COAL BLACK VOICES This is the introduction by IsWhat?!
Love [Thru Darkness]
THE BIRTH OF A SONG
This is a storymapping project
featuring the work of Napoleon Maddox
a
confluence of art, history and resistance
Please scroll down
About this Project
This is an experiment in storytelling based on my film-in-progress LOVE [THRU DARKNESS] about the work of Napoleon Maddox. Exploring the birth of a song based on Maddox' lyrics, it's a deconstructed film, using processes and elements of filmmaking including original footage. It's also an assemblage of 'found' digital objects - online video, maps, text, and still images ~ the ephemera of storytelling.
Thank you to Napoleon Maddox and the many video producers who have created such great performance and music videos over the years.
This project is partially funded by the Innovation Program of the Ohio Arts Council.
Golden love, won't let time be a judge, won't hold a grudge, would not budge, but the way will be free someday
what does ya LOVE enough
to wade thru marsh and mush?
on the darkest night
without a spark lost at dusk
nothing left for your soul to trust...
From Love [Thru Darkness], Napoleon Maddox, Jack Walker, and Boogie Bang (Brian Greer)
Who is Napoleon Maddox?
Napoleon is a rising Beatbox and Jazz artist who leads the progressive Hip Hop group IsWhat? from Cincinnati, Ohio. The most hardworking artist you'll ever meet, he is a writer, producer, human beat-box artist, vocalist, DJ and leader of a progressive hip-hop band called ISWHAT?!. He has also worked with highly respected Hip-hop, Rock, Jazz and Classical musicians, such as Hamid Drake, Chuck D, DJ Spinna, DJ Logic, Glen Hansard, Vernon Reid, Archie Shepp, Marc Cary and the late great Les Paul. He’s most recently been performing or touring with jazz and hip hop bands such as Papanoush with Roy Nathanson, Bad Fat, and recently released an album with French beatmaker Sorg, called CHECKIN US.
But first.
I met Napoleon in 2001. I, and my partner Fred Johnson, were completing a film, COAL BLACK VOICES, about the Affrilachian Poets, an ensemble of Black poets hailing from the Southern Mountains of Appalachia and the South who were taking the literary community by storm. We needed some original music for the opening of the film and were introduced to Napoleon by a mutual acquaintance. He came by our production office in northern Kentucky, across the river from Cincinnati, to chat about what we needed. He, Jack Walker and IsWhat?! produced a classic for us.
people praise CHRIST cause they say he bled for us
they say the follow him but won't bleed for much
I used to be touched
then I seen us for us
souls is cold and bones is dust
what the fuck!!
I'm giving up
Then I'd be worse than the ones whose heart is froze
breathing defeat cold as fuck
achieving what ?
not much.
You don't have to explain, it all comes from pain, lies and decisions not made. Childish mistakes make sinners of us all. It all comes from pain, you don't have to explain...
From Love [Thru Darkness] by Napoleon Maddox, Jack Walker and Boogie Bang
Just weeks after COAL BLACK VOICES was completed and broadcast on regional public television, a Cincinnati police officer shot nineteen year old Timothy Thomas in the back. It was the fourth shooting of a Black man in six months and the fifteenth since 1995. Everyone was in shock.
Emotions, anger and fear were running high,
it was a combustible time.
A few months later, in 2002, Media Working Group organized a three-day gathering called INDABA: THREE DAYS OF COAL BLACK VOICES. They invited the Affrilachian Poets, area teachers, students, church and community organization leaders from Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky to explore how poetry and creative writing can serve in times of conflict. They used the film, COAL BLACK VOICES and the presence of the poets to create dialogue about how poetry and creative writing can bring the energy into expression during this volatile period in Cincinnati.
The night of the readings by the Affrilachian Poets was a terrible night of heavy cold rain, and the first cold snap of the season. Napoleon Maddox showed up and performed Beatbox.
