At the 2022 June NAMM show, MIDI Association Executive Board member Lawrence Levine and President Athan Billias were invited to sit at the Broadjam table by MIDI Association supporter Roy Elkins. Roy’s Broadjam team is experts in running different kinds of voting for events. They handle the voting for the TEC Awards, The Academy of Country Music Awards and the MIDI Innovation Awards. Lawrence and Athan happened to be seated next to Brian Hardgroove, producer, drummer and bass player and member of the band Public Enemy.
After the TEC Awards, Brian, Lawrence and Athan ended up in a discussion that went late into the night about music, technology and culture. They immediately developed a bond and continued to meet regularly to share ideas on how music can be a positive force for change.
Soon their discussions turned to how 2023 would celebrate two unique anniversaries- MIDI@40 and HipHop@50.
That’s when their plans really kicked into overdrive.
JOANNE CALITRI from the Montecito Journal recently did a great article about the HipHop@50 NAMM events and we wanted to quote some her article here.
Check out the full article at HipHop@50 at NAMM.
Hardgroove, a musician, record producer, and member of Public Enemy, is a highly respected NAMM presenter who brings A-List industry experts to his TEC Tracks. This year he also brought in Chuck D, the co-founder of Public Enemy, social activist, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, and Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award recipient. Having Chuck D there ignited many new people to attend NAMM for certain.
In a phone interview with me, Hardgroove clarified,
“I have had a great relationship with NAMM for many years, and I am on the Les Paul Foundation Advisory Council.
When I heard that NAMM wanted to give a ‘nod to Hip Hop’ which is celebrating its 50th year, I decided to have Chuck D at my Black to the Future TEC Track to talk on the first 50 years of Hip Hop.
I went about raising the funds for that with Athan Billias and Lawrence Levine, who are members of The Midi Association, to cover the expense of bringing Chuck D to the show and provide a suitable honorarium.
We raised money under the banner of HIP HOP@50 from Roland, Shure, Pioneer DJ, Analog Devices, BASSBOSS, The Midi Association, and Spectrasonic Virtual Instruments.
While this is going on, my PR agent Caroline suggested to Pete Johnston, producer of the NAMM TEC Experience, to connect with me, which he did. Johnston said, since you’re bringing Chuck D here, we’d like to give him an award; however, there are no current NAMM awards that speak to his contributions.
I asked Pete to give me some time to come up with a proper award and its mission statement, which I did. The award is called the ‘Impact Music and Culture Award,’ to acknowledge the impact he has had on culture. I sent it to Johnston. NAMM made no changes to the awards name or mission statement, and then they sent an official notice to Chuck D to accept the award and he agreed. I presented it to him at the awards show Thursday.”
by JOANNE CALITRI, for the Montecito Journal
Thursday night TEC Experience
The TEC Experience at April NAMM was very different than previous TEC Award events. It was open to anyone with a NAMM badge and the NAMM Ballroom was packed with over 1800 people.
Host Larry Batiste reminded everyone of how HipHop was embraced by other genres of music-RUN-DMC’s use of Aerosmith’s “Walk this Way” is an obvious example as is Method Man and R&B artist Mary J. Blige, but there is also Chuck D’s 2015 collaborations with Archie Shepp (bet you didn’t see that coming!)
GrandMixer DXT was presented the “Hip Hop Innovator Award” for his innovation on the turntable by DJ Jazzy Jeff.
DXT’s work with jazz legend Herbie Hancock on “Rock It” is another example of how HipHop shaped both global culture and other musical genres.
Mike Relm created a fantastic mashup tribute to Hip Hop and HipHop gear including the Roland Rhythm Composer TR-808, Technics SL 2000 turntables, Gemini PreAmps, E-Mu Systems, Inc. SP-1200, MPC 3000 Pads, Ensoniq ASR10, Korg Triton pro music workstation, and Akai’s S950 sampler, the MPC60 and MPC60II.
This tribute fit perfectly with the MIDI@40 tribute to the founders of modern music production including Ikutaro Kakehashi from Roland, Tsutomu Katoh from Korg, Roger Linn from Linn Designs and Dave Rossum from EMU and Rossum Systems.
DJs pay homage to the musicians, the artists, the name of the record, the songwriters, the musicianship. That is where we come from as DJ culture, to be able to explain to the world the beauty and gift of music.
