Monday, August 13th, 2007

B-Boying & Hip-Hop Theatre In The NY Times :: How History Gets Distorted

I’m way past the point of being excited by seeing hip-hop dance in a place like the Times, but this piece is notable.

It tries to account for the global sophistication of b-boy/b-girl competitions in talking about the rise of South Korean b-boys and their journey into evening-length works. It also touches on Benson Lee’s fantastic new movie Planet B-Boy, which captures a year in the life of Thomas Hergenrother’s essential Battle of The Year, an event that is beginning to look like the b-boy/b-girl World Cup. Trac 2 also gets a strong mention in the piece.

At the same time, it’s waaaaaaay off the mark in terms of looking at how b-boy has moved to the theatre stage. “Battle of the Year is largely responsible for the trend toward longer, more artful works featuring characters and plot,” the author, Julie Bloom, writes.

WRONG.

The transformation of hip-hop dance into narrative theatre is a history that has been recounted thoroughly by Jorge POPMASTER FABEL Pabon in Total Chaos, as well as in this long piece I did on Rennie Harris and his group Puremovement. (PDF download)

Bloom even contradicts the Times’ own dance critics, who have been covering hip-hop dance theatre since the Rhythm Technicians took to the stage at PS 122 in 1991 with the acclaimed play “So What Happens Now?”, years before BOTY’s competition expanded beyond Europe. (That play could also be said to be the birth of hip-hop theatre itself.)

This is not at all a slight to BOTY’s influence on global b-boying/b-girling, which has been HUGE. It’s simply to say that Bloom overstates the case drastically, and there are effects.

This is not an incidental point. As many pioneer dancers remind me, part of the reason hip-hop dance remains the least understood of the original four elements is because few people really care to get their facts right. Many see this as a campaign to erase and deracinate hip-hop’s origins. Sometimes I agree, sometimes I don’t. But the effect can be the same.

So mad props, love, and respect to the German and South Korean massive for continuing to expand and change the game. But I’m sure even they would tell you that the history isn’t always what it’s made out to be by the mainstream media.

posted by @ 8:23 am | 10 Comments

Monday, August 6th, 2007

NY 77 :: Coolest Year In Hell

NY77: The Rap Battle! :: In which Caz and Wiz Take On Bambaataa…

The 1977 retrospectives continue. (Actually, “The Bronx Is Burning” has improved.) But this week on Saturday check VH1 for what might be the best doc yet: NY 77 :: Coolest Year In Hell. It features Kool Herc, Grandmaster Caz, the great DJ Disco Wiz, Lee Quinones, and many more, including many punkoids, and a cop or two. As this dude was saying to me over and over last week to the point where I wanted to slug him, “Good stuff! So enjoy!”

Warning: They filmed me for this one. But watch it anyway. I’m pretty sure they didn’t use my mugly ugg in this.

Thanks to Wiz for the previews. BTW here’s another:

+ Blackout 77!

posted by @ 3:54 pm | 3 Comments

Monday, August 6th, 2007

Obama On Rap :: With Updates

Back from where I’ve been.

If you haven’t already heard it on the radio or seen it on the TV show, it’s the B to the O, and you’ll start seeing the interview this week on newsstands.

As Ms. Smith says in her letter from the editor, “Music and all amusements are important to you and important to us, but it’s time to turn down the speakers and pull out the ear buds – at least for right now. Music is great; it inspires us. Films can change minds. Fashion makes us feel more alive. But, really – check the clock. Do you want to feel alive? Or actually be alive?”

Next week, Vibe.com will also be featuring a transcript of the interview, and a podcast with your boy.

Here’s another preview:

“Rap is reflective of the culture of the inner city, with its problems, but also its potential, its energy, its challenges to the status quo. And I absolutely agree my priority as a US senator is dealing with poverty and educational opportunity and adequate health care. If I’m ignoring those issues and spending all my time worrying about rap lyrics then I’m wasting my time.”

“On the other hand, I think that there’s no doubt that hip hop culture moves our young people powerfully. And some of it is not just a reflection of reality. It also creates reality. I think that if all our kids see is a glorification of materialism and bling and casual sex and kids are never seeing themselves reflected as hitting the books and being responsible and delaying gratification, then they are getting an unrealistic picture of what the world is like.”

UPDATE (8/8) :: Danyel Smith with Farai Chideya on the back-story to the special 14th anniversary Juice issue. I’m a little embarrassed about this one…!

