THE MUSEUM OF LIGHT: What inspired you to create #BARS workshop, and what do you hope this unique platform will provide to other performers?

RAFAEL CASAL: #BARS is a workshop I founded with my long-time collaborator Daveed Diggs as a place for artists to explore the intersection between contemporary verse/rap and theater. It came about as a joke suggestion from a friend, and turned into a force all it’s own through the excitement and genius of the artists who have been a part of it.

It has three components: a masterclass series with seven different guest speakers, a workshop period where we write, stage and create new work together, and a culminating video medley that we create for YouTube. The medley and the masterclass talks are all documented and put online, so we can spread the conversation and creation to others who are invested in this kind of art.

THE MUSEUM OF LIGHT: You also hold the Monday conversations at #BARS with artists from both the Hip Hop world and from Broadway, such as Black Thought of The Roots/Jimmy Fallon, Hamilton director Tommy Kail. What have been the highlights from these conversations so far?

RAFAEL CASAL: Because this conversation feels so new still, it has all been a highlight. But there were exciting themes that continued to prevail in each conversation; points about authenticity, about methodology as an artist, the importance of verse throughout the history of the arts, what it means for new voices to continue pushing into the Broadway realm, and things like what vegetable would be the best playwright if vegetables wrote plays.

THE MUSEUM OF LIGHT: Are people surprised by how much the Hip Hop artists know about Broadway?

RAFAEL CASAL: I am not of the impression that an overwhelming amount Hip Hop artists are super savvy on Broadway and it’s goings-on, but who knows… maybe Young Thug was super into Shuffle Along. I think it’s fantastic that Hamilton summoned some of the rap elite into a Broadway seat, and that The Hamilton Mixtape features a crazy list of Hip Hop and pop artists that Lin-Manuel Miranda picked out to do some next level shit yet again.

But Hamilton isn’t all of Broadway. It can only do so much as one show, and it’s important that the creation of new work continues so it doesn’t become THE Hip Hop show; an exception to a rule of a continued tradition of a separateness between the highest levels of Hip Hop and theater. It still feels like Hip Hop is in the early ‘80s on Broadway, and Hamilton just proved it’s financially viable in the mainstream marketplace. It’s an exciting time, but a time to start asking a lot of questions, like now there is a one rap song in the new The SpongeBob Musical, performed by the villain… what does that say about rap music? Are we about to re-experience the real VS fake dialogue that the early 90s Hip Hop scene, but with Broadway shows? What is the relationship between Beyoncé’s Lemonade, Chance the Rapper’s “Sunday Candy,” Hamilton, and the Lyricist’s Lounge Show? That is what I’m interested in asking Hip Hop artists about.

THE MUSEUM OF LIGHT: You mentioned that #BARS could be a kind of portal (portal being defined as a doorway, gateway, opening etc.). How would you define a portal in this context as it relates to #BARS?

RAFAEL CASAL: I think it’s a place for us to peer into the future of our individual and collective art through games and exercises. We just bring our skill sets like ingredients. Some people can rap, some can sing, some can write, some can do all of the above. The mutual ground is the love for pushing the boundaries of the forms, of using verse to tell heightened stories, and to see what new configurations of language can emerge when dope people get together to do dope shit.

THE MUSEUM OF LIGHT: Portals are often connected to light (how light gets in, how light shines through, etc.). How does #BARS provide a portal to performers and in what ways have you seen performers find new openings from this experience?

RAFAEL CASAL: It’s really too early to tell, but everyone seems to be excited by the possibility of it. I had a cohort member tell me that the workshop changed the way she approached art, and that she felt a whole new world of possibilities had opened up to her. Sometimes we just need a space that gives us permission to be the best, most full version of our artistic selves, and we flourish.

THE MUSEUM OF LIGHT: #BARS is shining a spotlight on the stage for both Hip Hop and Theater, creating a bridge between Broadway and spoken word. What is it that allows these two worlds to so naturally shine their light together?

