Learn English through Hip-Hop & Shakespeare?

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Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

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If I could request the resetting of the clock, it's on at four minutes at the moment,

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I presume from the one before... Fantastic!

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Okay! So, my name is Akala,

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I'm from the Hip Hop Shakespeare Company.

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And before we get into the philosophy of our work,

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what that means, what the intention is behind it,

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I'm going to challenge you guys to a little bit of a pop quiz.

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And we've done this pop quiz quite a few times,

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we'll talk about it after we do it.

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I'm gonna simply tell you some quotes.

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One line quotes, taken either from some of my favorite hip hop songs,

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or some of my favorite Shakespearean plays or sonnets.

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And you're gonna tell me by show of hands,

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whether you think it's hip hop or Shakespeare.

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(Laughter)

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Does that make sense? Okay.

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So the first one we'll go for is:

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"To destroy the beauty from which one came."

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"To destroy the beauty from which one came."

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If you think that's hip hop, raise your hands please.

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If that's Shakespeare, raise your hands please.

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Brilliant, okay, that's 70 percent towards Shakespeare.

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It's from a gentleman known as Sean Carter, better known as Jay-Z,

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from a track called "Can I live?"

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We'll go for another one.

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"Maybe it's hatred I spew, maybe it's food for the spirit."

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"Maybe it's hatred I spew, maybe it's food for the spirit."

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Hip hop?

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Shakespeare?

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Getting overwhelmingly towards Shakespeare. Interesting.

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Anyone heard of a gentleman known as Eminem?

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(Laughter)

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He's not Shakespeare.

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That's from a track Eminem did with Jay-Z actually, called "Renegade."

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We'll go for a couple more.

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"Men would rather use their broken weapons than their bare hands."

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"Men would rather use their broken weapons than their bare hands."

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Hip hop?

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Shakespeare?

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Pretty even spread with a Shakespearean lean.

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That one is from Shakespeare, it's from a play known as "Othello."

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We go for:

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"I was not born under a rhyming planet."

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"I was not born under a rhyming planet."

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Hip hop?

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Shakespeare?

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That one is Shakespeare. It's from "Much Ado about Nothing."

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We go for two more.

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We go for:

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"The most benevolent king communicates through your dreams."

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"The most benevolent king communicates through your dreams."

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Hip hop?

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Shakespeare?

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Ah, fifty-fifty there.

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A gentleman known as the RZA who's the head of the Wu-Tang Clan.

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We're gonna be revisiting the Wu-Tang later, we'll be talking about him a lot.

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He's one of the main exponents of hip hop philosophy,

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someone, or a collective, that had a huge influence on me.

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But we'll revisit them.

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Last quote of the day. Let's go for...

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"Socrates, philosophies and hypotheses can't define."

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"Socrates, philosophies and hypotheses can't define."

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Hip hop?

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Shakespeare?

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Overwhelmingly towards hip hop. And that one, that is hip hop.

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That's Wu-Tang again, that's from a man named Inspectah Deck.

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Interestingly, that quote comes from a single, or track,

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known as "Triumph" from the album "Wu-Tang Forever."

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"Wu-Tang Forever" was the first hip-hop album to go number one in this country.

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So that was what made hip hop cross over with this kind of lyricism,

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but we're gonna revisit that a little later and revisit the Wu-Tang, as I said.

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So, as you can see, it wasn't as clear-cut as many of us may have thought.

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The language used, the subjects spoken about,

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various things make it very, very difficult once the context is taken away,

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once our perception is taken away,

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and we have to look at just the raw language of the two art forms.

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And don't worry, we've done that exercise over 400 times,

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and as of yet, no-one has got them all right.

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Not even some of the most senior professors

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at some of the most respected Shakespearean institutions in the country,

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I shan't name names. (Laughter)

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But needless to say: it's challenged a lot of people's perceptions

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and we extend from that, we look at some of the other parallels

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between hip hop and Shakespeare,

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at some of the other things they share.

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One of the main things that is shared between the two is of course rhythm.

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Iambic pentameter -- dee-dum, dee-dum, dee-dum, dee-dum, dee-dum.

