Black Music Sunday is a weekly sequence highlighting all issues Black music, with over 270 tales overlaying performers, genres, historical past, and extra, every that includes its personal vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll discover some acquainted tunes and maybe an introduction to one thing new.
I’ve lined a number of genres of Black music right here over time, however I’ve to confess that I’ve hardly ever touched upon rap and hip-hop. That is most likely resulting from my age and technology, since I used to be born in 1947.
That generational point-of-view will get a really thorough examination on this 2023 interview carried out by Man Emerson Mount, at Black Views.
“The Hip-Hop Era”: An Interview with Bakari Kitwana
That is an interview with Man Emerson Mount, Assistant Professor of Historical past and African American Research at Wake Forest College, and Bakari Kitwana, the internationally identified cultural critic, journalist, activist, and thought chief within the space of hip-hop, youth tradition, and Black political engagement. Kitwana is the Govt Director of Rap Periods, which for the final fourteen years has carried out over 150 townhall conferences across the nation on tough dialogues going through the hip-hop and millennial generations. His most up-to-date e book is the co-edited quantity, Democracy Unchained: Find out how to Rebuild Authorities for the Folks (The New Press, 2020).
Man Emerson Mount (GEM): As we mirror on the final fifty years of what we now name Hip Hop, I hoped we’d start together with your tackle how the historical past of Hip Hop is at present being narrated each inside well-liked tradition in addition to inside scholarly discourses. What will we get proper and what will we get incorrect in regards to the origin story of Hip Hop?
Bakari Kitwana (BK): Hip-hop as a musical expression is comparatively younger. Its creation story and mythologies are routinely challenged, as its perceptions in well-liked tradition meet the scrutiny of an rising hip-hop scholarship. Some argue that the delivery date is unfair. Others recommend that there are iterations of hip-hop that predate August 1973, together with different musical varieties and practices that hinted at hip-hop earlier than hip-hop. All that apart, what the present Hip-Hop 50 celebrations throughout the nation revel is that there are many takeaways from what has been achieved on this temporary half century. The numerous signed and unsigned artists, the various improvements and disruptions, the cross fertilization of Black diasporic youth cultures as they meet new applied sciences. There’s tons to agree on and much to debate fare past the origin story that solutions the query, “What has 50 years of hip-hop historical past meant to the world?” Who’s the best emcee of all time? Who’s in your high 10 checklist? What have completely different areas past the East and West coasts contributed to the hip-hop story? So, there may be the debatable however there may be additionally the indeniable: that hip-hop music emerged out of a cross cultural fertilization that impacted the American and world music scenes, that Black American vernacular was and stays central in its verbal expression; that DJ Kool Herc who hailed from Jamaica was considered one of its early innovators, that many emcees and djs got here after, appeared again at these earlier innovators and pioneers and tried to construct on their practices with various levels of success and relying on publicity captured the creativeness of thousands and thousands. And all of it has given us numerous hours of music to hearken to and plenty of hip-hop historical past to mirror on. What we get incorrect within the origin story, as is true of any historical past are the unsung. Let’s make sure that we carry them up.
GEM: How do you conceptualize Hip-Hop? What does it imply to you?
BK: At first, I consider hip-hop as a Black generational phenomenon. It was a theoretical framework that positioned our technology in dialog with others most seamlessly. This was significantly important for a technology coming of age within the aftermath of the civil rights and Black Energy actions. In my earlier years as a hip-hop author, I sought out the pioneering practitioners who I additionally deemed theorists due to their cautious excited about what’s hip-hop. It’s necessary to know that not each practitioner makes a worthy theorist. Nevertheless, there are necessary exceptions. DJ Kool Herc. Africa Bambaataa. KRS-One, Chuck D, Popmaster Fabel had been among the many voices that not solely gave quite a lot of thought to what they had been doing and the place it was coming from, but additionally rigorously articulated what they noticed. After all, there have been others, however in my thoughts, they had been among the many dominant theoreticians whose excited about the query “what’s hip-hop” created a information middle that unfold out from there and was adopted because the gospel by many. Numerous hip-hop followers to at the present time cite their theories about hip-hop, many with out realizing their origin. Students like Tricia Rose, Mark Anthony Neal, Joan Morgan, Marcyliena Morgan, Daybreak-Elissa Fischer, James Peterson, Raquel Rivera, amongst others, have documented a few of these theories and solidified their preservation with the examine of hip-hop within the academy and of their books and scholarly essays. Equally necessary are hip-hop arts practitioners who sit at intersection of artwork and academia. 9th Marvel, Bun B, Lupe Fiasco, Akua Naru instantly come to thoughts. However in fact, there are others.