RAFAEL CASAL: I mean… they are both about beautiful language. They are both inherently theatrical, they are both musical. I don’t know that #BARS is the bridge by any means. I think that bridge has existed for a long time within the duality of people who love and exercise themselves in both worlds. #BARS is just a space for those people to improvise and create. #BARS is just a place that “Yes, and”’s the creators own forwarding plot line.

Learn more about #BARS here.

You can also find this story at THE MUSEUM OF LIGHT.

Photo Credit: Lavell Wells, Vincent Morris. V Matt Smith. 

The Museum of Light is curated by: 

Billy Johnson Jr., Adell Henderson, Joslyn Rose Lyons, Rafael Casal, Matt Smith, Malik Buie.

The post REFLECTIONS IN LIGHT: RAFAEL CASAL EXPLAINS BRIDGING HIP HOP & BROADWAY FOR #BARS appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

In 1998, Marc Levin’s independent film Slam hit the Sundance Film Festival. The film itself was astounding – set in the Washington D.C projects, a young African-American man named Raymond Joshua tries to escape the city’s trappings of drugs and gang violence, but D.C won’t let him leave so easily. Joshua’s a graffiti artist and an aspiring rapper with a gift for gab beyond belief, yet through various circumstances, he ends up facing the very real possibility of jail time. The film won Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize that year, along with the Cannes Film Festival’s Camera D’Or. Playing  the lead role of Raymond Joshua was Saul Williams.

It’s been 15 years since Slam introduced the world to a young poet named Saul, and since then his talents have given him the opportunity to spread his words across the world. Williams has released seven albums, written five books, had essays published in the New York Times and Eqsuire, and worked with artists spanning from Erykah Badu to Nas to Trent Reznor. Williams is about to embark on a quick trip across the country with at least seven scheduled readings. Before then, RESPECT. got a chance to catch up with provocative performer. It’s a brief conversation, but nevertheless, Williams still left us with much to muse over.

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RESPECT.: You’ve been in the poetry game now for nearly 20 years. What’s left to say?

Saul Williams: Well, in terms of writing poetry and what it represents for me and my life it’s always been pretty personal and therapeutic for me, which means there’s always a lot to say because we’re always changing, always growing. And then, in terms of what’s happening in the world, what’s happening with the rights of nations surrounding technology and all that stuff, when you talk about sexual, and racial and social identity issues, and what have you, there’s always going to be a lot to say in and through poetry. It’s always going to be the place where 15 year-olds, for example, find a way to express their angst, or anxieties, or fears, or dreams. It’s always going to exist. And so poetry is not something that’s fixed, liked the amount of gasoline on this planet or something like that; it’s an endless source. There are endless sources of inspiration, there are countless things to say and be said. Because it doesn’t belong to some sort of religious ideology, it’s not about “well we have the anthology and the canon here, so nothing else can be said.” There’s always going to be a million things to say and a million ways to say them.

You’ve performed and worked with countless artists and some of the biggest names across all different types of platforms. Did you ever think that 20 years from now, you’d be able to say that poetry took you this far in your career and in your life?

Poetry entered my life in a kind of mystical way. It was 1998 when my film Slam came out, and that was just two years after I had started writing poetry, and from the moment I started writing poetry, I’d get these invitations to interact with people like Allen Ginsberg, or Amiri Baraka, and all types of crazy things started happening, like to do a film or to release a book, work with Rick Rubin… all these things came from when I started writing poetry. I always thought there was something mystical in poetry and my relationship to it. As a result of that, I imagined everything from that moment on. As opposed to saying, “no I never imagined it.”

Really?

When things started happening, and synchronizing, and aligning the way that they did, I’ve always been like, “Well yeah, that happened.” Because it’s never been about me, it’s this mystical thing surrounding poetry. So it doesn’t surprise me, but for my personal perspective there’s the other side of me that’s like, “Wow. That’s fucking crazy.” But on the other hand, I look at it and I go, “Yeah, that’s poetry.”

You’ve released more musical projects, but more or less, you are a poet and that’s what you do. Why did you stick to poetry compared to something that may have been more lucrative, like dropping a “club banger?” Why’d you stay in the poetry lane?

