In the second of this three-part series with Garth Trinidad, The Authority on Urban Alternative Culture drops science on the music industry, our educational system, and the definition of a ‘con’.

Cazembe Abena (LA2DAY) – Has Chocolate City changed today from what you envisioned in its inception?

Garth Trinidad – It’s the same, but with evolution in its context. From where I started to where I am now, what’s been happening is the maturation of style. The evolution of my sound based on my discoveries, my music education, and my travels. The tagline that I created for my show was “A progressive mix of Soul, Hip-Hop, and World Rhythms” – and when you get down to it that’s a really expansive phrase. So, for me the inception was having discovered KCRW, where in the early 90s it was this whole new world of music, and for me it was being introduced to a whole new world of Black music - not only from what was current, but going back and discovering various genres and various times and decades.

Cazembe – What DJs at KCRW got you to tune in?

Garth – It was a friend of mine that told me to listen to Jason Bentley’s Metropolis early on. It was like one night I was at home working on some project, as you know I’m a visual artist by training, and this cat called me and said, “Yo, you got to turn on 89.9 right now! This dude is playing some crazy shit right now!” So, I turned him on and was like, "What? What’s this?” You know what I mean?

Cazembe – Was it Soul? Was it House? What was it?

Garth – Well, I think Jason, in the moment that I turned him on, was playing DJ Shadow… Neneh Cherry… Roy Ayers… The Roots… etc., etc… and this is back in ’93.

Cazembe – OK. It was ahead of the curve then…

Garth – And as I continued to listen and discover who this guy was and when he was on, I became a religious listener. I was introduced to Massive Attack, Portisehead… Goldie and the whole Drum & Bass movement, and then I was introduced to the whole Electronica thing because he was helping solidify it as a genre back then. He had come back from his travels as a post-graduate backpacking through Europe and discovered all this music. When I started to listen to Jason, he had been on for a couple of years with a couple shows that basically brought him to form Metropolis.

Cazembe – Where have your travels taken you?

Garth – Western Europe. A couple spots in Spain, including Barcelona, and then I spent some time in London. The funny thing was being there and checking all the records that they took from here. And then, seeing all the [US artist’s] records that we couldn’t get over here that had all the special remixes, extended versions, limited editions, Japanese only versions… Labels have their subsidiary labels and partners throughout the world, and each market determines what’s going to be more suitable for each market. So, going over there… I was like in candy land… I got a couple of Prince joints that I couldn’t find out here… This is all before it got really crazy with the online shopping so I spent most of my time collecting records. I did a lot of shopping at the local record stores like Aarons, which has since closed down, but also at the Swap Meets. But, having traveled a little bit and being exposed to things that you couldn’t get over here was a great experience. But, it’s not like I’ve been to Africa yet or Brazil to discover these other things with regards to genres and specific producers and techniques and production work of other artists that people just aren’t privy to in the States. However, I’ve of course been exposed to a little of that in those genres from friends of mine or other producers from back in the day whom I’ve discovered who came from these places, but that’s another story… like discovering Hugh Masekela’s Chisa Record label and being able to get a hold of that stuff because some of it is available here. There is a plethora of music yet to be discovered, but I have yet to go to these spots. The travel thing has been a bit minimal because as a DJ I haven’t been able to sink my teeth into anywhere. When I was in France I hit a couple spots in Paris and was able to discover a few artists and producers that I had no idea existed.

Cazembe – Let’s get back to some of your musical influences again. What do you remember that influenced you the most growing up?

Garth – Well, it was what my folks were listening to - and radio – which was a lot different in the 70s and even the 80s to an extent. I had crates from the parents that included everything from Jazz to Funk… James Brown of course… Pop stuff like the Bee Gees… and then I had my joints like Michael Jackson, a couple Prince joints here and there. But, my folks had stuff like Miriam Makeba, stuff like that floating around and I was like “What is this stuff?” and I’m little, so you’re open to that stuff. It’s just a record to you with a certain sound. I think being introduced to that from an early age really helped shape my ears. I was just a Soul lovin’ dude from the get-go. And then come the 80s and it was 1580 K-Day on the AM, and that was basically bringing Hip-Hop out to the West Coast… EVERYBODY was listening to K-Day. So, taking what I already knew and putting that youthful Hip-Hop energy on it shaped my musical taste early on. When I try to describe to people what Chocolate City is I say that it’s got to be one of the most exotic music programs, but it’s programmed through the eyes of a child of Hip-Hop.

Cazembe – I like that. When I think of Chocolate City that explanation makes sense. You said some interesting things in a previous discussion about how the history of our music educational system has affected musicology in today’s marketplace.

Garth – I wrote a blog on myspace… Anatomy of a Zombie…

Cazembe – Yes, I’ve seen it…

Garth - … And I took it there a little bit. What I was trying to get out was… after the rebellion of the 60s… you can call it a youth rebellion in the US really, and then you had the Black rebellion, you had the White rebellion… some of those things came together and sometimes they didn’t, from the Weather Underground, to The Generals, to the Hippie Movement, to The Black Panther Party and various other things that were happening – the Nation of Islam as well… and all these young people were going to school and being educated. They were raised up in an era where public schools had art and music already in the mix. So it was natural that these kids were learning how to make art and how to make music coming up. After looking at the rebellion of the 60s, I figured that education, coupled with a fairly functional home life, coupled with art and music inspiration – even if you weren’t going to be an artist or a musician – simply learning those things helps nurture thought- critical and creative.

