We left off and Tamara was asking Clyde about
Angela's Mixtape.
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Angela’s mixtape?
Yea “Angela’s Davis Mixtape”, which we just produced and it took 6 or 7 years to do it. But Eisa wrote this article and I didn’t know Eisa at the time but I read the article and I was like yo we got it. This is what we are gonna do. We are gonna do the Hip-Hop Theatre festival. We are gonna brand it and that’s what we are gonna own, we are gonna run with that and then everything else is gonna be underneath that. And he was like “brilliant.” And we are going to give more voice to more people, and we called everybody in that article. Kahmilla Forbes who is our assistant director now who’s in DC with Hip-Hop Theatre Junction. Will Power who’s in San Francisco we flew him out. Toni Blackman who was also in DC we brought her up. UNIVERSES who was in the Bronx with The Point CDC because they were still there at the time we brought them in. We brought all that down and Bobbito and those folks. It was one night and it was explosive. And then we were lucky to raise the attention of some private foundations who came in and said nobody is doing this have you considered doing it again? And then from there we just started running with it. And I feel like its basically another branch of the culture the way we have journalist, the way we have academics, at this point the way we have doctors and lawyers and teachers and educators and activists and organizers. Theatre is a as much apart of the cultural discourse for the Hip-Hop generation as any other medium and we are actually just scratching the surface and when you look at where technology is putting us in terms of access to media at all times whenever we want, we still need congregation places we still need places to go and celebrate as human beings. Which is why the Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival is so successful because its more about the energy and the sensibility of people converging than anything else, as long as you put the right people in that room wherever and however you create that space, be it a festival or a night of theatre. That’s what you do. So it’s exciting.
There’s a purpose of education within the Hip-Hop Theatre Festival. The current educational system is bleak, Eurocentric, and not accessible to the youth, so how do you see Hip-Hop reforming the current educational system?
We have been fortunate enough to collaborate with some real innovators in that world. NYU in particular, The Center for Multicultural Education and Programs they have a pedagogy initiative. Martha Diaz the founder of the Hip-Hop Association is at NYU, and she started an institute. The University of Wisconsin Madison has a program where they recruit annually the top 15 best and brightest young b boys, b girls, poets, MC’s and producers out of high school and they give them full scholarship to go to The University of Wisconsin Madison, and it’s called First Wave program. It’s Multicultural program. It’s phenomenal. So we are collaborating with these folks but we are also collaborating with organizations right here in New York, like Urban word and the Brooklyn Community Arts and Media High School (BCAM). Where the principal is from Chicago, tatted up, with a PHD, and grew up on Hip-Hop. And the school embodies that so even though we are still mashing it up with huge institutions, not only locally but nationally, we are beginning to see many more cracks and more in roads in the system. And for us it was always about if we are not engaging young people than we are not doing our jobs because unfortunately theatre is a very stayed traditional kind of institution it’s not where the hip and the cool happen. And when we talk about the Western canon no place is it more conservative than in theatre. So it is an uphill battle, but the argument that we are making is that Shakespeare is important, but we need to know that there are new Shakespeare’s, out there and they are gonna look like us. So we cant always look back we can’t get stuck in the past, we can’t solely be about classics. We have to understand that culture is constantly being remixed and we have to support that and nurture that by creating a space for it. So that’s why we think education is so pivotal because young people need to know that this is for them. And it never fails whenever they walk in they don’t quite always know what they are going to see, they think it’s gonna be boring. We are talking high school shorties who are 14 and 15, straight knuckle heads sometimes. And they sit there and they lean forward, they stop texting you know because the language is language they relate to, they can follow the story, it’s good, and they’ve never been in a space that will do that consistently, on top of engaging our peers which is a wonderful thing. And it’s a cornerstone to our mission and vision as an organization.
Marc Bamuti Joseph’s one man piece “The Breaks” uses spoken words, visual arts, live music and a DJ so he uses all the different ways people learn. He is also an educator and has described his educational pedagogy as trying to access his students from as many different mediums possible so that everyone is included within the ritual of learning. What is your definition of Hip-Hop pedagogy?
I would differ to folks who are smarter than me at the end of the day. I haven’t been in the classroom in a while. The approach we are taking, especially with BCAM is to meet the young people where they are. And again that’s a philosophical underpinning. Where it’s like “each one teach one”. So in other words I have something to learn from you, so what if there are fifteen years between us. I can learn from you and you can learn from me so lets start with a level playing field. And I think that’s a tenant of pedagogy, but it’s also a tenant of life. Being open its something that if you just paid attention to Bambaattaa of the Zulu Nation that’s a tenant, “each one teach one” and Zulu Nation is multi- generational at this point as an organization you have old heads, old Gs, and then you have fifteen and sixteen year olds, and its an international organization they have chapters everywhere. When we have met with young people we didn’t start with theatre we started with music we brought in songwriters to kind of shape projects that young people were studying in their classrooms be it English, social studies, or math we were like okay lets create a music project based on what you are learning right now. And not everyone is going to be the MC, some of you guys are going to produce, some of you are going to create the art work, and some of you are gonna manage the whole process, and it’s like spokes on a wheel. We paint the picture so the young folk can kind of settle into what’s comfortable for them, but we are also pushing and challenging them. We started with that but at the same time and we’ve done this now for the last two and half years with BCAM. We are constantly engaging young people in the work wherever it, so that they began to gain a literacy around how work actually gets made. So its not just the end product but it’s the whole process. And then say “what do you think” give us your feedback so that they know they have the input in creating value during that process they are apart of that process as well. And I think that’s also a part of the pedagogy and the educators that I know that’s a philosophy and approach that they take. That its interactive, it’s mixed media, and its mutual but there always ground rules there are lines we don’t cross in terms of respect and those kind of things. And it’s a freefall at the same time. It’s also true in theater its highly collaborative so it’s been easy to make that transition into working specifically with certain kind of educational institutions.
