Less than four years after gaining independence from the United Kingdom,
the Central American nation of Belize notched a smaller, yet somehow
lasting, triumph in 1985. That winter, the Chicago Cubs sent their star
outfielder Gary Matthews, Sr., to visit the country, which is often
claimed to be the most Cubs-friendly land outside the Windy City.
Matthews's visit was the culmination of a love affair that had begun in
1981, the year when Cubs games began being broadcast in the country.
And now, that the team is in the World Series, Cubs fever has come to the Caribbean in a big way.
Why the Cubs—and why Belize? Like a lot
of stories from this part of the world, it began with pirates. In this
case, however, the outlaws were local TV impresarios, not swashbuckling
Johnny Depp look-alikes. In the early ‘80s, there were no television
stations in Belize, the only country in Central America whose official
language is English. (Anyone with a set would use it to watch VHS
tapes.) In 1981, however, Belize City business couple Arthur and Marie
Hoare began transmitting the famous Chicago television channel WGN-TV
via satellite, bringing programming to Belize. Channel 9, the Hoares'
bootlegged Belize affiliate of WGN, brought Cubs and Bulls games into
living rooms and bars throughout the country, sparking an interest in
Chicago sports that has continued—with varying levels of enthusiasm—to
this day.
"As [WGN's] signal was relayed into
Belize City by the Hoares, 'world and country' were glued to their
television sets to see the mighty Cubs win or lose (mostly lose)," remembered politician Michael Finnegan in a 2013 article in the Belizean paper Amandala.
The country's tiny size may have kept American television executives at bay. In a 1989 Washington Post dispatch
from Wrigley - South, reporter William Branigin explained that "U.S.
broadcasters consider the Belize market so small that trying to stop the
operations would not be worth the trouble."
Most of the fans watching the Cubs in
Belize today are Gen-Xers who grew up watching the team, says Jerry
Martinez, a 36-year-old banker from Santa Elena, a city in the western
part of the country. If the Cubs can lock up the World Series, Martinez
thinks the romance may be rekindled. There are still diehard fans in the
country, he says, but "people here usually ride with winners,"
especially younger Belizeans.
However the season turns out, Martinez is
determined to make his son a Cubs fan. "I grew up a Cubs fan and will
die a Cubs fan," he says. "We're the lovable losers that introduced
Belize to baseball."
When Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad first signed on to score Netflix’s Luke Cage,
they didn’t consider how the show would consume their day-to-day lives.
The two are legendary — Muhammad was a founding member of A Tribe
Called Quest, and the prolific Younge has an output that defies
categorization.
They quickly realized all future plans needed to be shelved. It
wasn’t solely that the score was overly consuming — though Younge
concedes, “We had to give up our lives as artists to dedicate ourselves
wholly to this score” — but more that Younge and Muhammad realized they
had a chance to create a score that could define the TV series.
“We raised the bar and created something that is timeless,” professes
Muhammad. Over coffee at the Cut restaurant in the recently opened Four
Seasons Downtown in New York City, Vulture spoke with the two musicians
about creating the score, the lack of opportunities for black
composers, and setting a tone that bridges a many musical genres. You both had worked together before Luke Cage, right?Ali Shaheed Muhammad: Since about 2013, when he was working on the Souls of Mischief
record, and he asked me to be a part of it. That formed our friendship
and production partnership, but we had never spoken about scoring
together, so when [showrunner] Cheo [Hodari Coker] reached out to us
individually, it was easy to fall into. For something like this, are you both in the same room working
together? Are you emailing? And then how do you get the orchestra
involved?Adrian Younge: There are 13 episodes, and on
each of the episodes, we have a spotting session, where we meet with the
directors and the music supervisors, and we all watch the episode. Then
we write notes and we leave. Ali takes these amount of cues, I take
these amount of cues, we do a certain amount of cues together, and when
we are done, we submit it for approval to everybody, and assuming there
are no changes — there are never much changes at all — we give it Miguel
Atwood-Ferguson, who is our conductor-orchestrator, and he orchestrates
it for a 30-piece orchestra that we record in Raphael Saadiq’s studio.
