Hip-Hop Humanities – Breakdance Lecture

As part of Hip-Hop Theater Festival’s Humanities Series, Joe Schloss Ph.D., will join the legendary Ken Swift in a conversation about aesthetics of Breaking and Rock (two distinct forms of Hip-Hop Dance), cultural history, the need for documentation and the absence of institutional support in preserving the heritage of New York’s Hip-Hop cultural legacy. Come join the conversations contributing to the growing body of discourse around these important forms of urban American culture. The respondent for the evening will be Imani Johnson, Ph.D., who is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Performance Studies at NYU.

A Conversation w/ Ken Swift & Joe Schloss, Ph.D.
Friday, February 26, 2010, 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Tisch School of the Arts, NYC
Free & Open to the Public (Only 60 Seats)

Also check out this mixtape celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Hip-Hop Theater Festival in NYC – DJ Center on the mix:
HHTF 10th Anniversary (Dj Center Mix) by hhtfuser

October 1st -3rd come see “DEEZ NUTS” commemorating the work of the Beatnuts.

Watch Out Now! Presented by the Hip Hop Theater festival, DEEZ NUTS showcases musical landscapes created by the Beatnuts through performances of their music and examines the “sights, smells and characters” of their neighborhood, Corona, Queens. The shows will be taking places at the Ohio Theater on Wooster Street and begin at 9 PM. For tickets and more about Hip Hop Theater info go to:

Part 2 of Our Interview with Clyde Valentin

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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.

Interview with Clyde Valentin: Part 1

Bodega Contributor Tamara Davidson sat down with Clyde Valentin, Executive Director of The Hip-Hop Theater Festival.

 Clyde Valentin – Executive Director
Clyde Valentín was born and raised in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Clyde co-founded Stress Magazine, a pioneering publication that examined the socio-political context of Hip-Hop through groundbreaking content and design. 

Clyde also co-founded the Black August Benefit Concert series, entering its 10th year of programming. He is a graduate of Binghamton University.  He currently sits on the board of the Artists Community Federal Credit Union.


 Here is Part One of the interview

Part Two later this week

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The work you do is really amazing and involves Hip-Hop, education and the political consciousness of Hip-Hop, can you talk a little about your journey with Hip-hop and how you came to where you are now, doing the work that you do?

Sure. When I go into High Schools and talk to young people about what I do I describe it this way. When I was in college I had a general idea about what I wanted to do. And this was about the time where the Source magazine just started really going national and Vibe had just come out kind of with their premier issue. Upski had just written this book called Bomb the Suburbs, and it was the first kind of thoughtful book around an aspect of Hip-Hop culture. And that was his point of view as an upper middle class white kid, writing graffiti with these Black and Latino kids from the Southside of Chicago. And it was kind of crazy for me to read all of that because my experience with Hip-Hop growing up in Brooklyn was that it was something that was essentially, you know my parents teased me just saying it was a fad, and here I was in college now and it was becoming more than that it was really emerging as a full blown culture, even beyond music. So I knew I wanted to do two things, I wanted to work within the culture, not necessarily in the music business but I knew I wanted to work and embody it somehow, and I knew I wanted to work with my community. My sense of community has evolved since then, but I just followed that trajectory until I graduated. I started working at a non-profit around my way, and at the same time I started this magazine with some friends from college and home, called Stress, which was a broad magazine it wasn’t just a rap magazine. We focused on graffiti, we focused on spoken word, we focused on the politics and what was going on with young people. So we were more than any other magazine at that time, we were asking those socio-political questions about Hip-Hop.

 

And can you speak about the importance of presenting Hip-Hop in a larger sense, as a culture and the problems you encountered trying to legitimize Hip-Hop, presenting it as an art form that should be respected like any other art form?

I would say that popular culture dominates perception of what Hip-Hop still is to this day. And what I’m realizing is that what we are talking about ultimately is a lifetime worth of work. Not just my work, but all of our work.  We are no longer unique, there was one point when I thought I was the only one with those kind of ideas and then the community I spoke about became a wider framework as supposed to just straight neighborhood, it spread to other folks. The challenge is still legitimacy because folks still tend to confuse Hip-Hop solely with rap music and then specifically with the corporate music that they see on TV or on commercials. So I reside to the fact it’s a lifetime worth of work for all of us, if we are passionate pursuers of culture as producers or creators in some way shape or form.

As co founder of Black August can you talk about the history of this event and the Hip-Hop culture in Cuba that respects and mirrors American Hip-Hop so much despite the obvious strained relations between America and Cuba?

