By: Andrea Myers
The sur Seine festival provides Minnesotans with the unique opportunity to watch cross-continental musical collaborations happen on the fly, and Thursday night’s show also gave the crowd an opportunity to see two generations of talented hip-hop artists perform and improvise.
“We all belong to something else,” explained sur Seine collaborator Jean Rochard in an interview last week, referring to Thursday’s show and the fact that local hip-hop phenomenon Brother Ali was to play the same stage as Last Poets legend Umar Bin Hassan. For those unfamiliar, Hassan and the Last Poets are often regarded as “fathers of rap,” and their origins go back to the Civil Rights Movement struggles of 1968. The Last Poets wrote poems about the impending revolution, and Hassan recited their 1970 poem “Niggers are scared of revolution” with fervor during his performance at the Fine Line.
A soft-featured and at times soft-spoken man, Hassan recited work that ranged from politically charged to emotionally wrought, and he tied each performance together with bits of banter about the current social injustices he has observed and his opinions about Homeland Security. Hassan was joined by French percussionist Pablo Cueco, who endured many security struggles getting into the country to play with Hassan for the evening. Cueco, armed with a Persian instrument called the zarb, blended well with Hassan’s vocal passions and the two played off of each other’s dynamic changes perfectly. One highlight was a poem Hassan had written about meeting Jimi Hendrix, which combined many of Hendrix’s better known lyrical passages with his own stanzas about the power and depth of Hendrix’s music. Hassan and Cueco built the poem together, with Cueco furiously pounding his zarb as Hassan chanted, “Are you experienced? Are you experienced? Are you experienced?” The two fell into abrupt silence simultaneously and the audience cheered wildly for more.
The room became crowded as he worked into his set, mostly due to the fact that Hassan prowled back and forth in front of the stage as he rapped rather than setting himself apart from the audience on the raised platform. People gathered around the edges of the dance floor and pressed in closely to catch a glimpse of the legend at work, and by the time he was finished it was clear that the audience appreciated the chance to see such a talented spoken word artist in action.
As if our minds weren’t appropriately blown already, Ursus Minor took the stage next accompanied by Brother Ali. The group comprised musicians from the UK (keyboardist Tony Hymas), France (saxophonist François Corneloup), Philadelphia (guitarist Jef Lee Johnson), and Minnesota (drummer Stokley Williams), and their jazz improvisations were impressively coordinated and melodic for far apart the group ranges geographically. Brother Ali added to the groove seamlessly, tying in stanzas of rap from previous work and also creating verses and lines on the fly. At one point, Brother Ali started riffing on the chorus, “United Snakes of America / Home of the thief / land of the slaves,” while the band immediately picked up on his melody and threw it back to him, and the group faded into improv solos and back to the chorus so easily that it seemed like played it together every night for the last few months.
Another highlight was a reworking of Brother Ali’s “Forest Whitiker,” with Corneloup jumping in on the melody of the chorus on soprano sax and soling between verses with a flurry of notes and positive energy. Ali swapped out the usual verses for updated lines about being happy that he is able to afford a two bedroom apartment for his wife and kid (“In my world if you ain’t broke, you’re rich”) and the addition of live instrumentation to the already stellar song got the whole audience bouncing to the beat.
Though the concept of merging hip-hop and live musicians isn’t necessarily new, there was something revolutionary about this sur Seine performance in particular. If evolution results from adding as many variables together as possible, then the mission behind sur Seine just might produce some of the most forward-thinking musical performances yet, and I know I am already excited to see what they come up with for next year’s festival.
Photo by Andrea Myers.
Location Info:
Fine Line Music Café
Artist Info: Brother Ali, Pablo Cueco, Umar Bin Hassan, Ursus Minor
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