What are the similarities between Akala and Shakespeare? BARBARA: Well, and that’s the irony, too. Akala is understood to have been behind a complaint to the BBC regarding political correspondent Laura Kuenssberg's use of the phrase 'nitty gritty,' where he described the use of the phrase as 'structurally racist' and 'eediat ting'. I mean I deliberately when… so when I designed this exercise, I deliberately obviously didn’t pick certain instances from Shakespeare with line…. AKALA: I think a number of things. You know, Ovid, Pluto, the Bible. Harry of Hereford, Lancaster, and DerbyAm I, who ready here do stand in arms. So, if we take the sonnets, 154 sonnets, all ten syllables each, all end up rhyming. But mainly it’s to challenge people’s perceptions. A critical success, the album won him the 2006 Mobo Award for Best Hip-Hop Artist, and scored him an opening slot on the UK leg of Christina Aguilera's 2006 tour. There’s lots of stuff that doesn’t rhyme anymore because the accent of English has changed. Previous: Creating TNT's Will | Next: Shakespeare's Kitchen. Taking the name Akala (a Buddhist term meaning immovable), Daley released his first album, It's Not a Rumour in May of 2006. It’s Nas. Whereas if I play you Lauryn Hill performing it on MTV Unplugged, immediately you’re like, I didn’t understand half the words. AKALA: I think there’s a lot of different things and it depends where you are. And actually it’s a different challenge now and iambic pentameter is very easy to find the rhythm of because it’s consistent, whereas the stuff in The Tempest is much more difficult. They are quite bland. But also to show that there’s still a rhythm in it. Founded in 2009 by Akala, The Hip-hop Shakespeare Company (‘THSC’) is a music theatre production company aimed at exploring the social, cultural and linguistic parallels between the works of William Shakespeare and that of modern day hip-hop artists. 2012 DoubleThink. How does Akala compare himself to King Arthur? But it meant that unlike most kids, you know, culturally we were very rich and so it was a weird juxtaposition where I was probably exposed to more… a greater cultural offering than most rich kids in England. Cause they’re not that interesting. Yeah, so if you’ve got a four bar beat but you’ve got ten clicks of the high hat across those four bars, that’s sort of the way I would visually insert what your voice is doing and what the syllables are doing rhythmically within the kind of pattern of the drum structure. I mean if I gave you Lauryn Hill, “The Mystery of Iniquity,” one of the most complicated but brilliant raps, ever…, [CLIP of Lauryn Hill’s “The Mystery of Iniquity.”]. Maybe ‘cause they are bloody brilliant, lots of them. BARBARA BOGAEV: Well, part of me just wants you to rap for half an hour. AKALA: And it isn’t. But it is still mysterious how that works and since you look at Shakespeare through this lens of both politics and music, I’m curious what you think makes Shakespeare’s work timeless or relatable. One line quotes, taken either from some of my favorite hip hop songs, or some of my favorite Shakespearean plays or sonnets. 1. So, if you come to England, you’ll hear more people that sound like me but that way of speaking, Received Pronunciation, so-called Queen’s English, did not exist in Shakespeare’s time. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. [3][4]. The first person I saw give a lecture was KRS-One. But let’s talk a little bit first…. Akala (right) in 2009. Esther French is the web producer. BARBARA: And as with everything that came before it, it’s just this blank slate. But if … He is an English rapper, poet and political activist who was born December 1, 1983. As the groove is set up, students can see and hear that each line of sonnet should fit in one measure of music. That one’s actually from Much Ado About Nothing. And I get that point of reference. Your ears and your brain literally are not yet trained to understand the vocabulary of that music. Draw for your sword orSee to it your knees meet and greet the ground,Bow! What is your favourite line … There are three quarters of a million books surviving in the University of Timbuktu, which was the main university in that kingdom, though there were three universities. And performance, you know, go… I think for me, culture is… has… I unapologetically see culture as a tool for liberation, for people to come together, to better human society. But, actually, perceptions of Shakespeare can be problematic. He has released singles like "Roll Wid Us" and "The Edge." I’ll do a couple more and then we’ll talk about what the point of the exercise is, I suppose. BARBARA: I was not born under a rhyming planet. AKALA: Yeah, he was sampling other peoples’ stories. Part of my job, I think, and part of our job with hip-hop with Shakespeare is to sort of undo this undue reverence. Josh Osho). I mean it certainly could be Shakespeare. Thou art more lovely and more temperate. AKALA: How difficult that is to do to make sense, to rhyme, to be semi-autobiographical and to put ten syllables in every single