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Five sets, two beats, it's actually a wonderful rhythm

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to use in hip hop music and translates in a way

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that even artists writing today find difficult.

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What do I mean by that?

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It's very difficult to take, even as an MC, who is a professional MC,

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a lyric written over a grime beat,

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grime is a 140 bpm. Very, very fast tempo.

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And then take that same lyric and put it on a...

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what we consider to be a traditional hip hop beat, 70-80 bpm.

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A very, very difficult skill. Even writing now,

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with the music to hand.

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Yet, the iambic pentameter allows us to do just that.

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I'll show you what I mean rather than tell you. So listen up.

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Cue music please.

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(Music)

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What you're about to hear, some of you may know of it,

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some of you may not.

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It's Shakespeare's most famous poem, Sonnet 18.

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I haven't adopted it to make it fit to the rhythm, but just listen close.

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Okay. Yo.

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"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

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Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

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Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

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And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

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Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,

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And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

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And every fair from fair sometime declines,

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By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;

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But thy eternal summer shall not fade

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Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;

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Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

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When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:

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So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

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So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

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So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

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So long lives this and this gives life to thee."

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(Applause)

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Now as you can see, it sits right there in the rhythm.

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It's right in the pocket of the beat.

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Now we're gonna try a completely different style of beat, different tempo of beat.

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You're gonna see the same lyric, because of this consistent rhythm, can fit.

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Let's try.

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(Music)

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"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

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Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

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Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

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And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

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Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

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And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

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And every fair from fair sometime declines,

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By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;

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But thy eternal summer shall not fade

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Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;

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Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

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When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:

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So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

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So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

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So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

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So long lives this and this gives life to thee."

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(Applause)

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What I'd like you all to do is just put your hand on your heart for a second.

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Now... If you feel your heart,

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hopefully, your heart should be beating in sets of two,

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one off, one on, dee-dum, or an iamb, as we call it.

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If it isn't, I do suggest you consult a doctor as soon as possible.

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But because of that -- you can take your hands off your hearts now --

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But because of that, that's why this rhythm is so intrinsic,

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where, really, music is imitating the rhythm of life, the sounds of life.

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The heartbeat of life.

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And so, this rhythm, iambic pentameter, even though being such a simple rhythm,

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is intrinsic to so many forms of music.

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Other places in the world, they have different sorts of rhythms.

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Like the West-African rhythms, it's on the three,

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people speak in triplets, essentially.

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Well, we found that this rhythm really acts as a mnemonic device,

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for young people to remember the lyrics.

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But also, really, as a way to understand some of what is being said.

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The rhythm helps us understand it.

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It helps us to communicate feeling.

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And of course, in hip hop, tonality,

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the way you say what you're saying,

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the mood with which what you're saying,

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the rhythm with which what you're saying,

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is as important as what you're actually saying.

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But revisiting the philosophies

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and the perceptions or conceptions of these two art forms,

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these two things we think we know so much about,

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we'll start with Shakespeare.

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Over the course of the past three or four years,

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having worked with hundreds, thousands of young people now,

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at hundreds of workshops,

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we found out very interesting things

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about people's perception of Shakespeare.

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Who they think he was,

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what the inherited beliefs of the time in which he lived,

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the people he was surrounded by, his background, are.

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Some of them are of course, just as with hip hop, complete nonsense.

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This idea for example that Shakespeare spoke,

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as people say to us, posh, or the Queen's English.

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Received pronunciation.

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Well, received pronunciation we know wasn't invented

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well after 100 years after Shakespeare died.

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He'd never heard what we think of today as the Queen's English.

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When he was alive, people spoke a bit more like a mix

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between people from Yorkshire and Cornwall.

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So for example, the word "hours" was pronounced "urrs."

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"Urrs and urrs and urrs."

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Or: "mood" and "blood" ... rhyme!

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"mu:dd" and "blu:dd" was the way in which people would pronounce those words.

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The times in which he lived, you know,

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the chasm between rich and poor being larger than it is today,

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though we seem to be doing our best to recreate that chasm.

