Credits Due

September 6 2008

Friends and Voyeurs,

Back from Holland, back from Ireland, back from Scotland, back in England with the rain on the cobblestones outside the (free Wi-Fi) pub window, and in a few days back to Canada to count my lucky stars.

How many stars? My stars, so many stars! In the end "The Rebel Cell" was reviewed seven times at the Edinburgh Fringe by various magazines, newspapers, and websites, which resulted in six four-star reviews and one five-star review, as well as two award nominations, one of which we won! The Rebel Cell won a "Spirit of the Fringe Award" for being one of the most ground-breaking shows at the Fringe in 2008, and, as the award presenter put it, for "bridging the rap generation gap". If you want to read up on the critical effusion, the reviews are all posted on my website under the "Rebel Cell" link.

Another interesting development is that we've caught the attention of Andrew Potter, one of the co-authors of "The Rebel Sell", a book of cultural criticism which argues that rebellion (rather than conformity) is one of the main driving forces of modern capitalism. If you're interested in the book, I highly recommend it. Click here to check it out.

This book was definitely one of our inspirations when writing "The Rebel Cell", and I contacted Andrew Potter earlier this year to inform him of our plans. Well, in one of his recent blog entries for Maclean's Magazine Online he gave us a shout out, including the disclaimer: "I should emphasize that, apart from being extremely flattered, neither I nor Joe Heath had anything to do with the production — the success is Baba’s and Baba’s alone." The only comment on his blog entry so far is an indignant one from Dizraeli, claiming his due credit as a co-writer of the show. Click here to see it.

Although we are flattered by the attention, Dizraeli and I would like to emphasize that neither of us had anything to do with the writing of "The Rebel Sell" (which has been translated into three languages so far) — the success of the book is Andrew Potter's and Andrew Potter's alone.

Other interesting people whose attention we caught in Edinburgh were a film producer intent on making a feature-length movie of "The Rebel Cell", and a theatre producer intent on developing it into a full production in the West End of London next year. But those are only discussions at the moment, and I am not one to pin my hopes on mere words; hence, more of that anon.

And what's next? Well, in a few days I'm heading back to Vancouver for my brother's wedding (he met his beautiful bride at the Edinburgh Fringe last summer), and then in October I'll be back to England again for the Canterbury Festival and the Times Cheltenham Literature Festival. And then... USA here I come.

I found out just a few days ago that my application for a performer's visa to the USA has been accepted, so I am once again taking "The Rap Canterbury Tales" on the college campus touring circuit State-side in November and in early 2009. If any of you know of a college, high school, club, community centre, theatre, or other venue in the US that might be interested, you know where to find me (referrals make the world go round).

'Til next time,

baba

Reviewing the Reviewers

August 18 2008

Punters and Quarterbacks,

Greetings from the Edinburgh Fringe! As of today we have performed the Rebel Cell 19 times and we have just 8 shows left before it all packs up. I had planned to write earlier, but you know what Robbie Burns says about the best laid plans (they gang aft agley). Our plans for "The Rebel Cell" on the other hand have been coming to glorious fruition, with strong sales (only one total sell-out crowd so far though) and amazing reviews. So far we haven't gotten a review with less than four stars out of five and we are officially nominated for a Fringe First Award from the Scotsman, one of the major festival awards here for best new writing.

But instead of just trumpeting, I thought I'd turn my critical eye to the reviews being written and the degree to which they “got it”, and if so, managed to communicate it. Check out the highs and lows:

The Scotsman: 4 Stars
View Online

Highlight: "Like listening to a cross between Shakespeare and Mike Skinner...a joyful experience"

Lowlight: Hints at a mysterious alternate version of the review that's written all in rhyme, which we may never get to read! Hard to criticize this one; it's the best of the bunch.

Fest Magazine: 4 Stars
View Online

Highlight: “High-octane lyrical content...a cerebral, savvy production that explores our modern social contract with vivacity and zeal.”

