Dramaturgy Oldschool: Emmet Kirwan @ Edfringe 2016

Dublin Oldschool

A new play by Emmet Kirwan Pleasance Courtyard

This Award winning dark comedy is about brothers, Dublin and dance music. The cast are Emmet Kirwan and Ian Lloyd Anderson. Together they play 17 characters.  

It is directed by Phillip McMahon with lighting by Sarah Jane Shiels and sound by Ivan Birthistle. The playtext was published by Bloomsbury Methuen in January 2016.  Dublin Oldschool is presented by Project Arts Dublin in association with Soho Theatre.

Wed 3 Aug - Sun 28 Aug 1.00pm (ex 10, 15 & 22 Aug)  

What was the inspiration for this performance?

I wanted to write about a subculture of dance music in Dublin and something that touched on contemporary issues, much of Irish theatre is about the cannon, new productions of old plays. I wanted to write a contemporary Dublin play from a working class perspective.

How did you go about gathering the team for it?

I had known the director and Dramaturge of the play Phillip McMahon since we were in Dublin Youth Theatre as teenagers, Phillip is a playwright and director who’d i’d worked with there and in our adult life in Ireland’s national theatre The Abbey for his

musical Alice in Funderland, his company This is pop baby is known for celebrating youth, club and queer culture through their work and Phillip was of an age and similar experience to myself so i thought his theatrical sensibility would be a perfect fit, also as a playwright he was well able to edit out what wasn’t needed. 

I had worked with The actor Ian Lloyd Anderson for a number of years and had written the part specifically  for him. We shared a dressing room in the Abbey for a production of Major Barbara it was a long run and i had mentioned the next thing we do together would be something new, set in Ireland contemporary and vibrant. An energetic an antidote if you will, to slogging through an unedited Shaw play every night. 

The Play came from an Initiative called ‘Show in a bag’ run by Tiger Dublin fringe, Irish Theatre Institute and Fishable the new play company to enable and give support to actors to write their own work. 

How did you become interested in making performance?

Again working as an actor in Ireland for years, many of the disciplines i had learned about in college were rarely utilised in plays from the cannon of older Irish works and many modern plays were exercises in filmic style realism and naturalism, table and two chairs type of work. I wanted to play with form and acting style, so i wrote the opening scenes in Hip hop inspired verse to newly composed beats, and much of the story telling elements in the play are spoken word.  

Constrained financially, i had to employ story telling monologues to tell the more fantastical elements of he story that had multi characters. Since the nineties in Ireland, many of these monologue type narratives were told in the Irish storyteller tradition, in the past tense and with an actor standing statically in a pool of light. 

I wanted to do the opposite and tell the story in the present tense and employ Meyerhold’s externalisation technique and have a brash over the top comedic physical style that externalised actions and emotions with big gestures, doing something overtly theatrical in Meyerhold’s tradition of the actor as athlete . And then Juxtapose this with a more traditional  realism in the duologue scenes between the brothers.

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?

It was new piece so there was a lot more collaboration in the staging of it than i’d usually experience in a rehearsal room between all three of us and the styles of acting and directing we brought. I wrote the piece and then tried out the scenes with Ian and the director Philly, and then would edit out the pieces that were slowing the piece down with Phillip’s help

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

A spoken word, hip hop, comedy gig, mixed with a family drama . A kind of headrush that lets you experience a rave in the moment, that actors on stage are experiencing it. 

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

The director Phillip wanted to keep the aesthetic of a Hip Hop or Comedy gig. So the stage is bare and populated by only two microphones and two large speakers to give the audience the impression they where out on a night out or in an underground club and not coming see a play.

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?

Possibly plays in the recent Irish cannon of writers that are from a traditionally working class perspective and narrative, hopefully mixed with newer music and pop culture aesthetic and influences . 


Join wannabe DJ Jason on a chemically enhanced trip through the streets of Dublin, moving from one misguided misadventure to another. 

Somewhere between the DJs, drug busts and hilltop raves, he stumbles across a familiar face from the past: his brother Daniel.  

Daniel is an educated, homeless addict. They haven't spoken in years but, over a lost weekend, they reconnect and reminisce over tunes, trips and their city. Dark comedy, family drama and spoken word odyssey, Dublin Oldschool snaps, crackles, raps and rhymes. Two brothers living on the edge, but how long can this buzz last?