I started rapping when I was 10 years-old, and I grew up in New York, in the 80’s, so my original and initial inspirations to rap, were the original inspirations of rap. I started writing poetry when I was about 20 years old and I was starting to get bored with hip-hop, and where it was going and questioning where it could go. So there are a number of artists from the mid-90’s, like Tricky or Portishead or the drum and bass stuff was starting to jump off, where, to me, that was more interesting.

Is that why you went a different route?

I was never about not doing the straight ahead hip-hop, it was just about wanting to create the stuff that fell into the lane of what I wanted to hear. It’s a fight to see how hip-hop is going to evolve. You could never imagine that it was going to be co-opted by a bunch of ex-drug dealers.

Did you have a problem with that?

I wrote a lot of raps for drug dealers when I was growing up, and the drug dealers were never as good for rappers as the dancers. Then the drug dealers got their money right from Master P to Jay-Z, or whoever, and took over the rap-game. From my opinion, many of them took over the rap game with very mediocre raps.

So what’s your opinion on the state of hip-hop right now?

Oh, I like a lot of the new cats. I like the energy. I’ve been into it for a long time. I like Soulja Boy; I like Lil B.

You like The Based God?

I love Lil B. I think it’s brilliant what he’s done. To me, unlike a lot of my New York associates, I’m always lined with someone who…people think I care about what people say in songs, and it’s true, but in terms of hip-hop, I’m a stylist.  I could not care what you say, I could be more impressed with how you say it. You may say something really cliche, but you may say it in a way I’ve never heard it said and I’m like, “Yo you got lots of style.” How he rides the beat. How his voice falls in between the beat. James Brown didn’t have a lot to say all the time, but how he placed his voice on a track said enough. People think these cats are doing something new, but that’s just because they never listened to Rawkus or Def Jux and shit in the 90’s, and then there’s other cats who are like “That. Is. Amazing.”

So what separates you, and artists like Erykah Badu who is kind of in your lane, from an artist like Jay Z or Nas?

Nas and Jay Z are awesome, but they’re more conservative.

Ok…

Nas i love because his head is in the right place, his heart is in the right place. I listened to Nas as a fan in 1993. At that time, Nas put more words per bar, than any other rapper.

True.

He did the same thing to hip-hop that KRS-1 did to hip-hop when he came out. He made the rappers that came before him sound old. Nas did something brilliant…Jay Z on the other hand, is not as brilliant as Nas to me. To me, Jay Z is a better business man. But, Jay Z is a conservative business man to me. Even in terms of his music. One person you didn’t mention is Andre 3000. Andre 3000 is someone who has taken chances. Jay Z, the chance that he’s taken is like, “Oh this is what’s popular in Texas? Then I’m gonna do a rap song with these dudes from Texas.” And maybe do a verse like kind of in there style.

Like ‘Big Pimpin’? [The song Jay Z did featuring Texas’ UGK, who at the time was riding the momentum of their underground classic ‘Ridin Dirty’, released the previous year.]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like to me, Jay Z is a very conservative business man. It’s good for the morale for the people to see, ‘Ah this ghetto guy made it the right way.’ That’s good for morale. But, on the other hand, musically, he does exactly what he said on the Black Album, “I dumb down my lyrics and double my sales.” He just kind of called his audience stupid.

He’s kind of right.

But it’s bad for music. People are going to love the music they grew up with, always, but critically I would say that it’s too clean, it doesn’t take the chances that I hear other artists taking. Only now is Jay Z finding the space to say more, but that’s like playing it safe because what does he have to lose? That’s still more conservatism.

Would you say you have a problem with creativity boundaries?

I have a problem with all boundaries. There’s a lot of boundaries that we practice in America, like we talk about race as if it’s a reality. You’ll see it on CNN, at election time it’ll be ‘The Black Vote’, ‘The White Vote’, ‘The Latina Vote’, ‘The Asian Vote’, and you’ll see it written in big letters and I think that’s problematic think for us to continually identify and associate with these labels when it’s hardly true.

The post Interview: Saul Williams Discusses Poetry as an Infinite Resource, Conservative Hip-Hop and The Based God appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.