Extending the Breaks: Fires in the Mirror in the Context of Hip-Hop Structure, Style, and Culture

Abstract

In New York City in late eighties and early nineties, hip-hop music not only expressed some of tensions that existed between Jews and African-Americans, but it was characterized in media as part of problem. Most of this media attention was focused around charges of anti-Semitism that were being leveled against hip-hop group Public Enemy, who at time were among most popular and critically acclaimed hip-hop artists. In their 1988 song Bring Noise, from It Takes Nation of Millions Hold Us Back album, Public Enemy's leader Chuck D rapped that Louis Farrakhan was a prophet and someone listen to and follow for now, at time when Farrakhan was coming under media scrutiny for comments he had made in regard Jews. (1) A year later, Professor Griff, Public Enemy's minister of information, implicated Jews for the majority of wickedness that went on across globe. (2) In 1990, Public Enemy revived controversies over anti-Semitism in their 1990 song Welcome Terrordome, from Fear of Black Planet album by referring Jews as so-called chosen frozen, and rapping that crucifixion ain't no fiction. (3) At same time, number of Jewish leaders and television and radio personalities were using media speak out against hip-hop and Public Enemy by claiming that hip-hop was not music, and did not deserve critical attention that it was receiving. (4) By fall of 1991 when tensions between Jews and African-Americans exploded into Crown Heights riots, hip-hop culture hardly seemed artistic site explore relations between two groups in an inclusive and productive manner. (5) Yet number of people interviewed by Anne Deavere Smith and later performed for her one-woman play Fires in Mirror asserted that hip-hop was absolutely place attempt an intercultural dialogue. In Fires in Mirror monologue entitled Rhythm and Poetry rapper Big Mo suggests that with hip-hop rhymes: You have be def, / ... / Def is dope, def is live / when you say somethin's dope / it means it is epitome of experience / and you have be def by your very presence / because you have make people happy. / And we are living society where people are not happy / with their everyday lives. (38-39) (6) In this monologue, Big Mo imagines new vision of community through powerful form of hip-hop poetic expression. Later in Smith's performance, activist Henry Rice speaks of his efforts stop Crown Heights riots, as Public Enemy plays prominently and suggestively in background. And most explicitly, and perhaps most importantly, activist Sonny Carson feels that hip-hop has mesmerized him and America, and he hears in its rhythm, chords, and most importantly its discord, a whole new sound (106). He concludes by telling Smith, albeit in reference West Side Story, that perhaps answer society's ills should be musical (107). Anna Deavere Smith's Fires in Mirror shares with hip-hop culture certain thematic, stylistic, and structural concerns that are deeply related how Smith explores, envisions, and performs an approach race and community in America. At core of both hip-hop music and Smith's thematic vision is idea of the break used structurally in Fires develop themes in much same manner as hip-hop music. Like hip-hop, Smith uses new artistic techniques, such as form of verbal sampling and recombination, born out of technology, explore and assert new model for social change. Moreover, Fires in Mirror anticipates what will become highly productive relationship between theater and hip-hop music that has yielded proliferation of hip-hop/theater hybrids, including number of productions of hip-hop Shakespeare and yearly New York hip-hop theater festival. Fires in Mirror (1992) is performance piece about 1991 riots in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, that is part of Anna Deavere Smith's ongoing project, On Road: In Search of American Character. …