Lowlight: It’s also a very cerebral review, which can be a tough one to quote from and use as a selling point when flyering, like: “hey, come see our show; it’s really...cerebral!” Overall this was probably the review that best matched the tone of the show itself though.

FringeReview.com: 4 Stars
View Online

Highlight: “[A] brilliant dramatic final coup-de-theatre...it is clear that these performers are masters of their art.”

Lowlight: Mixing up a peace sign with a “V for Victory sign” which led to confusion, and the awkward rhyming lines in the last paragraph of the review, such as: “They compel, they impel, they use words well and they can spell.” We had to be careful not to quote any of these rhymes on our flyers, or else we would have had to accompany each flyer with a disclaimer, like “yeah, the show is in rhyme, but not like that...”

Three Weeks: 5 Stars
View Online

Highlight: “These two astounding lyricists transcend common perceptions of what hip-hop can achieve...Powerfully intelligent and awe-inspiringly eloquent, these guys are the saviors of hip-hop.”

Lowlight: It sounds pretty over-the-top, dubious even, but I have to admit I love the enthusiasm, and all of our flyers now say “Awe-inspiringly eloquent” on them, a very quotable accolade.

The List: 4 Stars
View Online

Highlight: “Extraordinary”

Lowlight: Grossly over-simplifies the premise of the show, but not by summarizing or being concise, just by stating baldly that the premise of the show is simple, which it most certainly is not. Also, the only remotely quotable phrase “extraordinary freestyle poetry” isn’t really usable, because the whole script is memorized as opposed to improvised, so it categorically isn’t freestyle. A review full of unfocussed and often mistaken criticism, which nonetheless gave us four stars, so who are we to complain?

The Stage: (no star system)
View Online

Highlight: “The Rebel Cell is a rare and inventive experiment...Both performers contribute great energy and panache...ingenious rhymes and brilliantly subtle delivery”

Lowlight: This is the only review so far to divide up our talents rather than discussing us as a harmonious whole. The “ingenious” quote actually applies only to me, and appears right after the observation that Dizraeli is a much better actor than I am. What is she trying to do, start a fight?

The Guardian: Feature Article (no stars)
View Online

Highlight: “Thrilling rap drama”

Lowlight: It actually calls the show a “Scattershot and occasionally thrilling rap drama” but that’s the beauty of strategic quotation. They’ve recently passed a new law here in Scotland that the quotations used for publicity have to be in keeping with the intended meaning of the review, so it is now illegal to take a review like this: "A tedious and clichéd piece of theatre that is played with incredible awkwardness by its cast. If it were well acted, it might have had a chance, but as it stands, this was a turkey.” And then put on your flyers: “Incredible!...Well acted!” What do you think, am I in danger of breaking the law?

Otherwise, we have just been performing the show every day, with additional spoken word gigs and hip-hop gigs at after-hours venues on an almost-daily basis. We have literally been averaging about twelve to fifteen gigs a week for the past two and half weeks, handing out flyers every day and meeting so many people and going to some really amazing shows, comedy, theatre, performances of every kind, as well as staying up until the wee hours most nights, ‘cause that’s what you do here. There is barely a week left to go now and of course I don’t want it to end, although I am completely exhausted. After this we will make our way to Ireland for the Electric Picnic Festival, and from there, well, more places too numerous to mention. The next time I write, it will be an Edinburgh retrospective, and I hope to have exciting news to share. Now to try to generate some...

If you want to set up a gig near you, either of the Rebel Cell or the Rap Canterbury Tales or the live hip-hop experience that is Mud Sun, just ask.

The new music video from the Rebel Cell is on youtube now:
View Online

All the best from the greatest festival in the world.

Baba

The Rebel Cell - Free Music Download

July 28 2008

Hello People,

Thanks for all the great feedback on my Fly on the Wall episode, and now this one is about the next chapter. Yesterday Dizraeli and I performed our first show at the Edinburgh Fringe, the World Premier of "The Rebel Cell", to an audience of about 50 people at the Pleasance Dome, and the reaction was everything we could have hoped for. Exactly four years ago I premiered "The Rap Canterbury Tales" here and the reverberations are still being felt, not the least by me.

