Reflections on Two Turntables and a Microphone

Above Paintings: Deborah Elizabeth Whaley, "Lauryn Hill," 2005 (Oil on Canvas, 11 X 14); "Funkamentals," 2005 (Oil on Canvas, 11 X 14).

Kembrew and I are in the process of constructing our joint and individual curator statements. In an effort to organize my thoughts and how I am thus far thinking through aspects of the show, I will use this space to reflect upon the origins, meanings, and final execution of this collective artistic endeavor, Two Turn Tables and a Microphone: Hip-hop Contexts Featuring Harry Allen's Part of the Permanent Record.

Reflections:

Two Turntables and Microphone: Hip-hop Contexts Featuring Harry Allen’s Part of the Permanent Record; Photos from the Previous Century, is at its very heart a collective effort, and like the origins of hip-hop, its beginnings are discursive.

In September of 2007, co-curator Kembrew McLeod wrote to Kathleen Edwards, curator of European and American art at the University of Iowa Museum of Art, to garner interest for bringing a photo-exhibition of photographer and journalist Harry Allen's documentation of hip-hop in the early 1980s. As Kembrew relayed at the time, Allen's photos provide a visual archive of "the early, gestating African-American hip-hop scene of New York City." On the same day, I met with Edwards to discuss the possibilities of forming a relationship with the museum and doing an exhibition on the response to 9/11 in hip-hop music, activist groups, Black art, poetry, and comics. The idea was to visualize research I conducted on the topic for the William Monroe Trotter Institute for Black Culture, which included a discussion of Public Enemy's music, Chuck D's post 9/11 reflections, and an articulation between new Black cultural politics and aesthetically innovative hip-hop music. Kembrew McLeod's intellectual and artistic work relates closely to the topic of the show as well. As a public intellectual and documentary filmmaker, he has written and created filmic work on hip-hop, authenticity discourses, sampling, copyright, and technology. McLeod has also organized several conference panels with members of Public Enemy (PE), including Allen and Chuck D, to create a space for an acknowledgment of PE as seminal to hip-hop studies. It was Kathleen Edwards' decision to put the two of us together on the project with the idea in mind that collaboratively we could create a fantastic exhibition that would showcase Allen's work and contextualize the historical moment of the emergence of his work in the public sphere.

Such a venture would necessitate drawing from a wide variety of expressions, including music, memorabilia, and graffiti art. Edwards posed the idea of having a commissioned graffiti mural for the exhibition, while I, along with Kembrew, began to consider ways to create an exhibition that would commemorate the moment without nostalgia or recapitulating narratives of hip-hop that even today serves as the permanent and often limiting narrative of hip-hop's origins. Similar to Allen's photos, we wanted to think through this moment as indebted to, but not confined by, MC's, rappers, and musicians, and to instead think of lesser-discussed representations of hip-hop. It was at that time that it made sense to intervene in the male dominated field, both intellectually and artistically. I posed the idea of showcasing the work of Lady Pink, one of the most important graffiti artists of the 1980s -- the very same moment that Allen documents. Pink continues to create graffiti and fine art, thus, the inclusion of her work helps to chart the transformation of iconic and aesthetic representations of hip-hop over the past three decades. From there, the show continued to grow by the inclusion of material artifacts such as event flyers, album covers, and music. Kembrew was able to obtain permission from T La Rock (an emcee best known for his collaboration with Def Jam Recordings co-founder Rick Rubin and the 1984 single, "It's Yours") to include his collection of hip-hop event flyers. Our album covers constitute a rich mixture of male and female hip-hop artists.

I chose the prefix title for the show because it reflects the organic and technological beginnings of hip-hop. The decision was influenced by the musical arrangement and lyrics to hip-hop artist the Guru's song "Loungin.'" A piece I regularly employ as an example in my Black popular culture classes, because of its blurring of the genres of jazz and what is commonly referred to as old school hip-hop with a New Jack swing, "Loungin'" and its lyrics reflect upon hip-hop as a site of technological and cultural invention. It also situates hip-hop as a form that remains true and is indebted to (but by no means confined by) its early years of one DJ, two turntables, an MC, and a microphone. At the song’s conclusion, the Guru raps that the industry has tried to change hip-hop from its classical roots for commercial reasons, but the musical form must and continues to grow for its own artistic health. He continues, “We’re the type of rappers that when we rock shows, we don’t use DATs (digital audio tapes), because when DATs came out there were no more turntables. If the DJ’s up there, he’s not really doing nothin.’ He’s just scratchin’ over the DAT. And basically, what we do is play some instrumental tracks to everything we do, because when rap started what they did was, which was so ingenious was, to create a whole form of urban style music from just two turntables, two records, and a microphone.”

Guru’s words assert that one can pay tribute to technological and musical forms as they simultaneously expand those forms. Similar to "Loungin,'" it is the aesthetic complexity, artistic innovation, and contextualized narrative that Two Turntables and a Microphone aims to create for spectators, scholars, and hip-hop enthusiasts. As is the case with all art exhibitions, this project has taken a committed, caring, and resourceful "village" to enable the execution of the curators' joint vision. We welcome and look forward to how this visual narrative translates for its intended academic and popular audiences when it opens in March 2010.