Then we record that and mix it. There is a sense that you both realized this score would be
studied by future musicians, and the idea that you had to go above and
beyond expectations. Am I right in that? And did that sense come while
scoring or after the fact?AY: It was in the present. As
freelance artists, you do what the hell you want to. When you are a
composer for a multi-billion-dollar company like Marvel, you are an
employee and you have responsibilities. When we accepted these jobs, I
just thought it’d be a couple of months. We realized this is a big deal
for many reasons, at that point.
One reason, we enjoyed it, and we wanted to do a good job for Cheo,
who has our back. Secondly, it is something that is great for our
careers. As composers, it brings us to another side where cats have done
hip-hop, R&B, and now we’re getting into a big television series
with a film perspective on composition, not just a regular television.
And lastly, we needed to execute because it was something that was
bigger than us. We are two black composers, and black composers don’t
really get the opportunities to support things of this magnitude. It is a
cyclical process. If you look back to Duke Ellington, to Quincy Jones,
to Isaac Hayes, these opportunities are seldom, and when black composers
have been awarded these opportunities, it is something where you must
make a statement. The statement we sought to make is that people of our
culture should aspire to do more than just sampling or producing for
someone else. Don’t just stop there. You can score film, you can have an
orchestra, you can go as far as you want to.
When I say our culture, I am talking about urban culture. And that
includes people that are in hip-hop. You don’t see hip-hop producers
composing. We can count on one hand how many we know. It is unfortunate.
But it is something that ties into the fact that you don’t see many
black composers having these opportunities. We knew we wanted to set a
bar, and we wanted to make something pivotal, unique, and novel for
people to watch and feel. The second episode is where the viewer really feels the impact of
the score. It starts and ends the episode. Was that a pivotal episode
for the both of you?ASM: The funny thing about that is
that the second episode was the first episode we scored. That was the
one where we knew — everything has to go into this moment. AY: And when we did that episode, it helped convince Marvel
and Netflix that these guys should have an extra budget now to have an
orchestra. They love what we were doing so much. Dawn Soler at ABC
pushed hard for us to get an orchestra. That song that starts and ends
episode two is the song where they were like, “This is it. This is the
sound of the show.” They always believed in us, but what we said to them
is you don’t have to have any needle drops here, you don’t have to
license as much music, let us create more score. Let us create more
source material for you guys so that the music all comes together to
create a world of Luke Cage. Instead of songs just being pulled
from everywhere. That helped us have this orchestra for 13 episodes,
which is very expensive.
"I was reckless with records. I would put my hands all over them."Courtesy Grandmaster Flash
As a music-obsessed teen growing up in the Bronx in the 1970s, Joseph Saddler noticed that every party song had one drum break or keyboard solo that made dancers go wild. What if you could string those fragments together to create a nonstop frenzy?
"A call and an email came in. I didn't know the name Baz Luhrmann, but I read his film credits and was like, 'Oh shit!'"
So Saddler, an electronics student at Samuel Gompers Vocational High School, set about transforming the humble turntable into an instrument. Using a jerry-rigged cross fader and two platters side by side, DJ Grandmaster Flash, as Saddler rechristened himself, helped lay the foundation for the emerging "hip-hop" style. He and his now-estranged crew, the Furious Five (which he won't discuss due to a legal dispute), shared in some of the genre's earliest hits, such as "Freedom," "New York New York," and "The Message." In 2007, they were the first hip-hop artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Now Flash is revisiting those seminal days as an associate producer on The Get Down, a new Netflix drama set in '70s-era New York. The series, which launches in mid-August, was created by movie director Baz Luhrmann and includes actor Mamoudou Athie as the youthful Flash. We asked Alan Light, a founding editor ofVibe and former editor-in-chief of Spin magazine, to run a mic check with the Grandmaster.
Alan Light: So how did you and Baz Luhrmann connect?
Grandmaster Flash: A call and an email came into the office. I didn't know the name, but I read his film credits and was like, "Oh shit! It's that movie where the guy never gets the girl!" The Great Gatsby kind of broke my heart. I watched it three times. So I go down to his place and Baz takes me into this huge room, and he's got a timeline in Sharpie from '69 up to '79. I'm like, "This fuckin' guy is doing his research!" He says, "Can you explain how you came up with this thing where you put your fingertips on the records and manipulate it back and forth?" I did a kind of hand motion, and he says, "Stop. I'm gonna give you a Sharpie and a piece of paper. Please explain it with a Sharpie." The next time that I see him, it's in a frame!