The important factor is we had to know where these sounds came from. We knew that a DJ could be a band like Run DMC said, but you have to have the knowledge of the records. In this day I think it is disrespectful to make light of scholarship, because people just think they can be what they want to be by looking at a screen and think they’re a scholar too.
Scholars read everything, the good, bad and ugly – and then have a conversation about it. That is the same thing about technologists, DJs, and musicians – they can play anything but they process it to a point where you can dig it, pick it up and it’s palatable to your taste, and they spend time at it. They do the good, bad and ugly so they possibly can come up with something that can be a universal language. That’s the gift of music.
Where we’re going right now, Artificial Intelligence is not getting dumber. You look around and it looks like society is falling off into stupidity, and AI is coming on like a locomotive on nuclear steroids in outer space. I know, I’ve heard all the talk how music is this and musicians are that and we are being invaded. You’ve all seen the speed of data GPT, and it ain’t wack. Prince Rogers Nelson said, ‘Try your best to be on top of the technology or it will be on top of you.’
And one thing we know, you might not like, but everybody’s got the gadget in their pocket attached to their hip. How do we dance with it as musicians, artists, creators, technologists, DJs, bass players, guitarists, and people who say I don’t have to write this speech all I have to do is pour it in a GPT blender, how we deal with that? What’s the next two and three generations look like? That’s the challenge. It’s hard to challenge that when you’re drunk or high, AI is not on cocaine.
This is the turning point, we’re two years past the pandemic, what is 2024 looking like?
Let the music stay free. Peace.”
by Chuck D during his acceptance speech of the Impact Music and Culture Award
On Friday, over 500 people showed up for Chuck’s discussion on HipHop at a NAMM Tec Tracks session.
Here are some highlights.
Brian Hardgroove (BH): Why did Hip Hop last 50 years?
Chuck D (CD): We were more aware, and we knew Hip Hop was going to last over 50 years. It is a sight, sound, story style which has creativity, musicianship, dance culture and graffiti art culture. Most people don’t have a clear definition of Rap and Hip Hop; Rap is a vocal on top of music, it is a vocal platform.
BH: How does Hip Hop push the dial to move culture forward?
CD: We need more people like you! We need to stop the corporate spectacle that has become music. Be spectacular not a spectacle. Hip Hop has always been embracing, intelligent, genius, and had scientists who know the technology to engineer and produce it. In the U.S., music was the number one influencer of people and culture, now it is sports, which has used music in its platform to push its place forward. The airwaves used to be public, but corporations took that over. The last century we all had music in the crib, and musicians respected the music that came before us, we knew who wrote it, produced it, wrote the liner notes, and the engineers. Get out of your bubbles. Look at what other countries and cultures are doing with music, Hip Hop and Rap have been worldwide for a long time, and it started right here. Use your devices as tools, not as toys which is soc-med [social media]. Don’t let the tech make you stupid and lazy, manage your devices before they manage you. Things are moving fast in 2024 and 2026, and you need to stay awake, it’s the cheapest price you’ll have to pay.
BH: Tell us about being inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame.
CD: Rock Hall said for the TV show we have a younger person do the induction speech. I said we love what you do but we have our own plans how we are going to do this. We come from Black Music, we want to honor our heroes instead of somebody inducting us, we don’t think we’re the most important thing. We want Harry Belafonte to induct us or we’re not showing up. We’re honoring somebody who laid the groundwork for us to be here in the first place that America wants to forget quickly. We felt dignified and honored to honor our hero honoring us. You have to fight for what is right if you have the power to do so at that particular time. When it comes to the arts, there is a longer trail of what made it to be – instead of thinking it’s a bunch of bones we stand on. You’re recording music and making technology on the shoulders of unacknowledged giants. When I look at any screen, I think of Philo Farnsworth; he was one of the cats who realized people could look at a screen and you got TV, but he’s one of the names that got pushed to the back like thousands of unacknowledged heroes, which you can choose to honor. This is where the humanity of music, the arts, and culture unite us with similarities and knocks our differences to the side.
Resonant Alien performs on Saturday at the MIDI@40 concert
Resonant Alien performed on Saturday April 15th at MIDI@40 concert bringing the MIDI@40 and HipHop@50 celebrations together.
If you have the NAMM + app, you can still watch the MIDI@40 live stream and we will be rebroadcasting portions of the event soon.
In the meantime, here are images from the Resonant Alien graphic novel currently in development.
