(bright music tones) (dramatic upbeat music) - Happy New Year everybody.

I'm Earl Arms, and welcome to the January 2023 edition of Black Nouveau.

This month we'll continue our tradition of featuring one of the winners of this year's annual Martin Luther King, Jr. speech writing contest.

James Causey will talk with historian Dr. Cedric Burrows about Dr. King's legacy, and we'll preview Fight the Power How Hip Hop Changed the World.

It's a new four-part documentary coming this month from PBS.

Also, we'll examine Milwaukee's hiphop roots with Geraud Blanks, Chief Innovation Officer for Milwaukee Film.

But we begin with a profile of a Milwaukee cellist currently working out of Chicago.

His unique sound has graced the records of musical greats like Kirk Franklin and John Legend.

(dramatic upbeat music) (click) (cello playing plucked notes) - I would say that the cello is, it's my favorite instrument.

Maybe I'm biased.

It has a lot of range.

It can go super low, it can go super high.

It's very versatile.

You can play classical music, you can play jazz music you can play R and B, you can play hip hop.

You can literally do anything you want.

(cello playing plucked notes) (cello playing) Prior to me, like knowing about the cello or learning classical music, I literally knew nothing about it.

I come from like a very gospel family, and my mom is very heavily involved in the church and my dad is a super big hip hop head.

Like he loves hip hop and rap music.

So I, before, you know, getting introduced to the cello, I literally had no kind of like base to go off from about classical music.

I got started with the cello through an afterschool program called MYSO, Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra.

They had a program for third and fourth grade inner city students in Milwaukee.

The program was called the Progressions Program.

(cello clunking) The significance of a program like Progressions it just allows students to have access to resources, and to a wide array of musical education by top professionals in the city of Milwaukee and also just all around the world.

So if it weren't for them, I wouldn't have been able to you know, have access to those things.

My Progressions Program teacher was actually my teacher from Progressions Program until I graduated from high school, Ravenna Helson.

She, she became like a second mom to me.

- Let's make sure it's really straight.

(cello playing) I think every child should have an opportunity to see if they are musicians.

When Malik plays from the very beginning he had a voice that was clear and authentic.

And so with Malik it was really pulling him along to understand that the tools that he was learning were really gonna be helpful to him later on because he couldn't even dream about it when he was eight or nine, or 10 or 11.

- She always just challenged me to be a better person better musician, just express myself in a way that I never had before.

And, you know, really try to connect with my audience or whoever I'm playing for.

There was a lot of times where I wanted to quit especially like playing cello so young at a young age you know, especially as a black kid there's not a lot of, there wasn't a lot of people who looked like me you know, playing a classical instrument.

So she definitely just inspired me to just keep going and she knew I had a talent and it was something that I had to share with the world.

(cello playing) Some people know me as 99 The Producer, so yeah I guess I got turned into him.

So, yeah, 99 is my alter ego, I guess, my performance name.

(cello playing) When I'm playing, I kind of envision myself just in my own world, doing my own thing at peace, clear mind.

I imagine myself lifting off floating somewhere.

I think about the people I love the most.

I think about what I'm playing, how it, you know can connect with my audience.

But yeah, that part of my mission growing up was like I wanted to kind of do something different with the cello.

I wanted to, you know, expand the boundaries of what people have already seen with the cello.

So I do find myself playing a lot of contemporary pieces and more like modern kind of songs.

(cello playing) I've been blessed.

I really have been blessed.

I was able to travel to Europe with MYSO when I was 14, 15, or I think 15 years old.

Definitely a lot of stuff with the Matt Jones Orchestra.

I've been able to work with Kirk Franklin.

We were on his Grammy award winning album, Long Live Love which also led me to be on Tiny Desk with PJ Morton through NPR, record with John Legend on his Christmas album in 2018.

I've been able to produce for Masego.

I produced on his last album, Studying Abroad, which got nominated for a Grammy.

What else?

(laughing) I remember people used to ask me like, Malik would you ever teach one day?

I was like, no.

(laughing) But teaching is so beneficial.

It's so helpful, it's so transformative.

(orchestra playing) I teach through the Wisconsin Conservatory and I'm placed at the Woodland School, here in Milwaukee.

I'm happy that I can share this gift with others and, you know, inspire kids to play the cello or violin, or viola or whatever they wanna play.

I hope my presence demonstrates that you can you can do anything that you wanna do.

