Classical music was never my thing but I probably wasn’t the only one that noticed the cello propped against empty chair in the orchestra. It was a detail that I couldn’t miss, like a best friend’s birthday, for example. For someone who never listens to classical music, I still paid attention – and there was good reason.
The symbolic instrument-on-empty chair was part of an elaborate tribute to one of hip-hop greats, Jay Dee aka J Dilla aka Dilla, who played cello growing up in his tough as mechanic’s nails Detroit ‘hood. As plugged in as I am to L.A.’s bubbling hip-hop community, it was an underground rapper that reconnected with me recently who texted me about the event. I reached out to him to see what was going on that day and his reply was a short and sweet: “a suite for Ma Dukes at cal state LA.”
I was almost going to pass. I respected Dilla’s music but wasn’t a fanatic – and there are plenty of those out there. I am glad I decided to go, because I saw history being made in front of my eyes. A 40-piece orchestra took Dilla’s compositions and interpreted them through classical music.
Dilla’s soul was present, although the body wasn’t. The man born James Yancey succumbed of lupus at the age of 32, leaving behind young children, a bitterly fought-over estate and of course, “Ma Dukes,” his beloved mother Maureen Yancey. The sold out event, tickets to which went for $32.50, was put on as part of the ‘Timeless’ series of concerts at the Cal State campus an earshot from downtown Los Angeles.
I doubt even the top brass at telephone handset manufacturer Vtech, which sponsored the event, knew what they had done was above and beyond special. For us in the close knit L.A. hip-hop circuit, amidst which Dilla lost his battle with lupus in 2006, it wasn’t just another event. It was an experience, the orchestra’s performance throughout the night simply being that euphoric, soul-raising event the likes of which makes time stand still. It had the makings of such the minute that conductor Miguel – wearing cargo pants and a loose-fitting white button-up – raised his hands to conduct the orchestra.
Grasping the moment the best I could, my hip-hop, jazz and R&B-attuned ear couldn’t right away appreciate the classical music being played. That changed at the precise moment the orchestra got into the melody from A Tribe Called Quest’s “Find a Way,” one of Dilla’s earliest productions and one that became the sound bed for a whole generation of hip-hoppers the globe over. Between the light drums and the whirly sounds, the audience was hearing the work of Detroit hip-hop’s answer to Mozart – and it was simply gracefully powerful.
I’m convinced of nothing if not this: If Dilla’s soul was in the building, it was definitely in the music and it was being transmitted to every single member of the audience. A woman sitting next to me exhaled loudly when the melody from another familiar Dilla composition was played. Since the event was all ages, somewhere closer to the stage a toddler squeezed out a “daddy” couple of times. It was definitely a night when strange was the norm, when ghosts were raised, when death was simply … life.
Before the show got under way, a writer friend of mine mentioned a who’s who of hip-hop and R&B genres were to make an appearance. He even suggested Erykah Badu, who recently gave birth to a child, would be there (she wasn’t). Instead it was the dapper Lonnie Rashid Lynn, better known in Hollywood and hip-hop as Common, that walked to the center of the stage and introduced Ma Dukes. He was followed by Dwele, a respected if not commercially successful R&B artist, who walked out in bright white sneakers and a shiny chain. Dwele said he was so fond of the event upon first learning about it via an email from a friend in Amsterdam, he booked a hotel and a flight – all before being asked to have his trip paid for.
Following suit, Dwele and the orchestra’s rendition of Dilla’s “Angel” was heavenly, but it wasn’t until Posdnuos from the seminal early 90s hip-hop group De La Soul and Talib Kweli walked out to the sounds of “Stakes Is High,” a Jay Dee production on De La’s album of the same name that cemented their place in hip-hop history (Yohance was wearing a “Stakes is High” shirt and told me later that song got him through high school).
As the night wrapped up and Yohance and I hopped into an acquaintance’s car and whisked away to an after-party a few blocks from downtown L.A.’s Skid Row, we all felt our souls rise. And it was all for Ma Dukes, who we saw moments later, sitting on the corner of the dance floor in the warehouse where the after party was held, bobbing her head to hip-hop music. Some of it was her son’s and some it wasn’t.
Regardless, the night demonstrated that hip-hop and classical may both be good for the soul.