All the events for the Hip-Hop Theatre Festival this year in DC are free. I know that making a good event that is free is a struggle. And now all the biggest Hip-Hop events come with a huge price tag so can you speak about the growing inaccessibility of Hip-Hop through these concerts that are so expensive?
I’d have to say that in Washington DC in particular there’s no way if we would be able to make the festival free if it weren’t for the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. They come with about 60 percent of the funding off the back. And then we raise the rest. Also we work with a number of different local institutions from rehearsal studios to theatres, like the Kennedy Center and the Studio theatre, all these different venues around the town that actually contribute something. So if they have to charge us a front they throw in the labor but everybody chips in, because keeping it free is an important mandate. But we are working with tax dollars so that’s the other thing. I’d love to see something like that happen in New York, but in DC it’s the mandate and we wouldn’t be able to move the way we move and operate in DC if we didn’t have the support of the commission. And I would say that particular institution is unique right now in our country in that not only do they support the Hip-Hop Theatre Festival and the work we and the program do, but they also have a community arts grant that they do every year where they support local Hip-Hop artists, educators, and activities with grants for their special projects, and I can’t tell you any other city that has an art program that does that exclusively for Hip-Hop. It’s great that’s the nations capital, but I’m sure it could be happening in other places, where it a branded program supporting Hip-Hop arts and culture.
There are those that argue that free devalues what you’re doing. And we’ve gotten that from a few people and usually its folks who are running institutions and have failed in that model, we haven’t. But if you look at the success of SummerStage if you look at the success of Celebrate Brooklyn they have suggested donations now, but you know the quality isn’t compromised their mission is a bit broader, but what’s to say that Hip-Hop can not be broad in its own right and that’s what we are exploring its not just music its all these other things. So I think there’s value in making it accessible to anyone, by just providing the information, it certainly has not hurt us.
I’m not sure if you saw the BET awards last Sunday but it was a disappointing representation of the Hip-Hop community and the black and brown community as a whole and I have spoken to a lot of people who have grown up with Hip-Hop you just as you and a lot of them are not hopeful and believe that Hip-Hop is dead and believe that there is no future, do you see a future in Hip-Hop?
I did not see the BET awards but I read a bit of Byron Hurts letter and open letter that he sent and it was put on blast by. And I could only imagine. I can’t really speak on that because I think the folks at the end of the day who are doing that work, care as much is this is me being optimistic as much as we do about the culture, and I think they are doing good I just think that there perspective is maybe is a little too narrow. But I also know if you are doing anything for “the tube” and you’re owned by a company like Viacom you have very specific parameters to work in and therefore your perspective has to be narrow. I’m more interested in the long tail if you will the aggregate of all the work that we are all doing that now can thrive beyond BET or beyond an awards who that is based upon the media. I think Hip-Hop is far from dead, because again I feel like our culture was the beginning of the 21st century. What started in the 70’s, essentially a generation before the end of the 20t century or the beginnings of what we are seeing now, has become popular culture. And that’s just not Hip-Hop; it’s beyond that at this point. It may be called something else down the line, but the tenets are going to be there.
I’m going to give you a concrete example, what Mick Boogie has been able to do with Adele in terms of remixing her whole album based upon beats from 1988. That’s remix that’s a remix culture, I don’t even know if you can call that Hip-Hop per say, or what he did mashing up Hay-z and Coldplay. Nothing was more rewarding to me than watching the Grammy’s and seeing Chris Martin on the piano and doing that melody from “Lost Ones” and Jay-z popping up for his verse and I was sitting there telling a friend yo I copped this on a mixtape and if Jay-Z comes on right now, that’s crazy. And he came out and I was like That’s what I’m talking about right there. So I think there’s an evolution and I think in that sense, it’s far from dead. I think what is dying are the notions that some of us have brought into, about what it is. And that’s why preservation is important now more than ever. Having access to that knowledge which is still mostly oral, because a lot of the old timers, the folks that weren’t even calling it Hip-Hop, don’t like to talk to a lot of people They are jaded they’ve watched this thing grow they’ve watched a lot of clowns make money, you know pimping something. I think more than ever we need institutions and this is again part of our larger mission, you look beyond the theatre festival but as an organization that supports those ideas, its about educating young people its about creating safe space, its about having reverence and making sure that we document and celebrate as much as possible be the pillars of the culture I’m not just talking about the four elements, I’m just saying the pillars of the culture. And facilitate don’t dictate; don’t be the experts just create the environment for things to keep happening between young people and between folks who embody knowledge. That’s important you know, that has to happen in traditional educational institutions but it also has to happen in spaces that don’t even exist yet. That’s the bigger vision.
