Artist: Danny Hoch
Interviewer: Alexander Fruchter

"Till The Break of Dawn," the new play by Danny Hoch, explores Hip Hop culture as well as social activism. Through the different characters, settings, and events, Hoch delves into the different meanings and perspectives on what a revolution is and when it stops.

Simultaneously, Hoch questions Hip Hop's boundaries in many ways. Through Hip Hop Theater he stretches Hip Hop's presence in the performing arts. Through his works such as "Jails, Hospitals, and Hip Hop," and "Whiteboyz" he expands Hip Hop culture's impact and interconnectedness to issues of race, ethnicity, and social class. And through his writings and community involvement he pushes Hip Hop into the realms of education and social change.

To Danny Hoch, Hip Hop is more than just rap music, a misconception that eats at him, and invokes him to speak passionately about a culture that he has grown up with. In this interview the Queens native speaks on all that Hip Hop is, what it is not, as well as his past and present works. Check it out and see why Danny Hoch doesn't stop "Till The Break of Dawn."

SoundSlam: I wanted to start by talking about your current play, Till The Break of Dawn.

Danny Hoch: Alright.

SoundSlam: The title is a common Hip Hop party rocking expression. How does that relate to the theme and messages in the play, which are exploring Hip Hop culture as well as revolution and what that means in other parts of the world?

Danny Hoch: Well, I think there's a double meaning, I think maybe even a triple meaning. We know it as this Hip Hop, 'rock on till the break of dawn' term. Also it kind of signifies we're gonna not just make a party, but make a revolution. And it's till the break of dawn, that's when, in a good way and in a bad way. I think there's a lot of messages in the play, a lot of contradictions around how revolution is made or gets made, or how change gets made. Sometimes I think folks look at it like a party that ends. And on the other hand it doesn't end.

SoundSlam: I understand what you're saying. How is that communicated through each character in the play? I read that each character is motivated for their own reason to attend this Hip Hop festival in Cuba. What were you trying to communicate about our culture, and the way we may think, 'oh revolution ends,' when it doesn't end? How were you trying to communicate that through the characters' motivations for attending the festival and such?

Danny Hoch: Some folks think it's weird even though this story is really based on many different trips to Cuba, and many different Hip Hop activist trips to Cuba, and many different characters are rolled up into each of these characters. I think Cuba is kind of a metaphor for the Hip Hop generation in terms of struggling. Struggling against injustice, struggling against U.S. Imperialism, struggling for equality. At the time that they go to this festival it's 2001 and the Cuban Revolution is just over 40 years old. That's how old Hip Hop is. The Cuban Revolution has had to make some compromises. And for all the good that it does, there's some very, very disturbing contradictions living on the island. And I think you can draw a line to the compromises that the Hip Hop generation has made and the disturbing contradictions that you find within Hip Hop culture, and the Hip Hop generation even though there are a lot of good things going on. I think the expectation of these characters is, 'hey, if we go to Cuba we're going to be all good. We're going to be affirmed in what we're doing.' But what Cuba winds up doing is shattering their pipe dream about 'it was really all good, or really all a party.'

SoundSlam: Something you just touched on, it seemed to me that if we just look at Hip Hop, if we just look at the music part of the culture, it can simultaneously be very revolutionary in the things that are discussed and where it came from, and submerged in activism. Yet as you said, it can be very anti-revolutionary and do things to keep the current power structure the same. What do you see as Hip Hop's position or usefulness for actually getting dirty socially activism type work?

Danny Hoch: I think since its inception, since really the beginning of the culture, there's always been a great potential for grassroots education and organizing in all original four elements and the tenets of Hip Hop politics and values. It's about battle. It's about switching up your style in order to better your community and better your life and better your future. I don't think the potential for social change has ever disappeared. I just think it's been shadowed and drowned out by the blaring drone of corporate Hip Hop music. It's also 'watch the birdie' type s**t. The corporations and the government have sort of said, you're not going to use this for social change. It's just pop culture and it's just a money maker.

