White Rapper from Vancouver, BC, Brings Darwin to NoHo
I read Olivia Judson's Opinionator column (...on the influence of science and biology on modern life) "Darwin Got It Going On" in the New York Times on May 4th and was immediately intrigued:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/darwin-got-it-going-on/
"The lights go down. The room fills with music — a pulsating hip-hop rhythm. And then, over the music, you hear the voice of Richard Dawkins reading a passage from 'On the Origin of Species' by Charles Darwin: 'Whoever is led to believe that species are mutable will do good service by conscientiously expressing his conviction. For only thus can the load of prejudice by which this subject is overwhelmed be removed.'
"So begins one of the most astonishing, and brilliant, lectures on evolution I’ve ever seen: 'The Rap Guide to Evolution,'by Baba Brinkman."
Within minutes I had a front row center seat reserved at the 45 Beekman Theater in Noho for $22.50 with fees. Cheap.
I just returned from the performance and was as entranced as Ms. Judson. And bought Mr. Brinkman's CD The Rap Guide to Evolution (which bears the notation "For Education Use Only") for $10.
Mr. Brinkman introduced himself by explaining that he had gotten a bit of a reputation in the rap community by rapping the works of Geoffrey Chaucer (available from iTunes!) and was contacted by a gent in the UK in 2008, who was also a rap fan, asking Baba if he could construct a rap performance of Darwin's work for a Centenary Celebration in February, 2009. There was a catch. Since the professor was putting his own reputation on the line by presenting a Canadian rapper, Baba would have to submit his notes ahead of time for critique. In other words, as Baba proudly proclaimed, his Darwin rap is the first to be successfully peer reviewed, like a scientific paper. (And at the end, as with any good paper, he projected the references from which he constructed his performance!)
This being New York, and with a capacity audience due, no doubt, to Ms. Judson, Baba's internal rap references were not as obscure as he claimed they were in more rap-deprived venues, so his introduction of a vintage rap called "Survival of the Fittest" was immediately attributed by an audience member to Mobb Deep (1995). During another, "I'm A African," by Dead Prez (2000), the audience repeated the chorus, since, as Baba pointed out, the ancestry of all people can be traced to Africa.
Since Ms. Judson has already "been there, done that," while taking notes, I will repeat her description of the goings on:
"It is also, I suspect, the only hip-hop show to talk of mitochondria, genetic drift, sexual selection or memes. For Brinkman has taken Darwin’s exhortation seriously. He is a man on a mission to spread the word about evolution — how it works, what it means for our view of the world, and why it is something to be celebrated rather than feared.
"To this end, he has concocted a set of mini-lectures [10 on stage, 16 on the CD] disguised as rap songs. When he comes to human evolution, for example, he has the audience sing along in call-response fashion to 'I’m a African' — a riff on an earlier song of that name by the radical, pan-Africanist hip-hop duo Dead Prez. The point of Brinkman’s version is that because humans evolved in Africa, we are all Africans: pan-Africanism meets population genetics. A few moments later, he’s showing a video of individuals [cells] of the social slime mold Dictyostelium discoidium streaming together while rapping about how cooperation evolves.
"(Dictyostelium is notorious, in some circles, for its strange life-style. Usually, an individual Dictyostelium lives alone as a single cell. But when food is scarce, the single cells come together and form a being known as 'the slug;' this crawls off in search of better conditions. When it finds them, the slug develops into a stalked fruiting body, and releases spores. But here’s the mystery: not all members of the slug get to make spores [only the ones at the top] — and thereby contribute to the next generation — so why do they cooperate?) ...
"The lyrics are, for the most part, witty, sophisticated and scientifically accurate; and they lack the earnest defensiveness that sometimes haunts lectures on evolution. I spotted one or two small slips — a confusion of the praying mantis with the Australian redback spider (oh no!) — and there are a few moments of poetic license that a po-faced pedant might object to. Otherwise, it’s pretty rigorous. [Tonight Baba discussed BOTH the praying mantis and the Australian redback spider.]
"Brinkman can’t resist taking a few pot-shots at creationists ('Darwin got it going on / Creationism is … dead wrong …'), and he devotes one rap to refutations of creationist arguments. But by and large, he proselytizes about evolution not by attacking its deniers, but by revealing the subject’s scope, from natural selection to the evolution of human culture and language. At the same time, he teases the audience, sends up post-modernism, mocks himself and satirizes the genre of hip-hop, all with fizzing energy and spell-binding charisma. Like I said, astonishing."
Baba explained that he is of Dutch Calvinist ancestry, some of which are still in Holland, and about 20% of which—including his sister—don't really believe in Darwin's point of view. But it is certainly not from Baba's lack of effort!
He announced that he would invite people back, but his final performance at 45 Bleeker is sold out, due to Ms. Judson, no doubt. Videos of some 2009 segments of his Darwin presentation are available on YouTube, and downloads of his CDs are available from his website, www.Babasword.com (note, NOT Babasworld.com) and from iTunes.
