Don't ask me what I'm doing with MY creative writing major

Can institutions that promote art production and innovation cope when an artist creates outside the barriers of their expectations? How interdisciplinary are undergraduate art programs prepared to get to meet student demands? And how much support can an artist actually get from his small liberal arts college after he graduates?
Since graduating from Oberlin College in May of 2006, Baraka Noel, a 22-year old hip-hop artist, has managed to breathe life into a barely-existent hip-hop performance scene in a tiny Ohio town. He’s co-organized a poetry slam in the basement of a college dorm and staged a one-man show based on his own album, The Mixtape Philosophies of Mushroom Black. Last week Baraka talked with me about performing off the cuff, how far literate hip-hop can go in a small town, and the monkey on every young (or old) artist’s back: sponsorship.

Q: You graduated from Oberlin with a degree in Creative Writing and a minor in Theatre, and now you’re working mostly in hip-hop. Do you ever go back and forth between different kinds of writing?

Baraka: Um, the furthest I would get away from writing poetry in a hip-hop aesthetic would be more of a spoken-word thing, but still probably intended to be performed. One thing I really want to do is more play writing. I really like dramatic writing and writing voices for people—and I don’t think hip-hop writing works if you’re forcing actors to perform who aren’t part of the aesthetic. I don’t really want to write for another MC.

So continuity between the writer and performer is essential to what you’re doing now?

Baraka: Oh yeah, definitely. In January this book of hip-hop plays came out…it’s like you can take this play and perform it. And theoretically someone could take Mushroom Black and perform it, but I think if it’s a person who’s not really connected to hip-hop…there’s a danger in it. It’s like if you take an American actor and stick them into Kabuki theatre, it’s like well you don’t know what you’re doing. You can’t do it the same way.

Do you think there’s support for performance that has that kind of writer-performer continuity in other kinds of theatre and writing?

Baraka: Well, I think it’s easier. If you are the writer and the performer, it gives so you so much more power, as opposed to in a lot of scenarios where writers sort of get shuffled off and lose all control over what they’re doing. It does make collaboration a very different thing because it’s not the writer and the director and the actor…it’s kinda like, these people have to have a joint vision from the beginning and then build it up.

Do you find there’s support in Oberlin for what you’re doing? Would, say, the college theatre or creative writing department like to have a hand in something like that, or would they be more likely to distance themselves from it because it’s a different aesthetic from what they’re used to producing?

Baraka: I wonder…I do know—and this is mad controversial shit—that [the student theatre association], I’ve gone to them for multiple projects and gotten some sponsorship and stuff—but in my experience they are much more willing to sponsor pieces that are written by professionals, accepted work. The idea of writing your own thing, and now you're going to perform it, is kind of like what? But it seems like the theatre department is collaborating more with students. And the creative writing department, I mean they let me do my thing, but in my experience a lot of people don’t have the same chance to go off and do random shit and get credit for it.

What’s your method of working now? What kinds of things do you do every day?

Baraka: Well, I used to just write in my classes…now that I have these couple shows I want to try to take them somewhere. I kind of have needed an excuse…I haven’t been doing a lot of writing on my own. And there’s a couple shows coming up, and because of the shows, I have to figure out something to do on stage for a certain period of time. So it’s very opportunity specific.

That makes sense…someone gives you some structure.

Baraka: There are so many things that need to happen…a lot of art has become almost bureaucratic for me because I have to find a place to do a show and find a place to record. But I’ve been trying to freestyle everyday. I have a phone appointment with my friend, we’re supposed to call each other every day.

I was going to ask you about your connections to Oberlin specifically as a community to do art, and it sounds like you have some pretty strong connections to artists and writers from Oberlin college. How about people from outside the Oberlin college community?

Baraka: I have, actually. A guy I know who does freestyle storytelling, he’s named Ink, and I met him actually through Oberlin high school. I did this program that I pretty much consider a failure, cause I was trying to start a writing group that didn’t really happen, but I did meet him, and we started meeting every so often and we write together. We formed a group called collective genius, and we’re going to do a show at the Grog Shop [in Cleveland], which I have no idea what we’re going to do.

How likely do you think it is that people in small towns and big cities are interested in being involved in writing, theatre, storytelling, but don’t get a chance to because they don’t have a source of institutional support?

Baraka: Well…this sounds mean. It might just be that a lot of people don’t have a vision of doing a new kind of art. Which isn’t to say that they couldn’t do it….people look at Andre 3000 and crazy artistic geniuses, and people are like, wow, that person is wild! But it seems like most people are just trying to fulfill what they already see existing. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But I guess that provides in theory a path to follow, even though maybe that path is really crowded. So I guess I would say, there’s artists everywhere...I think that everyone is interested in art, everyone wants to experience art in some way, right, and maybe some people will write off a particular kind of art because it’s like, I’ve seen it before.

Or “I’ve never seen it before.” If you’re interested in doing something totally new, you might reach people fairly easily who are always looking for something good and new, but the people who aren’t looking for something new, do you even try to reach them, or do you just say, forget them?

Baraka: I don’t know, it might be harder to reach those people through familiar channels. But if you just set up what you’re doing in front of a store…I heard about a kind of guerrilla art piece where it was set in a Starbucks and it was just people doing a prescribed series of actions for like five minutes at a time. I think that’s a really interesting way of bringing art to people who may not perceive it as art. But I think there needs to be more community…people coming together and trying to support each other’s work mutually, trying to collaborate and trade audiences.

"The Mixtape Philosophies of Mushroom Black" is available from CDBaby. Check it out
here.