SoundSlam: I read that you said in another interview that there are a lot of people all over living and breathing Hip Hop culture not on 106 & Park, and not looking for record deals, but these are people like activists, teachers, lawyers, people that are doing a lot of work. But, like you just said, they are getting drowned out. I'm wondering if the people that are busting their balls and not getting a lot of recognition, if you think that them getting drowned out and the way you said this is going to be a pop culture thing, does that lead to their burn out and frustrations? I've seen that at least from a lot of people that pick up activism, especially Hip Hop activism, and end up getting burnt out and really frustrated with things.

Danny Hoch: I think the corporate drown out definitely doesn't help. Especially when you see everyday in the news the mistakes that kind of the commercial cats in Hip Hop are making, and they become spotlighted or highlighted. It's not very reinforcing when you're trying to make social change or community change through Hip Hop. If you're making change anyway, and you are a teacher or you are an activist, you are Hip Hop in the true sense of the word. Meaning, you're not just a rapper, and you know that you're making good, then it's not whether Kanye beat 50 Cent in record sales is really going to make a difference in whether you teach a class of 30 young people to really build their lives in a just way. But in activism, in any kind of activism, whether it's Hip Hop activism or any activism, eventually when you do have an effect the empire takes notice and they try to destroy you. I think that can have an effect on burning people out. The empire has tried to destroy activism in so many ways, through false propaganda, through trying to divide people, through straight up assassinating people, incarcerating people. That's definitely cause for burnout, much more than whatever is on a music video.

SoundSlam: I heard about you around the time Jails, Hospitals, and Hip Hop came out. At that time you were known, and are still really well known for doing one man performances. What was it like putting out this play and having a lot of characters and a lot of actors which put you in a directing role? Was it hard at all to give back some of the control and let other people interpret your work? What was that like?

Danny Hoch: I got to tell you, it wasn't easy. It definitely was a challenge in taking a chance to let other people interpret my work. In fact, I resisted it. I was like, 'look, nobody's going to interpret this. It's already interpreted, so do this my way.' But ultimately if you just do that and you don't let actors be actors, then they wind up fighting you. So it was definitely a challenge. Even once we got passed that issue, it's just a challenge managing 11 actors. I mean, it's crazy. I felt like I was a teacher in a class full of unruly students. They're all great people, and they're doing their thing, but it's like there's just so much energy in the room and everybody's asking you like ten questions a minute. It's a lot to think about, and mentally exhausting.

SoundSlam: Are you happy with how it's turning out?

Danny Hoch: I am. I feel like I definitely could have done better as a director. I feel I also could have done better as a writer. I'm a perfectionist with my work, even with my solo work. So, it's just something that I feel once I got it into motion, once all the actors got off the script and memorized their lines and I had made some serious decisions about blocking and directing moments around the set and everything, once the thing got in motion in front of an audience it became harder to change, and harder to fix a lot of the problems I still see with it. Whereas, if I was doing a solo show, it's a lot easier to fix those problems even once it gets up on stage because there's sort of less people involved in the machine.

SoundSlam: I want to talk about some of your older stuff. In the film "Whiteboyz," you played Flip, who I believe is also a character in Jails, Hospitals, and Hip Hop. What did you want viewer's reactions to be towards Flip? You can't really hate him or dislike him strongly because he does have a sincerity in his actions. He does feel strongly that that's what he should be doing. But, at the same time, some of the things he does are just stupid.

Danny Hoch: Right.

SoundSlam: I think that when a lot of people watch it they feel sorry for him, and I'm wondering what feelings you were trying to evoke in people through that character and the complexity of his simplicity?

