By CHRISTA MORLETTI McINTYRE

In an age when collecting has trumped the library and become a mausoleum of consumer culture, Rap is one of the last cultural holdouts to maintain a sense of the individual as prominent in the artistic process. Its fluid appeal is easily translated, copied and replicated from continent to continent. It carries an element of sharing and community that is disappearing from the downloading culture of Pop music, and has never been prominent with Classical collectors. Rap is a chameleon: it has a sister, Hip-Hop culture, and can be translated into material objects, literature, entertainment, sensibilities, attitudes, politics, movies, dance and plays.

By nature, Rap is centered on Black identity, and while the popular critical battleground is to name the “haves” and “have-nots,” at one point or another a Rap artist must address the Black identity of the art. The “haves” are held under a magnifying glass for popularizing material excess without allegiance to community or explaining the Western European origins of the commodities they exploit lyrically. There is a conflict, since Rap is by definition the ultimate popular and most accessible musical expression of Deconstruction: a reassembling of portable culture whose birth came out of poverty and necessity, which still relies on the premise of parts that refer to physical, emotional, and intellectual history. While the wealthiest of authors can afford the resources to make each part themselves, they still follow the origins of the structure.

Mic Crenshaw: cultural historian in the groove.

There is also an elegiac pattern among Black intellectuals. The beautiful fragments that compose what we call this culture, or in this case, a play, all come onto a common ground with Idris Goodwin, author of How We Got On, which opens Saturday night at Portland Playhouse and continues through October 25. How We Got On is a celebratory bildungsroman told through a Selector of three kids during the late 1980s Golden Age of Rap who lay down beats and rhymes, overcoming dysfunction and isolation through the music that shapes their lives.

The history of Rap is still under debate: was it born from the field holla, the preacher call, the long history of Black poets in America? Some say that it was born in the late 1970s. Others look at the Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron in the late ’60s as the fathers of the genre. Heavily politicized by them, that message never left Rap: fundamentally, when we assume art is by definition communication, Rap is a dialogue.

I spoke with Mic Crenshaw, who is musical director of Portland Playhouse’s How We Got On, the day after he MCed the new documentary Who Is Gil Scott-Heron?, directed by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, at the Clinton Street Theater. Scott-Heron was the voice of the Black Panther Party on vinyl: he gave us a new notion of how to look at the divisions of our cities and the marketing that invaded homes more prominently in the ’60s. His message remains clear and authentic, providing a legacy that still cuts a good groove. At the premiere of the documentary, Mic Crenshaw – community leader, artist, co-station manager of KBOO radio –presented a group of young poets who shared their lyrics on the state of society today. It was an ellipse of history in motion.

Crenshaw, born and raised in the Midwest, moved to Portland as a young adult. He’s taken on a lot of projects over the years, from poetry slams to recording to working closely with Education Without Borders, and is the Political Director of Hip Hop Congress, the Lead U.S. Organizer for the Afrikan Hip Hop Caravan. He also works with Black Lives Matter.

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