In November 2002, days after INDABA: THREE DAYS OF COAL BLACK VOICES I left for Addis Abeba, Ethiopia to work for UNESCO's International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa. I and a colleague were hired to integrate HIV-AIDS education across the curriculum using the new digital video production tools. Life in the U.S. seemed distant even though our new Ethiopian friends were on edge about President Bush's threat of war against Iraq.
In this period just before sophisticated social media tools like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, I lost track of Napoleon.
Jean Donohue
After re-connecting through Facebook in 2009 and seeing his flow of images from Instagram, I found that Napoleon had skyrocketed his career as a lyricist and recording artist, he was performing with a variety of bands and artists doing jazz, hip hop, hip hop fanfare, and experimental music. Some forms I'd never heard or heard of.
Here's a clip from the film-in-progress where Napoleon and Bad Fat, a hip hop fanfare band, are in rehearsal.
I wondered about how he made this leap.
Here is one of Napoleon's video diaries.
And, then there's the work with Hamid Drake.
Reggaeology - Kali's Children No Cry (2/2)- Hamid Drake live Sant'Anna Arresi Jazz Festival 2010 Hamid Drake (Drums), Napoleon Maddox (Voice), Jeff Parker (Guitar), Jeff Albert (Trombone), Jeb Bishop (Trombone), Josh Abrams (Bass)
The film is based on Napoleon Maddox' lyrics of the song LOVE [THRU DARKNESS] and his life and work as an artist. In exploring his young life he told a story about his father. Here is a video diary.
A prolific writer and performer he attracts some of the best musicians who want to tour with him. I found this interview by an Italian producer between Hamid Drake and Napoleon at the Torino Jazz Festival in Torino, Italy. It's a great conversation about style and technique. It answered a lot of questions for me.
He's also been touring and recording with long time collaborator Sorg, Bad Fat, Archie Shepp, Roy Nathanson, Phat Jam and Boogie Bang.
(Click on the map)
Collaboration is an important aspect of the work. Check out these performances with Papanosh+Roy Nathanson, Sorg, and IsWhat?!
In 2018, after a residency in north Paris with Roy Nathanson and Papanosh they took that material to record and perform "Subway Moon" in New York City.
Sorg & Napoleon Maddox - "Wild West" During IsWhat?! show @La Rodia, Besançon France
Machines/sounds: Sorg Vocals/rap: Napoleon Maddox Drums: Hamid Drake Bass: Dave Kane Sax: Erik Sevret.
At Jazz à Luz (Luz-Saint-Sauveur) in July 2010.
Production by Bertrand Basset and Matthieu Parmentier
His lyrics and music are grounded in history, civil rights, and his own experience growing up in Cincinnati.
The Mobilization of Congo Square
He's not forgotten how important exposure to the arts was for him. He maintains a fundamental belief that society can change through artistic expression. In February 2019 he created the "Mobilization of Congo Square" when local musicians were organized to take jazz, hip hop, and beatbox to African American neighborhoods. Watch these videos.
This is Marquicia Jones, director of QKidz
“Napoleon Maddox participatory performances called The Mobilization of Congo Square are not only beautiful, but full of meaning. I have witnessed how people, how the audience, not only learns about black history, but realizes the implication of this history in their present. I believe in art as a form of sharing knowledge.
The Mobilization of Congo square is sharing knowledge and creating bridges between the past and the present, and among human beings of all walks of life. Napoleon is one of the most important and profound performers of the city and the region. I do not hesitate to say that his art, and the Congo Square project in particular, have changed and will continue changing lives.”
~ Manuel Iris, PhD./ Cincinnati Poet Laureate.
~
Underworld Jazz Festival
From John Mabery's NO PARTICULAR ORDER
“We’re not asking you to pay, we’re just asking that you pay attention.”
“This weekend thousands gathered for Cincinnati Music Festival to catch Maxwell and Mary J. But the Underworld Jazz Festival was the real gem of the summer: Kim Gory and Napoleon Maddox’s gift to the Queen City. The second edition, which ran into late May 2019, featured tons of music and cultural events designed to showcase Cincinnati-based and international talent. Despite its name, the festival also included hip-hop, rock, gospel, spiritual and avant-garde acts, as well as Maddox’s searing production of “Twice The First Time.”