What hip-hop means to me? As somebody preoccupied with the best way American society and white supremacy suppresses Black people as a common observe, hip-hop for me has all the time pointed to risk inside a particular generational second for the way we get free. Its emergence from and continued rootedness within the Black grassroots offers it particular enchantment and energy to remodel the world as we all know it. We see hints of that as hip-hop meets highschool training, academia, politics, entrepreneurship, and so on, however in my estimation, regardless of hip-hop’s commercialization, to a big diploma a lot of its revolutionary and transformative potential on this regard, stays off the radar. To that finish, we’re simply getting began.
There’s a few 20-year age distinction between me and Kitwana, and as such, I can declare to have been solely a part of the technology that god-fathered what turned rap and hip-hop. My introduction got here through affiliation with Gil Scott-Heron and The Final Poets, who additionally intersected with my pursuits in each jazz and poetry. You will get a way of the “birthing interval” through the next two movies.
Don Letts’ 2003 BBC documentary, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: The Story of Gil Scott-Heron,” consists of interviews with The Final Poets, Chuck D, Mos Def, Richie Havens, and Linton Kwesi Johnson.
The second documentary, introducing The Final Poets, is Herbert Danska’s “Proper On!”
Billed as “a conspiracy of formality, avenue theater, soul music, and cinema,” Proper On! is a pioneering efficiency movie, a compelling report of radical Black sentiment in Sixties America, and a precursor of the hip-hop revolution in musical tradition. It options the unique Final Poets—Gylan Kain, David Nelson, and Felipe Luciano—performing 28 numbers tailored from their legendary look at New York’s Paperback Theater in 1969, shot guerilla-style on the streets and rooftops of decrease Manhattan. Opening months after the better-known music documentary Woodstock and nearly concurrently with Melvin Van Peebles’s Candy Sweetback’s Baadasssss Music, Proper On! was described by its producer as “the primary ‘completely black movie,’” making “no concession in language and symbolism to white audiences.”
The total movie is posted right here, through The Museum of Trendy Artwork:
Fred Wiggs at The Black Previous profiled The Final Poets:
The Final Poets, a bunch of musicians and poet performers, originated out of the civil rights motion, with an emphasis on the black re-awakening. The unique Final Poets had been based on Malcolm X’s birthday, Might 19, 1968 on the former Mount Morris Park (Now Marcus Garvey Park), at 124th Avenue and Fifth Avenue in East Harlem, New York Metropolis. The unique members, Felipe Luciano, Gylan Kain, and David Nelson took the title from a poem by South African poet Keorapetse Kgositsile, who believed that he was within the final period of poetry earlier than weapons would take over. They introduced collectively music and spoken phrase.
He factors out that there have been two teams of Final Poets:
Although the recognition of each teams declined by the late Nineteen Seventies, the respect the rappers and lyricists of the post-Nineteen Eighties period have paid them has helped cement The Final Poets’ place in historical past as a serious affect on the hip-hop and spoken phrase actions. The Final Poets influenced jazz and hip hop artists starting from Pharaoh Sanders and Senegalese drummer Aiyb Dieng to Public Enemy. Just lately varied members of the 2 teams have tried to carry them collectively. The Final Poets have additionally collaborated with modern artists akin to Frequent and Wu-Tang Clan.
Right here is the second group of Final Poets, mixing their spoken phrase rapping efficiency with jazz in “Jazzoetry.”
For a deep dive into the origins of hip-hop, check out “Hip Hop Historical past: From the Streets to the Mainstream,” from the ICON Collective.
From the road nook to the world stage, hip hop has grown into one of many world’s most distinguished musical genres and cultural influences. Discover vital occasions in hip hop historical past and its explosive evolution.
[…]
Hip hop historical past has an enchanting story price exploring extra. This cultural motion has seen appreciable change and evolution since its inception within the seventies. What started as an area motion supposed to supply a haven for African-American and Puerto Rican youth in New York Metropolis, has turn out to be a worldwide phenomenon. To at the present time, hip hop continues to be a dominant drive influencing the tradition all over the world.