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But... you know, he was living in very tumultuous, very violent times

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and we really receive almost a sanitized vision of that violence,

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you know, coloring our view of the past.

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We know over ninety percent of Shakespeare's audience

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couldn't read or write.

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So how is it that in the 21st century in Britain

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that he's come to be viewed as almost the poster child for [elitism],

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and even within that now we're getting a debate:

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Did he even write his own plays?

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Because of course, this comes down to

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who's allowed to be the custodian of knowledge and who isn't.

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Shakespeare was someone who didn't go [to uni].

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He wasn't Oxbridge. He's seen -- by some -- they need to see him that way --

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as someone who's not entitled to be a custodian of knowledge.

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So we have to find an explanation for his intelligence

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rather than just accepting his intelligence as an actual fact.

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Which brings me on to hip hop.

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Many people have opinions of hip hop --

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of course, the media's had some very loud opinions of hip hop.

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But I've found again over this working with thousands of people,

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and these hundreds of workshops,

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and interactions with these institutions,

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many people who have an opinion of hip hop

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know absolutely nothing about it.

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Zero. Zip. What do I mean by that?

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So... the very words "hip hop,"

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the "hip" in that word comes from the Wolof word "hipi,"

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Wolof is a Senegalese language,

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it means "to open one's eyes and see" as a term of enlightenment.

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The word "hop" from the English signifying movement,

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thus "hip hop" means "intelligent movement."

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Hip hop contains five elements

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as codified by its founding fathers in New York City.

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It contains five elements.

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DJing, MCing, break dancing, graffiti art

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and the fifth element, which is the one I want to talk about today:

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Knowledge.

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An element we don't see so much in the television or the radio, perhaps.

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But of course the representations of that culture today are not owned

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by the people who founded that culture.

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But when it's understood,

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if we go back to the medieval West-African empires

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of Mali, Songhai, Gao, ancient Ghana,

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you have a character that the Malians refer to as a griot.

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These griots still exist today, well, who was the griot?

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The griot was a rhythmic, oral poet, singer,

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musician, custodian of the history, of the spiritual tradition, etc. etc. etc.,

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of those empires, of that culture.

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When we start to understand

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how those musical oral cultural traditions manifested in many complex ways,

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in the Americas, and helped influence jazz, blues, funk,

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up to hip hop,

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we get a much greater sense of what the founding fathers,

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Afrika Bambaataa, Kool DJ Herc and Grandmaster Flash were trying to do

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when they codified this culture in this way,

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and understood in that context, of course,

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hip hop becomes a very different proposition

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to a way in which much of the time it has been represented,

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when we understand what was going on in New York City

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in the late seventies, early eighties.

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People coming out of a post-civil rights era,

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aesthetic influence by the literature of Amiri Baraka or James Baldwin,

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influenced by the persona of a Muhammed Ali,

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influenced by the funk of a James Brown.

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James Brown the drummer, incidentally, is the most-sampled drummer in history.

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His famous loop becomes the basis of all hip hop music.

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And that is the only intellectually honest context

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in which to place hip hop as a culture.

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And that's kind of what I grew up in.

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That's what I was massively influenced by.

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And it became, really... Up until the mid-nineties, it was still normal

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for the most commercially successful rappers to boast about how clever they were.

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To talk about kicking science, dropping knowledge,

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spreading mathematics, while simultaneously

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talking about what life was like in the projects of New York City.

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There was no contradiction between both of those elements,

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and again, it was about who was custodian of the knowledge.

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Who was choosing to pick up that baton and run with it?

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And one of the things that was so inspirational about hip hop

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was that people who were told they were not supposed to do that,

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without trying to be anything they weren't,

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without dressing any different,

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without speaking any differently,

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they decided, they made the decision:

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"We're going to become custodians of this knowledge.

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We're gonna educate ourselves

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and we're gonna transmit this knowledge through the music."

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The main exponents of that in my life, the main influence on me,

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was this group I already told you about, the Wu-Tang Clan.

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When "Wu-Tang Forever" came out, when I was in school,

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it was the first album that united people that listened to all different sorts of music.