On one particular rainy evening at MOTR Pub, Maddox reminded the crowd that most of these shows were free and that, “we’re not asking you to pay, we’re just asking you to pay attention.” At a time when so many festivals are pushing corporatization over community, Gory and Maddox have curated an event that Cincinnati has sorely lacked over the past few years. For those of us in attendance—whether for a cypher featuring local MCs or a history lesson about conjoined twins who were born slaves—I say thank you to Ms. Gory and Mr. Maddox. I look forward to next year’s iteration of the Underworld Jazz Festival.
Artists featured in this gallery include Tank and the Bangas, Lauren Eylise, Fo/Mo/Deep, Vibe-One, Watusi Tribe, and the Napoleon Maddox Quartet.”
Like African American artists who came before him, his art transmutes a harsh reality into an art of compassion and love.
You can also see this in his writing and performance called Twice the First Time, where he retells the true story of his great-grand aunts, conjoined twins Millie-Christine. Born into slavery in 1851, Millie-Christine lived an extraordinary life jumping between autonomy and captivity, emancipation and exploitation. They were sold and exploited as a circus sideshow act.
Maddox uses the hyphen separating Millie-Christine as a metaphor for "Black" life in America; trapped between two identities, examined and exhibited.
TWICE THE FIRST TIME was premieried at Cincinnati, Ohio's Contemporary Arts Center and since has been performed in France, Italy, and Germany. Watch this clip from the film-in-progress.
Napoleon worked with French beatmaker Sorg to create a complex and surprising composition for TWICE THE FIRST TIME. Sorg and he have been writing and performing together since 2013. They've released a number of singles and two EP albums together, “Ribbons & Razors” and "Soon." And, the LP "Checkin Us." Their collaboration won them the SongwriterUniverse “Best Song Of The Month” contest for September 2018 with “What’s Your Joy?”
More about Sorg and Napoleon's collaboration
A radio interview with Sorg.
Emergence La Rodia
Beatboxing is making and being the music
What do I know about Human Beatbox? Only, that it is unique and certainly an ancient form of music-making. Here's what I've learned ~
From Wikipedia - "Techniques similar to beatboxing have been present in many American musical genres since the 19th century, such as early rural music, both black and white, religious songs, blues, ragtime, vaudeville, and hokum. Examples include the Appalachian technique of eefing and the blues song Bye bye bird by Sonny Boy Williamson II.
Additional influences may include forms of African traditional music, in which performers utilize their bodies (e.g., by clapping or stomping) as percussion instruments and produce sounds with their mouths by breathing loudly in and out, a technique used in beatboxing today. Vocal percussion is "the imitation or approximation of percussion instruments," and beatboxing is a form of vocal percussion but can be described as, "music with your mouth... beatboxing is making and being the music, not just rhythm." ... Beatboxing is both the rhythm — predominantely through the bass and snare drums as well as hi-hat — while also incorporating various sound effects such as DJ scratching, synthesizers, and bass lines. Using the mouth, lips, tongue, and voice to make music is thus the beatboxer's equivalent to a pianist's fingers and arms."
I found a number of videos that present Human Beatboxing and feature Napoleon.
The Human Beatbox Festival #5, Dijon, France, April 2012 with Polo "Mr Groove", Sly Johnson, Human player, Napoleon Maddox with Cheick Tidiane Seck, Naïssam Jalal, Greg Gensse, Ezra and Fatkab
2013 Roma Jazz Festival - “Speech” at Auditorium Parco della Musica Rome
ISWHAT?! at La Sirène "The crew of Cincinnati is like an update of the free jazz activist of the sixties (Mingus, Coltrane). Formed in 1999 by rapper and beatboxer Napoleon Maddox and the saxophonist of the golden age of funk, Jack Walker - two different generations."
Napoleon's music is an alchemical fusion of rage at injustice tempered by love for humanity.
"One Mind" by Napoleon Maddox, featuring Rashida Manuel and Baoku Moses, 2015. This video was produced by Marie B Cros.
