HIP HOPERA

Winner of the 2000 San Francisco Showcase Award

Hip-hop has had one of the largest cultural effects on the globe and is the most lucrative form of music. Like African storytelling, call and response, it is a new chant for our youth, one whose full potential remains vastly untapped. As Russell Simmons, CEO of Def Jam, once said, �We�re trying to make decisions on what wings to add to this great house.�

The Story of Hip Hopera � 1999

Three years ago in San Francisco, Cleveland-born, April Chelsea Mosley, created one of the other wings. She called it Hip Hopera---an urban musical drama that aims to instill thoughts of statehood into the stream of black consciousness. It is the first work of its kind to draft a Hip Hop Constitution. She wanted to change notions of how the music could be made and was driven by a desire to forge a new hip hop genre. With her work and others like it, she hopes to pave the way for hip hop to become as worthy of civic dialogue and academic study as any other art form. Ms. Mosley received her formal training from Tisch College and Lee Strasberg Theater Institute at NYU, and by attending Sundance workshops. Currently she is the director of public relations and drama instructor at Cleveland's Dale House. Here she speaks candidly of her vision for Hip Hopera:

I created this musical in an effort to move towards the cultural and political aspects of hip hop, to plant the seeds of new, positive, free, and expressive ways to make the music. The children are listening to this music. Begun as a verbal battleground, hip hop began a black dream for black people. At its best, hip hop is a school free of Angle-American control. Today some pull from it for their education, ideas, politics, and whatever else they want; hence, the need to handle it responsibly! The Hip Hopera I have developed focuses on human social challenges that occur in our community, and resolves itself with a positive plan for the future. Through it I hope to make musicians aware of their social and cultural responsibility when making the music in order to influence our young people positively to stop the aimlessness and the violence.

What if the hip hop nation had its own state? What if within that state, we as a people had the right to govern ourselves? What if we as a hip hop nation had a constitution that laid out a plan for the future that would change all the negative circumstances in which we are currently living? What if we could eliminate ways of doing things that do not support the black community like unwarranted traffic stops that lead to hundreds of thousands of African Americans jailed yearly? What if future leadership of the hip hop community was clearly defined with a system of elders, checks, and balances? These are the questions that Hip Hopera chooses to answer clearly, concisely, and with a stylistic edge that is hardcore, provocative and unapologetic. As a nation of citizens, a hip-hop nation, we have to continue to grow intellectually, courageously, artistically, and politically. While hip hop is Asian, Australian, Latin, and universal, there is a capitalistic exploitation of black Americans in hip hop resulting in gangster-fantasy, killing, and sexually exploitative rap getting more radio airplay than positive raps. Once we understand that art, creativity, and freedom of expression are the only truly open spaces, we must work harder to fight the constant oppressive control of this space and the ever-looming threat of having it taken away. Only then will we truly be free.

- April Chelsea Mosley

After showcasing the first act of her three-act, nine-song musical in San Francisco, Ms. Mosley moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where, for the past several months, she has been tirelessly working on the production, performing excerpts from her play throughout the area, forming an executive project committee, and securing a state-of-the-art venue. In March 2001, Ms. Mosley was invited to be keynote speaker at the Conference on the Arts given by the Black Studies Department at Cleveland State University. For her participation in the Third Annual Youth Conference of April 2001, she was awarded a Congressional Service Honor (below). The playwright's project is also currently under consideration for development at the Institute of Arts and Civic Dialogue at Harvard University. The executive project committee is very much aware of Hip Hopera�s timeliness and potential for commercial success, especially in view of the spring 2000 MTV televising of Carmen Hip Hopera, based on the opera and directed by Robert Townsend.

DONATE NOW TO Hip Hopera

YOUR HELP IS NEEDED! CONTRIBUTE $5, $10, $20. In partnership with RAMSEN GROUP, the project committee is seeking to raise production costs for a 2002-Cleveland Hip Hopera premier through donations and sponsorships. Our plea is that those in a position to contribute to a project that influences young people in a positive way will do so. DONATE SECURELY to Hip Hopera using PayPal. All major credit cards are accepted. Or send payment to the address below.

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