GRANDMASTER FLASH, BONJAY and DJ ANDYCAPP in the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Walker Court (317 Dundas West), Thursday (February 5), 7 pm. Sold out. ago.net.
Hip-hop pioneer Grandmaster Flash has no idea what he’s going to play Thursday at the AGO‘s launch party for the Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibit. However, that’s perfectly normal for the veteran DJ, who prefers to go into each performance with a blank slate.
“I look at the people in front of me and they just give me a feeling,” Flash says as he prepares to board a plane to the UK. “It’s kind of hard to explain. I just go off the vibe I get from the audience, which is pretty much how I’ve played for decades now.”
That freewheeling approach has helped set him apart from the generations of turntablists he inspired with his groundbreaking approach to DJing and work as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. But while he’s proud of his legacy – despite preferring not to discuss FF or 1982’s iconic single (and video for) The Message – he also sees contemporary hip-hop DJs losing touch with the roots of the style.
“A hip-hop DJ set is pop, rock, jazz, blues, funk, disco, R&B, alternative and Caribbean. It’s about finding the breaks in these songs. Today there are some misperceptions about that, but when I play that way, people sincerely enjoy it – like they’ve never heard it before. People need to know where hip-hop comes from, and it comes from all the greatest genres of all time.”
Similarly, Flash also has no interest in the ongoing angry debates about what “real hip-hop” is, and sees such a question as antithetical to what’s made the genre so wildly popular.
“You can’t put your finger on what real hip-hop is because everyone wakes up differently and has their own perspective on what great music is and what a great lyric is. A person in California will see it differently than a person in the Bronx, and a person in the Philippines will see it differently than a person in Japan or Germany or Belgium.
“When you start trying to pinpoint what this is, you limit it. So I don’t know what it means when people say ‘real hip-hop.'”
Interview Clips
Grandmaster Flash discusses the impact of digital DJing on his craft.
benjaminb@nowtoronto.com | @BenjaminBoles
