From 2001 to 2003, current City Park’s Foundation Summerstage Artistic Director Erika Elliott worked as Talent Buyer for Sounds Of Brazil specializing in urban music. Ms. Elliott was the first person in New York to book Kanye West, an early champion of John Legend and the Roots, Outkasts, Pete Rock and others. We call that having your ear to the ground. Mos Def was already reaching legendary status when he played SOB’s and Erika was already a fan. In 2003, Erika joined Summerstage, “And I’ve wanted Mos Def, or I should say Yasiin Bey , to play since year one, having been a huge fan for such a long time. But his schedule has been so busy and I couldn’t make it happen…”
On Monday , June 24th, Erika gets her man when Yasiin plays a free concert at Central Park’s Summerstage. And while not specifically a part of Summerstage’s gasp inducing “This Is Hip Hop” series of concerts, dance recitals and theater events in the five boroughs, the timing couldn’t have been better.
The concept behind “This Is Hip Hop” was birthed last summer “DJ Kool Herc is a friend of mine and he alerted me that the summer of 2013 would make it 40 years since the parties he DJ’d.” Elliott explained, Herc was the innovator who scratched vinyl to make beats within beats on turntables the start of hip hop as we know it. “This is an important date in a city where hip hop is a big part of our society and I wanted to give Kool Herc the opportunity to celebrate any way he wanted to.” The immediate manifestation is the 40th Anniversary of Hip Hop Culture in Central Park on Saturday august 30th, but the ideas have rippled throughout the concert schedule. The This Is_Hip Hop Series, with the blank standing in for so many different aspects of Hip Hop, including Latin, Classic and Family! The Rock Steady B-Boys will be there, as will (get this!) the Martha Graham Dancers!
“It started with the celebration of the 40th anniversary but it has moved into the larger community, something broader has evolved.” An answer to what is hip hop.
I am personally excited to see Dead Prez (who Erika worked with at LOUD) but couldn’t help but notice a lack of mainstream hip hop. Erika agrees “But it wasn’t strategic, it wasn’t deliberate, and a lot of the artists I’d have liked to have perform, like Lamar Kendrick, just weren’t available.”
Among the other performances this year, Elliott mentions the Mahalia Jackson documentary screening, with Joshua Nelson, the Kosher Gospel singer who floored everybody who saw him at the Summerstage Showcase at the Highline earlier this year. Also, the annual Charlie Parker Fest, expanded to three days for the second consecutive year: “If you have even only a passing interest in Jazz, try and go to Friday’s Jimmy Heath commissioned evening. Heath is known as “The Little Bird”… “
And the eagerly anticipated “King Kong “ Hip Hop Opera by Randy ‘Sleep No More’ Weiner and Alfred ‘Classical Theater Of Harlem’ Preisser. Freedome Bradley, Director of Theater programs for the City Park Foundation, explained how Randy and Alfred were excited about this outdoor spectacular. “Three record executives in the ‘Bronx Is Burning’ 1970s are searching for the next big thing and end up in the South Bronx and the next thing is fierce.”
Freedome is an Indie theater director and actor in his own right who “is in the 8th year of my six month contract!” Freedome is also working on Mando Alvarado’s “Diablo Love”, directed by Preisser. The musical is Faust meets Romeo and Juliet and it stars rock nyc regular and friend Tomas Doncker singing five Howling Wolf Songs and some original material.
The concert theater mash up is something Freedome Bradley has been working on for a couple of years now, last seasons “The Power Of The Trinity” came from a similar place, and seems to be reaching its tipping point with “King Kong”.
So how does 2013 rate? Erika says, “Really, it is such a joy to put out what you’ve been working on all year and see the reaction.”
My reaction is that it is another dynamite year of music and art, and maybe because I love hip hop so much, a little better. Yet another reason to adore this City and to adore the City Parks Foundation Summerstage.