Emmet Kirwan is best known for writing and starring in the Irish TV cult comedy series 'Sarah and Steve'. He was in 'Juno & the Paycock' at the Gate earlier this year, and films include 'Pursuit' with Brendan Gleeson and the Award winning '71' with Jack O'Connell.

Ian Lloyd Anderson was Dean in the long running TV series Love/Hate,  He is Jack Clitheroe in the Abbey Theatre production  of 'The Plough and the Stars' which will tour the US in the autumn.


Director Phillip McMahon is half of pop culture outfit THISISPOPBABY and has directed Panti:High Heels In Low Places Traverse Theatre August 8 - 20.

Dublin Oldschool has played 2 sell out seasons at Project Arts Dublin,  plus at the Tiger Dublin Fringe Festival and  in Cork.  

Ian Lloyd Anderson & Emmet Kirwan were joint winners, Best Performer Award, Tiger Dublin Fringe 2014.
itself. 

Beside- Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33). 60 Pleasance. Edinburgh EH8 9TJ. Box Office 0131 556 6550. Wed Aug 3- Sun Aug 28. 1.00pm. (ex 10, 15 & 22 Aug)    Tickets: £6 from 3 Aug until 5 Aug, £8-10 from 6 Aug until 28 Aug. Running Time 60 minutes. Age 14 +

Artificial Hip Dramaturgy: Ida Barr on reviving a career

RESURRECTED MUSIC HALL SUPERSTAR IDA BARR PRESENTS ‘ARTIFICIAL HIP-HOP’ AT WILTON’S MUSIC HALL

The world’s first music hall star turned hip-hop icon Ida Barr will tread the boards of one of the East End's best-kept secrets, Wilton’s Music Hall, once more from Thursday 11 to Saturday 13 February 2016 in brand new show Artificial Hip Hop.

Renowned for her two massive hits Oh You Beautiful Doll and Everybody’s Doin’ It, Ida has now embraced a whole new musical genre which she has christened Slipped Disco, also known as Artificial Hip Hop, as featured on various pirate grime radio stations around London’s East End.

To great acclaim, she has launched her new album, Get Old or Die Tryin’, and she invites you to join her for an old fashioned, new wave sing-a-long.  Ida’s going to be mashing up Rhianna with Dan Leno, Omi with Noel Coward and Marie Lloyd with Eminem, whipping you all into a frenzy for her epic rendition of Jerusalem by Will.i.am Blake mashed up with Nicki Minaj.  

Believe us, you ain’t heard nothin' like it.

Who is Ida Barr?
Ida Barr was a real music hall singer who died in 1967.  I heard her on a recording in the National Sound Archive at the British Library and immediately had the idea to bring her back to life.  Or rather, imagine her life if she hadn't have died back in 1967.

What attracted you to modern music in a vaudeville style - or is that vice versa?
It’s a simple comic conceit - music hall meets hip hop - but it’s also a rich musical one.  Win win!



Why perform live rather than just make an album?
Ida is very much about the chatting and the jokes as well as the songs.  But more than that, she is about interaction.  Old fashioned sing-songs and the communal joy that comes from all being in the same place at the same time.  Don’t get me wrong - I’d love Ida to have a blistering radio-friendly hit - but really she is best experienced live.  Whilst she still is.



Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?
The fact that the character was created out of lots of historical research is typical of the way I work.  I just wrote a book about the history of Hypnosis that came out of my research for my character, The Singing Hypnotist.  But Ida has really been created in live performance, with a huge variety of audiences from toddlers playgroups, to hospices via hen parties and everything in between.


What do you hope that the audience will experience?
I hope the audience find they are joining in without feeling self-conscious.  Because everyone is doing it.  From bellowing along with sing-songs to getting up and dancing the hokey-cokey.  



What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?
I spent a lot of time making it very well constructed so that you are supported and reassured every step of the way, so that it feels natural to take that immersive leap.  

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?
My work is at the entertainment end of live art.  Or at the live art end of entertainment.


Are there any other questions that might help me to understand the meaning of dramaturgy for you in your work?
I think the audience is the best dramaturg.  They tell you what they want and don’t want.  I see my job to encourage them to want the same as I’m offering.  That the trick!

Ida Barr is the creation of Olivier-award winner Christopher Green also known for BBC Radio 4 favourite Tina C. Ida has graced stages at the National Theatre, Tate Modern and Britain and the Barbican, as well as livening up many a variety and comedy night around the globe. She’s appeared in her own series, ‘Artificial Hip Hop’, on BBC Radio 4 with special guest, the beatboxer known as Shlomo.     