As soon as we all know the historical past, we will additionally perceive how hip hop and rap intersected with and borrowed from jazz, and the way jazz musicians absorbed them as effectively. Give a hearken to a number of the main style inventors and blenders.
NPR’s Frannie Kelly wrote:
A Tribe Referred to as Quest: The Rise And Fall Of A Legend
When A Tribe Referred to as Quest was first getting began, straight out of highschool, it was the ’80s, and hip-hop was younger. Authentic group member Jarobi White says he was having extra enjoyable than anyone else, and his crew was firing on all cylinders.
“Being so younger, I imply 19, 18, that is younger,” he says. “We had no thought. Every part was simply flying by the seat of your pants. The way it felt. The way it felt was the one factor that issues. Am I having fun with it? Do I be ok with it? Sure? That is what we’re doing. The cash and the celebrity and all of that stuff, that was all secondary.”
The 2 predominant vocalists within the group had been Phife Dawg and Q-Tip. “Me and Q-Tip had been greatest associates from like 2 to fifteen,” Phife says. “Me and Jarobi turned greatest associates from like 12 till now. Ali Shaheed went to the identical highschool as Q-Tip. That is how they met.”
“We had been simply attempting to be fly,” Jarobi says. “And make music. And be musicians. Be like Stevie and Marvin and Prince. Thelonious Monk and Mingus and Charlie Parker. We had been attempting to be these individuals.”
The British Bootstrap Channel covers their historical past in “A Tribe Referred to as Quest: Pioneers of Jazz-Rap”:
One other group who would cross and mix genres was Digable Planets. They inform their story on their web site:
Digable Planets burst onto the music scene in 1993 with their Grammy-winning single, “Rebirth Of Slick (Cool Like Dat)”. Made up of Ishmael Butler (“Butterfly”), Craig Irving (“Doodlebug”) and Mary Ann Vieira (“Ladybug Mecca”), the trio carved out a novel model of jazz-informed Hip Hop. Shortly after, Digable Planets adopted up with their debut album, Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time And Area), an formidable providing that Pitchfork praised as “a world inside a world, full with its personal language and monuments.” The group celebrates the thirtieth Anniversary of Reachin’ in 2023.
Melding Jazz samples, and complicated rhymes that touched on the whole lot from the nuances of metropolis life (The place I’m From) to abortion rights (La Femme Fetal), Reachin’ was a wealthy and vibrant inventive assertion in addition to an enormous business success (RIAA licensed gold).
Digable Planets instantly adopted up with Blowout Comb, a daring and colourful meditation on Black liberation. Whereas the album didn’t initially attain the quick business successes of Reachin’, the album has aged fantastically, influencing future generations of Hip Hop heads, younger Jazz musicians and Afrofuturists. The trio spent the 2000s establishing their very own particular person inventive voices with Butler’s Cherrywine and Shabazz Palaces initiatives, Mecca’s work with BROOKZILL! and Irving as “Cee Data” main Cee Data & The Cosmic Funk Orchestra.
Vlogger Brandon Shaw’s “Digging The Greats” channel has their bio on this 12-minute video, “Digable Planets: When Jazz Rap Beat Snoop & Dre”:
A groundbreaker in 1993 was Guru’s album “Jazzmatazz.” Jesse Ducker at Albumism wrote in 2023 for its thirtieth Anniversary:
Jazz has been part of hip-hop since its inception. The creators of the hip-hop artwork type like Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and Afrika Bambaataa all included data by artists like Roy Ayers and Bob James into their DJ units. Mid-’80s hip-hop tracks steadily sampled songs like James’ “Nautilus” and “Take Me To the Mardi Gras.” And Gang Starr’s first single “Phrases I Manifest” sampled Charlie Parker’s model of “A Night time in Tunisia.”
Honestly, jazz has proven a love for hip-hop because the starting of its recognition. Herbie Hancock launched “Rockit,” a Grammy Award profitable collaboration with Grandmixer DST. Miles Davis’ remaining album was Doo-Bop (1992), the place he partnered with expert producer Straightforward Moe Bee. And Branford Marsalis performed the saxophone on Gang Starr’s “Jazz Factor,” the theme music for Spike Lee’s Mo’ Higher Blues (1990).
So Jazzmatazz, the primary solo album by Gang Starr’s Guru, is a logical extension of this musical symbiosis. Launched 30 years in the past, Jazzmatazz is the primary profitable instance of fusing straight-ahead East Coast hip-hop with dwell jazz artists. Guru enlists a forged of jazz heavyweights to chop free and present their love.