Well, The Rebel Cell, in my humble opinion, is better - it's funnier, crisper, more topical, and in many ways a perfect inheritor to the Lit-Hop mission I began with the Tales, although its content is more Orwellian than Chaucerian. I sincerely hope the reverberations of this project go even further; although, tragically, not everyone can make it to the Fringe!

Never fear. Just like with the Tales, we've recorded The Rebel Cell as a full-length rap storytelling album, and it is now available for free download from my website. Free?!? Yes, that seems to be the nature of the beast these days. Everyone with a bit of web savvy will be able to get it for free soon anyway, so why not follow in the footsteps of Radiohead and beat them to the punch? At least that way we can raise the buzz to a fever pitch and hopefully have a successful run at the world's biggest arts festival. So please, tell your friends!

Of course, if you want to order a physical CD in the mail that's still an option, and if you want to support us there is also the option to donate £5 ($10) to the cause of a couple of recording artists doing good things, but either way you can start listening to The Rebel Cell right now, no strings attached, just click on the "Rebel Cell" link to see download and streaming options.

http://www.babasword.com

All the best from the 'burgh,

Baba

Fly on the Wall

July 23 2008

Hi Lights,

In the midst of all of the intended fanfare around “The Rebel Cell”, which premiers in Edinburgh in one week, with the corresponding album release coming up on the weekend, I thought I’d take a moment to share a quick Chaucer-related story, bizarre and hysterical as a Canterbury Tale. Yesterday I returned from performing at the New Chaucer Society conference in Swansea, Wales, where over three hundred of the world’s top medieval professors had congregated for four days to give papers and round-tables and plenary speeches on the subject of history’s favourite storyteller. I was scheduled to be the entertainment at the pub night at the end of the conference, but I asked if I could also come for the day to attend some of the lectures and get caught up on the state of global Chaucer studies. I was especially keen since I recognized many of the featured speakers from the bibliography of my Masters thesis, so I was looking forward to putting some faces to the quotations I used.

The first session I attended was a fierce debate about “New Formalism vs New Historicism”, the question of whether the study of literature is best guided by a close reading of each text as a semi-autonomous work of art, or whether it’s generally better to understand texts as a product of their historical and cultural circumstances. As with many debates, it was only the most radical applications of these two approaches that were really under attack, and both of the speakers actually seemed to fall somewhere in the middle, although they did a fine job of misrepresenting each other as ideologues.

The second session produced an incident that was so surreal I’m sure I will never forget it. It was a round-table discussion on “Teaching Chaucer” featuring short presentations from six professors (actually five professors and one high school teacher) who all shared their varied experiences with teaching The Canterbury Tales at their respective schools. I had quietly taken a seat near the back of the lecture hall before the session started and was curious to hear if any of what was said could be brought to bear on my own work in schools with the Rap Canterbury Tales. Little did I know that the intensity of the “New Formalism vs New Historicism” debate was shortly going to be eclipsed by the intensity of the “pro-Baba Brinkman vs anti-Baba Brinkman” debate.

I was mentioned probably half a dozen times in the various presentations, with the first speaker coming out strongly against me, cautioning against over-reliance on superficial pop-culture adaptations of Chaucer, from the TV dramatizations to parallels with South Park and Family Guy to the notorious Rap Canterbury Tales, which was now being put to use in a dangerously high number of classrooms. She argued that these students would be left with no memory of the actual curriculum material or of Chaucer himself, only the “cool stuff” it was compared to in class, like rap. Other professors came to my defense, saying they were skeptical at first about a white Canadian co-opting a black art form in order to disrupt the sanctity of medieval studies, but that after seeing the show performed and hearing about my work in inner city schools, they were convinced that I was a valuable resource for capturing the attention of young people who would otherwise never give Chaucer a chance. Still others argued that it was a bad idea to use the rap as an ice-breaker, because it would unduly influence the students’ interpretation of the Tales, but that they had found it effective as an incentive, as in: “at the end of the Chaucer section, if you study hard, you’ll get to hear the rap as a reward”.