Thursday 11th to Saturday 13th February 2016

8pm and also 3pm on Saturday

£15 stalls, £10 balcony, £8 concessions

Wilton’s Music Hall, Graces Alley, London, E1 8JB

WILTON’S MUSIC HALL

Wilton’s Music Hall is a gem in the heart of the East-End and the best surviving example only intact survivor of the early music hall era. This prestigious Grade II listed venue has been carefully  repaired after four years of building work with help from the Heritage Lottery Fund, SITA Trust, Viridor Credits, The Loveday Charitable Trust, The Foundation for Sport and the Arts, Garfield Weston Foundation, Aldgate and Allhallows, The City Bridge Trust, The Foyle Foundation and numerous other Trusts and individuals to which Wilton’s are hugely grateful. The Grade 2 Star listed building is a focus for theatrical East End history as well as a living theatre, concert hall, public bar and heritage site.  

Christopher Green is a writer and performer whose work

covers comedy, cabaret, theatre and live art. He is Tina C., Ida Barr, Jedd O’Sullivan and a host of others. He is also himself.  The Australian Newspaper called him ‘the most intelligent man to come out of the UK since Stephen Fry’, The Independent called him ‘Britain’s best drag queen’, and The Guardian ‘an entertainment maverick’. Chris can’t comment on any of these.

Likes:  hypnosis, acupuncture, Mary J Blige.

Dislikes:  self-loathing, war, celery.

High Concepts and Low Morality

When Vice said that Martin Shkreli was claiming that his market manipulating antics are performance art, it was too good to be true. He did do an interview in which he achieves the apparently impossible - making him appear even more hateful - and between sounding like a teenage boy who has listened to a bit too much hip-hop and is threatening his Latin teacher for giving him a low grade, Shkreli refers to his financial activity as selling drugs (see what he did there? Gangster to the max, bro'). And there's this gem.

It makes you wonder what art is. To me, what I’m doing right now in the media, raising prices, all this shit, believe what you want, but it’s interesting. It gets people talking. At the end of the day, that’s what art is.

Thank goodness that discussion's over. It's been a struggle to get a clear definition of art - there has even been attempts to define assassination as performance art.  Shkreli avoids the nitty-gritty of specific forms and contexts, and sees it in terms of its consequences: it gets people talking. Like Star Wars.

Let's assume he is right, and this isn't just a desperate attempt to justify his willingness to make cash money off suffering. 

His behaviour actually reads more like a patron's position: he's got the loot, he spends it on art, and there is no obligation for a patron to be a good person or have any taste. I mean, Cesare Borgia, right?

My new pal Diderot would probably agree. In his treatise in defence of his (badly received) plays, he sees the role of theatre in a social context. He's weaponising theatre to make it a tool for bourgeois revolution, so he wouldn't mind The Shkrel's big wallet bragging. 

In fact, his description of the genius - extreme sensibility and moments of calm, even cold, action - is mirrored in that DX interview. Anyone who reacts to RZA's dissing by waving a metaphorical pistol, but can also raise prices on a product that is essential to the survival of the customer is totally a gangster, and conforms to Diderot's definition of genius.

Then there's the precedent of Marina Abramovic. Once upon a time, she did some intriguing art, examining the nature of gender, desire, the boundaries of art itself. Now she tries to make the green off her own myth. Grant Morrison (off comics) said that making money in Hollywood is a form of magic. 

And despite Shkreli's dubious assertion that there hasn't been a really rich rapper, his mate Jay-Z does something similar. Oh yeah, he completely used Abramovic. It's making sense.

Then there is Kanye West. Anita Sarkeesian has something to say - it did get people talking, didn't it? Although I encourage the belief that it is the interpretation rather than the art that generates meaning, allowing Kanye's Monster video to operate as a critique of objectification rather than a celebration, I have sympathy with her position. 

So yeah, I think Martin is totally doing art. There isn't a genre for it yet - performance art would be a place-holder label. It's great that he has kept going with the act: getting arrested gets people talking, and he's introduced an element of comedy into a serious narrative. I mean, it got people laughing when he got nabbed for fraud. There's even a sense of natural justice, the wicked getting punished. 

The Texture of Dramaturgy: Bram Gieben @ Edfringe 2015

Bram Gieben has performed poetry across Scotland as a solo performer and as part of Chemical Poets since 2005. In 2015, this culminated in him winning the title of Scottish Slam Champion. In 2010, the Chemical Poets took our show Twenty Tentacle to the Edinburgh Fringe. Bram returned the following year with a solo show, Neuromonster. He is working on a new solo show, which will début at the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe. 