The first rap record came out in '79, but hip-hop began in '69. So what were we doing? A lot of journalists say, "Tell us about the '80s." Nobody wants to know about the '70s! And so, I became Baz's consultant and his historian and then assisted him with wardrobe and props—we wore those sneakers, we dressed like this, we drankthis, the mixers were this model. There's no such thing as a perfect historical film, but he wanted to get it right so bad that he'll ask you the same question 50 times. My phone rings: "What street was it on? Who was there? What happened? Why?" I gotta tell you, Alan, the factual and the mythological glue together in this series—it's gonna stir up emotions.
AL: Has looking back on all of this changed your perspective on the birth of hip-hop?
GF: Hip-hop has always been chronologically misunderstood. Too many times, people are hearing the story from the second floor. Nobody's heard the story from the basement. If hip-hop was a cake, all I can tell you is the eggs, the flour, the sugar, the vanilla—the ingredient years. This is what Baz wanted to put on film.
AL: What was the hardest part?
GF: After a month or two, Baz says, "Flash, I would like to make you a character." I says, "Hell no! I'm not going in no film." He says, "No, I want a young Flash—someone to play you." Two months later, I meet somebody that looks like I made him. "What's your name?" He says, "Mamoudou. I've been hired to play you. I want to learn everything about you." The hardest part was teaching him how to DJ. After three months, he finally got it.
AL: The kid really does look like you.
GF: I actually asked him, "What's your mom's name?" I didn't know it, so I was like, "Thank goodness!"
AL: Let's go back. What started you down the road toward turntablism?
I asked "'Can you take that turntable out of the window?' The salesman looks at me like, What? He thought I was coming in to rob them."
GF: I was annoyed with the way DJs were playing. The part that would get people dancing the hardest would be the drum solo, but that break was always like 10 seconds long. I was like, "What the fuck? I have to be able to make one long song of the drum solos." So I did research on needles, elliptical and spherical, and torque theory—how long does the platter on the turntable take to take off? Then mixers: I needed to be able to hear the mix before you do—that's when I came up with the "peek-a-boo" system. But there was a problem. A new turntable had a mat, like a big rubber pancake—too much drag.
My mother, God bless her, was a seamstress. I remember going to a material store and feeling all the fabrics. I bought two pieces of felt the size of an album, but they were too limp, so when my mother wasn't looking I hit it with spray starch. I turned the iron all the way up and turned the felt into what I called "a wafer." My mother had a plastic baking sheet. I cut that out. I put the felt on top of the plastic and the record on top of the felt. Now I had the fluidity to make the record move, but the turntable didn't have enough torque.
It wasn't until I'd seen this extremely ugly turntable—this unknown company called Technics—in the window of this store in Hunts Point. I remember asking, "Can you take that turntable out of the window?" The salesman looks at me like, What? He thought I was coming in to rob them. I said, "I'm doing a science experiment." I wanted to feel the pickup. I said to the boss, "How much?" He said $75 apiece. I saved up and I got them. These turntables played a major role: I created a music bed so that the speakers could tell their stories.
AL: Did any of this feel revolutionary to you at the time?
GM: I was in the moment. I just wanted to extract the drum solos and glue these things back to back. For what reason? I didn't know. It's just how I heard the record. The record was shit. I didn't care about it.
Janette Beckman/RedFerns/Getty Images
AL: When did you sense that this was going to be big?
GF: When I tried getting a job as a club DJ. In the '70s, anybody who was a connoisseur of collecting vinyl had the velvet brush. Remember the velvet brush? It would clean the record, and you would only grab the record from the sides and you would carefully slide it into the jacket. I never had a velvet brush. I was reckless with records. I would pull them out by my fingertips. I would put my hands all over them. So the word had got around that this dude Flash, he's spinning the record counterclockwise. He's going backward and he's got these crayon marks on the record—he's totally disrespecting the records! But slowly it became the way. I tried teaching people and it was like, "How did you come up with this shit?" I never came outside! This is what the fuck I was doing.