Right here’s the complete album:
this topic in reverse, it’s necessary to try jazz musicians who’ve blended rap and hip-hop into their repertoires.
Pianist Robert Glasper is a type of musicians.
Hailing from Houston, Texas, Robert Glasper is a jazz pianist with a knack for mellow, harmonically advanced compositions that additionally reveal a delicate hip-hop affect. Impressed to play piano by his mom, a gospel pianist and vocalist, Glasper attended Houston’s Excessive College for the Performing Arts. After commencement, he studied music on the New College College in Manhattan, the place he discovered efficiency work with such luminaries as bassist Christian McBride, saxophonist Kenny Garrett, and others. After graduating faculty, Glasper labored with a wide range of artists, together with trumpeter Roy Hargrove, vocalist Carly Simon, and rapper Mos Def. The pianist launched his debut album, Temper, on Contemporary Sound New Expertise in 2004. Canvas and In My Aspect adopted in 2005 and 2007, respectively, on Blue Word Information.
In 2009, Glasper launched the forward-thinking album Double Booked, which featured a mixture of modal post-bop and funky, ’80s Herbie Hancock-inspired numbers with two separate bands. The primary of those was his trio with drummer Chris Dave and upright bassist Vicente Archer; they recorded 5 originals and a canopy of Thelonious Monk’s “Consider One.” These tracks had been adopted by 5 extra originals by his electrical band, dubbed the Robert Glasper Experiment, that includes Dave, electrical bassist Derrick Hodge, and Casey Benjamin on saxes and vocoder.
In 2010, Patrick Jarenwattananon wrote for NPR: Listening To Rap With Robert Glasper.
Robert Glasper straddles two distinct worlds. He is an achieved jazz pianist, who was signed to Blue Word Information in his mid-twenties. And he works with a number of hip-hop and R&B artists, each within the studio and on the stage: Q-Tip, Mos Def and Maxwell, to call just a few. Either side are mirrored on his 2009 album Double-Booked, which captures each his acoustic piano trio and his electrified Robert Glasper Experiment collective.
Most interviews I’ve learn method Glasper from a jazz angle; I wished to speak to him about hip-hop. So in late 2009, I sat all the way down to play him 5 completely different rap songs and speak about them. On the finish, we talked additional in regards to the thought of being each in jazz and hip-hop worlds without delay. I am completely satisfied to lastly current the outcomes right here.
I’m a fan of his interpretation of Mongo Santamaria’s jazz traditional “Afro Blue,” with vocals from Erykah Badu.
I’ll shut with an album from jazz elder statesman Miles Davis, produced in coordination with hip-hop report producer Straightforward Mo Bee, which was launched after Davis had died.
Miles’ demise on September 28, 1991 got here after almost a month in a coma, a month after his final public look on the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. The impression on the world was quick and reached far past the circle of jazz. He left behind shocked associates and followers—in addition to {a partially} completed album within the fingers of a hip-hop producer named Straightforward Mo Bee.
“We bought six songs carried out and I used to be engaged on them once I bought the decision from [Miles’ road manager and producer] Gordon Meltzer. I was like, ‘Ohhh man.’ I used to be considering that he would bounce again from it. Miles appeared like a powerful man.”
Doo-Bop, the album that Straightforward Mo Bee would full, including two extra tracks that used trumpet elements from the 1985 Rubber Band periods, turned Miles’ first posthumous launch in 1992. It initially was supposed to be a double album exploring the complete breadth of Miles’ funk and hip-hop infatuations: one disc fulfilling the long-standing promise of a collaboration with Prince; the second that includes co-productions with John Bigham, Sid Reynolds, Straightforward Mo Bee, and maybe others.
Born Osten Harvey, Jr., Mo Bee was establishing himself in 1991, having produced breakout hits for rappers Massive Daddy Kane and The Genius (aka GZA of Wu-Tang Clan). His first assembly with the trumpeter passed off that spring in Miles’ Manhattan condominium at an audition alongside a half-dozen hip-hop producers. Mo Bee credit a perfectionist streak for serving to him beat the competitors.
Right here’s the complete album:
Be part of me within the feedback part under for extra, and I hope these of you who’re extra acquainted with each rap and hip-hop will publish a few of your favorites that intersect with jazz
