The batalla de gallos free style is an improvisation competition of rap or hip-hop where two people confront each other in a verbal duel, sustained by beats, creating rhymes and lines in real time, without prior preparation. In these competitions, different techniques are used, one of which is called metralleta [machine gunning]. This consists of producing a rapid and constant flow of words, imitating the sound of a machine gun. The rappers use their voice and breathing to build a fast and steady rhythm, generally between one hundred and two hundred words per minute, through rhymes and assonances. The technique allows for a conjunction between word and body, which at times reaches an emotional pitch that is transmitted to the audience. It is a body-to-body circuit, sustained by sounds reproduced frenetically through rhyme and retort; a circuit that takes place in the bodies as actual resonance boxes.
Beginning with bocalización the opening of the mouth in a particular rhythm, giving way to a vocalization [vocalización], the repetition of phonemes that impact and resonate in the ear, in the eardrum, in the organ—before reaching the higher functions of communication and understanding.
Thus, through rhythm, this circuit produces an audible in situ text, in which the more effective the retort, the greater the chances of winning the battle. Therefore, rhythm and the presence of the other, limit and organize a ritmiado [rhythmical] text where communication and message are only secondary to the affectation of bodies seized by the metralleta. The sustained rhythm of the metralleta makes it possible to breathe, "inspire," and aspire to that state of communion between two bodies, beyond the meaning of words.
The retort or punchline allows for the inclusion of the audience's ears, generating an effect of community: this audible text is written by everyone; everyone becomes part of that circuit sustained by rhythm. An audible text in act, forging a bond on the background of the semantic non-relation: the structural gap between signifier and signified, between words and things, and between subject and object. It does not rely on message or communication, but on sound and rhythm, which inscribe themselves where "It is not sustained in the message, nor in communication, but in the sound and rhythm that is written where the signifier fails the referent, and finally the object is essentially the failure. It demonstrates the different ways of failure of the sexual relation."
These battles began taking place in open and airy spaces such as public squares, in different neighbourhoods of southern Greater Buenos Aires, during the partial lifting of mandatory lockdowns due to the COVID pandemic in 2020. Today, they have become a practice that functions as a veritable artificial lung in the face of the suffocating sense, amongst teenagers, of virtuality and of social networks.
[1] Batalla de gallos, literally "cockfight," refers to an improvised hip-hop battle, a face-off between two rappers in a competitive exchange where there is a winner and loser. [TN]
[2] For an example of the metralleta, see here: https://youtu.be/qyR3VTUK_Gs?si=Oilmn7nhUqiLtTrM
[3] Bocalización seems to be a neologism, a portmanteau of boca meaning "mouth" and "calzicalización", from "vocacalización". It is a reference to percussive sounds made with the mouth, like "beatboxing," rather than the voca of the syllabic voice. [TN]
[4] Miller, J.-A., La fuga del sentido, Buenos Aires, Paidós, 2012, p. 177.[Unpublished in English]
