Many of you have heard about the phenomenon of Canadian tree planting culture, but for some of you it will be a completely alien concept. For those who know it as intimately as I do, this video is for you, a little rush of nostalgia for the wilderness life. But for those of you who know nothing of the tree planting existence, this video is especially for you, because it will provide you with a window into a realm of raw experience that will surprise and enthrall you. Plus, you get to see me rapping shirtless in the woods, exciting!
The people in the opening scenes of the video (filmed in 1976, not 1977) are my parents and aunts and uncles and their circle of close friends, and the people in the scenes shot in 2009 are my brother and sister and I and our circle of close friends, so tree planting is very much in our blood. If you're curious about the company and the history of tree planting in Canada, visit check out the website of my dad's company, Brinkman & Associates Reforestation.
Smoky Tiger is the latest artist to join my Lit Fuse Records label, and his debut album "Smoky Tiger and the Seven Doors" was released in September, along with my new record "Apocalyptic Utopian Dreams in the Western Wilderness". Smoky Tiger and I worked together planting trees this Spring in my brother's camp near Merritt, BC, which is where we filmed the video for "The Tree Planter's Waltz" (Have you watched it yet? You're missing out!). Both of our records are now available from CD Baby, so please take a moment to buy them if you feel so inclined. Here are some other platforms where you can watch the video: Facebook, Vimeo, Youtube. Hope you enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed making it!
Today I won a Scotsman Fringe First Award for the Rap Guide to Evolution, which is a prize given each year to the best new writing for the stage at the Edinburgh Fringe. This is literally the most coveted theatre prize at the festival (it's officially a big deal), so it really is a great acknowledgement of the show and a great boost for the rest of the run (ten more days to go!), and for life after the Fringe. Last year the Rebel Cell was nominated for a Fringe First but we didn't make it through the final round of judging. This year I guess I passed the bar, so call it a birthday present to Darwin. Click here to read the announcement.
Speaking of life after the Fringe, I am now on the lookout for gig opportunities for October (UK), November (USA) and February - April 2010 (Australia), and if you have another place or another time in mind I'm open to any possibility. Please get in touch. If you want to know about availability I put all of my confirmed gigs on my Google Calendar.
If you haven't heard the Rap Guide to Evolution yet, you can download the CD by clicking here.
The launch of the Edinburgh Fringe was one week ago, and I just finished performing my 25th show of the festival. Yes, with previews last week and both the Rap Guide to Evolution and the Rebel Cell on every single day, plus cabaret spots at night, it adds up quickly. There is so much to tell that I'm not even going to try to elaborate in an email, except to say that the highlights have been constant and consistently stimulating, and I'm blogging them regularly.
Yes, if you want to know more about the details of my experience here, I am writing a regular blog called "Darwin on the Fringe" for Whatsonstage.com, a Darwinian analysis of the strange phenomenon that is the world's largest arts festival. The most recent entry about performers-cum-producers and the phenomenon of human menopause is particularly entertaining. Here's a link to read it, and catch up on the past week: Darwin on the Fringe Blog.
The other interesting development is that we've been on the telly quite a lot lately. Dizraeli and I performed live on both BBC Breakfast Television and GMTV last week, which went out to literally millions across the UK, and the BBC rap was picked up by BBC News 24 and run worldwide (!) every hour that day, so a lot of random people in Australia, Europe, etc, have written to say they saw us, quite surreal. Here's the link to the BBC feature.
And the reviews? So far we have only been reviewed once for the Rebel Cell, quite positively, and I have been reviewed four times for the Rap Guide to Evolution, two three star reviews and two four star ones. The three star reviews have faulted me for speaking too fast and trying to cram too much into an hour, and for coming across too much like a lecture and not enough like theatre. The best (ie most interesting) review so far was from BroadwayBaby.com, and ought to be read in its entirety, since the critic really did pick up on some of the most important elements of the show. Click here to read it.