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The Fringe

What inspired this production: did you begin with an idea or a script or an object?
I guess you could say I started with several ideas - the show is made up of short stories, rap songs and poems, some of which have been performed before, others not. What I found was that once these 'objects' were on the page of a script, their pace and shape changed, and became part of something new and different - that ended up being the show. The theme - an exploration of nihilism, and an attempt to escape from it - is absolutely present in the original 'objects.' It was the only theme it made sense for me to explore - existential terror, and various coping mechanisms.


Why bring your work to Edinburgh?
Well, I grew up there, so it's near. I have a network of friends and collaborators there, many of whom are involved in SHIFT/ as well. Mainly though, I wanted to bring my show to Edinburgh first because Summerhall very kindly gave us the opportunity to stage it there, an opportunity we might have struggled to find elsewhere. It's a rare example of a major Fringe partner putting some faith in local performers. Hopefully we won't let them down!


What can the audience expect to see and feel - or even think - of your production?
I hope these poems, stories and songs will get them to ask existential questions of themselves - why am I here? What is the purpose of life? How does one avoid suffering, and should it be avoided? I also hope to provide some answers to these questions. Nihilism is a dark theme to start exploring, but I try to offer some chinks of light and hope. For me the solution to existential dread has always been cosmic awe, so I hope the audience get to experience a little bit of both - terror and wonder.


The Dramaturgy Questions
How would you explain the relevance - or otherwise - of dramaturgy within your work?
As I said above, the thing that surprised me most while writing the show was how different the pre-existing poems and stories seemed to want to change shape and pace once they were on the page all together. There's something about the dramatic structure implicit in an hour-long show.. the peaks and troughs, the highs and lows, sort of suggest themselves while you are performing. So that process of writing, rehearsing, revising, tightening, re-writing and rehearsing again has been great fun, and completely central to how the show has developed. People who might have seen me perform one of the pieces separately might be surprised at how much has changed.


What particular traditions and influences would you acknowledge on your work - have any particular artists, or genres inspired you and do you see yourself within their tradition?

The beat generation continue to be a huge inspiration - one of the poems in the show is a homage to Alan Ginsberg's Howl, sanctioned by the estate of the great man himself. The themes of the show are heavily indebted to Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Camus, John Gray and Thomas Ligotti. 

On the performance side of things, this year I have been really

inspired by one-man performances from Chris Thorpe ('Confirmation') and Christopher Brett-Bailey ('This Is How We Die'). Inspired by these shows, I wanted to create something that felt muscular, utterly singular, and intense. A loaded dialogue between performer and audience, in a way... I want to use my show to infect people with ideas. I am trying to picture myself as a disease vector for nihilistic thoughts, and then an inoculating needle.


Do you have a particular process of making that you could describe - where it begins, how you develop it, and whether there is any collaboration in the process?
Not much in the way of collaboration, in terms of the writing - but the rehearsal process, and the feedback I got from my fellow SHIFT/ers was invaluable. So the performance was a case of trial and error, informed by detailed feedback. Some of the music was made collaboratively - there are drone pieces in there which have elements co-written by a musician I work with called Partisan, and some mandolin samples from a producer called Mild Maynyrd. The pre-made elements of the tracks for the show were also mastered by Asthmatic Astronaut of Black Lantern Music.


What do you feel the role of the audience is, in terms of making the meaning of your work? 
I suppose their role is to examine these existential questions about suffering and existence, which I am posing quite directly at some points, and more cryptically at others. My show is quite heavily didactic - it is unapologetically polemical, with some of the language taking the shape of political speeches, rhetoric, and loaded satire. So their reaction is somewhat dictated to them, if they are sympathetic to my bleak world-view... otherwise, they are free to react with disgust. Perhaps they will find that it is all a bleak and monstrous tapestry with no meaning. Perhaps they can just enjoy the imagery in the writing, and the music... I hope it means something to them, anyway.


Are there any questions that you feel I have missed out that would help me to understand how dramaturgy works for you?
I am, undoubtedly, an enthusiastic amateur at the dramaturgy part of this - but having written traditional scripts, short stories, and three minute performance poems before, I can say that this script is different. It was developed through performance. It has been road-tested and it is rugged. I am new to the process of creation-through-repetition-and-feedback... and I have absolutely loved experiencing it. I think this is the strongest work I've ever done. Why haven't I been working like this for years?!