line. [30] He has performed at various U.K. festivals, including V Festival, Wireless, Glastonbury, Reading and Leeds Festivals, Parklife, Secret Garden Party and Isle of Wight, and has supported artists such as Christina Aguilera,[31] MIA,[32] Richard Ashcroft,[33] Audiobullys,[34] DJ Shadow,[35] The Gotan Project[36] and Scratch Perverts on their U.K/European tours. And that’s what great culture does. You know, Othello is okay. AKALA: It’s terrible. He wasn’t, you know, top of the top. He’s become a global icon for a whole host of interconnected complicated reasons. Yeah, a hundred percent. AKALA: Okay. Name Meaning of Akala. So, for example, if we take the end of The Tempest: But release me from my bandsWith the help of your good hands.Gentle breath of yours my sailsMust fill, or else my project fails, Which was to please. 419 Views . Surrender yourself to the floor.Mowbray: come, come, settle down,Don’t spit away your blood when you don’t have a crown…. Well, like this. AKALA: Yeah, what we try to… I show young people, adult or anyone, I think as a songwriter, for me, actually, any songwriter should be engaging with Shakespeare’s work, if you’re interested (a) in lyricism, but (b) in rhythm. AKALA: So, yeah, let’s play the first beat. The earlier you're aware of the hurdles, the easier they are to jump over."[11]. There’s only five percent that are old words. I don’t think we can divorce Shakespeare’s global success from British imperialism and if India colonized the world, would we be reading the Mahabharata and the Rāmāyaṇa and these wonderful texts of Indian spirituality in the way that we read Shakespeare, as universal human text? They made music in spite of the condition of enslavement. Shakespeare’s characters are… the best ones are all imperfect. BARBARA: So you do the Hip-hop and Bertolt Brecht Company? He was interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. BARBARA: You have a rap about this, right? So if artists wanna learn how to make stuff rhythmic that doesn’t rhyme, you think of Hamlet: “What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving…”. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Ferington. This might be Akala’s first children’s book, but it’s not his first foray into publishing. BARBARA: Okay, that I didn’t know. AKALA: I think there’s two points in there. ... Be the first one to write a review. Have a question about our collections? You know, you’re being poetic but at the same time you’ve put these very serious constraints on you but what the iambic pentameter, I think, gives you, it makes it a lot easier to memorize and as we’ve now discovered, you know, we can see that over modern music is a pretty good way for a person to learn how to flow. In the 1400s, the main kingdom he speaks about in that book is the Empire of Mali. The overall ideological framework of the book is a pragmatic, socialist-oriented Pan-Africanism that claims to seek the liberation of all humanity from oppression and exploitation. The book is part biography, and part polemic on race and class. BARBARA: Well, that’s a really important and controversial point because there’s this huge amount of skill required in that level of rap, right? You know, they watch MTV and they see MTV’s version of hip-hop culture, which is ironic given that, you know, Viacom is this massive big corporation. No, thank you very much. 2015 The Thieves Banquet. AKALA: Yes, it was, because my step-dad was the stage manager of, you know, to be crude, London’s equivalent to the Apollo. [49][50], Daley has given guest lectures at East 15 Acting School, University of Essex, Manchester Metropolitan University,[51] Sydney University,[52] Sheffield Hallam University,[53] Cardiff University, and the International Slavery Museum,[54] as well as a workshop on songwriting at the School of Oriental and African Studies. [29], In 2007, Daley was the first hip hop artist to perform his own headline concert in Vietnam. [citation needed] In March 2013, Daley announced via his social media feeds that his fourth album would released in May 2013, pushing back the future EP The Ruin of Empires to later in 2013. Ian McKellen came. It has to be rhythm first. AKALA: He was like, I like this stuff. The sonnet was introduced into Czech literature at the beginning of the 19th century. Even an acclaimed Shakespearean actor like Sir Ian McKellen can’t always answer correctly. But we're not on the line to talk about music. © Folger Shakespeare Library. But you’ll learn it in a second because, as you’ll hear, asking the question, “Is that Shakespeare or is it hip-hop?” is often the opening gambit that launches a conversation about poetry and prejudice for the British poet, rapper, and educator, Kingslee James Daley, who goes by the stage name Akala. AKALA: No, I don’t think that has the same ring to it. But if you do like them, that’s absolutely fine, too, and you don’t have to ask anyone’s permission. This early experience of racism leads him on to the larger problems of the racial injustice rife within Britain and the U.S., such as the troubling statistic that the overwhelming prison population is black. Okay, cool. AKALA: So, yeah, let’s play the first beat. We had help from Joe Philip at Covered PR, from Mariama Abudulai and from Ryan Pate at the Dub Room Studio in Los Angeles. [10] Daley saw a friend attacked by a meat cleaver to the skull when he was 12, and carried a knife himself for a period[11] He went on to achieve ten GCSEs and took maths a year early. Sleep is the cousin of death.”