(cello playing) I got started with the cello through classical music, but I've found myself being able to take my classical training and transform that and into something very special.

I hope my story represents passion.

I hope it represents the fact that if you put your mind at anything you can do it and you can succeed and be great at it.

(cello playing) (cello continues to play) (dramatic upbeat music) - This coming weekend, Milwaukee will celebrate its 39th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration.

This year the theme will be working towards a world of peace.

Here is Ashe Henry, speech writing winner in the K through second grade category.

- Hello, my name is Ashe Henry and I'm a second grade student at Lowell International Elementary School.

Working towards a world of peace.

Living in a world where there is peace, love, unity and justice was Dr. Martin Luther King's dream.

He wanted everyone, no matter how they looked or where they're from, to be treated equally.

I come from a family of different backgrounds.

None of us look the same but that does not change the love we have in our hearts.

In today's world, there is a lot of hatred.

Even though we are free, so many of our men and women are not free for the fear of racism.

Dr. Martin Luther King did not want us to live in a world of fear.

His mission called for change.

Change is not impossible.

It continues with you and me.

We must always be peaceful and free of hatred.

We must always move in love for everyone.

That is how true change happens.

That is how we continue to fulfill Dr. Martin Luther King's dream.

Thank you.

- The 39th annual MLK celebration takes place at the Marcus Performing Arts Center, Monday January 16th, 2023 from four to 6:00 PM.

The event is free and open to the public.

(dramatic upbeat music) - The cultural impact of Blackness cannot be denied yet in Marque University, professor Cedric Burrows' book Rhetorical Crossover, In the Black Presence and White Culture, he argues Black culture is still held under a microscope by the dominant culture.

He uses music, film, and social movements to argue that the dominant culture has created coded narratives on how Blacks should behave in majority spaces.

He joins us to talk about his findings just days before the celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Thanks for joining us.

- Thank you for having me.

- So you say in your book that Dr. King was more radical than he's given credit for.

How do you think the civil rights leader would've viewed the Black Lives Matter movement?

- Well, I think he will understand the circumstances of how it developed itself.

That one thing about Dr. King, he was always very fair about his assessment of social movements.

So I think that he, whether or not he approved or not then that's kind of hard to say, but I think that he will be understanding of the causes as to why it developed in the first place.

Because some of the causes that developed Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter movement were the same that were part of the Civil Rights movement or so things that he were discussing back in the late sixties as well.

So I think he would have an understanding about how it developed and how it came into being.

- Yeah, we know that the dominant culture or white culture, we just call it the white culture is fine when Blacks are entertaining them.

But when something arises that people speak out against they're told to just shut up and dribble or be happy that they're in the space that they are and they made and accumulated all their money.

What would King say to like the LeBron James' of the world and to white people who tell him that he shouldn't have an opinion about what's going on?

- Well he always said, "Injustice anywhere is justice everywhere.

Threats are justice anywhere, threats are justice everywhere."

So I think that he would say you just use your voice to speak out.

'Cause even he also criticized the white moderate where he felt that they wanted to keep a sense of peace and tranquility but not speak out as well.

So I think that he would encourage everyone to use their voice and their agency to speak out against injustice.

- What's one thing about King?

I know you study King a lot, that, that people really don't know about him that they would be surprised to learn?

- So many things I would say.

- [James] What stands out?

- For me, I think what stands out is that especially toward the end of his life where he called for a radical redistribution of wealth in the United States, where he said that society itself needs to be overhauled basically.

And where he criticized even with integration because he taught about, for example, about going to a musical where his daughter was in an integrated school and they were singing Dixie.

He was saying about how integration is not, this is not what we thought about with integration.

We're not trying to integrate into a system like this.

And even in his case about how before people called affirmative action and what his book, While We Can't Wait he would give me some examples that would be an example of affirmative action.

So I would say that King himself basically was talking about a lot of the same things that we're talking about down and that his one where he really wanted to change society but not a case of just saying Black and white together but saying that change the overall economic system of society, that everyone should have a living wage and that everyone should be able to live comfortably in society itself.

So he understood that everything was intertwined with each other.

So it's saying that along with race there's also economic differences as well.

Economic inequality and how we are going to have a true system of a beloved community which he also overhaul our society itself and that we see later on in his career the tone that he had also becomes a lot stronger itself.

Like in one of his speeches where he's talks about America you must be born again you must change your whole social structure.

Not just things that are easy to do but the overall structure itself.