Between 2009 and 2011 under the name Texture, Bram recorded the Neuroleptica Trilogy of EPs, featuring collaborations with Morphamish, Asthmatic Astronaut, dustmotes, Monkeytribe, Krowne and Harlequinade, among others. The EPs were remastered and re-released in 2012. In 2007, he released Future Proof with long-term collaborator Morphamish, under the name Double Helix. Bram is currently working on new music with his band DUST, new solo tracks as Texture, and a collab with US rapper p.WRECKS as Power Hungry Liars.  

In 2009, he  helped set up the label Black Lantern Music, releasing music by more than thirty artists from Scotland and worldwide. In 2011 he released the self-produced album Sigil Kids on Aural Sects, following it up in 2012 with Sigil Kids II - Thrown Room. Bram regularly performs live and puts on shows, and has played the Kelburn Music Festival's Viewpoint Sessions, the Wickerman Festival and at gigs throughout the UK. In 2011, he recorded a live session for the BBC Radio 1 Introducing.... New Music: Scotland show. Black Lantern hosts a fortnightly show on Future Music FM - Bram co-hosts with Asthmatic Astronaut on alternating fortnights. 

Mobb Deeep @ ABC

Steady Mobbin' from The Vile Arts on 8tracks Radio.

In the hour of chaos, only defeat

Some context: early nineties, the joy of the rave scene was turning drab (bad drugs sneaking in, the division of the clubbing nation into tribes, the state attempting to legislate against repetitive beats et cetera et cetera). More experimental electronic artists emerging, mostly making self-consciously intelligent music. Spiral Tribe still up to stuff but winter of paranoia after summer of love noticeable. 

Closer influence: the soon-to-be workmanlike Manic Street Preachers express joy that Public Enemy refused to work with them, because 'we are shit.' Such awareness soon lost as Manics turn towards the lumpen socialist rock they were supposed to transcend. 

Revival of grunge mad misery and guitars hip again.

Tricky, known quantity. Part of a Bristol scene that had eclectic tastes and hip-hop connections. Worked with Massive Attack and Portishead (or at least shared a vinyl collection).

First blast - a cover version of Black Steel by Public Enemy. Transposed from America to UK, dropping Chuck D's stentorian declamation (and optimistic fantasy of prison escape) with a disorientated female voice. Lyrics half-remembered, repeated. Unlike in source, singer remains in prison and doesn't bust out of prison. Tricky's voice only turns up to sound like a prison warden tapping on the cell bars.

Ruins of hip-hop, in which Tricky retains themes of arbitrary law and paranoia, removing machismo of Chuck D, leaving a woman captive. Dynamic metal guitar races into psychedelia but never jumps the groove to funk or wail

Azaelia, Azalea and Me (part 1)

I am really getting into this beef between Iggy and Azealia. Even the frickin' Daily Telegraph is getting in on the action - although they put the article in the 'women's life section' for reasons I can't understand.

Being a minor media pundit, I am more interested in the way that the issue is being handled than any 'truth' in the accusations that Iggy A is appropriating hip hop. And I seem to find myself siding against an artist I admire to protect a cookie-cutter pop chick. The Telegraph article is a pretty good survey, though. My notes in italics.


...rapper Azealia Banks had a viral hit with 212,(which was a storming track)... she’s also known for her long-standing feud with the Australian rapper Iggy Azalea... Last week, Banks gave an interview to New York based radio station Hot 97. When questioned about her feud with Iggy, she burst into tears at the cultural appropriation of blackness, calling it a "cultural smudging".

She seemed particularly upset that Iggy Azalea was nominated for Best Rap Album at the Grammys. “The Grammys are supposed to be awards for artistic excellence… Iggy Azalea’s not excellent,” Banks said. 

I did watch a bit of Iggy and, while I am not ready to define excellence, I don't think she is as good as Azaelia. But let's have a look at the Grammys' past winners to check whether they are about 'artistic excellence.'

Records of the year have included Phil Collins, Coldplay, Eric Clapton (in the 1990s when he has that revival), U2, and The Captain and Tennille. The most striking consistency is that artists get this award long after their music might have been exciting or relevant (Sinatra in the 1960s, Carlos Santana in the 1990s). When Eddie Veder won an award, he questioned its value in his acceptance speech, and Sinead O'Connor boycotted the event. Even the wikipedia page notes that it tends to go for commercially rather than critically notable artists.