AL: So then what you're doing starts getting out there. You release the "Wheels of Steel" single and do the now classic DJ-in-the-kitchen scene in the movie Wild Style. For me growing up in Ohio, that stuff was from another planet.
"I miss the kaleidoscope of records... that diversity of production styles and diversity of lyrical structure."
GF: For a long time, I was in denial. I just loved doing it. Then Frankie Crocker from WBLS—I was tuned in—and he says, "I'm getting ready to play you something that you've probably never heard before: This is DJ Grandmaster Flash, and it's called 'Adventures on the Wheels of Steel.'" Nobody told me they had brought the record down to him. I was like, "Oh shit!"
AL: In the early days, DJs were the focal point of hip-hop culture, but later the rappers moved front and center. How did you feel about that?
GF: I couldn't understand why the record companies didn't let the DJ be the music—that they had to bring a band in. I guess the [copyright] clearing was probably hugely expensive, but at that point I didn't understand. I wasn't angry, just confused. We were playing the greatest drummers on the planet back to back. Why wouldn't you want that? And certain records, there's that dirt, that fuzz, that thing—I don't care what band it is, they can't copy that.
AL: What's your take on today's hip-hop? I miss the kaleidoscope of records.
GF: I think a lot of that shit is dope. Drake is incredible. But I miss the kaleidoscope of records. You could go from, you know, sneakers—Run-DMC—to loving black people, that's Chuck D; and then you go to Rakim, who was incredible at words, and then LL and then Grandmaster Flash. That diversity of production styles and diversity of lyrical structure—I miss that.
AL: It does seem like now it's all about chasing one hot sound at a time. But on the other side of things, DJing has become its own massive industry.
GF: It's bigger than ever. I used to travel 200 days of the year. I had to calm it down because I have a 17-year-old daughter going on 30, and a 23-year-old son. I want to be around for them. But to this day, whenever I go into a club and I see someone put their fingertips on the record and go back and forth and counterclockwise, I think, "Oh shit! Wow!" It's kind of cool, Alan.
THESE WELL-HEELED wordsmiths earned a combined $269 million over the last 12 months, proving that the written word isn’t dead–although television and movie adaptations often help drive sales.
To wit: Zoo, a thriller from the inescapable James Patterson, scored a second season on CBS , while Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin benefited from clamorous interest in the hit HBO series based on his fantasy novels.
Patterson topped our list for the third straight year, earning $95 million pretax, while children’s author Jeff Kinney placed a distant second, earning $19.5 million.
HBO confirmed Monday that Game of Thrones’ seventh season won’t begin until summer 2017 and will include only seven episodes, as opposed to the usual 10. Rumors had been swirling about the shortened final two seasons (the eighth season will likely only include six episodes) and late start for weeks, but the network only now confirmed the changes. The next season will reportedly be shot in Northern Ireland, Spain, and Iceland. “Now that winter has arrived on Game of Thrones, Executive Producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss felt that the storylines of the next season would be better served by starting production a little later than usual, when the weather is changing,” said Casey Bloys, president of HBO programming. “Instead of the show’s traditional spring debut, we’re moving the debut to summer to accommodate the shooting schedule.”
Jamaican-born Ziggy Marley, of Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers fame and the eldest son of reggae legend Bob Marley, recently made his acting debut on popular CBS show, ‘Hawaii Five-0.’
Marley appeared in the Hawaii Five-0 episode “Ka Pohaku Kihi Pa’a” (The Solid Cornerstone) on CBS l at 9 p.m. last night playing the character “Bones.”
In it, Five-0’s longtime informant Flippa (Will Yun Lee) is accused of murder and Commander Steve McGarrett (Alex O’Loughlin) calls his old friend Odell Martin (Michael Imperioli) to defend him. It won’t be easy defending the life-long criminal. So Martin calls in his friend Bones for backup.
Bones is portrayed as a Jamaican undocumented immigrant who Martin says should get a green card for any information he provides to the case on the underworld of human smuggling
“Thanks to the H5O crew for the support. JAH,” Marley tweeted last night.
Marley’s songs – “Ka Pohaku Kihi Pa’a (The Solid Cornerstone)” – was also featured on the show.
Business consultancy Katalyxt continued its public advocacy role initiated at the prior launch of its infokat.com service into a full-fledged, all-day business conference at Kingston's Knutsford Court hotel.