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And up to then, hip hop, still, in London, really only appealed to

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a particular segment of the people, in my school, anyway.

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And then "Wu-Tang Forever" came out,

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and all of a sudden, kids who listened to Heavy Metal,

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kids who were into Blur and Oasis,

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everybody was united around this one sort of album.

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And what was it about?

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It was this openly proud, intelligent discourse

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that was so undeniable that really appealed,

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in my opinion, and pulled everybody in.

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And I'm gonna show you an example of a poem,

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well, what I would call a poem, but some people would call it rap,

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by the lead member of this group, a gentleman known as the RZA.

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I spoke about him earlier.

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He actually produced the music for the film "Kill Bill" as well,

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so some people may know him better in that capacity.

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There was a poem he wrote called "Twelve Jewels,"

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and this will give you just a sense, as someone, as I said,

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who was one of the most successful MCs of his time,

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how normal it was to be so boastful about one's intellect.

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It's a piece called "Twelve Jewels," you can look it up on the internet.

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I'm only gonna share a little bit.

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It goes like this:

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"In pre-existence of the mathematical, biochemical equations,

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the manifestations of rock, plant, air, fire and water,

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without their basic formations, solids, liquids and gases,

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that cause the land masses and the space catalysts

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and all matter that exists and this dense third dimension

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must observe a physical comprehension.

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It takes a nerve to be struck.

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Wisdom is the wise poet spoken to wake up the dumb who've been sleeping.

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The fourth dimension is time. It goes inside the mind.

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When the shackles energize up through the back of your spine.

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So observe as my Chi energy strikes a vital nerve.

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One swerve with the tongue pierces like a sword through the lung.

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Have you not heard that words kill as fast as bullets?

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When you load negative thoughts from the chamber of your brain,

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and your mouth pulls the trigger that propels wickedness straight from hell.

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From the pits of your stomach where negativity dwells."

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That's just a little piece of the RZA's "Twelve Jewels."

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But it's interesting.

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Because when you understand that kind of lyricism,

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you realize that hip hop carries that same power as with Shakespeare.

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You know, the transmute philosophy, as with any great art,

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to question the world around us.

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And this brings us, really, to the conclusion

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about what the work we do with the Hip Hop Shakespeare Company

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from theater productions to education productions

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to hopefully film and TV, which we're working on at the moment.

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What it's all about

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it's about who is going to be custodian of the knowledge?

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And in the 21st century, particularly moving towards post-industrial societies,

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where we don't need masses of workers,

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we're not training masses of workers to go and work in factories anymore,

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these are big questions.

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What is the purpose of education today?

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What are we teaching young people?

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What are we training the next generation to do and form?

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Are we training each individual human being in a society

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where, increasingly, the success or failure of a society

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is going to be dependent on the mind, or ideas, of the people within that society?

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Are we training people to aspire to be the best they can be?

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To reach their full potential?

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Wherever they're born in that society

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or are we still working in the old, stratified ways of thinking

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that people have stations and places they need to be,

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or are we encouraging people to think as big as possible?

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Because maybe, I don't know who in Shakespeare's life

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encouraged him to become a custodian of the knowledge,

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but if he was not able to do that, we'd be missing his section of work,

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similarly with hip hop.

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So really, that's what we want to think about.

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Education, who does it belong to, who doesn't it belong to.

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And using these seemingly disparate art forms,

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these two seemingly disparate worlds,

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and putting them together,

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to show ourselves a unity in human culture,

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a unity in the ideas that humans pursue,

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in activities humans pursue.

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And to inspire people towards their own form

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of artistic, literary, cultural and societal accents.

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I'm gonna share with you a little bit... one final piece.

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It's a bit more... I don't want to say "fun,"

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but a bit more of a game and a challenge.

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It came out of a radio, "Freestyles" on Radio 1 Extra,

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about two and a half, three years ago.

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And as a bit of a joke, the DJ said to me,

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"Here's a list of 27 Shakespeare plays,

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attempt to fit them in a freestyle."