Danny Hoch: Well, with Flip Dog I think I was trying to be that complicated. In fact, it's deep because a lot of folks in Hollywood, even at the movie studio that produced it, Fox Searchlight, they had issues with the fact that people couldn't make it out to be just a comedy or tragedy. They wanted it to be one or the other, and that's part of the reason they really didn't get behind it once they finished the film. Again, my opinion about that is that Hollywood doesn't really want us to see poor people or Hip Hop generation-ites as 3 dimensional human beings. We either want to see the quote-unquote wigger, the kid like, 'oh he wants to be down, ha ha, isn't he stupid.' That's it, as if he's not a human being and only one dimensional. Or you kind of want to see this like super tragic story that's not funny at all. I don't think Flip is really one or the other. He has a whole bunch of contradictions within him. And then at the same time that you have some empathy for him, you're also like, 'yo man, get a clue. Read a book or at least watch some other channels than the one channel you're looking at.' I did that intentionally because I feel like, I'm from NYC and the whole concept of white kids in Hip Hop in America was foreign to me outside of NYC. I had been touring around the U.S. and I saw all these white kids that...Most of the white kids in Hip Hop that I grew up with, we knew we weren't black. Maybe for a few days we thought we were, but out there these kids...Things were so desperate economically and culturally in this sort of wasteland of the heartland of poor America that they were clinging onto this false identity of race even of blackness, even the understanding of blackness was twisted based off of what they saw on TV and listened to in rap albums.

I was just blown away at it because at one level I wanted to grab them and be like, 'my man, wake up. We need to sit down and have a conversation.' On another level, I felt really bad for them because they felt like they had no identity, no white identity that they wanted to aspire to. Every image of white folks that they could find on television or in their lives they wanted to reject. There were sort of no role models and all the role models were gangsta rappers because the gangsta rappers in music videos were supposedly wielding their power and these white kids felt powerless. There was a whole bunch I think I was trying to squeeze into the character and squeeze into the film. I think a lot of that worked too. Some of it didn't but a lot of it did.

SoundSlam: Keeping with that issue, I also read that you went from Queens to North Carolina for college and experienced a sort of cultural awakening, or culture shock. I am from the South side of Chicago, a neighborhood called Hyde Park, which is really integrated and an interesting place. I went to college in Bloomington, Indiana, which is in southern Indiana and I experienced something similar to that. I wanted to ask you how that impacted you? People usually think of small town people going up to the city and being blown away by everything being so big, but really when someone from a big city goes to a small town they also experience a kind of shock that is not really talked about as much, so I wanted to get how that experience impacted you and even if you use that in making the play you are directing now and definitely in "Whiteboyz."

Danny Hoch: Definitely! I definitely experienced culture shock in a big way when I went down to college in North Carolina. Because not only had I never really met, I know this is going to sound crazy, not only had I never met White Americans before, but I had never met Americans. NYC, at least up until the 1990s, all through the time I was growing up, was really a poly-cultural city that did not have a majority of Americans if there were any Americans living here. When I say Americans, I mean people that had been in the United States more than four generations. Everybody I knew was either African American from a generation of migrants from the South, or immigrants and their descendents. The idea of America, or an American to me as a New Yorker was something very strange because I had never met any. All of the sudden I was thrust into America. People are walking slow and people are talking different, and people are definitely behaving different. I felt like I was in another country. Literally I was. It kind of opened my eyes, not only to learn about the United States and what American culture is, but also it opened my eyes to the idea of what race is and what race means outside of a poly-cultural city or vacuum

.SoundSlam: I wanted to also ask you about Hip Hop theater and how you pushed that forward. I'm wondering if there was a time when you were fighting for legitimacy inside the larger theater community and what that was like?

Danny Hoch: Well, believe it or not there's a fight for legitimacy on both side. The larger theater community is still rejecting Hip Hop theater because they feel like it's just a fad or they feel like Hip Hop doesn't really have anything to say that's of too much substance. But it is kind of interesting when we spin on our heads during a play if we do Shakespeare as rap or whatever. We're still kind of fighting to get the Hip Hop generation's story on stage in a legitimate way.