- Yeah, I think a lot of people miss those things from King.

Let's get back to talking about the crossover appeal of Black culture into white culture.

We know that, you know, we see it every day how in white culture they they adopt certain principles from Black culture but still white culture still determines what's acceptable or not from Black culture.

Why do they still have that kind of control and what can we do to take that control back?

- Well, I think part of it's also too is a case of what they think is entertaining but also what could be threatening as well.

So this is a case where we live in two separate cultures and it's also been called separate unequal itself.

And a lot of it is the narratives that we have in our society as well.

So in white society never really understanding Black culture, the narratives, the history, all the nuances behind why the culture develop in the first place.

So then when it crosses over, the misinterpretation comes in because it's seen as something you have to control or you have to water it down in order to be acceptable.

So that way it wasn't threatened the status quo or the system itself.

So I think what Blacks do in response is that we reinvent or reimagine the possibilities of our culture itself and that we create our own narratives about how we should see ourselves and how we define ourselves.

- That's interesting that you brought up creating our own narratives and making sure that our stories stay authentic.

Is critical race theory a way to do that and should that be taught in schools?

- Well, I think it's this is based in graduate education itself.

I think that part of it is it's talking about the structures itself and I think that's important as well.

But I think for me it's also too to discuss the stories as well, because oftentimes we discuss the injustices and that's important.

But also too as well, we should talk about the ways that Blacks have countered those institutions.

How did they resist them?

How did they also, how do they recover their humanity in a lot of ways as well.

So I think it's a lot of various things at play about how to teach those histories as well.

That it is good to talk about the injustices but also not to always emphasize a story of victimhood.

Not to say critical race theory is doing it per se but then when we hear them mainstream there's always the victim.

But we never talk about how do Black people own their own stories also own their own selves as well in the community.

So for example, we may talk about, let's say Tulsa and the devastation of that, which is important but also we talk about the aftermath as well about how the city tried to erase that whole area but then they took them to court.

And they actually won and they rebuilt their neighborhoods and they be able to reclaim that.

- Right, right.

Well, thank you.

Well this is the book Radical Crossover Rhetorical Crossover, I'm sorry.

And by Cedric Burrows, thanks for joining us.

- Thank you for having me.

(dramatic upbeat music) - In the 1960s, the air of resistance and turbulence helped create hip hop.

Hip hop became our voice that was for so long silenced.

- [Background Voices] We gotta fight the power.

(crowd cheering) - When we look at a global context, people across cultures can listen and say, that's my story too.

(upbeat hip hop music) - Yeah, that's a promo from Fight The Power How Hip Hop Changed the World, a four part series coming to PBS starting at the end of January.

It's produced by Chuck D from Public Enemy and we thought this would be a good time to look at Milwaukee's involvement in the hip hop movement.

So of course, we're joined by Geraud Blanks Chief Innovation Officer for Milwaukee films.

Geraud, thank you so much for being here with us.

If you could talk about hiphop culture and how it's been important to black people.

- Wow, okay.

(laughing) - Loaded question, I know.

- Yeah, I know, right?

Well, so hip hop, you know it's turning 50 this year, which is amazing, right?

And so where do I begin?

I mean, hip hop, it keep in mind it's a cultural art form.

It includes rapping, graffiti, break dancing.

It is art and culture in its rawest form.

And I'm not being hyperbolic when I say hip hop has saved the lives of millions, millions of young Black men and women in that it gave an outlet for expression, an expression, or sometimes a rage, sometimes a panic, sometimes anxieties about life and the world in which we live.

It gave expression to those emotions, right?

And I can't imagine a world, I can't imagine growing up without hip hop in my life, right?

And so when you think about the various elements like I said, you got the rap, right, the spoken word you have the dance, right?

Which is breaking, right?

You've got the visual art, which is graffiti, and then you have where it all began with the turntables, right?

Hip hop started as a house party and it's become a cultural phenomenon that many people, I will remind you thought was a trend, right?

That has impacted the world just on so many levels.

I mean like, how long do we have to talk about hip hop?

Because I can talk about it all day.

- Well, it's only a 30 minute show, but either way.

What we will do though within this interview is talk about one of the earliest Milwaukee videos.

It's gonna bring it back home and talk a little bit about Gumbo.

Take a look at this clip ♪ Basement music ♪ ♪ In my basement is where all my spellings fit ♪ ♪ Click the sticks, hit that brother's speech play tricks ♪ ♪ When I need to get away from music ♪ ♪ I go in the cellar, snap my fingers ♪ ♪ Stomp my feet and write rhymes acapella ♪ - [Earl] So we see that video.

