More than you might think.

Find out by coming to hear Brett Rogers discuss From Homer to Hip-Hop at the Watha T. Daniel Library this Wednesday at 7 PM. 

Participants will discuss how Homer and various Greek poets are, despite their distance in history, very similar to all sorts of modern storytellers and singers — in particular, filmmakers, writers of comic books and even hip-hop artists. For example, the heroes of Homer’s Iliad and Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes compete with each other in boasts and battle, whereas Homer’s Odysseus shows us how a crafty storyteller works and even outsmarts (and gets outsmarted by) his audiences.

Professor Rogers’ lecture at a DC Library branch last month drew a strong attendance and plenty of positive comments. This talk should too.  

From Homer to Hip-Hop

Wednesday, May 16

7 pm

Watha T. Daniel/Shaw Neighborhood Library

1630 7th Street, NW

Washington, DC 20001

727-1288

http://www.dclibrary.org/watha

The Watha T. Daniel/Shaw Neighborhood Library is located by the Howard University/Shaw Metro stop on the Green and Yellow lines. Take the 8th and R Street exit. The library is right across the street. 

From Homer to Hip-Hop is part of the Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives series that the DC Public Library system is hosting this spring. The series is made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Participants will “read, see and think about how classical literature influences American culture.”

www.ancientgreeksmodernlives.org  

Additional funding provided by the Friends of the Georgetown Library, Friends of the Palisades Library, Friends of the Watha T. Daniel/Shaw Library, and Friends of the West End Library. 

Homer, tell us your inspiration behind the ‘Hip Hop Odyssey’. What made you want to share the story of the Odyssey in the form of music?

The idea for the Odyssey was organic and accidental. I was working on another CD when I created what would become Book II. After I had finished it, I immediately thought this had an “epic” feel too it– lots of space, wide sounds, lots of classical instrumentation. Lots of strings and female vocals. Then I went about writing something else that had a similar feel; that turned out to be Book I. Then I thought, “2 down, 22 to go”, and I have been working on them ever since. I wrote Book II in the winter of 2007, when I was 21 years old. So the inspiration was originally musical and then lyrical afterwards. Before the story can be told again as passionately as the age of the bard, the means of transmission must be revitalized: from the spoken form to a slightly improvised nature of retelling, to the circle of dancers surrounding the bard and stomping their feet to a proper setting at a carnival or concert or even religious event. I studied Homer and read it in both Greek and in English, have listened to it on audiobook and seen comic and movie forms of it. All of these mediums offer something very important for academic formation, but few seem to capture the primary function of the bard: to spark the imagination and find ourselves brandishing weapons and fighting as one of Odysseus’ loyal men.
This is the first time I had the conviction that it might be possible to rethink the entire story of the Odyssey with the primary focus on the cultivation of imagination. I think many kids today–and especially those within the beltway–have their imagination driven from them in exchange for realistic self-esteem, self-respect, rule following, and other banal pseudo-virtues. We teach our kids how to be civil but not how to be citizens. Citizenship means above all realizing the relationship between our connection to the state, and how that has developed over 3,100 years. If we know what loyalty is in action, or the cost of iniquity, or the threat of violence, or the warming embrace of hospitality, then we can be better citizens. Otherwise it’s the TV instructing on these matters– and I am quite convinced that television is the poison of young minds.

How has the younger generation reacted to the music? Do you think that they can relate to the story of the Odyssey through the music?

The younger generation hasn’t reacted at all, because I need a bard. Actually, I need over 24 bards! I am no lyricist, or at least I’m not yet (I have been working my chops for a year or so now). I’m a producer – I coalesce with creativity. I need intellectual mainstream lyricists to step up to the plate, learn a book (and help me teach them my method), and then write me a track. In fact, this is a real chance for artists to take care of their community in a purely altruistic way.
I’m not worried at all though that the youth won’t eat this up the second it arrives in the classroom. Anything one hears on the radio is more than likely a dumbed-down version of a subject in the Odyssey: war, fidelity, drugs, sex, exile, reunification, love and a good ol’ fashioned slaughter in the end. But the context in which this is placed makes the difference between a trashy diatribe and a piece of art.

The National Hellenic Museum has been proud to partner with you in having your music played on several of our video clips promoting our museum. What impact do you think the National Hellenic Museum will have in the community? For Chicago? The Nation?

It’s too soon to tell, but I think the NHM has the unique opportunity to allow people to be excited and proud of the whole scope of western history. In simplest terms: to be proud of and in love with and living out western culture. I heard that in Texas they were printing history books for kids that only have the history of America back to 1861 for “sensitive” reasons. The elite who structure the public education of children in this way today are so full of deleterious hubris that they think the barbaric evils of slavery, civil war and revolution are beyond us–that we’ve thankfully arrived at a state beyond the misery of conflict. The NHM is a remedy for this. If there is to be pride, it should be more for western civilization and not for our present civilization. The continuum is what is beautiful, not always the present state. And the NHM gently reminds people that the west has already been here. We have already seen this conflict of rulers, the outbreak of war, lost parents, the anguish of betrayal, natural disaster and the virtues of loyalty in the lives of our fathers– our earliest fathers. Christianity and Judaism might do this in a certain way, but Christianity came along well after the battle of Troy and the innovations of Athens. The NHM reminds the citizens of Chicago of how they are “citizens of the world”, but from a privileged position: they are taking part in a living history of the west that informs their decision every day, and this history is amazing.

What do you feel Hellenism’s most significant contribution has been to the world….your life?

Well, it’s not democracy or kouskous. I’m a theologian by trade, so I’ll give you a theological but compelling answer. I think it was the contribution of Plato and Aristotle to notions of form and essence which allowed Christianity to figure itself out and the whole mess with the Trinity. The early ecumenical councils sound like commentaries on Physics in their treatment of the nature of the Trinity. When Christians stopped caring about all this mess about the Holy Trinity’s nature and essence and soul and just wanted to worship the one true God, you end up with Islam– and there’s not much western about Islam. The in the 13th century–after a period of western history where there was a lot of fending off foreigners but not a lot of human flourishing — Jewish, Muslim and Christian scholastics all the sudden discovered Hellenism… again! And by this I mean mostly Aristotle. I’m thinking here of mighty St. Thomas Aquinas, the great Muslim scholar Ibn Rushd, and the life of the University of Paris in the 1250′s. Dante’s Divine Commedy is a guidebook to philosophical debates of the early renaissance – and every one of those debates had roots in the forums of Greek city-states. Hellenism and the reclaiming of form, the sudden drive to depict the figure of Man as realistically as possible– this is the the renaissance and it is directly fed by ideals of Hellenic art. As an orthodox Christian and lover of history and amateur philosopher, I can’t go far into my own faith and Her tradition without having Plato and Aristotle at my side. The great A. N. Whitehead said it best: “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato” (Process and Reality, p. 39)

or right on the site: http://www.hiphopodyssey.com/wp-content/beats/PTM-news.mp3

But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream… (Amos 5:21-24.)

Check out Arthur Howe’s article on the source material for Martin Luther King Jr.’s infamous speech here:

http://open.salon.com/blog/arthur_howe/2011/01/16/a_mighty_stream

And listen to the beat I made, inspired by the article.

Happy MLK Day everyone.

Shawn Walker on the keyboards.

http://www.artfire.com/modules.php?name=Shop&op=listing&product_id=2162118

The NHM has been using beats from this site in their videos. Check them here:

Comments appreciated.

Aaron Copland