On the other side, you got Hip Hop fundamentalists that are like, 'if you're doing theater, that ain't Hip Hop. If you're teaching, that ain't Hip Hop. If you're doing Hip Hop literature, that ain't Hip Hop.' Because as one brother said, 'if you ain't talking about underground emcees then you ain't talking about Hip Hop.' And I feel like at this point with the Hip Hop generation being over 40 years old, there's a struggle to define what Hip Hop culture is beyond the original four elements. If we stay in these original four elements only, then we're just fundamentalists like any other fundamentalists. We're not allowing ourselves to grow and breathe as every other culture has. If we really consider Hip Hop as a culture, and we really consider Hip Hop as an art, then it has to be nurtured and it has to grow and breathe in other ways.

SoundSlam: I also am a teacher and I recently had a curriculum I wrote published in H2ed's Hip Hop Education Guidebook. They used a quote from you on the back cover where you said, 'if education isn't one of the first ten elements of Hip Hop then nobody is keeping it real except the teachers.' How does learning and knowledge being of the first ten elements work with the large misconception that Hip Hop is anti-education and anti-intellectual? Where are the two missing each other?

Danny Hoch: I think they're missing each other largely because of the mis-definition of what Hip Hop is in the commercial world. If the only message that we're hearing, or I should say the loudest message that we're hearing, is that the definition of Hip Hop is rap music and rap videos, then we can't even begin to have a discussion about Hip Hop as education, or Hip Hop education because it's still going to get discussed as something esoteric and something on the periphery of what Hip Hop is. Hip Hop education is at the center and should be at the center of what Hip Hop is. I know this sounds crazy to say, at every Hip Hop panel, at every Hip Hop forum or debate or discussion, no matter what the topic is whether it's Hip Hop and politics, Hip Hop and education, Hip Hop and social change, Hip Hop and grassroots activism, Hip Hop and women, you name it, Hip Hop and art, Hip Hop and theater, every single panel the discussion winds up moving to rap music.

That is proof that even the discussion around Hip Hop as art as culture has been poisoned by this one dimensional view of it as music. That's why I've been on this mantra of 'Hip Hop is not just rap.' And also this mantra of, 'if you're not talking about education as one of the ten original elements of Hip Hop then you're not Hip Hop.' It's cause you're not acknowledging the roots of where it came from. Even if you're looking at the original four elements you're talking about education. You're not talking about it in a western way, but you're talking about education. That doesn't make it any less education than western education. So, I say all that to say, if we just say, 'oh is it education or is it this other side? I feel like again we're talking about two dimensions and one of them isn't really as important as the other one.

SoundSlam: I did a lot of reading for this interview, man. I read another interview with you and at the end the interviewer said, 'tell me something most people don't know about you.' And you said, 'I'm not playing.' I also read something in another one where you were saying that some people want you to be like that Flip character in real life. I'm wondering, do you feel people take you seriously, and if they don't, why not?

Danny Hoch: I think, hahaha, I think a lot of people do take me seriously, but I also think we suffer from the mystification of celluloid. Once we see people on TV they become to a lot of us the character that they play, and they also become inhuman. I've seen this numerous times not just when people stop me on the street, but with other celebrities that I've worked with. People actually feel like they have a relationship with you. Because they've seen you on screen and they know who you are because you've entered their world. But they haven't necessarily entered your world. I think there's definitely a challenge in being taken seriously, not necessarily in what you're saying, but in the entirety of what you're saying. It's like I often talk about the psycho-fanaticism of people when they see celebrities. Even after this whole Michael Richards incident in the comedy club, black folks that saw him in the street were still stopping him for his autograph. People who had lost their relatives in Iraq were still stopping for George Bush's autograph when he came to their town because these people are celebrities. All of the sudden I feel like these people are caught like a deer in headlights because everything you are and have actually done goes out the window, and it's more like you're a myth. People aren't really hearing what you're saying, they just want the autograph. You kind of want to say, 'wow, I really saw that person.' But there's not really discussion behind it. I guess that's the power of television.