As this debate transpired I kept sliding down lower in my seat trying not to be noticed, since they were clearly oblivious to my presence. Ever wondered what it would be like to be a fly on the wall at your own funeral? Well, as it turned out one person had noticed me coming in, and it happened to be the session moderator, Dr Helen Cooper from Cambridge, whose job was to open the floor for questions after the initial talks. So the first thing she said was: “A fascinating debate about modern vs traditional approaches to teaching Chaucer! Rapping and YouTube and Television, what exactly is their place in medieval studies? It may come as a surprise to many of you, but we are lucky enough to have Baba Brinkman in the room right now, and I’m hoping he’ll be willing to comment on the ongoing discussion of his work.” A hundred and fifty bespectacled professors’ heads swiveled around in surprise to stare directly at me as I gave them a nervous wave, “hi everybody”.

So I said: “It’s pretty surreal for me to hear you all debating the merits of my rap adaptation as a pedagogical tool, especially since that’s definitely not the purpose that I wrote it for. I’m happy that it’s found a home in the classroom and that some teachers have found it useful, but my original motivation when writing The Rap Canterbury Tales wasn’t to help you to teach Chaucer; it was to wrest Chaucer away from you people and bring him to a wider audience outside the classroom. That’s why I brought the show to the Edinburgh Festival and to dozens of other festivals around the world. I thought it was a tragedy that The Canterbury Tales was only being enjoyed by people with a medieval studies education, when the Tales have a universal appeal and deserve to have a universal audience. So, use the rap version at your own risk, and please judge it on its own merit after listening for yourself, instead of through the lens of your prejudice about rap, and keep in mind that from performing this show to tens of thousands of people around the world over the past five years, I am now the face of Chaucer, not you all. I think the tales should be studied because they are loved, not loved because they are studied, and I’m trying to make people love the Tales again. So come see the show tonight and you’ll see how I do that.”

That night I got to perform the rap in a crowded room full of the world’s most eminent (beer-drinking) Chaucerians, and from the response I got (both to my comments and to the performance) I have a feeling that the “anti-Baba Brinkman” faction has been all but vanquished from the field of Chaucer Studies. However, the “New Formalism vs New Historicism” debate rages on.

Yours from the trenches,

baba

Performance Therapy

July 17 2008

Two weeks is an unforgivable hiatus when it comes to blogging, not in a moral sense, but just for the fact that anyone who might have been paying attention prior to the sabbatical will likely have lost interest and found ample entertainment elsewhere, which for an entertainer is an unforgivable transgression. Loss of audience is loss of lifeblood.

Wait! I'm still here, and still putting everything I've got into this creative monster dubbed Lit-Hop. For the past two weeks I was holed up in Brighton, in a spare room at Dizraeli's house, in a frenzy of preparation, rehearsal, and recording. Several landmarks were passed, including the first performance of the Rebel Cell last Thursday at the Brighton Komedia, part of the "Hammer & Tongue" night at the Rising Styles Hip-hop Festival. The day before we were anxiously rehearsing, fine-tuning our scripts and music and lighting cues etc, feeling the mounting thrill and also worry around the first performance of a show we have worked on for about eight months now. Up until that point, we had only done run-throughs in private, in Dizraeli's living room, or in a borrowed rehearsal space about a pub in Brighton. The big questions still loomed: would it work? would it be funny? would people relate?

Thursday's show was pure catharsis in this regard. The house was packed, mostly with people we knew but also with many we didn't, a large space with well over a hundred people seated cabaret style with drinks at tables. Long story short, the show went down a storm, got huge laughs, and we had the overwhelming experience of greeting people in the foyer afterwards and having many spontaneous hugs and handshakes from people expressing a range of emotions about the experience, of which disdain was not one. Even the hip-hop heads were with it, which for us was the highest compliment we could have gotten.