Talk about the early hip hop scene in Milwaukee.

What was that like?

- So it's interesting because are you familiar with Speech Thomas of Arrested Development?

- Absolutely.

- Yeah that was his group.

He produced a group, put 'em together.

Gumbo was in a lot of ways ahead of their time, you know and a lot of the sort of music of the nineties we might call sort of the organic hip hop from groups like Arrested Development to the Roots to De La Soul and BlackStar.

Like Gumbo was sort of at the forefront of that sound, right?

And Basement Music, I remember when that came out.

One, I was just ecstatic that it was a group from Milwaukee, but two it was this weird almost, I hate the the term alt right but it was this weird new sound that I really wasn't even used to.

And in many ways I think that's why Gumbo isn't sort of remembered in I think the way that they should be.

Because again, I thought they were really ahead of their time and they gave, I think a voice to another segment of hip hop culture, right?

That was really into the spoken word aspect, was really into these really this mix of neo soul and really what you would call underground.

And I, again, that's the term I don't necessarily love but this art form, when you think of Digable Planets they sort of come out of this sort of styling that Gumbo was doing in the early, late eighties, early nineties.

- So you're talking about Gumbo, we're talking about Speech.

Who were some of the other Milwaukee artists that were involved in this movement?

- Well, you got Kali Tribe, Twan Mack, King Kamazik, Kali Tribe was another group that was late eighties, early nineties.

♪ Today we gonna show you how we get bigger physically ♪ ♪ Now my brother Anton Mack, he gonna tell ya a little about ♪ ♪ Somethin' about gettin' ♪ ♪ Somethin' very big, something very long.

♪ ♪ This is subject matter of a Kali song ♪ - This was a beautiful time in hip hop by the way, right?

Because you had, you had a mix of Afrocentric hip hop mixed with gangster rap was evolving at the time and there were so many different styles.

There was this beautiful, colorful, just palette that people could draw from.

And then you gotta think about groups like the Rusty Pelicans and the Rusty Pelicans were touring like in Europe, right?

Country Boy Clique, Country Boy Clique, Baby Drew and D-Note, that is that group had a song called Mr. Goldfangaz ♪ I walk the walk you don't know how chalk go ♪ ♪ When they reach me walking county of Chicago ♪ ♪ Not yo base miscellaneous entertainer ♪ ♪ Go mista goldfangaz ♪ - Which is a Milwaukee classic.

I mean, that's a song you could play right now in the club.

And people my age would lose their minds, right?

So you have all of these groups coming out of the nineties that are achieving national success, right?

And of course, Coo Coo Cal, you cannot forget about Coo Coo Cal.

My Projects, I don't know if you know this I don't know if a lot of people know this at one point was the number one hip hop song in the country ♪ Come to my projects ♪ - Webster X in 2015, I want to say puts out a song called Doomsday with an amazing video.

And he really, when we're talking about local artists that went national, he really I felt like with that song and video sort of took things up a notch.

That was a pivotal point, I think in Milwaukee hip hop in that you didn't necessarily need at this point any sort of help from a major label or major distribution to make your voice heard and be known, right?

And then when you move to someone like Huey V and Lakeyah, I mean like Huey is signed to Memphis Bleek's label.

If you know anything about Memphis Bleek, that's Jay-Z's protege.

And so, and then Lakeyah signed to Quality Control out of Atlanta which is one of the hottest record labels in the business.

So, you know, there's this lineage, right?

Where Milwaukee, it's not the first place you think of when you think of hip hop, but we have a a grand tradition and a lineage that you, that goes back to the late eighties all the way up through Ray Nitti's Bow, which was a big song, into UV Lakeyah, we've gotta see.

And there's like a, there's probably another 30 or 40 people that I could mention.

Again, it's only got 30 minutes, so.

(laughing) - And yeah, unfortunately we've come to time but we could talk about this all day Geraud.

Thank you so much, always a pleasure having you here on Black Nouveau.

- Oh man, my pleasure.

- As we close tonight, a reminder to check us out on social media, we're planning a preview party later on this month with our friends over at HYFIN Alternative Radio for Fight the Power with some special surprises you do not want to miss.

For everyone here at Black Nouveau, I'm Earl Arms.

Have a good night.

(dramatic upbeat music)