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Luckily, we did it, I don't know how, we had about ten minutes, though,

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so it wasn't a true freestyle in the truest sense,

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but we did it as a track that we then, subsequently, put on the album,

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so the first part contains 27 Shakespeare plays,

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the next parts contains

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16 of Shakespeare's most famous quotes interwoven.

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It's entitled "Comedy, Tragedy, History,"

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you can look it up on the web, and it goes like this.

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I'm just gonna do it here, let's see how it goes.

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"Dat boy Akala's a diamond fella.

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All you little boys are a comedy of errors.

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You bellow but you fellows get played like the cello.

18:03

I'm doing my thing, you're jealous like Othello.

18:05

Who're you? What're you gonna do? Little boys get Tamed like the Shrew.

18:08

You're mid-summer dreamin', Your tunes aren't appealing.

18:10

I'm Capulet, you're Montague, I ain't feeling. I am the Julius Caesar, hear me?

18:12

The Merchant Of Venice couldn't sell your CD. As to me, All's Well That Ends Well.

18:16

Your boy's like Macbeth, you're going to Hell. Measure for Measure, I am the best here,

18:20

You're Merry Wives of Windsor, not King Lear.

18:21

I don't know about Timon, I know he was at Athens.

18:23

When I come back like Hamlet you pay for your action.

18:25

Dat boy Akala, I do it As You Like It.

18:27

You're Much Ado About Nothing, All you do is bite it.

18:28

I'm too tight, I don't need 12 Nights. All you little Tempests get murked on the mic.

18:31

Of course I'm the one with the force. You're history just like Henry IV.

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I'm fire, things look dire. Better run like Pericles Prince Of Tyre.

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Off the scale, cold as a Winter's Tale Titus Andronicus was bound to fail."

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That's 27 plays.

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(Laughter) (Applause) Listen up.

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And there is one final bit, this contains 16 of Shakespeare's most famous quotes.

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"Wise is the man that knows he's a fool Tempt not a desperate man with a jewel.

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Why take from Peter to go and pay Paul? Some rise by sin and by virtue fall.

19:01

What have you made if you gain the whole world. But sell your own soul for the price of a pearl?

19:04

The world is my oyster and I am starving. I want much more than a penny or a farthing.

19:07

I told no joke, I hope you're not laughing. Poet or pauper which do you class him?

19:11

Speak eloquent, though I am resident to the gritty inner city, surely irrelevant.

19:14

Call it urban, call it street. A rose by any other name, smell just as sweet

19:17

Spit so hard, but I'm smart as the Bard. Come through with a Union Jack, full of yard.

19:21

Akala, Akala, wherefore art thou?

19:22

[I rap] Shakespeare and the secret's out now.

19:24

Chance never did crown me, this is destiny. You still talk but it still perplexes me.

19:27

Devour cowards, thousands per hour. Don't you know the king's name is a tower?

19:31

You should never speak it, it is not a secret. I teach thesis, like ancient Greece's

19:34

Or Egyptology, never no apology. In my mind's eye, I see things properly.

19:38

Stopping me, nah you could never possibly. I bear a charmed life, most probably.

19:41

For certain I speak daggers in a phrase. I'll put an end to your dancing days.

19:44

No matter what you say it will never work. Wrens can't make prey where eagles don't perch.

19:48

I'm the worst with the words 'cause I curse all my verbs.

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I'm the first with a verse to rehearse with a nurse.

19:51

There's a hearse for the first jerk who turn berserk. Off with his head, 'cos it must not work.

19:54

Ramp with Akala, that's true madness. And there's no method in it, just sadness.

19:58

I speak with the daggers and the hammers of a passion when I'm rappin' I attack 'em.

20:00

In a military fashion the pattern of my rappin' chattin couldn't ever map it.

20:03

And I run more rings round things than Saturn. Verses split big kids wigs when I'm rappin'.

20:08

That boy Akala, the rap Shakespeare. Didn't want to listen, when I said last year.

20:11

Rich like a gem in a Ethiopia's ear. Tell them again for them who never hear."

20:15

It's a pleasure.

20:17

(Applause)

#II46leanenglishshakespeare