UPDATE (8/9) :: Links to the complete Obama transcripts! Part 1 and Part 2. Vibe’s Obama homepage is here.

posted by @ 6:10 am | 5 Comments

Friday, July 27th, 2007

Ignite The Crowd Like…

Hey fam, I thought you should hear it from your boy first.

Three words: Vibe. Juice. Obama.

Monday it’ll all make sense…

posted by @ 12:54 pm | 2 Comments

Wednesday, July 25th, 2007

Defend KET :: The Walls Belong To Us


Defend Ket!

If anyone has any doubt that the idea of President Michael Bloomberg would be bad for America, just look at the way the man has treated hip-hop graf historian, activist, and graf writer Alain KET Mariduena. The co-founder of the legendary Stress Magazine, the publisher of three classic books on hip-hop (Martha Cooper’s Hip Hop Files and Street Play, and The Nasty Terrible T-kid 170) and a champion of real street art is defending himself from trumped-up charges brought against him by Bloomberg’s attack dogs. In this era of globalized corporate hip-hop, KET’s case reminds us all of what the real stakes are for those who want to practice and support transgressive art.

In October 2006, NYPD’s Special Investigations Unit burst down the doors to his home, looted his vast archive of NYC and global graffiti history (one of the most thorough in the world), and threw him in jail, charging him with felony criminal mischief and possession of graffiti tools. He has since spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending himself against the trumped-up charges.

Apparently, this was payback.

In 2005, KET had curated Marc Ecko’s block party, an event that paid tribute to graffiti pioneers and introduced the company’s graf-styled video game. Mayor Bloomberg–who came into office talking tough about graffiti and street art–tried to revoke the event’s permit, but after a heavily publicized court battle, the City was forced to reinstate the permit and the event was a huge success.

Since then, New York graf and street art have enjoyed a kind of a third (or maybe, fourth) renaissance period. Some college grads now consider street art the route to becoming global stars, and the art world is paying top dollar for previously ephemeral wall work. In this context, KET’s central role as an unapologetic spokesperson, scholar, historian, and activist has made him a target of Bloomberg and NYPD.

(Really and truly, all this stuff makes this whole Splasher controversy look like the psuedo-political, privileged little kid’s stuff it really is. But that’s another beef for another time.)

Beginning tomorrow, “THE WALLS BELONG TO US” will be an online art auction for KET’s defense fund. At that website you can check out the incredible art and the long list of artists who support KET and you can also bid on the pieces. There will also be a panel discussion and exhibition on July 28th featuring T-KID, YES2, PART, KEL 1ST, WANE, KAVES, CHAIN3, DR. REVOLT & others at Tuff City Styles in the Bronx, and a silent auction and a benefit jam on August 1st at the Powerhouse Arena. All info–as well as the online auction–will be here.

KET, his family, and his friends are spending lots of their own money and working hard to defend him, exactly what the Bloombergites wanted–to wage a war of attrition on the hip-hop and street-art movement by attacking one of its underground heroes.

So whether or not you can bid on the art, you can spread the word about KET’s cause (here’s a summary of the facts of the case) and help out the cause by donating here.

posted by @ 10:57 am | 0 Comments

Monday, July 23rd, 2007

Michael Eric Dyson And Black Public Intellectuals In The Hip-Hop Era


Photo by Shawn Brackbill

He’s appearing at the East Bay Church of Religious Science in an event sponsored Marcus Books on Tuesday and at Barnes & Noble in El Cerrito on Wednesday. Check here for all the information.

Below is an excerpt from my piece in today’s Chronicle. I’d also recommend this great piece from Mark Anthony Neal.

At a recent town-hall discussion sponsored by the television network BET, newly appointed Georgetown University Professor Michael Eric Dyson found himself sitting next to the chart-topping rappers Nelly and T.I.

Squaring off over sexism in rap, Dyson objected to Nelly’s explicit, late-night-viewing-only video for his song “Tip Drill.” The video features a man swiping a credit card through a girl’s behind. Dyson charged that, whether he realized it or not, Nelly had commercialized the trafficking of black women’s bodies in a way that had recalled slavery’s auction block.

With a cocked eye, T.I. asked Dyson, “Is it really that serious?”

Dyson retorted, “Of course it is.”

“Wait a minute,” Nelly said. “What was you doing watching my video?”

Dyson, 48, said, “I’m a cultural critic. That’s my job!”

That moment of levity illuminated the continuing debate over the role of black public intellectualism. Should scholars engage themselves in the no-holds-barred world of talk shows, shock radio and pop culture? Or are they better off dispensing wisdom within the confines of the ivory tower?

