Rock the Bells hip hop festival cancelled - the end of an era?

Today, a friend mentioned to me that the Rock the Bells hip hop festival stops in DC and NJ was cancelled. 

Perhaps it was just a matter of poor promotion...but I suspect it's more than that.

During my research for The Essential Artist, I found that the simplified, general history of the musical branch for pop music appeared to be rather as follows:

• 1940s, swing/"big band"
• 1950s, rock'n'roll
• 1960s, psychadelic rock
• 1970s, hard rock
• 1980, heavy metal
• 1990, hip hop/"rap"

Yes, there were other genres happening concurrently in each decade (such as "new wave" in the 80s which itself was equally significant if not moreso, albeit for a briefer period and in a different way. I had to acknowledge this even though criteria for ranking the relative influence of any genre is beyond the scope or purpose of this quick reaction article).

While it is convenient to compartmentalize the genres in neat ten-year successions, the seeds of each dominant genre did germinate in the years before solidification - in fact, the emergence of heavy metal was as early as 1970, and of hip hop by 1980. Seen in this light, we may recognize that heavy metal had a run of twenty years from 1970-1990, and hip hop an unprecedented run of over thirty years.

Have we reached that moment when hip hop (finally) recedes into history, after 30 years?

Of course, the end of the era doesn't mean the end of the music. I mean, baroque music still "exists," people listen to it, and orchestras still perform it. Classical, romantic, dixieland, bop...Bach, Mozart, Beethovan, Tchaikovsky, Louis Armstrong, Coltrane, Parker, Davis... We still listen to Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley and The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zep... We still listen to Chuck D and KRS-One and Run DMC and LL Cool J and Rakim and Fat Boys and Tupac and Biggie Smalls...

However, time has quite the dulling effect on the angry, rebellious anti-establishment edge of acid rock, heavy metal and hip hop, as the original acts age and became a part of the establishment. It can be tough to see artists from the 1960s who are now pushing into their 70s; it can be tough to see 1980s hair metal bands with grey hair; to see NWA rapper Ice Cube checking the kids' attitudes in family movies.

It was a great run, but it may be time to actually utter the words, "hip hop is dead, long live hip hop."

Newman and the essence of artistic creativity

The first time I saw Barnett Newman's Onement 1 (1948), I voiced in abject perplexity, "what is it?" Little did I know that this was precisely the question Newman wanted me to ask, so he could answer, while stifling a chuckle, "it is...what it is."

Well, sort of. He might have said something more along the lines of wanting his viewers to "begin in the ‘chaos’ of feeling and sensation…to evoke out of this chaos ‘a memory of the emotion of an experienced moment of total reality,’” (Rosenberg, Harold. 1972. The De-definition of Art. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co. p93).

Um, yeah... Basically, Newman was driving at the issue that can divide art camps when asking that fundamental question, "what is art?", the definitive answer to which is most elusive.

For Newman, painting a copy of something that exists is exactly that - copying something that exists. Copying does require degrees of skill, and the more realistic the copy, the more skill that's required. Wonderful...just not very creative.

To "create", opined Newman, was to, as it were, become like God, who created things that had not existed before they were created. Humans, made in "the image" of this creative Creator, were thus expected to be reflections of this creativeness and likewise not just create, but be creative (Newman drew heavily from his Jewish heritage as well as his education in philosophy).

As such, a vase of flowers or a bowl of fruit didn't excite Newman. Nor did he want a viewer to look at Onement and try and recognize something else by which to make sense of it. If someone was able to answer "it's a tree" or "it's the horizon at sundown", he'd have failed, for indeed his work would have had meaning only as it reflected something else, something he did not himself create; that piece would not have brought the viewer any closer to the creator of the piece, but instead to the creator of the horizon, which certainly wasn't Newman.

When I first saw Onement, it made me think "what in the world is Newman trying to say?" It became the beginning of a journey of discovery, an invitation to begin a dialog with the artist, through which I might become more acquainted and, yes, even intimate with his deepest ideas about art, life, his place in the world, and mine too.

It is what it is - a unique creation, from the mind of a unique artist, who had something to say. It got my attention. I was listening. I heard him.

Of course, "art", for such a short word, is a very big idea. And surely many will disagree with the notion that copying isn't "really art," which is fine. Defining art is a very personal experience - to share one's findings is itself a part of the motivation for artists to produce and engage. I explore not only the issue of defining art, but my definition of art, in my book The Essential Artist. (I welcome any comments on the manuscript while it's in the "read it for free online" vetting phase -  http://www.scribd.com/doc/33684335/The-Essential-Artist).

One of the primary lessons I learned from Onement 1 is simply this: appreciating artists and their art may require that we push past the surface - the "what it is" - to contemplate and approach the "what it means."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally published on Art + Culture, September 15, 2010