Cazembe – Absolutely.

Garth – And a lot of that stuff contributed (for the long term) in how the young people began to see the Vietnam War, about policy in the United States foreign and domestic, about law, about all that stuff. Art and music play a huge roll in nurturing those things for the long term; in nurturing an individual who is going to look around and say, “Something ain’t right” and not accept what’s naturally wrong. What was going on back then was wrong, just like it’s wrong today. So, with all that said, by the time Jimmy Carter was in office it began. We saw the decline of public schools as they began to use funding as an excuse to take out art and music programs. So, that’s how Reagan came into effect. In the 80s it was over - forget about it. Seeing all that, going to the Burroughs, going to the Bronx, focusing in on the Bronx and what was happening with Cool Herc from the very beginning with him throwing these parties and collecting these records… you see the formation of Hip-Hop based on these break records. And the nurturing of the guys that stood on stage and rocked the crowd, who helped the DJ along who eventually became the “MC”. Melle Mel, when he put the stamp on MC there was no one before him that used that term. So once the MC was in effect and the DJ was hypin’ the crowd with these breaks, that translated into somebody’s bedroom as a studio and they began to record things using these break records like they were doing at these parties. What the DJs figured out, what Grandmaster Flash figured out, was by going between two records it gave the MC an opportunity to breakdown and the B-Boys and B-Girls an opportunity to breakdown and battle each other because of the breaks – that translated into what we know today as beat-making. Using a loop, using a sample, using a pattern, programming drums was based on that whole premise, because the kids having not been educated on how to make music with real instruments or read music…

Cazembe – Because it was taken out of the schools…

Garth – They were like… well, we’re just going to use our parents' records because that’s what’s hot right now, that’s what we’ve been acclimated to so that’s how we’re going to take that from the party and take it into the studio – that became Hip-Hop. That also became Electronic music, and Electronic music is Techno music based in Detroit…

Cazembe – Thank you…

Garth – …which is House music, which is basically Warehouse music, which is up-tempo R&B that was started in the Chicago warehouse parties. And, just like Blues, Jazz and Rock & Roll once these genres entered Europe, or were exposed to people in Europe who took a liking to them and began to do their own version, these things then became popular as actual genres. So the Electronic music movement and the Hip-Hop movement in general are both based on Jimmy Carter/Reaganomics taking out public education for music and art. If people had continued to have that sort of [traditional] music education Pop music today would not be what it is with Hip-Hop and Electronic music. But because people were able to take that party energy, and companies were able to make technological advancements with beat machines and dudes started pressing buttons to do drums, and to sample from records, nobody really had to learn music like they used to in order to make something. So, it wasn’t about necessarily being a great musician anymore because that time had passed. Now, it’s about, “How do we relate to the scene with the music that we’re making?”

Cazembe – What do you think of the pros and cons of that?

Garth – I think that obviously there are a lot of both. Everything moves in cycles. In a lot of ways, much of the early Hip-Hop, once it became conscious, seemed to backfire on the government. And the government had to come back in and utilize the recording labels and nurture every negative aspect about the culture it could and sell it back to the culture and to the world. It all goes in circles. In the blog that I wrote, I mentioned Gangsta Rap. It’s a very short paragraph and it’s based on the fact that Gangsta Rap started in 1988 – 1990; before then actually if you want to count all the things that Ice-T did, but he didn’t really call his stuff Gangsta Rap he called it 'Crime Rhyme'. He felt like what he was doing was more of a white-collar Gangsta Rap because it was based on the whole hustler/drug dealer mentality where there were millionaires who lived in the ghetto because their game was so tight. So, Ice-T was coming from that angle rather than I’m a Crip or a Blood and I’m gang-bangin’ – he never really got into that whole gang-bangin’ thing as much as he did the Crime Rhyme thing – this was a little more classy. He was able to get away with a little bit more and you hear it when you listen to his stuff like ‘6 ‘N the Mornin’’… ‘Squeeze the Trigger’… ‘I’m Your Pusher’… joints like that. ‘Colors’ really launched the Gangsta Rap thing, with the gang-bang aspect of Rapping. It became such an anthem among all the gangs that a lot of the rappers seeing Ice-T’s success started to do that, and once the record labels figured out how popular this was going to be they took that shit and ran with it.

(Laughter)

Garth – By the time NWA and Easy E came along it was over with. The labels and corporations were like… wow…

Cazembe – This is gold…

Garth – There’s sex and violence like we’ve never seen before! And so they started buildin’ prisons like crazy. Between the year 1990 and 2000 they built more prisons in that decade than they did in all of the 1900s. That music helped usher in an entire generation of young Black and Latino men in the prisons based on the packaging
of the exploitation of this lifestyle. That, by the way, is considered a con.

Cazembe – Thank you. I was hoping you would say that.

By Cazembe Abena

Also Read Part 1

Also Read Part 3

Stay tuned next week for ‘The Future of Music and the Death of the Record Label’ - the third and final installment of the Garth Trinidad series.