Moments in Postmodern Ethnography, Part I

LPAL, 170th St., South Bronx, December 10, 2005.

B-Boy Alien Ness of the Zulu Nation takes a break from Out For Fame to review student papers responding to his guest lecture in my "Hip-Hop In American Culture" class earlier this semester at a fine Boston-area university.

"…and from that point of view, it’s most improbable that anyone will ever know exactly who is enjoying the shadow of whom…"
- Duke Ellington, The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse, 1971.

Stealth MCs in the Building

Check out my brother* Jay Smooth getting nice on the mic device**on his WBAI radio show, the Underground Railroad:

Rap lyricism:
I make it refract in a prism of African rhythm,
while your mind is trapped in a prison of capitalism..

Going back to one of my earlier posts, I would like to present this as an example of "hip hip-hop": Never letting anyone know that you could rhyme, waiting for the right moment (sometimes for years), then suddenly – when they least expect it - just killing it. Even on the MP3, you can hear what I can only describe as the delight of the other folks in the room. It's like little kids seeing a magic trick! I remember seeing Seattle’s DJ B-Mello do the same thing about ten years ago. People were in shock! He was also, to this day, the only person I’ve ever seen rhyme while holding the mic with both hands. It made the whole thing really intense.

*you didn’t know he was my brother? In the old country, our last name was "Schmoov", but they changed it at Ellis Island…
**I’m trying to bring back the golden era rap slang. Next up: "bozack" and "tenderoni"…

"Always keep a little sunshine on your face..."

In remembering Richard Pryor, Jay Smooth emphasizes his honesty and his compassion. What was so moving for me, though, was that Pryor was able to apply both of those attitudes to himself, and beyond that, he did so without either one overwhelming the other.

His awe-inspiring technical chops as a comic* allowed him to talk about his equally awe-inspiring human faults without minimizing them on the one hand or falling into self-hatred on the other. He did this by making an implicit agreement with his audience: I will tell the absolute truth about myself and make it funny; you will laugh and through your laughter absolve me. But it only worked if we laughed, and you could see in his eyes that he knew what was riding on each performance: no laughter, no peace. He was both desperate and very, very brave. He placed his soul in our hands and then boldly won it back each and every night.

A lot of times when he was talking about an interaction he had with someone (or something – his heart, his wife’s car, the pipe) he would actually take on thier persona and start referring to the audience collectively as "Richard".

He actually made you see the world through his eyes.

At one point in his concert film, Live on the Sunset Strip, he transforms himself into a mafia-affiliated nightclub owner he knew back in Youngstown, Ohio, who used to tell him "murder stories". He takes on the vocal tone, the body language, the little bits of Italian sprinkled into his sentences, everything. After graphically reminiscing about killing a teamster ("Big mouth. Hurt a lot of people," is his dead-on justification), he turns with a look of genuine concern in his eyes. "What’s the matter, Rich? You don’t look too good …"

Although technically it's part of a comedy bit - and it is hilarious - it remains one of the most chillingly effective dramatic performances I have ever seen.

Your soul is safe, Richard. We’re gonna be laughing down here for quiet a while.

*and please let’s not forget that. [Clarification, in response to Jalylah's comment below: I didn't mean not to forget that he was a comic, I meant not to forget that in addition to genius and passion, he also had tremendous technical skill as well.]

B-Boy Wisdom

Those of us who consider ourselves Hip-Hop scholars might do well to heed the above advice, as bestowed upon me in t-shirt form last night at Out For Fame by Rob from bboynyc. I'm just sayin'...

We all knew it was coming, but it's still a shock...

Richard Pryor dies at 65. More as soon as time permits.

Whoops!

Make any mistakes at work yesterday? Not like this guy...

According to today's New York Times business section:

...Admitting to what could be Japan's biggest trading error ever, the brokerage unit of Mizuho Finanacial Group Inc. said after the close of trading on Thursday that a worker had entered what was intended as an order to sell one share of J-Com, an employment services company based in Osaka, at 610,000 yen. Instead, the order went out to sell 610,000 shares - valued at $3.1 billion at J-Com's initial offering price - for one yen each...The error has so far caused a loss of some 27 billion yen ($324 million).

The Place To Be

Yes, I know Alec Baldwin is hosting Saturday Night Live, but if you were a real hip-hopper you would tivo it…

CROS1 AND PAULSKEEE

along with Entity Apparel, and Gfx Crew Ent present:

OUT FOR FAME NEW YORK CITY

DATE : DECEMBER 10TH

PLACE : LPAC ON 14 west 170th street IN THE BRONX

TIME : 7pm - 1am

PRICE : $20 W/O FLYER and $15 with flyer

"A Brooklyn Artist"

The New York Times had an interesting article today entitled "After Storm, Riding His Heart Out: From Brooklyn to Florida To Aid Hurricane Victims" about how Lee Quinones - identified as "a Brooklyn artist" - rode his bike alone from Brooklyn to Miami in 35 days to raise money for victims of Katrina and also - implicitly - as a journey of personal discovery (he was not a serious cyclist before this).

Intriguingly, the article does not mention that Quinones, also known as "Lee 163" is one of the most important artists of our era, a legendary hip-hop pioneer both as a graffiti writer (his crew, The Fabulous 5ive, was one of the only crews to paint a whole train - 10 cars top-to-bottom; he was also one of the first graf writers to move into the conventional art world) and also as star of the first hip-hop movie Wild Style.

The piece also contains this unusually graphic paragraph:

Dodging the wire, glass, old wigs, used condoms and dead cats and dogs that littered Route 1 in New Jersey, he ignored shouts and honks from bewildered drivers and, before reaching Princeton, got the first of four flat tires.

Just for my own amusement, I like to imagine those words set to music and sung by Bruce Springsteen. It just seems right.

PUBLIC CULTURAL DISCOURSE

On the uptown platform of the Grand Street B/D station, on an ad for the new Usher movie, In The Mix, someone has written the following in black magic marker :

American pop "culture" is CRAP!

An admirably straightforward critique, indeed.

OH, ONE MORE THING...

As several people have urged me to do, I have gone through & removed all of the comment spam from this blog, so you'll have to go elsewhere for fly-by-night investment opportunities &
herbal supplements....