I met up with Napoleon in late 2019 at L'Oasis a performance space in Le Mans, France. He was rehearsing with Bad Fat, a hip hop fanfare band, getting ready for a performance at New Morning Jazz Club in Paris. They've been touring intensively for a couple of years. We talked about the history of American Black artists who found freedom and success in France over the last century. Josephine Baker, Louis Armstrong, Sydney Bechet, Dexter Gordon, Grace Jones are just a few who made France their home.
We talked about the history of American Black artists who found freedom and success in France over the last century. Josephine Baker, Louis Armstrong, Sydney Bechet, Dexter Gordon, and Grace Jones are just a few who made France their home.
About fanfare. It's not what we might think here in the U.S. That is, a short, showy piece of music with a lot of marching band kind of brass horns, like played for the president to enter a room or whatever. In France there are entire festivals dedicated to hip hop fanfare. It does have a lot brass horns, however it's not your father's fanfare. It's hip hop with a lot of percussion and synthesizers, and is experimental with surprising rifts and turns.
Watch the following videos to get a good sense of what hip hop fanfare is. The first two feature Bad Fat.
Napoleon writes lyrics that say hard things with love.
Napoleon is philosophical about life and the danger and challenges society currently poses for people of color. He approaches his art and life with deep questioning, finding difficult solutions.
"What's Your Joy?" Sorg and Napoleon Maddox
"Soon" Sorg & Napoleon Maddox, featuring José Shungu aka Smoov) ... Réalisation Antoine Saba
Listen to the complete song, LOVE [THRU DARKNESS]
Listen to Jim Nolan’s insightful review of Love [Thru Darkness] on WVXU, Cincinnati Public Radio.
“How many hip-hop albums have you listened to recently that contained freestyle performed in French – or that combined heavy bass-drop with samples of birdsong?
Before you can begin to address the album “Things That Go Bump In the Dark” by IsWhat?!, you must first throw away any preconceived notions of what a hip-hop album is or what ‘urban’ music is — because the aesthetic of this album lies somewhere between beatnik coffee-house poetry-jams and late-night dance club after-parties.
IsWhat?! is the team-up of MC Napoleon Maddox and Jack Walker on saxophone — a duo that almost-musique calls “a sort of a spacio-temporal rendezvous between Charles Mingus and Public Enemy.” The album “Things That Go Bump in the Dark” is the fourth full-length release from the duo and features a huge roster of notable musicians performing on traditional jazz instruments paired with samples, turntables and heart-wrenching poetry performance.
Listed on the inside sleeve of the CD package you’ll find names that read like a who’s-who of hip-hop, jazz and R&B musicians, such as Hamid Drake on drums and percussion [Herbie Hancock], Cocheme’a Gastelum on alto sax [Paul Simon, Amy Winehouse], Claire Daly on baritone sax [James Brown, Aretha Franklin] as well as Tobe Donohue on turntables [Bootsy Collins].
The final mixing and mastering on “Things That Go Bump In the Dark” was performed by the legendary award-winning producer Bob Power , who has worked with the likes of The Roots, Q-Tip, A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Macy Gray, Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny, KRS-One, Curtis Mayfield, Quincy Jones and Run DMC, just to name a few.”
Jim Nolan, WVXU, Cincinnati Public Radio
PRODUCTION CREDITS
Producer, Director, Writer - Jean Donohue
Co-producer, Map Production - Fred Johnson
Mapping Consultant - Shawn Walker
VIDEO PRODUCTION and EDIT TEAM
Jean Donohue
Fred Johnson
Mark Stucker, Director of Photography
WEB / STORYMAPPING PRODUCTION
Jean Donohue, Nicole Davis, Fred Johnson
(c) 2019JeanDonohue
Love [Thru Darkness] is based on the life and work of Napoleon Maddox featuring his music, writing, and performance. It features IsWhat?!, Bad Fat, Sorg, Papanosh, Jack Walker, Boogie Bang (Brian Greer) and more. All rights to their work remain with them.
