Black on Both Sides: A Conversation with iona rozeal brown
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUPClick for larger view | Figure 1 |
This interview was conducted by email during the Fall of 2002 and the Spring of 2003, between New Haven, Connecticut and Chillum, Maryland.
iona rozeal brown introduced me to Japanese youth culture's ganguros and DJs in color-saturated blow-ups of profiling geishas. Since 2001, brown has articulated the far reaches of this little-known group's appropriation of African American hip-hop culture in provocative paintings that have been exhibited in national and international venues. She perceives this Japanese subculture's "admiration" as a superficial gloss and emphasizes this distance by playing up the gaps between the figures' natural skin color and the blackface they don when performing hip-hop culture. brown's perception is far from passive resignation. She toys with the concepts of manners and attitudes which are quite present in the original Japanese ukiyo-e prints, overlaying them with hip-hop culture's postures, which seem as codified as the Japanese gestures even though they are barely thirty years old. brown wraps her skepticism in humor rather than defeat.
While she has since expanded to a broader examination of international cultural consumption, here brown discussed this earlier body of work, her experiences in the hip-hop world, and her impressions of the interchange between American and Japanese culture.
WILLIAMS: How did you come to represent hip-hop culture in your work?
BROWN: I have been listening to hip-hop since the Soul Sonic Force dropped "Planet Rock." I still have the original 12" that I bought back when I was . . . whatever. The point is that I have been a big fan for a long while. I really dug the new movie Brown Sugar where hip-hop was referenced as if it was a lover of sorts (I had to see it twice). I've seen its bad side and its good side, but it is still hip-hop, and I am pulling for it to exist forever. It is a brilliant art form—it's story telling, it's the dozens, it's a threat, it's a love note, it's an ode, it is so many things and so many people are drawn to it. But many take hip-hop, black innovations, and black people for granted. It has been happening for so long, people are having a difficult time stopping, or even recognizing that they do it. Although not always receiving a fair cut, if any cut at all, black people have supplied and continue to supply the world with marketable talents. These issues were on my mind and needed to come out, and they did so in the form of paintings and music. [End Page 827]
WILLIAMS: Can you talk more about the role of music in your life and work?
BROWN: Music has been important to me. My father has a most impressive jazz collection on vinyl and on cd, but lots of the vinyl is not on cd. I grew up with jazz and classical music (I actually studied guitar from seven to nineteen or so, mostly jazz and classical), rock, gospel, then house and club, hip-hop and go-go. Go-go is from DC and has stayed here. It's great because it has not been tainted the way that it could have been if it had left. It's heavy percussion and call and response. I've wanted to mix music since about nineteen years old. I would buy records every week that I heard on the radio or in the clubs. I'd go to 12" dance records. I only had one turntable then, so when I made my tapes, I would put each song right flush after another to try and mimic mixing—no cross fader. Some of the tapes are bearable.
I can get into so many forms of music. What usually draws me is the beat—that's...