The other thing Diz & I have been up to over the past few weeks is putting the finishing touches on the album version of the show, spending endless twelve-hour sessions holed up in the studio with Mr. Simmonds, the producer, engineer, and general mastermind of the musical side of "The Rebel Cell" LP. Amazingly, I only met Mr. Simmonds six weeks ago when I first arrived in England, although I had heard his beats on the Gentleman's Club myspace page and was well impressed. Well, Mr. Simmonds turned out to be a fan of the Rebel Cell concept as well, and agreed to do some beats for us, and then he did some more, and in the end he has produced eleven out of the twenty tracks on the album, including The Fallout, which is currently up on our Mud Sun myspace page for your listening pleasure.

Improbably, we now have a twenty-track album version of the Rebel Cell completed, recorded and produced entirely over the past six weeks, and all that remains now is the mixing and mastering and manufacture, which I have left in Mr. Simmonds' capable hands. Yesterday we finished the last track, arrangement and recording wise, and I struck out for London, packing my life once again into the suitcase for another round of touring of rural England. The album will be released no later than the end of the month, perhaps with a launch date on the 30th to correspond with our first preview in Edinburgh. But as soon as I have a final master I will add it to the discography on my website so that people can experience this futuristic fantasy in all its glory.

Last night we performed The Rebel Cell for the second time only, and the show is definitely getting more fun to perform each go. We sold out the Poetry Cafe in Covent Garden (no mean feat with a capacity of 50) and the response was, once again, quite intense. But then, the show is quite intense and very personal, allowing us both to go to places that sometimes don't even feel safe in conversation, never mind in front of a crowd. That's entertainment I guess, and it's also therapeutic. Sacred cows are better mocked than worshiped in my view, or perhaps both, but certainly not the latter on its own.

Speaking of sacred cows, I'm departing for Cambridge in a few hours to return to more familiar ground with the Rap Canterbury Tales. A program called "The Oxbridge Experience" brings American and International high school students to England to absorb British culture through a series of field trips, and before they embark on their pilgrimage to Canterbury the students will be treated to the Canadian bastardization of Chaucer's Tales. And in the news, Canterbury is currently a place where still more sacred cows are being debated, what with the Anglican flap over women bishops and homosexual bishops, naturally a turn of events that is morally opposed by misogynists and homophobes. To paraphrase Bill Hicks: "Women priests? Great, so now there are priests of both sexes I don't listen to, big deal! Show me a hermaphrodite priest with three titties and trunk, now there's a sermon I'll attend..." Amen.

Three Weeks Edinburgh Quick Quiz

July 3 2008


1. What is your 2008 show all about?

It's about politics, civil rights, capitalism, freedom of speech, democracy, tyranny, civil disobedience, revolution, terrorism, activism, dissidence, and everything important that most people take for granted.

2. Why should we come and see it?

Because it's wickedly clever and very funny, and because the dialogue is all done in an Eminem rapping style. It's like nothing else out there really. Attendance is guaranteed to make you smarter.

3. If your show was an olympic sport, what would it be and why?

It would be a poetry contest. Poetry was an Olympic sport in ancient Rome, with the winner receiving a laurel crown (hence "poet laureate"). This show is a battle of wits and world-views between two lyrical heavyweights.

4. What are you most looking forward to about this year's Festival?

Randomness, late night debauchery, surprisingly talented performers, the pleasure of being surrounded by people who are "up for it".

5. What are you least looking forward to about this year's Festival?

The hangover.

6. What advice would you have for someone trying to navigate the Fringe?

Don't bother with GPS, just use venues as landmarks and wander into everything.

7. What advice would you have for someone trying to survive the Fringe?

Don't worry too much about the aftermath while you're there, just be present every day and have a great time, then sort out what happened later.

