"The Mozart of hip-hop."
That's how the Brits over at Guardian UK choose to anoint late local legend J. Dilla; and the classical music world agrees. This article interviews the composer of
Suite for Ma Dukes, classical music virtuoso Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, who reworked Dilla's beats for a performance with a 60-piece orchestra in London last year. To mark what would have been Dilla's 37th birthday this week, London will hold three separate celebrations. But if you're on this side of the pond, praise will be paid at the 5e Gallery in Corktown on Feb. 12. Our own local "Detroit Loves Dilla" event will feature a screening of the
Suite for Ma Dukes DVD, a performance by the Urban Strings Youth Orchestra and DJs, with all proceeds to benefit the J. Dilla Foundation.
Excerpt:
Dilla was, perhaps, the only hip-hop producer to have studied the
cello ("Not the instrument of choice in the ghetto," as his mother puts
it in the sleevenotes) as a child, and his work is full of the sort of
subtle but powerful differences that a composition-based education might
provide, as Atwood-Ferguson noticed when he broke down the pieces ahead
of arranging them for the orchestra.
"Dilla loves five-bar
loops," he says. "He loves sevens and elevens as well, but within the
phrases of five, he will have different parts of the beat looped in
threes, fives and sevens a lot as well. Two of my other favorite
musicians, Billie Holliday and Elvin Jones, very naturally phrase in
three, five, and seven as well, without even seemingly being consciously
of it."
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