• Submitted by: manso
• Editorial Articles
• 07 / 13 / 2011

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BY Sam Levin. DAILY NEWS WRITER. Tuesday, July 12th 2011, 4:00 AM. After chasing hip-hop movements from Chicago to Havana, emcee-turned-professor Sujatha Fernandes ultimately found herself most at home in the genre's birthplace - New York City.

Fernandes, an assistant professor of sociology at Queens College, recounts her 11-year global journey in a new book to be released in September, titled "Close to the Edge: In Search of the Global Hip Hop Generation."

She traces rapping, b-boying, deejaying and graffiti art in four different countries.

"There is this way that hip hop speaks to people and helps them talk about their local situations," said Fernandes, 37, who was an emcee with a rap group in her native Sydney, when she was a teenager.

The book focuses on street culture in Havana, Chicago, Caracas and Sydney. But Fernandes also writes about how several artists - mirroring her own experience - immigrated to New York City.

The city is a "mecca for young people all over the world who listen to hip hop," said Fernandes, who integrates popular music into her Queens College classes.

As an "Indian-Australian-Portuguese gringa," Fernandes said settling down here felt natural. "In some ways, I was really looking for home."

Ariel Fernandez-Diaz, a well-known deejay and promoter from Cuba featured in the book, also found his hip-hop journey landing him in New York.

"In some ways, I feel closer to New Yorkers who share the same culture and values as me than the Cubans who lived on the same block as me," said Fernandez-Diaz, 35, who wrote the first article in Cuba about hip hop.

Fernandez-Diaz says he was captivated by American hip hop and helped bring it to life in Havana, where he ran a festival and a magazine tied to the movement. But he felt like his voice wasn't being heard in Cuba and grew frustrated, he said.

"I always felt connected with the hip-hop culture of New York," he said of his decision to leave his country in 2005. He now lives in East Flatbush, Brooklyn.

The move from Cuba to New York resonates with Julio Cardenas, a Cuban rapper who came to the city in 2001 and now works at a restaurant in the East Village.

He was immediately inspired by the diversity of local rappers, he said. "I thought everything was going to be commercial, but it wasn't," said Cardenas, 36.

Even though he doesn't rap professionally now, Cardenas said he feels proud to have been part of a Cuban movement that still influences hip hop today.

"We were the first to take the risk," he said.

www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/queens/2011/07/12/2011-07-12