I am concerned that Azaelia gives a shit about The Grammys. Her viral hit had a chorus about 'that cunt's getting eaten.' She is not making commercial music. In fact, the pleasure of her songs comes in the disregard she has for the niceties of conventional pop: the sexuality she celebrates is rough and tough and determined, and is a long way from Iggy's white-bread fantasy persona. 

“When they give these Grammys out, all it says to white kids is, ‘You're great. You're amazing. You can do whatever you put your mind to.’ And it says to black kids, ‘You don't have s***. You don’t own s***, not even the s*** you created yourself.’ And it makes me upset.”

So, I did check the rap awards at The Grammys, and it is a mixed bunch of artists. It isn't as redundant as I'd expected (although no Public Enemy, Tribe or De La Soul and P Diddy has won twice). The racial profile (hmm) of the awards does not suggest that it either favours or ignores black or white artists. Given that Iggy and Azaelia have had beef for a while, I wonder whether she is picking out The Grammys to continue the ruckus. 

Reni Eddo Lodge's article is better than most of the clickbait about this beef, because she gives Iggy's response. It's not impressive. 

“You created your own unfortunate situation by being a bigot and don't have the mental capacity to realize yet,” she wrote. “Probably never will. Now! rant, Make it racial! make it political! Make it whatever but I guarantee it won't make you likable & THATS why ur crying on the radio. Enjoy continuing to bang your head against that metaphoric brick wall & Savor this attention. I'm the only way you get ANY.”

Up to now, I have been on Iggy's side - for the reasons that will come clearer later. But this is some bullshit. It's rude. It makes it personal (Azaelia was making a point about The Grammys, and using Iggy's aesthetic quality as an example. She might be wrong or right, but saying that someone's art is not excellent is fair critique. Saying that they are a bigot and stupid is not). 

And to quote Skin off Skunk Anansie: of course it's fucking political. 

Top Ten Appropriators of Hip Hop

So, Iggy Azalea blah blah blah. She is the first person ever to use music from another culture without understanding, yeah? Now we've started, let's blame the guilty...

Eminem
As I understand it from Q-Tip's twitter lecture (great use of the medium there, man. Designed for soundbites, the Tribe Called Quest rapper did a series of tweets that built up into something better expressed in a blog post), hip hop is a manifestation of 1970s African American culture, that has a political and social importance. Eminem is a white guy who makes comedy records: he's Weird Al with beats and a few DJ mates.

Goldie Looking Chain
They are from Wales and sing about living with their nan and going to the drive-in restaurant. Their subject matter disrespects the seriousness of hip hop culture.

Loki
From Scotland, sings in an accent and bangs on about politics in the UK, ignoring the more important issues he could read about on Buzzfeed.

Lorde
See that song Royals? Well, it dissed American hip hop's preoccupation with conspicuous consumption.

Q-Tip
Despite being blessed with the smoothest flow of his generation, he turned up doing a rap on Groove is in the Heart, a pop song. The feel good energy of the tune, and its association with the then fashionable hedonism of dance culture, occluded the post-Vietnam blues for a 'don't worry be happy' vibe. Technically, Q-Tip was appropriated, but he let it happen, and had a big smile in the video.

Madonna
Since her entire career has been based on sucking up vibrant talent through her blood trumpet (as Alan Millar said), I bet she appropriated hip hop somewhere. Just like she did to vogue, Ali G and American Pie.

Kanye West
Recent releases from Kanye suggest that he is a celebrity capitalist, who uses the poses and sounds of hip hop to make lost lists of his possessions and explain how brilliant he is. Not exactly exploring the experience of the streets, is he?

The Streets
A latter-day William Blake according to The Guardian, Mike Skinner destroyed UK hip hop by associating it with emo poetry and half-baked satire. By far the most pernicious artist on this list, since he made it possible for rappers to think that diluted hip hop and beats made through pressing repeat on a CD player could make the charts.

Robin Thicke
No list of arses is complete without The Thickness and his Big Dick. Maybe that thing he did with Miley counts. I don't know. I am not researching his catalogue.

Rick Astley
I seem to remember the future viral internet celebrity as being described by his producer as 'a white man with a black voice.' Technically, this isn't hip hop but a reminder of how the appropriation of African American music by a white music industry didn't start with Iggy. Let me introduce you to Eric Clapton, Elvis Presley, Dave Brubeck...

