Yeah, Sublimidible. Bostonist has heard Dubya utter that word a thousand times in rerun clips in the past four years, in fact we're pretty sure it came up as a hip hop mix during the last election cycle. According to a Boston Globe report last week the election debacle of 2000 is what got DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid kicked into gear speaking out about politics and history. Paul Miller, a.k.a. DJ Spooky, remixed a film into a multimedia presentation "Rebirth of a Nation" that will be performed for the first time locally Friday at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre. The presentation has been performed around the country but DJ Spooky will perform the new work locally as part of Harvard’s Learning From Performers series. The performance will be followed by a discussion and question and answered session with real academic feel, moderated by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Chair of Harvard's Dept. of African and African American Studies. Get a preview of what’s in store Friday night at an event tonight at the Harvard Book Store at 6:30 p.m. Rhythm Science, Paul Miller’s book, has met some critical acclaim. The book speaks to mixing and the art form of the DJ. The pop culture favorite DJ anthology today seems to be the 36 Chambers, The RZA’s discusson of the Wu-Tang phenomenon. Rhythm Science was just released in paperback, with a CD, on March 1, 2005 (It came out hardcover last summer). Catch the DJ in Cambridge for two days of thinking hip hop not as a cultural phenomenon but as a method to splice old and new ideas into a newly creative work.
Photo of "Rebirth of a Nation" by Chris Fanning
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The RZA's book is called, in its entirety, "The Wu-Tang Manual: Enter the 36 Chambers, Book One." If you missed Terry Gross's interview with the RZA on NPR on Monday, I strongly urge you to listen to it (www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4525189). It's esoteric-meets-ghetto in the best way possible, especially when the RZA talks about studying mathematics, which accounts for the Z in his name, which stands for "zig-zag-zig." Priceless.
you know, i respect mixing hip-hop and academics, but i just can't get into "the art form of the dj." to me it's like watching those guys who are really good at guitar just wanking around for an hour. i'm not a big john cale fan either, so maybe i'm just ignorant about high-art music. call me old fashioned, i just like my hip-hop bumpin'.
You clearly need to go to a DJ battle show. A couple years ago, I went to some semi-final round of the Internationl Turntablists Federation world championships (or something like that), and the stuff they did there was pretty mindboggling: They'd have DJs with 3 turntables, making three beats into one new, funkier beat. Also, the DJs would sometimes work the tables with their faces, elbows, or feet, and would take short moments where they let all the records spin just long enough to come out of the DJ crouch and strike some silly-looking tough-guy pose (imagine the arms-crossed, head-cocked, 1980s rap album cover stance). It's not as musically satisfying as one well-crafted beat a-bumpin', but it is something worth seeing. (The again, I went to a DJ Spooky show and it was way too much Philip Glass and not nearly enough Pete Rock for my taste. Go figure.)