. But I do think it’s interesting that a lot of people who don’t know hip-hop have this negative opinion of it without even knowing it. He wrote in The Guardian: "So why will I be voting now? AKALA: Well, it’s to think about language, perception of language, language out of context, linguistic techniques, metaphor, simile, alliteration, rhythm. He claims several times in the book that some of his friends could have been academics or scientists if the obstacles of what he terms 'structural racism' and 'class oppression' had not been there.[46]. [40] He was present at the "One Love:No Borders Hip Hop" event held in Birmingham, England in April 2011, with Iron Braydz from London, Lowkey, Logic and other up-and-coming UK artists. AKALA: Right, completely different atmosphere, completely different style of beat. AKALA: Right. But what do you want people to go home with? One of the interesting things about the iambic pentameter is, because of this very consistent 10-syllable structure, you can do exactly that. The song "Love in my Eyes" heavily sampled Siouxsie and the Banshees' song "Love in a void" with the voice of Siouxsie Sioux. So, for those who don’t know what that is, I’m gonna do my BBC accent now. I think there’s something about Shakespeare as a brand, but I think that comes as much from what has been written about him as what he wrote. It doesn’t matter that it’s from the projects of Staten Island. BARBARA: Do you also run into this idea that, “well I can’t even… I don’t think any of the things that you’re quoting to me could be Shakespeare because I just don’t even know Shakespeare.” That people have a sense of who’s allowed, or have a misperception or a bias about who’s allowed to know Shakespeare well enough to even identity it? "[48], In November 2019, along with 34 other musicians, Akala signed a letter endorsing Corbyn in the 2019 UK general election with a call to end austerity. He has said he "was in the top 1 per cent of GCSEs in the country. BARBARA: Well that … let’s talk about that. In the UK, Shakespeare has become a symbol, in many ways, of the British class system, and there’s a perception that you have to be like basically as smart as Albert Einstein to enjoy Shakespeare. The second…. So, sitting people down and forcing them to read Shakespeare… Performance poetry has to be performance first. From Hawaiian roots, its meaning is raspberries. The first eight lines, the octave, state a problem, ask a question, or express an emotional tension. [He] got 100 per cent in [his] English exam. You know, he went to a grammar school. He explains his success as the absurd and unexpected consequence of an unequal system that allows the rise of a few while leaving behind the many, no matter how brilliant they are. So, for example, Felipe Fernández-Armesto, the great, you know, historian from Oxford University, he has a book called Millennium. Does that make sense? Thanks. AKALA: Right. BARBARA: Well, what I find interesting about peoples’ misperceptions, I mean this gets back to this relationship between hip-hop and Shakespeare that you talk about, is that Shakespeare really was the original mash-up artist as well. It wasn’t allowed to be in the city because it wasn’t considered proper by the religious establishment of the time. What you gonna do?All you little boys get Tamed like the Shrew.You're midsummer dreamin',Your tunes ain't appealingI'm Capulet, you're Montague, I ain't feeling.I am the Julius Caesar hear meThe Merchant Of Venice couldn't sell your CDAs for me, All's Well That Ends WellYour boy's like Macbeth, you're going to Hell.Measure for Measure, I am the best hereYou're Merry Wives of Windsor not King LearI don't know about Timon,I know he was in Athens.When I come back like Hamlet you pay for your actions. So…. A digital anthology of early modern English drama, Transcriptions, metadata, and images of manuscripts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. And the point is, the guy wrote performance poetry and great stories that were about sex and violence and love and tragedy. On 31 July 2018, he also received a honorary degree from Brighton University. What was the popular perception of jazz when jazz was the dominant youth culture for black America? [56] He has also been involved in campaigns to "decolonise" the curriculum including giving a talk at the University of Leicester. So, a standard bar of music, you know, four beats and if you put a ten over four… if you can visualize it in that way, where you’ve got ten… think of it like high hats. BARBARA: I want to start by picking up on something you use at the beginning of the presentations that you do, usually, and it’s the, “Is it hip-hop or Shakespeare?” bit. AKALA: I was not born under a rhyming planet. AKALA: Okay. I'm doing my thing,You're jealous like Othello.Who you? Garland Scott is the associate producer. You’ll recognize this as Sonnet 18. There wasn’t… we didn’t actually program any Shakespeare there. Akala isn't a Goodreads Author , but he does have a blog, so here are some recent posts imported from his feed. AKALA: Next one, we will go for, “I was not born under a rhyming planet.”