Hip Hop Pondering

Ever since Jack Halberstrom championed Jay Z and Kanye, reinterpreting their selfish celebrations of success into blueprints for anti-capitalist resistance, I’ve been listening to hip-hop. Unable to accept that rappers so popular, and so uncompromising in their belief in capitalist values, could be subverted towards revolutionary ends, I’ve been looking for a voice that articulates cultural alienation over good beats.

And when I found it, I didn’t want to admit who it was.

I’ve been really unfair on Stanley Odd. Currently up for the Scottish Album of the Year, they are intelligent, thoughtful and relevant: their take on the independence question is wittily recast as a marriage break-up. There’s none of the wild paranoia that often dominates political rap (Wu Tang members babbling about conspiracies, or Chuck D taking it all personal) and they stay far away from the blatant misogyny that makes far too much US hip-hop a guilty pleasure.

Stanley Odd are measured and smart: rapping in their own accents, they pick up on a UK tradition that includes Roots Manuva – telling their truth, not being in thrall in the gangster bravado of the 1990s underground and throwing down beats that owe more to the melodic hooks of DJ Premier than the glitch and paste of J Dilla. It would be a just victory if they won the SAY: it’s a bold attempt to express a distinctive Caledonia hip-hop, drawing on the past while speaking to the present.

But it wasn’t them. They are too moderate, too sensible. They encourage voting. They see both sides of the argument, but separate them and turn their tracks into dialectical, reasoned debates. Their frustration at society isn’t dystopian: they see abuses in terms of corruption of the existing state, and aren’t revolutionary.

My complaints are entirely due to my growing up with Public Enemy and Wu Tang, A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul. Although PE had plenty of obnoxious energy (Chuck D is going to have to explain Sophisticated Bitch, or Open Letter to the New York Post, which seems to shift responsibility for Flav’s wife-beating onto the newspapers who reported it), their vision of rap as a “CNN for the Black Nation” made for a fiery, confrontational dynamic.

From Public Enemy, I learnt that I didn’t want hip-hop to be reasonable.

J Dilla’s Donuts has been described as Dilla’s deathbed conversion: a series of short musical sketches (and made in hospital as he lay dying), it is a difficult, sophisticated album that jumps between raw bangers and contemplative loops. It is pervaded by a melancholy, chopping together fragments of Dilla’s massive catalogue and echoing the floating disorientation of Burial’s south London dubstep experiments.

Charged by the symbolism of its composition (it’s the Mozart Requiem of hip-hop) and the importance of Dilla’s career in defining hip-hop (his influence is beyond measure – it’s not even clear how many popular artists he produced), Donuts tentatively deals with redemption, the densely picked beats never quite breaking down into a clear message.

But it wasn’t him. Donuts is obviously a masterpiece, but the state of suspension it describes is hypnogogic, vague. It’s introverted, sporadically beautiful and then abrasive. It’s a puzzle, not a polemic.

The Wu Tang Clan has plenty of faults – not least flooding the market with different incarnations and unleashing Old Dirty Bastard on the world. ODB was a lyrical genius, hilarious and challenging but he didn’t live his life right. His early death ended up being a morality tale. Yet when they hit it – take C.R.E.A.M- they expressed a profound analysis of the way of the world. They didn’t hide their opinions in the creases of samples. The immediacy of their vision was never less than enthralling, and frequently terrifying.

The Wu Tang Clan taught me that I want word play and drama.

Apparently, Mykki Blanco began rapping as an art project. Naming an album The Illuminati Prince/ss stakes out the territory. Blanco is refreshingly queer: the raps match classic hip-hop arrogance with a sensibility more familiar to fans of ballroom vogue. Teenage Dream abuses Katy Perry and pictures Banco as a neophyte angel, and his lyrics bubble with imagery snatched from comic books and clubbing. 

Hip-hop’s history has a few issues with gay sexuality, and welding queer identity onto braggadocio escapes the thuggish heterosexuality that is numbingly normative.

It’s not Banco, either. The integration isn’t complete: gasps of breath between lines makes Banco’s flow stutter and the beats are simple electro work-outs, foregrounding Banco’s treated voice.  The

importance of what Banco represents outweighs the quality of the work in progress.

 De La Soul introduced the idea of otherness to me: that rap could represent self-deprecating aspiration. They might have despaired at the success of Three Feet High, and deliberately avoided pop cross-over on later albums, but one track, Trying, saw the magic threesome admit to frailty. Throughout their career, they spoke from the heart, reflecting honestly on their failures.