It was an eventful day that included a "condensed" version of the Tru-Juice story, from present CEO Peter McConnell, and a creative industries panel featuring Sister Judy Mowatt, one of the I-Three backing corp, who are as legendary in their own right as the great Bob Marley whom they supported in his tours around the world and on wax.
Mowatt related the experience of losing the rights to the master of her landmark "Black Woman" album owing to the fac that she signed a prohibitive agreement at an early age in her career. The now gospel minister, who still very fondly remembers her time with the reggae legend, closed the proceedings with a rousing rendition of "Ordinary Servant" and "Love is Not Blind"
The day also included repeated challenges to the finance industry and the emerging venture capital community to seriously take on board the needs and opportunities of the small business sector, and entertainment and agriculture businesses in particular.
Business growth consultancy Katalyxt had its own expectations exceeded at the Knutsford Court in Kingston last Thursday when it presented a briefing on the way forward for small businesses.
Moderated by noted radio/TV commentator Cliff Hughes, the breakfast panel heard stirring contributions from the likes veteran agricultural exporter Rita Hylton, who painted a no-nonsense picture of the intricacies and challenges of maintaining supplies, educating producers and qualifying buyers.
Another ear-pricking contribution came from UWI lecturer Andre Haughton, who pointed out that corruption while inherently inimical for business as a whole, was actually spurring the progress of individuals and enterprises by virtue of the fact that it enabled businesses to acquire goods, meet orders, and retain staff.
Haughton also pointed out that conventional macro-economic metrics were insufficient in gauging economic activity or making a meaningful contribution to national wealth.
Amazon orders a full season of Untitled Woody Allen Project,which will premiere exclusively on Prime Instant Video
Episodes will be written and directed by Allen
SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 13, 2015-- (NASDAQ: AMZN)--Amazon Studios today announced it has signed the critically-acclaimed Director Woody Allen to write and direct his first television series ever. Untitled Woody Allen Project,a half-hour series, has received a full season order and episodes will be written and directed by Allen. Customers will be able to see the series exclusively on Prime Instant Video in the US, UK and Germany. Additional details, including casting information, will be made available in the future.
Woody Allen is a visionary creator who has made some of the greatest films of all-time, and it's an honor to be working with him on his first television series," said Roy Price, Vice President of Amazon Studios. "From Annie Hallto Blue Jasmine,Woody has been at the creative forefront of American cinema and we couldn't be more excited to premiere his first TV series exclusively on Prime Instant Video next year."
Woody Allen added, "I don't know how I got into this. I have no ideas and I'm not sure where to begin. My guess is that Roy Pricewill regret this."
Allen is represented by ICM Partners.
About Amazon Studios
Amazon Studios most recently debuted its dramatic comedy Mozart in the Jungle from Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzman, Paul Weitz, John Strauss and Alex Timbers, as well as Jill Soloway's multi-Golden Globe Award-winning dark comedy Transparent;its first live-action series for kids 6-11, Gortimer Gibbon's Life on Normal Street; anda second season of the Garry Trudeau political comedy Alpha House. The studio has also launched three additional children's series, the Annecy International Animated Film Festival Award-winning and Annie Award-nominated Tumble Leaf from Bix Pix Entertainment; Creative Galaxy from Angela Santomero and Out of the Blue Enterprises, the creators of Blue's Clues; and Annedroids, from Emmy nominated Sinking Ship Entertainment.
Amazon Studios has also announced five additional, original series to debut in 2015 including Michael Connelly's Bosch; Hand of God from Marc Forster and Ben Watkins; Red Oaksfrom Steven Soderbergh, David Gordon Green, Greg Jacobs and Joe Gangemi; and kids series Wishenpoof! from Angela Santomero and Out of the Blue Enterprises; as well as a second season of Transparent.
Amazon Studios launched in 2010 as a new way to develop feature films and episodic series--one that's open to great ideas from creators and audiences around the world. Anyone can upload a script online and Amazon Studios will read and review all submissions. Those who choose to make their projects public can also receive feedback from the Amazon Studios community.
Comprehensive cast and crew information, including bios and filmographies, is available on Amazon's IMDb (www.imdb.com), the world's most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content.
