Brian “B+” Cross speaks at Timeless: Suite For Ma Dukes screening at the Beats Breaks and Culture festival July 10 at Harbourfront Centre, Brigantine Room, 235 Queens Quay W. Hosted by mymanhenri. 3pm. Free.
When J Dilla died in 2006 after a long illness, his prolific beatmaking had become a cottage industry within hip-hop. Four years later, James Yancey’s nom-de-production has become as recognizable as the artists he worked with, and tributes have appeared almost as fast as Dilla’s beats once did. One of the most sublime was arranger Miguel Atwood-Ferguson and producer Carlos Nino’s Suite For Ma Dukes EP, adapting several Dilla beats for strings; inspired by the music, Brian “B+” Cross and Eric Coleman of hip-hop production house Mochilla began organizing a full concert of Dilla performed by a 60-piece orchestra as well as guests including Common, Talib Kweli and Dwele. More than a year after the concert, Suite For Ma Dukes is now a full-length concert movie (part of Timeless, a 3-DVD boxed set of Mochilla-headed concerts). On the phone from his home in California, B+ explained why, for hip-hop lovers, Dilla + strings = chills down your spine.
What was the biggest challenge of putting on the show?
It was music that had never been performed before. Not only had it never been performed live, it had never been heard. It existed only as pieces of paper at Miguel’s house. The first day in rehearsal when the band struck up — I can’t remember what song it was, maybe “Untitled”? At one point Mrs. Yancey [Dilla’s mother] just got up and walked out really quickly. And everybody was kind of, “Is everything OK?” and it wasn’t, she needed to go and cry, basically. I don’t know, there’s something about hearing this music played by an orchestra, and just being in the air of an orchestra playing this music, that’s something… at certain points during the rehearsal it hit all of us, and she certainly wasn’t immune.
Had Dilla expressed a desire to work with strings?
The story that made the whole thing make sense was the story about Dilla’s cello. When Miguel and Carlos started working on the EP, we felt that it was really important that we get Mrs. Yancey’s blessing. She was in LA for something and we arranged a meeting for her and sat down, and during the meeting she brought up this story of him playing cello. And we all looked at each other and were, like, whoa, we never knew that. Apparently when he was quite young, he wanted to be in an orchestra in school, and he wanted to play drums. But the teacher said, look, you know, that seat has already been filled, we’re short a cellist, so if you can play cello, we’ll let you play. And his dad was a bass player, and Dilla, I guess, could play pretty much every instrument from quite a young age.
So he played cello, and apparently he was really good and actually taught other kids to play cello, but he would never bring a cello home. He would only play at school. Mrs Yancey said he was sort of embarrassed by it; it would be one thing to come home with a violin, and you could somehow get away with it, but walking around their neighbourhood with a cello was a surefire way to get yourself bullied or whatever. To us, this was an opportunity to reclaim that part of his life that not too many people knew about.
What was the family’s reaction to the concert?
The day after the concert, Mrs. Yancey came over here and we all went to lunch. And after lunch, we were going to take her up to the grave, that was the plan. We were all sort of in the post-event glow. So she sat there and we asked, should we go up to the grave? And she was, like, ‘You know, I think he’s happy today. I don’t think he needs visitors.’ That was a beautiful sign-off from her.
Are you concerned that, with Dilla’s sounds being celebrated in more formal and even academic settings, that it’ll lose its connection to the essence of the music?
It’s a very complicated issue; the academy can make things very stale and rigid. But at the same time, the complexity of what somebody like Dilla offers, or somebody like Duke Ellington or Sun Ra for that matter, is worthy of academic study. I mean, we have to find ways to include these people and these practices into the history of music. And the best way for that to happen is for those musics to find their way into the academy.
The problem to me is with the academy; the problem isn’t with the music. I mean, the music is sophisticated and complicated enough. The academy, by its institutional nature is slow to move; it’s slow to change. They’re teaching Beethoven the same way they’re trying to teach Dilla or Duke Ellington, whereas maybe that’s the issue; we need to find new ways of teaching these things.