Street beat/rap artist or lyrical Parkour?

[Matt_from_Burn]

Hi folks, I'm new to the forum but wanted to get people's opinion on this peice of work i'm involved with: Burn, have recently created this short documentary about Julius Wright, a Phildelphia beat/rap artist. Check it out here. What Julius is doing feels innovative and mixes genres and styles in a new way. He uses pens and pencils to create rhythms with his urban environment. I've been trying to find a name for what he does, closest i've got is 'lyrical parkour' - what he's doing feels fresh and new and totally fits with how free-runners reinterpret urban environments for their art. I'd love to know what people think!

[teddy]

Hello Matt and welcome to the forum. Trust you will enjoy your time here as much as I do.
Interesting clip. Nothing new here though as schools and playgroups promote this sort of action/interaction from a young age. It will be interesting to see if they can develope this further, maybe intermixing with musical instruments or other genre.

teddy

[Matt_from_Burn]

Hi Teddy, I agree - I'd love to see it intermixed with jazz!

[John Watt]

Matt_from_Burn! You've got an interesting concept, but you're approaching it from a parkour perspective, what's new for you. C'mon now, you know how long humans have been singing, making up words for fun, or sitting with a pen and paper to write down a song. So please, you can't type to me about jamming it out there, when musicians have been jamming it all along.

But your concept still works because what you're jamming on with parkour is just as complicated an environment as a symphonic rendition. While the act of creating music causes more deaths in the rock scene, falls and electrocutions, the party, the parkour experience faces injury and death as the initial concept of this discipline.

Even if I was younger, I wouldn't do this. When I first started working downtown in the evenings as a theatre usher, employees in other buildings would show me how you can walk around downtown on top of the roofs, watching down at the intersection before the canal bridge, across from the court house, and we'd stand behind the screen in the theatre to hear the big new Lansing speakers and watch the movie in reverse. But I'm happy to leave it there.

However, I now long distance bike-hike, and see myself as traversing the Niagara Peninsula like some exterior parkour. Having Niagara Falls, the Niagara Parkway, the Lake Erie shore, makes the outdoors wonderful and exciting, what is basically one of the biggest continental migration routes. Too bad I got caught trying to sneak into the tunnel being dug for the new hydro diversion.

So my parkour involves glacial striations, looking up the lake, seeing a view that's been the same for over 10,000 years, looking across to The United States... many waterfalls, the falls, the rivers and canals, the great lakes... just like my music.

I was jumping off a three foot stage during one fast dance song,
playing guitar with my teeth when I hit the floor, not stopping, but,
chipping my one front tooth a little and breaking the high E string,
where it shot off the neck, slicing the sides of my mouth, bleeding,
making wounds that took over a month to finally heal, and the keyboardist was saying
I had stereo herpes. It looked that way. When I sang they'd break open.
I got facial wounds playing guitar.
That's so parkour.

[John Watt]

"Ain't it funny, how time slips away". Yeah! A lot has changed since my last post.
It snowed, softly and gently, and kept snowing, for days.
Now that it's all piled and packed, frozen and hard, covering everything,
I'm doing some lyrical parkour myself, slippin'n'sliding all over the landscape.
It's not all good.
In Toronto so far this year, three people have died slipping under buses.
I didn't hear a bus the other day, the snow and my parka so silent,
and almost got hit myself. And the bus driver is a drummer I know.

[White Knight]

For Pete's--not to mention your own--sake, please be careful, John!

[teddy]

"Ain't it funny, how time slips away". Yeah! A lot has changed since my last post.
almost got hit myself. And the bus driver is a drummer I know.

A drummer ? You sure he didnt see you?

teddy

[John Watt]

I gotta say, out of all the musicians I played with,
drummers liked me most.
Drummers always commented on how my beats accented theirs.
Not all of them liked me lashing them with my cord or hitting cymbals with my headstock,
but drummers need help sometimes.

When I was riding the Handi-Trans with 83 year old Uncle Bill,
the driver was a guitarist I knew and he played c.d.'s his guitarist son made, with his band.
That was getting closer to being a hit.

[rayed]

Nothing new here though as schools and playgroups promote . It will be interesting to see if they can develop this further.