In this article, I intend to discuss how, in the racialized context of the association between black youth and music, experiences arise and develop as identity marks, social criticism and the ratification of racial, class and gender hierarchies. To do so, I work with the idea of youth and generation as not only a biological, but also a social and historical data, and with the idea of music as a shared sense. Besides, I discuss my own ethnographical observations as well as those of other authors who reflected on the relationship between music and black youth and have basically observed, in various contexts, young, poor, partly Negro suburbanites with low schooling, some having a low buying power, others being anxious consumers. I conclude pinpointing the importance of music as a configuration instrument for a youthful and black Diaspora experience, but also as an instrument that renews old dissimilarities that are not genetic.
Youth; Black Culture; Bahia; Africa