Regardless of the reviews, the crowds have been having a great time, and we've been playing to full (if not yet sold out) houses. I have also had some great responses on my Rap Guide to Evolution CD giveaway, including plugs on both RichardDawkins.net and PZ Myers' legendary Pharyngula blog, which called it "not bad" (shivers!). Click here to check it out, along with some of the twaddle.
Tomorrow I depart for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and possibly the greatest creative adventure of my life to date (I know, I always say that). Starting next week I will be performing the Rap Guide to Evolution and the Rebel Cell (with the ever-talented MC Dizraeli), both every day until August 31st, and to get things launched I want to share my newest opus with you: The Rap Guide to Evolution LP!
This album was recorded in between rehearsals and tours over the past six weeks, in collaboration with some amazing UK artists, and one Turkish one. Infinite Potential, Tom Caruana, and Nokz from Tehdit all provide the beats, Mr. Simmonds did mixes, cuts, and the final master, Dizraeli and Noa Bodner provided chorus vocals, and my uncle Simon Kendall provided the keyboard magic to give it a powerful musical score. The whole thing can now be download from my website for free as a special Fringe promotion for August only! Click Here.
Please download it and give it a serious listen and pass it on to friends if you think they would like it (or if you think they would hate it, but need to hear it).
This album is for anyone who has ever wondered: what's the big deal about Darwin? The album explores Darwin's place in history, what he taught us, why it matters, what is being done with his theory today, what it says about the human animal and our place in the universe, why his theory is so threatening to so many people, and why it is so inspiring to so many others. Besides the philosophical aspect, the album also gives a fairly comprehensive and scientifically-accurate overview of modern evolutionary biology, which means it can also be used for educational purposes (my devious hidden agenda). And did I mention that it's also quite funny?
If any of you know of video editors or producers (students welcome) who might be interested in helping me to create video treatments for the songs, I am very keen to make this a reality.
If you want to hear what the live Fringe show sounds like, a Podcast called "The Naked Scientist" recently posted a complete recording of one of my Cambridge Darwin Festival performances, just click here to download.
And while we're on the free music tip, Dizraeli just released his first single, "Reach Out", which can be downloaded for free from his website. Give it a listen, you'll love it! Click here.
Wish us luck on the Fringe!
Baba
PS - here's a link to my Edinburgh press release, with details, if you know anyone who will be there. Click here.
Yesterday I returned from the Cambridge Darwin Festival, after six days of evolutionary bliss. Every day consisted of morning and afternoon sessions featuring top evolutionary biologists discussing various aspects of Darwin's legacy and contemporary evolutionary biology. And every evening consisted of entertainment events and ceremonies, including a healthy dose of Darwinian rapping. I performed "The Rap Guide to Evolution" four times over the course of the festival, including shows at both the opening night party and the closing ceremony dinner, which meant I was literally entertaining the poshest of the posh, and some of the most inspiring minds of our time.
Some highlights for me were:
1. Performing a freestyle rap on the lawn of King's College at the closing night ceremony dinner, with David Attenborough in the crowd (not to mention a few other heavyweights). Did I meet him? No I did not, since he was one of several hundred people there and was surrounded by acolytes the entire time, but he did witness the performance and I did give him a shout-out in my verse. Here's a video ably shot by my friend Irene (if you can't see it click here):
2. Meeting Richard Dawkins and talking to him about the potential of rap to rally people and bring evolutionary ideas to a wider audience. He didn't get to see me perform, but I did give him a CD of my song "Natural Selection" which features his voice reading from the "Origin", and he was delighted by my description of the opening night ceremony, where I had all of the champagne-sipping dignitaries shouting "Creationism is dead wrong!" along with me on the chorus. You can download the song and watch a video of the performance on my website.
