Extending the Breaks: Fires in the Mirror in the Context of Hip-Hop Structure, Style, and Culture

Extending the Breaks: Fires in the Mirror in the Context of Hip-Hop Structure, Style, and Culture Steve Feffer In NewYork City in the late eighties and early nineties, hip-hop music not only expressed some of the tensions that existed between Jews and African-Americans, but it was characterized in the media as part of the problem. Most of this media attention was focused around charges ofanti-Semitism thatwerebeingleveled againstdiehip-hop group Public Enemy,who at the time were among the most popular and critically acclaimed hip-hop artists. In their 1988 song "Bring the Noise," from the It TakesaNation ofMillions toHold UsBackalbum,Public Enemy'sleader Chuck D rapped that Louis Farrakhan was"a prophet" and someone"to listen to" and "follow for now," at a time when Farrakhan was coming under media scrutiny for comments he had made in regard to the Jews.1 A year later, Professor Griff, Public Enemy's "minister of information," implicated the Jews for"the majority of wickedness that went on across the globe."2 In 1990, Public Enemy revived the controversies over antiSemitism in their 1990 song "Welcome to the Terrordome," from the Fear ofa Black Planet album by referring to the Jews as the "so-called chosen frozen," and rapping that the "crucifixion ain't no fiction."3 At the same time, a number ofJewish leaders and television and radio personalities were using the media to speak out against hip-hop and Public Enemy by claiming that hip-hop was not music, and did not deserve the critical attention that itwas receiving.4 Bythe fall of 1991 when tensions between Jews andAfrican-Americans exploded into the Crown Heights riots, hip-hop culture hardly seemed the artistic site to explore relations between the two groups in an inclusive and productive manner.5 397 398Comparative Drama Yet a number of people interviewed by Anne Deavere Smidi and later performed forher one-woman playFires in theMirrorasserted that hip-hop was absolutely the place to attempt an intercultural dialogue. In the Fires in the Mirror monologue entitled"Rhythm and Poetry" rapper Big Mo suggests that with hip-hop rhymes: You have to be def, / ... / Defis dope, defis live / when you saysomethin's dope / it means it is the epitome of the experience / and you have to be def by your very presence / because you have to make people happy. / And we are living a society where people are not happy / with their everyday lives. (38-39)6 In this monologue,BigMo imagines a newvision ofcommunitydirough the powerful form ofhip-hop poetic expression. Later in Smith's performance , the activist Henry Rice speaks of his efforts to stop the Crown Heights riots, as Public Enemy plays prominendy and suggestively in the background.And most explicidy,and perhaps most importantly,the activist Sonny Carson feels that hip-hop has "mesmerized" him and America, and he hears in its rhythm, chords, and most importantly its discord,"a whole new sound" (106). He concludes by telling Smith, albeit in reference to the musical West Side Story, that perhaps the answer to society's ills "should be a musical" (107). Anna Deavere Smith's Fires in the Mirror shares with hip-hop culture certain thematic, stylistic, and structural concerns that are deeply related to how Smith explores, envisions, and performs an approach to race and community in America.At the core ofboth hip-hop music and Smith's thematic vision is the idea of "the break," used structurally in Fires to develop themes in much the same manner as hip-hop music. Like hip-hop, Smith uses new artistic techniques, such as a form ofverbal sampling and recombination,born out oftechnology, to explore and assert a new model for social change. Moreover, Fires in the Mirror anticipates what will become a highly productive relationship between theaterandhip-hop music thathasyielded aproliferation ofhiphop /theater hybrids, including a number of productions of hip-hop Shakespeare and a yearly NewYork hip-hop theater festival. Fires in the Mirror (1992) is a performance piece about the 1991 riots in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, that is part of Anna Deavere Smith's ongoing project, On the Road:In Search oftheAmerican Character.Odier Steve Feffer399 works in this...