He Got Game: Chuck D at the CHF

Today Ira and I attended two events at the Chicago Humanities Festival. Although both events were held downtown at the First United Methodist Church on Washington, they couldn't have been more different. The first event was an appearance by the British novelist and literary critic David Lodge, who gave a lecture titled "Time in the Novel" that provided a concise overview of basic ideas regarding the relationship between temporality and storytelling drawn heavily from the work of Gerard Genette. Then, Lodge read a humorous excerpt from Author, Author, his new novel about Henry James, that illustrated the techniques he deployed in order to create the illusion of simultaneity in a particular scene.

Whereas Lodge gave a witty and polished talk, Chuck D--yes, the Chuck D from Public Enemy, still the greatest rap group ever--offered a more free form talk. The official title of Chuck's talk was "Hip-hop and the Digital Divide," though the issue of access to new digital technologies was not really primary issue. Chuck gave a rambling sermon that began by bemonaing the recent election results, then railed against the dumbing down of American culture, and concluded with remarks about the need for the hip-hpo generation to know their mustical history, because the story of musical migrations is also the history of African-American migrations. But my account here is selective. To be honest, Chuck was all over the place in his talk, which was given off the cuff. At the close, he even apologized for his digressions, but I wouldn't have had it any other way.

I'd heard most everything he had to say before, but it was good to hear someone from the 'streets' broadcasting the news using rhetoric less polished than, say, the writers from The Nation or In These Times.

The highlight, for me, was witnessing Chuck D at the pulpit, dressed down in a Cubs cap, black t-shirt and jeans and bathed in the light pouring through the stained-glass windows, rail against George Bush's faux faith as a cover for corporate greed while reminding the crowd of the need for authentic Christian values. In many ways, Chuck's remarks were another version of the call for the progressive Left to reclaim the Christian legacy and to forge a fighting collective--an argument advanced by Cornel West and, of course, Slavoj Zizek.

A few other moments that I want to remember from my notes... (1) Chuck D noted how ill educated and solipsistic many Americans are at this isolationistic moment. Remarking on people he'd encountered in his travels to 53 countries, Chuck said he found people elsewhere to be "quicker, wiser, more humane and smarter" than your average American. (2) He noted that rap is not a genre of music, but rather a "vocal application on top of music." (3) Chuck noted that if you placed a person dying of AIDS on a stage next to a Lexus that was crushed by a wrecking ball, more people would express outrage about the machine being destroyed than the human being.