3. Following the fascinating debates about the intersections of evolution with culture, and especially religion. Dan Dennett argued that religion was a meme or cultural parasite similar to a lancet fluke, which high-jacks the brains of those who are infected, causing them to behave in bizarre ways that benefit only the meme and not the carrier, while others, notably David Sloan Wilson, argued that religion was an adaptation with high "secular utility", allowing people to cooperate in communities that function like beehives or like integrated organisms with a common purpose. Others argued that religion itself isn't even a valid subject of study, because it contains so many unrelated spheres of human activity, which have been promoted as a whole by institutions designed to take advantage of these evolved "modules" of human psychology. Click here to read Dennett's hilarious report of the festival's infestation by loopy "religious apologists". 4. David Sloan Wilson sitting in the front row of my performance on Tuesday night. Wilson's books "Evolution for Everyone" and "Darwin's Cathedral" were a big influence on the writing of the "Rap Guide" and although his concept of "Group Selection" was occasionally derided by nay-sayers at the festival, I didn't hear a single person explain what was logically or empirically wrong with it. I even heard Dawkins admit that Darwin's example of group selection was valid, ie the propagation of cooperative ancestral tribes over ones with severe infighting. That's pretty much the whole gist of Wilson's theory, which I personally find quite convincing, and I have a whole chapter of my show dedicated to it. Afterward I asked him for his feedback and he said the rap gave an accurate (and entertaining) account of the theory, and invited me to come and perform at Binghampton University where he teaches. Mission accomplished!
5. Sitting next to Sarah Hrdy at the celebration dinner, while listening to David Attenborough give a majestic speech on Darwin and evolution as "the most important theory and view about mankind and his place in the world that has been enunciated in historical time". Well put. Sarah is also possibly the sweetest sociobiologists I've ever met (she had lost her voice so we chatted all night with her writing on scraps of paper), and her book "Mother Nature" about the central role of the female sex in evolution and the natural world is definitely going to merit a chapter in the "Rap Guide".
6. Chatting with Dan Dennett about meme theory (or memetics), which he came very close to completely redeeming. The problem I've always had with the concept is that it lacks a clear unit of selection, treating a religion as a meme, but also a word, a song, a story, a dance craze, a style of dress, anything that can be copied (mimicked) from person to person, undergoing differential selection. But the copying is usually "analogue" and highly malleable, more Lamarckian than Darwinian, which means there is very low fidelity and no direct mechanism for the kind of adaptation that drives biological evolution. In his talk, and our conversation, Dennett emphasized "digital" memes like words, which sound different in different dialects, and look different in different fonts, but which our minds instinctively correct to a norm, much like the copying fidelity mechanisms of DNA replication. Conclusion: the theory of memetics is still alive and well, if still in its infancy.
Now I'm back in London working on recording the "Rap Guide" to a CD format, and rehearsing the Rebel Cell all week in preparation for our debut at Latitude Festival on Friday. I hope you are all having a great summer, and please take a moment to send some digital memes my way if you like.
... in the Western Wilderness is where I've been for the past month, living in a tent and planting trees near Merritt, BC. And "Apocalyptic Utopian Dreams in the Western Wilderness" also happens to be the title of my new hip-hop album, which is now finished, mastered, and... still some time from being released. But since I have the final master in my hands, I wanted to give you all a little preview. For a limited time, you can download the whole record in Mp3 format by clinking this link.
Why am I giving it away, you ask? Because this is the modern era of music downloads, where independent artists such as myself face a conundrum. Sell it to a few people, or give it away to a lot of people? In this case you are my front lines, my ice-breakers and taste-makers, who get the record for free, for now, in the hopes that more people will hear about it through you and give it the momentum it needs to reach the elusive masses (and in the hopes that you will like it so much you will buy a physical copy when you see me next, or buy it online when it's available). If you want to stream songs a bit quicker, I have the entire album on my Facebook page and select songs on my Myspace page.
And what's up with that title? Well, as you will find when you listen to the record it's complex, but I have found there is something about the Pacific Northwest, something about Vancouver, BC, that inspires thoughts about the end of the world, or at least the end of civilization and technology, and about how that wouldn't be such a bad thing for everyone, perhaps ridiculous thoughts. These thoughts are not exclusive to that area, but they are rife there, perhaps because one's proximity to the geographical end of civilization inspires notions of its temporal end, or maybe for other reasons (extensive colonization by hippies and draft-dodgers etc), but it's a phenomenon I wanted to explore lyrically and musically. How ludicrous are those thoughts? How parochial and selfish? How realistic? Where do they come from and how can they be turned towards constructive ends? This has been my preoccupation for the past six months, between various tours and performances.