When we were publishing Stress, we started in ’95 right, so at that point there was a real diversity of scenes and there still out there but they are not papered, they live online. But at that point there were actually a number of people printing different kinds of magazines, with different focus. And because our particular company was a bit more diverse culturally, in terms of our background some of us were Puerto Rican, African American, bi-racial, and some of us were from South America. We kind of had this different perspective, you know.  I had met Danny Hoch, who is a theatre artist, who I still work with today, who had been to Cuba on a theatre research trip and he found Hip-Hop. He was like “yo I met these cats they were MC’s it was amazing, they had this annual thing its called the Cuban rap festival we need to go.” So we went, and we went to Alimar, we saw this amazing just like experience of all… when we think of coed rap groups in the United States how many can we really name? Like maybe one or two or three. And it’s always the Fugees that come first to mind you know. So when we came back from that first trip and we had met folks that we met there, both Cubans and American exiles some of them political exiles and we were like we gotta do something. Because some of those exiles came out of the Black nationalist movement, we then went back to friends that we had relationships with that were organizing in the United States around that, specifically Lumumba from the Malcolm X grassroots movement and we also hooked up with Fab Five Freddy that first year, and this brother Kofi Taha. And we basically sat down and said what can we do? It was Lumumba who said, as we were talking about the timing of some sort of benefit concert that would raise money and bring U.S. arts to Cuba and bring equipment and cultural products that Cubans could use to make their own music. It was Lumumba who was like “you know in the black nationalist movement August is a very important month.” And he began to educate us about what that was, and all the different things that have happened in history in terms of the struggle. From the Nat Turner rebellion to the assassination of Malcolm X the list just goes on. So right there just using our own innate marketing sensibilities, we were like we have a brand, we have a product. Now not only can we have a fly concert with a dope name like “Black August” we can reignite that kind of consciousness with our folks by actually going out there and marketing this event. And that’s exactly what happened. I mean my hair stands just thinking about, because it was at that moment, and we met at the Caribbean Cultural Center which was like a whole other place in terms of Diaspora, so we were having that meeting and it was like that’s it, that’s what we want to call it. And I remember that was me saying that, we are gonna make that happen, we are gonna call it that, we are gonna roll with it. And it was a phenomenal first year, in terms of that concert and its still happening today, which is really dope because I would say that’s the only project at this point career wise that I want to emulate in terms of spawning things that have that kind of impact.  You know what I mean, because its run now by people that are ten years younger than us and its engaging artists that are ten years younger than us. Then it was Dead Prez, Black Star, and folks like that. Not that they aren’t relevant anymore but now its also Rebel Diaz its Blitz The Ambassador, who is an immigrant form Africa who is incorporating a whole other level. Since then they have traveled beyond Cuba.  They have gone to South America, Venezuela, South Africa, and East Africa.  It has really flourished and the consciousness of that idea has flourished amongst our generation. It’s great to make that kind of contribution.

Greg Tate is quoted to say that “Hip-Hop is ancestor worship” and KRS ONE spoke at NYU in 2008 and said “Hip-Hop is an idea that is spread amongst humanity” At the Hip-Hop Theatre there is a workshop that connects Shakespeare to Hip-Hop, and kind of alludes to the fact that Hip-Hop has been around before and its not necessarily something that is new. Can you speak on the transcendence of Hip-Hop and how it has managed to be created across the globe?

Absolutely I think what inspires me now, I was just having this conversation the other day with somebody because we were talking about rap music in particular, and just the commercial side of it. And I said well you know as a fan first and foremost what really inspires me when it comes to the music and where I think its really going is the internationalization. I think especially here in our country in America in the U.S. of A. Even based upon our own president and his background, right, and the perspective that he brings to the table. You know what he actually pronounces things correctly out of respect and reverence for that culture. I think that kind of sensibility has always been embedded in Hip-Hop innately, right. And I really believe its based upon the origins of the culture. The fact that you had a mixed group of essentially young poor people, in an urban setting who all came from someplace else. Whether it was down south or the islands, the English speaking and Spanish speaking Caribbean islands.  Ireland, Poland or Italy, in terms of the white kids that were down in the early day, and mashed it all up. And what we saw was the beginning of the new millennium it was just the seed of that. So what is commonplace now for your generation in terms of how you go about creating your work or collaborating was rather unique at that moment.  I would say that my generation was kind of the first generation that started to articulate that and look at the world that way. ‘Cause even though my parents were born and raised in Puerto Rico and I was born here in New York and I grew up as a Puerto Rican I always looked at, as proud as I am of that, I always understood that I was a part of a wider community and I feel that Hip-Hop gave me that perspective. And it allowed me as some people have said to carry a different kind of passport. And what’s beautiful is, that’s true for everywhere you go where there’s youth, and now its not just youth there are different generations but there are people who are embedded in the culture from all over the place. And I’m more inspired now by what’s happening internationally, by what’s happening in Africa, South America, then I am sometimes about what’s happening right here.

Can you talk a little about The Hip-Hop Theatre Festival how it started and how you guys came to do the work you do? And the connection between Theatre and Hip-Hop? 

Well you know, I had met Danny Hoch during the Stress Magazine days. And he was basically somebody where I wanted to see his work, just cause I wasn’t in theatre at that time, but a friend of mine was and he was like you gotta go see this cat your gonna love him. And when I went to go see his play I was like, “Damn he’s dope.” And I knew he was Hip-Hop again like it wasn’t expressed he didn’t have a t-shirt but it was the way he carried himself. I was like this cat is down. And we built a relationship and we did the work around Black August, and that evolved.  As the publishing business started to consolidate because that’s what happened, some of the top writers of all these different magazines started working for the big guys like Vibe, Source, and then XXL. And in our advertising I was looking to do something else. Danny and I had lunch one day and he was like “well I want to produce Sarah Jones this sister Liza Calone Zius and even though you don’t know much about theatre you have everything else you know about the culture politically and socially you are in the right place you’ll learn the theatre part.” And I took it as a wonderful opportunity and for me as a writer, publisher, and now a media maker and theatre producer it always been about stories, about celebrating culture. When we did the festival that year it was the same kind of “A-HA” epiphany moment. We were trying to figure out what kind of brand we were trying to make and in theatre, especially in non-profit theater, which is one of the good things; the playwright is at the epicenter of the work.  The playwright is the mc in terms of the story that they tell. And there are treated that way, which is very different than how commercial television and film and theatre work, where writers kind of come and go and get paid per gig, and they don’t really own the work the commercial producer owns the work. So as I learned that and we were thinking about how were gonna approach this thing, this article came out in Source magazine called “Hip-Hop Theatre: The New Underground” and it was written by this sister Eisa Davis