Both Otero Alcántara and Osorbo are active members of Movimiento San Isidro – the collective of artists that fight for freedom of artistic expression and demonstrate against Decree 349 which came into effect on 7 December 2018 and continues to curb independent artists’ expression in Cuba. “

– from this article on freemuse.org

For those of you that understand Cuban Spanish you can listen to Maykel himself speaking below about the incident and what is happening to him in his own country.

Cover photo taken from Facebook

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