Sonically the record was crafted by the incomparable Lin G, who co-executive produced it with me and brought her signature quality standards and production talents to every track. Musically I have collaborated with some extremely gifted artists on this record, mostly producers from London and Brighton, and mostly singers from Vancouver or based there, Tia Brazda and Chantel Upshaw and Erica Dee and Aaron Nazrul. I also recently signed a new artist to Lit Fuse Records called "Smoky Tiger" who is featured on "The Road Northwest", which captures the album's theme perfectly. Smoky Tiger's debut album will be coming out on Lit Fuse Records before long as well, but I'll preview that one to you in another email.
As for me, I'm now in England with Dizraeli rehearsing and re-writing "The Rebel Cell," and tomorrow we visit our first music festival as Mud Sun, bringing our live hip-hop sound to the English Bacchanalia. There is a lot more to tell about this summer as well, with upcoming performances at Glastonbury, Latitude, Secret Garden, Edinburgh, and the prestigious Cambridge Darwin Festival, but I'll share those as they unfold.
In the meantime, please take the time to download the album and give it a listen and provide me with feedback. It took several months to craft and several years to formulate, and I am deeply chuffed with the result.
Open Letter to Gary Goodyear, Canada's Minister for Science and Technology
Dear Minister Goodyear,
I will be performing a show called "The Rap Guide to Evolution" as part of the Vancouver Evolution Festival in a few weeks, and I would like to invite you to come to the performance free of charge. Allow me to explain.
I have read with interest the recent articles in the Globe and Mail about your misgivings towards Charles Darwin's theory of evolution ("Science minister won't confirm belief in evolution", March 17th). The Globe and Mail interviewer was very misleading when she asked whether you "believe in evolution", a question clearly designed to misrepresent Darwin's theory as a matter of personal belief rather than a scientific fact based on solid evidence. Hence, when you answered her question by saying "I don't think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate", you were only following her disingenuous lead.
However, your follow-up interview with CTV, ("'Of course' I believe in evolution", March 18th), suggests that the problem is a lack of comprehension rather than a lack of belief. Your chosen example of "evolution" was the ability to adapt by "walking on cement versus anything else, whether it is running shoes or high heels, of course we are evolving to our environment." By this measure, Mr. Goodyear, you are doing an excellent job of evolving your responses under the intense environmental pressure of media scrutiny. But you clearly don't understand Charles Darwin's theory.
However, I think your error is quite common and I have a simple solution: come see my show! I have spent the past few months researching and developing "The Rap Guide to Evolution", which explains and explores modern evolutionary theory through remixes, comedy storytelling, and rap poetry, making the theory simple, accessible, interesting, and fun to learn. The show was commissioned by Dr. Mark Pallen, a Microbiologist from England, who has consulted extensively on the scientific accuracy of the raps. Once you have nodded your head to the beat and laughed out loud at some of evolution's bizarre implications, you will have no reason to fear or avoid Darwin's ingenious theory any longer.
Here is what Science Magazine said about the show: "With lyrics that were sometimes sly, often hilarious, and always smart and thought-provoking, Brinkman married the fast, complex, literate delivery of Eminem with the evolutionary expertise and confrontational manner of Dawkins." Click here to read the full review.
The Rap Guide to Evolution is presented by the Vancouver Evolution Festival (venues and details are below). I sincerely hope to see you there, both for the sake of your job security and Canada's international reputation, not to mention the reassurance of our scientific community.
Public Performances Friday 10th & Saturday 11th April, 8pm, Aisle 45 in Gastown (45 W Hastings at Abbott), doors at 7:30pm, running time 1hr. Tickets $10 ($5 concession)
UBC Student Show Thursday 9th April, 4pm, The Norm Theatre, SUB (Student Union Building) Free entry