. Okay. "[47], In May 2017, he endorsed Corbyn in the 2017 UK general election. [22] In 2008, The War Mixtape Vol. You won’t always be able to pick up the rhyme. We call this podcast The Poet’s Pen Turns them to Shapes. "My analysis of institutionalised racism is not 'oh, this is an excuse to fail' – quite the opposite. All Folger programs and events will be held at other venues during construction. Othello is not originally his story. “Is it Shakespeare, or is it hip-hop?” British poet, rapper, and educator Kingslee James Daley, who goes by the stage name Akala, likes to recite a passage and then challenge his audience with this question. We invite you to personally participate in the life of the Folger Shakespeare Library by making a tax-deductible donation to the institution. The English language has not changed as much as people would like to believe. I’m Michael Witmore, the Folger’s director and, no, I’m not going to give you the answer right now. In 2009, Akala launched the ‘The Hip-hop Shakespeare Company’ which has sparked worldwide media interest since its inception. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date. See also the related categories, english, hawaiian, and american. Popularity: Back to Top. AKALA: Yeah, I don’t have a Dostoyevsky one, but it’s all right. AKALA: Of course. AKALA: Okay. So, I never ever had this sense that hip-hop was just what I saw on the television. Shakespeare Unlimited comes to you from the Folger Shakespeare Library, home to the world’s largest Shakespeare collection. The last six lines, the sestet, resolve the problem, answer the question, or relieve the tension. Our main building is closed for a multi-year renovation. See what's new with book lending at the Internet Archive A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Akala is a derivative of the English name Akayla. You don’t have to like Shakespeare and you don’t have to like hip-hop, either. Both my dad and my step-dad run sound systems and hip-hop. full list of Shakespeare Unlimited episodes. You can learn more about Akala’s work at www.hiphopShakespeare.com. Well what happens when you hear rappers rap in French or in Brazilian Portuguese or in—I went to Zimbabwe—Shona. AKALA: You’d be like, forget it. One line quotes, taken either from some of my favorite hip hop songs, 34177 0:34 - 0:37 ... "Wu-Tang Forever" was the first hip-hop album to go number one in this country. But many of these stories are not original stories. And so if poets today try and do that, it’s like poetic mathematics. BARBARA: So, and for people who haven’t heard it, you recite a passage, I gather, and you ask the audience, do they think it’s hip-hop or do they think it’s Shakespeare. This podcast episode, The Poet’s Pen Turns Them to Shapes, was produced by Richard Paul. But it follows a slightly different rhyme scheme (usually either aabb ccbb ddbb ab or abab cbcb dbdb ab), and the last line of each stanza is a repeating refrain. I have a problem with that being the only voice that cuts through and being seen as the dominant perception. BARBARA: It was such a pleasure to talk to you. BARBARA: I mean he was rewriting and borrowing and…. Do they say, oh… do they always think it can’t possibly be Shakespeare because it sounds so modern? So, when you understand this context, when you understand the type of instrumentation in West Africa, it becomes much more easy to explain how these musical cultures were created in the Americas. He is an icon and that’s fine. Throughout his entire career, he was experimenting with different forms of rhythm. No one feels intimidated by Bob Marley, though. BARBARA: Well, as you say, they haven’t ever been exposed to this tradition of there’s this, you know, bifurcation in hip-hop. There was a long tradition of gathering at Congo Square on a Sunday and when we understand this griot tradition and the drums and call and response and African polyrhythms and everything that came before it, we can literally plot a line through jazz and blues and gospel and reggae music in the Caribbean up to hip-hop. AKALA: But also I mean the Elizabethan theater itself was not, you know, the Globe was on the south side next to the bear baiting and the prostitution. And it’s not always peoples’ fault. BARBARA: Well, what… when you do that exercise, then, what misperceptions do you find that people have? Students begin by using loops to create a drum-based groove. And you could take any verse of Shakespeare that’s in iambic pentameter and you can put it on most regular 4/4 hip-hop and you can put it on most of what we call in the UK “grime”—it’s a very