De La Soul revealed that hip-hop could be tentative and searching.

Kitty Pryde shares Banco’s X-Men reference points (Banco samples a chunk of the X-Men cartoon, she takes her name from one of them), and her lyrics dwell in the world of the teenage girl. It’s all about crushes, the naïve expectations of late childhood. It’s deeply uncomfortable listening – the music is stoned and languid, her voice floats on melodies that could have been ripped from clouddead’s debut. It’s slice of life stuff, willfully disconnected from ‘the street’ or political engagement. Juxtaposing youthful enthusiasm and almost obsessive desire, she evokes a soured sensuality, the blooming of an identity already tainted as it blossoms.

She isn’t the one. Pryde’s music is so self-contained, it doesn’t make any points beyond itself: hermetically sealed, she wanders through her fantasies without giving away their essential absurdity. The inevitable failure of her dreams is implied, but there’s no analysis, no context.

A Tribe Called Quest managed to do the jazz thing without overloading it with meaning. Guru did a series of albums that boasted their jazz credentials. ATCQ just got funky. Live double bass rolled through The Low End Theory, while their rappers weaved between each other like a classic jazz front line. They connected the present to history, saw the links between hip-hop and Miles Davies: while many acts were happy to cop a motif, ATCQ borrowed the style.

ATCQ clarified hip-hop’s relationship to the past, and recycled it into something both eternal and immediate.

Hip-hop’s pretty rich. All of these artists combine: there’s no need for the one voice to control them all. There’s the danger is Halberstrom’s postulation – by taking a single song as a blueprint, the subtle balances of the culture are ignored. Sure, Jay Z has blown up, Kanye’s got it all going on. Yet their No Church In The Wild is nothing outside of its context, and takes on an unnecessary importance if these other artists are abandoned.

The post-modern critique is dangerous if it fails to recognise that music does exist within a particular context. It is dangerous if it relies on pure audience response, stripping the meaning from the environment and re-aligning it on the whim of the listener.

So… my choice of the one voice is deferred. I daren’t admit who he is, and I excuse it by claiming that it needs context. 

Open Art Surgery

Although he would (hopefully) disavow it, a great deal of the energy and charm of Breakin’ Convention comes from the personality of Jonzi D.  He’s been working within both theatrical dance and hip hop since the 1980s – a time when most perceptions of hip hop focused on the rappers - and has become a vital supporter of hop hop theatre, from the lyric-based solo shows that proliferate across England to the increasingly sophisticated fusions of locking, breaking and crumping with Modern Dance.

Open Art Surgery is an appropriate finale to the Traverse’s dance season: six short works, all from Scottish artists presented as works in progress after a week of mentoring in Dance Base at the hands of Jonzi and Curious Seed’s Christine Devaney. From Claricia Kruithof’s opening, claustrophobic solo to Big Tajj, Drew Taylor and Christina Gusthart’s finale three-way of dance, beat-box and poetry, Open Art Surgery is a quick survey of a dynamic scene that can incorporate the expected techniques of hip hop while welcoming other approaches.

With all six pieces still under construction, the territory is frequently more sketched out than completely mapped. But there are healthy signs of artists willing to push beyond boundaries: sweeTe performs a straight up rap but by constantly changing costume reinterprets her rhymes through homely, aggressive and theatrical modes. Jackin’ The Box get sinister for Piece of Mind and Ready Ready Sauce mix it up with Black Swan Dance Theatre is poke at Facebook: Steven Fraser (Heavy Smokers) and Will Thornton (Product) have an already brooding duet in Diamond Life,

All of these pieces – along with the two untitled works that began and finished the showcase – deconstructed the idea that hip hop is limited in its vocabulary. Topped and tailed by Jonzi’s enthusiastic cheerleading (and a DJ set by the UK DMC champion Ritchie Ruftone), Open Art Surgery is a testament to a dance scene that sometimes thrives beneath the radar, and a happy statement that choreography need not be confined to obscure ideas.

Death Grips flips his label the bird...

Champion of underground hip hop, Death Grips, have decided, rather than wait for their major label to release their album, to leak the whole thing themselves.

Lovers of angry hip hop - here's where you can find it...

Ugly Duckling...

A wee spot of hip hop while you read about ballet... this comes from "west coast old school loving trio" Ugly Duckling. Sounding a bit like Jurassic 5 or even A Tribe Called Quest, it makes me feel like I am still down with the lastest sounds...

My Producer Harry has not yet expressed his approval of this interlude...