Read the whole thing…

posted by @ 9:03 am | 0 Comments

Monday, July 23rd, 2007

Tribute to Sekou Sundiata

A fine tribute to the the great Sekou Sundiata, an elder who understood and mentored the hip-hop generation and whose work was a profound influence on many young hip-hop poets. Here’s another one as well.

Rest in power.

posted by @ 8:00 am | 0 Comments

Wednesday, July 18th, 2007

Music And The Post-Industrial City :: Rebecca Solnit on Detroit


Photo by Misty Keasler

From this month’s Harper’s comes a fine meditation on the prehistory, present, and near-future of Detroit by one of my favorite writers, Rebecca Solnit. As you might always find in Rebecca’s writing, the piece is breathtakingly written, wrenchingly honest about race and history, and, in the end, cautiously, even defiantly optimistic. You can see why I love her work.

Here’s an excerpt where Rebbeca interviews one of my heroes, the inspirational Grace Lee Boggs. In this short passage, my fellow Detroit music fans not from Detroit or nearby, you might find some of the real context for J-Dilla, Invincible, Sa-Ra, Juan Atkins, Derrick May, PPP, Black Milk, Soundmurder, Dana Burton, and the list goes on…:

…inside that stockade of racial divide and urban decay are visionaries, and their visions are tender, hopeful, and green. Grace Lee Boggs, at ninety-one, has been political active in the city for more than half a century. Born in Providence to Chinese immigrant parents, she got a Ph.D. in philosophy from Bryn Mawr in 1940 and was a classical Marxist when she married the labor organizer Jimmy Boggs, in 1953. That an Asian woman married to a black man could become a powerful force was just another wrinkle in the racial politics of Detroit. Indeed, her thinking evolved along with the radical politics of the city itself. During the 1960s, the Boggses were dismissive of Martin Luther King Jr. and ardent about Black Power, but as Grace acknowledged when we sat down together in her big shady house in the central city, “The Black Power movement, which was very powerful here, concentrated only on power and had no concept of the challenges that would face a black-powered administration.” When Coleman Young took over city hall, she said, he could stgart fixing racism in the police department and the fire department, “but when it came time to do something about Henry Ford and General Motors, he was helpless. We thought that all we had to do was transform the system, that all the problems were on the other side.”

…

When she and Jimmy crusaded against Young’s plans to rebuild the city around casinos, they realized they had to come up with real alternatives, and they began to think about what a local, sustainable economy would look like.

They had already begun to realize that Detroit’s lack of participation in the mainstream offered an opportunity to do everything differently–that instead of retreating back to a better relationship to captialism, to industry, to the mainstream, the city could move forward, turn its liabilities into assets, and create an economy entirely apart from the transnational webs of corporations and petroleum.

Jimmy Boggs described his alternative vision in a 1988 speech at the First Unitarian-Universalist Church of Detroit. “We have to get rid of the myth that there is something sacred about large-scale production for the national and international market,” he said. “We have to begin thinking of creating small enterprises which produce food, goods, and services for the local market, that is, for our communities and for our city…In order to create these new enterprises, we need a view of our city which takes into consideration both the natural resources of our area and the existing and potential skills and talents of Detroiters.”

That was the vision, and it is only just starting to become a reality. “Now a lot of what you see is vacant lots,” Grace told me. “Most people see only disaster and the end of the world. On the other hand, artists in particular see the potential, the possibility of bringing the country back into the city, which is what we really need.”

Shout out to the AMC fam and to the Detroit Summer crew, past present and future, wherever you may be.

posted by @ 9:50 am | 4 Comments

Wednesday, July 18th, 2007

July Rains + The Bad News A’s

Normally in the Bay, there’s no rain in July and no last place in July either. But today we’re looking at both. Welcome to One Of Those Years. Even the faithful are losing faith.

It’s almost enough to make one feel sorry for the Yankees. Almost.

“Bronx Is Burning” is getting better.

Zito actually won.

Back to work.

posted by @ 9:00 am | 0 Comments

Tuesday, July 17th, 2007

Global Images :: Brasilintime in LA Times + Bling on DVD

Fantastic piece by Lynell George on Brasilintime in the LA Times. Check the opening graph…brilliant newswriting.

BTW just got word today that Raquel Cepeda’s film Bling: A Planet Rock, a film on hip-hop and the Sierra Leone diamond trade featuring Paul Wall and Raekwon that aired earlier this year on VH1 will be out in her essential director’s cut DVD this September. Another brilliant project that is a powerful must-see.

posted by @ 5:20 am | 0 Comments



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