8. Describe your show in three words

"8-Mile meets 1984"


The Rebel Cell
Pleasance Dome – 10Dome
1 Bristo Square, Edinburgh
30 Jul - 25 Aug, 5.40 pm (1 hr)
www.pleasance.co.uk/edinburgh
Press: info@babasword.com

Tawdry Travelogues

June 24 2008

Attention Seekers,

Name dropping is so tawdry, but so are most things that instantly capture our complete attention. Twenty minutes ago I bid goodnight to my dinner companions, a group of five including the legendary English actor and playwright Steven Berkoff, theatre dynamo and James Bond villain extraordinaire. Steven regaled us with tales of theatre productions in the 60's when he shared the stage with a 24 year old Ian McKellan, and I reciprocated with a command performance of The Wife of Bath's Tale. It turns out he's also directing a play at the Pleasance Dome in Edinburgh this year, so we'll soon be sharing a venue. When I told him that we'd be performing 27 consecutive shows in Edinburgh, he retorted: "I have a tour of Australia coming up in September with 36 consecutive performances, two hours per night!" Nothing like a little healthy competition among playwrights...

If you don't know who Steven Berkoff is, then you've never seen Beverly Hills Cop. Check him out: http://www.stevenberkoff.com

I'm writing from the Lowdham Book festival in Nottinghamshire, where I have three days of performances and workshops in schools to keep me busy. Today I performed The Rap Canterbury Tales in five consecutive one-hour sessions starting at 9 a.m., for groups of students ranging in age from 11 to 18. Ouch, I can hear some of you wincing. Cool, I can hear others enthusing. Yeah, a bit of both, I concede. On the one hand, it leaves me completely wiped out, rapping for hours on end, repeating the same stories. On the other hand, every new audience brings new appreciation, and I get $1000 a day when I'm gigging.

The only thing more tawdry than name dropping is talking about how much money you're making, ugh. Whatever. Independently mounting a full production at the Edinburgh Fringe is an expensive endeavor, and this is how I'm financing it. Speaking of which, Dizraeli and I finished writing the script for the Rebel Cell the other day and have done a few test runs, smoothing out the kinks. We're also pressing ahead with the album version of the show, and we'll have advance copies ready in time for the Fringe, barring any unforeseen disasters. We recently completed the first track, "The Fallout", in which we break up like the Fugees in true dramatic fashion. The preview is now on myspace if you want to give it a listen: http://www.myspace.com/mudsun

Last week I was in Stoke-on-Trent, (which the locals call Choke-on-Stench), an industrial town not far from here that couldn't be more different (Lowdham's demographic is more than 70% millionaires, according to the cab driver). I spent three days performing at Staffordshire schools and teaching workshops to kids who definitely don't see outsiders much, lovely as they were. Some of them came up with very clever raps. Most bemusing was the fact that they mistook me for a celeb and had me signing dozens of autographs, which they seemed to think might be worth money someday. But I can't imagine even Eminem's autograph is worth anything on a scrap of paper (autographed large glossy photos go for about $5 on Ebay). If it were otherwise, he could just stay home scribbling his name all day instead of making records. Of course, no one is a celebrity except in so far as people mistake them for one.

Hold me back. In two days I depart for the notorious Glastonbury Festival, headlined by Jay-Z, Amy Winehouse, and Lenhard Cohen. I'm performing on three different stages over the course of the weekend, a mixed bag including both hip-hop gigs with Mud Sun and solo spoken word gigs. I've heard the legends for years and I'm finally going to see for myself, and under the exact circumstances I had most hoped to do so. After just over three weeks in England the cuts and scrapes on my limbs from a month of treeplanting have finally healed and I've completed my seasonal metamorphosis from a beast of burden into a purveyor of linguistic animal magic.

If you're curious about what our new Edinburgh show is going to be like, take a moment to read about "The Rebel Cell" at this link: http://www.babasword.com/press/Rebel-Cell-PR.pdf

During the current run up to the Fringe (barely a month to go) is when the publicity drive kicks into gear, so any press contacts or suggestions for getting the word out are always appreciated.

Wish me luck at the mother of all music festivals!

baba