transferable rhythm. And a lot of people still have the belief that that’s all kind of hip-hop has to contribute, has to say. BARBARA: Now, you said even when you then change the rhythm it’s fine. The Folger is dedicated to advancing knowledge and the arts. Akala has published a graphic novel/comic book called Visions. Meaning: The meaning of the name Akala is: A parrot. The octave … Founded in 2009 by BAFTA and MOBO award-winning UK hip hop artist Akala, The Hip-hop Shakespeare Company (‘THSC’) is a music theatre production company aimed at exploring the social, cultural and linguistic parallels between the works of William Shakespeare and that of modern day hip-hop artists. Notable Persons With the Last Name Akala. BARBARA: It has a very different… completely different atmosphere. I’m saying what Nas rapped about was profound and incredible. You know, so some people get confused there. One of the things I learned, going all around the world and working with hip-hop artists in Brazil and Algeria and all sorts of different places—in fact, one of my good, good friends is a legendary Brazilian rapper called MC Marechal…, [CLIP: MC MARECHAL raps in Brazilian Portuguese]. So we give people all different sorts of verses to show how versatile Shakespeare was and how much he experimented across his career. “Maybe it’s hatred I spew. AKALA: And spending time with him and hearing him rap, in Brazilian Portuguese, I was like, “the rhyme is not the same.” What I would hear audibly as a rhyme in English isn’t exactly what a rhyme is in Brazilian Portuguese. Akala Akala is a british hip hop, grime music, and alternative rock rapper, mc, poet, songwriter, academic., rapping, and master of ceremonies. But it was as part of the British rap and grime scene that Daley would make his biggest impression. 2017 10 Years of Akala. Become a member of the Folger Shakespeare Library and receive access to special member events. BARBARA: Well I’d love to hear your Dostoyevsky rap, but I’m gonna content myself with your Shakespeare ones. BARBARA: No. And so it’s that… I want people to take away the fact that culture’s there to be enjoyed. "[11] As a teenager, Daley focused on football, being on the schoolboy books of both West Ham United and AFC Wimbledon, and dropped out of college. 2016 Knowledge Is Power II. I don’t think it has the same ring. [15], Daley got his stage name from Acala, a Buddhist term for "immovable",[16] and started releasing music in 2003 from his own independent music label, Illa State Records. Browse our full list of Shakespeare Unlimited episodes. [13], Akala did not attend university but has 2 honorary degrees in recognition of his educational work. [28], In May 2012, Daley released a two-part mixtape, Knowledge Is Power, containing "Fire in the Booth", and followed the release with a promotional tour in the autumn of 2012. AKALA: The next one. I always recognized that hip-hop had a range of expressions. I mean it’s… listen, I don’t like to embarrass people but we did a workshop, one of our launch workshops. So I think all of these big themes, all of these character—obviously, you know, writing in English helped. From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited. [18] His work was recognised with the MOBO Award for Best Hip Hop Act. If you’re not an expert on jazz or on classical music, it can all sound the same till you get into it, right? But it was as part of the British rap and grime scene that Daley would make his biggest impression. I have a… or so-called. So, we can play you the Golden Gate Quartet, who are a gospel quartet. What are his criticisms of rappers? It has to be sung…. Akala, who is also an author, said UK gang violence was 'not new' but had existed for 150 to 200 years, and suggested that a 'moral panic' was pushing politicians towards the wrong solutions. Like playing… being a virtuoso classical pianist or playing violin or being a great actor. [58][59], Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire, "Raheem Sterling joins Meghan and Stormzy in top 100 most influential black Brits", "Lewis Hamilton ends incredible year top of influential Black Powerlist 2021", "Fight the Power — Akala and the Power of the Word", "Akala's race polemic nominated for James Tait Black literary prize | Scotland", "Akala: "I don't enjoy explaining that black people are human beings, "Akala receives honorary doctorate | The Voice Online", "Albion boss to receive honorary doctorate from Brighton University", "Akala interview on "The Situation" website", "BBC - Music - Review of Akala - It's Not a Rumour", "Akala (2) & Ms. Dynamite - A Little Darker EP", "BBC Two - Shakespeare Live! 2 was released, along with an EP of acoustic remixes. He started releasing music in 2003 and his first proper album came out in 2006. Published July 25, 2017. [11] When accepting honorary degrees, he has said he "would like to thank the entire Caribbean pan-African community that helped me through school and encouraged an intellectual curiosity and self development from a very young age.
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