Abstract
This paper deals with the rap poetry performed by the mendicants aboard Public Utility Jeeps (PUJ) plying the streets of Metro Cebu. The rap poems which were collected either through audio recording during actual performances or through handwritten copies provided by the mendicants themselves were basically in Cebuano Visayan with intermittent code switches in Tagalog and English. The fourteen rap poems collected were translated into English. The rap poems were primarily intended as an apparatus of mendicancy. However, under critical examination, the mendicants’ rap poetry subverts the immediate pragmatic authorial intent and behaves as an autonomous text replete in critical elements in manifold forms of social redress, protest, and commentary. From a mere apparatus of mendicancy, it has metamorphosed into a formidable apparatus of critique from “below” so much so that it is proffered by the mendicants, -the marginalized who live at the margins of society. Gravitating around the predominant themes of marginality and poverty, the rap poems resound as a searing indictment of a society whose publicly professed ethical and cultural values are discredited by the very existence of the subterranean social pathologies that breed the poorest of the poor.
Recommended Citation
Benitez, Jiolito L.
(2015)
"The Mendicants’ Rap Poetry: Critique from the Margins,"
CNU Journal of Higher Education: Vol. 9:
Iss.
1, Article 20.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.70997/2546-1796.1130
Available at:
https://jhe.researchcommons.org/journal/vol9/iss1/20