An Uptown Cultural Landmark Explores New Dimensions in Sound

It would seem that a sensory environment drenched in sampled blackness is once again rewiring the aesthetic sensibilities of the general populace. Even the spin-talk of government officials makes use of rhythm, rhyme and meter in ways directly borrowed from black vernacular as filtered through commercialized hip-hop music (small ‘h’ intentional). Catch phrases like ‘24/7’ now grace tv spots for Citibank. Diagonal lines mimic spray-can scrawl in animated advertisements for cartoons and clothing. If the Smithsonian Institution’s recent inauguration of its Hip-Hop collection and the past decade’s experience of Hip-Hop as a growth industry within academia offer any indication, perhaps it is this: the time has come to recognize Hip-Hop as a culture whose apex during our era has transformed nearly every arena of public discourse, just as black cultural developments have done in every epoch of our history.
Cultural critics, historians and curators have in recent years produced a significant body of scholarly analysis, museum exhibitions, and symposia on the subject. While the Smithsonian Institution’s collection at this early stage focuses on artifacts such as Zulu Nation gear worn by seminal artist Africa Bambatta, New York City’s Studio Museum in Harlem has, through its public programs series, become a participant—not merely a collector/dissector of—Hip-Hop culture. Among the five Hip-Hop elements— Dancing, DJ-ing, MC-ing, Writing/Graffitti, and Knowledge of Self— the art of DJ-ing has asserted itself as a viable portal into the museum’s curatorial universe. The Studio Museum’s performance series— entitled Vital Expressions in American Art— recently introduced a new genre of presentation: the ORCHESTRA OF DJs.
Frequency, a survey of new work in two and three dimensions at the Studio Museum in Harlem from November 9, 2005- March 12, 2006, was the impetus for a collaborative experiment in sound, featuring seven DJs spinning simultaneously in symphonic orchestration. Importantly, Frequency is not a show about Hip-Hop. Director/Curator Thelma Golden writes in the Fall/Winter collectors’ issue of Studio, the Museum’s magazine, that Frequency is rather “a snapshot of the current moment we live in,” featuring “artists exploring a range of ideas in a wide variety of media.”
The innovative practice of ‘orchestration’ in the art of DJ-ing— and the equally fresh project of creating sound-sets to museum exhibits—paradoxically bring turntablism back to (one of) its roots as an element of the Hip-Hop aesthetic which marries visual and aural disciplines (read graffiti and beats). The third ORCHESTRA of DJs event is scheduled for Fall 2006. A paradigm-expanding performance, the ORCHESTRA reveals a desire on the part of museum audiences for an authentically interactive experience. It also encourages the cross-fertilization between artistic disciplines that has been crucial to more than one creative renaissance in recent memory.

Uniquely, with the ORCHESTRA of DJs, the Studio Museum uses the central ritual of Hip Hop— the cipher— to bring this cultural phenomenon ‘back to the people’—repositioning DJ culture within the context of museum culture. Amidst the sculptures and video installations of the main gallery, seven turntables form a circle. At the wheels, a collective of artists perform a sound-scape created in response to the gallery exhibition. In the ORCHESTRA, DJ Ron Paisley/Interplanetary Soul Brother #1, DJ Bill Coleman, Lynnee Denise Bonner, Loganix aka Blessed Productive, DJ Reborn, DJ Kofi Obafemi, and Brett from Boundless join as a septet, periodically breaking into solos. A two-year-old from the boogie-down Bronx bops to the beats nonstop as his parents reminisce, bouncing on their Adidas. Graying cats in berets stand and sway, their gazes at gallery paintings broken only by the shift from one DJ’s solo to the next.
In her introduction to the ORCHESTRA of DJs ‘concert’, Sandra Jackson-Dumont, the Museum’s visionary Director of Education and Public Programs, describes the germination of the concept: “I had dreamed for years of seeing the art of DJ-ing elevated, given the respect it deserves as an art form. These are musicians.”
A pastiche of recorded music invites museum patrons to engage the world as interpreted by the artists of Frequency. Southern trees bend to Hendrixian windstorms. Toaster-style vocals scratch aural strobes of gospel. Sonic treatments chosen by the DJ’s refer directly to themes and constructs of the art included in the show. The orchestra selected Crisis, Transition, and Celebration as guiding principles for the concert, each theme receiving its own symphonic movement.
“I’d imagine that the abstractness of the mix forces active listening,” muses DJ Brett from Boundless: “In conventional settings, the DJ almost never requires this much from its listeners. We were all out of our comfort zone.” Indeed, the zone to which the ORCHESTRA was passing out tickets is a zone of true synaesthetic resonance. Viewers of Michael Paul Britto’s Dirty Harriet—a movie poster featuring Harriet Tubman cast as a Clint Eastwood/Pam Grier hybrid, advertising the film of the same title shown in the gallery’s video room— could hardly avoid the synaptic click that followed when DJ Brett dropped a sample from THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER narrated by the late Brock Peters.
“That’s the gospel/ rhythmic continuity— the music I hear in my head as I’m sitting there meditatively rhinestone-ing each painting,” says Mickalene Thomas, whose paintings from the Brawling Spitfire series enliven the gallery’s upper level. “All of the titles for the “She Works Hard for The Money” series (the series which preceded the wrestling paintings featured in Frequency) are taken from album covers by Diana Ross, Eartha Kitt, Donna Summer, and Stevie Wonder.”

These comments by Thomas and Brett represent the crux of a liminal idea: that in the ORCHESTRA of DJs, The Studio Museum in Harlem has hit on a cultural practice which pushes several envelopes at once. It destroys boundaries between street and museum. It requires DJs to create arrangements as ensemble musicians—linking turntablists to great arrangers in the line of Duke Ellington and Alice Coltrane. It asks audiences to activate kinetic, synaesthetic—rather than merely cerebral— responses to gallery exhibitions. In so doing, the ORCHESTRA plants seeds of an organic, multidimensional consciousness that catalyzes the growth of an aesthetically engaged, Hip-Hop-literate audience.

Works Cited

Britto, Michael Paul. Dirrrty Harriet Tubman. 2005. Studio Museum in Harlem, New
York.
Golden, Thelma. “From the Director”. Studio: The Studio Museum in Harlem
Magazine. Fall/Winter 2005-2006: 1.
Thomas, Mickalene. Instant Gratification. (Brawling Spitfire Series) 2005. Studio
Museum in Harlem, New York.
Turner, Nat. The Confessions of Nat Turner. [sound recording] Narrated by Brock Peters.
Feat. John Henrik Clarke and Herbert Aptheker. CMS, 1968.