Nomadic Wax: Shrinking the Global Hip-Hop Scene

by Sarah Bardeen

Hip-hop has become a global phenomenon, but the popularity of U.S. superstars such as Nas and 50 Cent tends to drown out the flows of lesser-known artists from countries like Senegal and France. Nomadic Wax, a small New York-based label, is trying to rectify this, giving emcees from around the globe a platform to start making waves of their own, while giving the rest of us a chance to listen in.

Nomadic Wax founder, musician and producer Ben Herson, was working on his -- get this -- undergraduate thesis when he went to Senegal to research the intersections between music and politics. What he found blew him away: a thriving hip-hop scene where emcees were playing a major role in shaping the debate around upcoming elections. Inspired, Herson finished his thesis and returned to Senegal, armed with recording equipment and determined to document the scene.

That moment marked the birth of Nomadic Wax, a record-label-cum-production company. Nomadic Wax has made Herson into an impromptu documentarian as well. In Senegal, he found himself not only recording the hip-hop artists but also filming their impact on local politics. The fruits of his labor are the hip-hop compilation African Underground: Depths of Dakar and the documentary Democracy in Dakar. We caught up with him a few weeks ago to get the skinny on how and why he's so determined to shrink the global village.

Rhapsody: What got you interested in African hip-hop?
Ben Herson: In 1998, I was traveling to Senegal for the first time with my drum teacher. I was really into hip-hop, but I didn't know that it existed in Africa at all. I went to pick up some music before we left and was asking the guy at the local music shack what he had and then I noticed some locally produced hip-hop in the back. So, I bought some cassettes and brought them back home and things began to percolate. I was interested in the whole thing, why these rappers chose hip-hop instead of traditional music.

How did you find the emcees for your projects?
I thought it was a crazy idea to do a thesis on Senegalese hip-hop and wasn't sure I would find people. I stayed with a friend in a neighborhood [in Dakar] called Sicap Liberte 4. It's a typical Senegalese neighborhood, everybody knows each other. And if you're a white guy who speaks Wolof, everybody wants to talk to you. I studied Wolof before I went, and there's not that many Americans who can speak Wolof well enough to be on their own, walking around and meeting people and whatnot.

Everybody was wondering what on earth I was doing there. So, when I told them I wanted to do a thesis on Senegalese hip-hop, they'd say, "Why didn't you tell me? I've got a guy across the street that's a rapper," or "My brother's a rapper." Everybody knows everybody, and all rappers know each other, so from there I got introduced to pretty much everyone I wanted to work with.

At that time, nobody was really interested in this stuff, especially not from the West. It was actually easy to meet a lot of the emcees I wanted to meet because there was such a lack of interest at that time. They were just really psyched that somebody was coming over there to interview them.

I understand that you created a mobile studio while you were there. What challenges did you face recording on the street?
The biggest challenge was mostly technical. When I first did it, I had played in a lot of bands and toured and recorded but I'd never been behind the mixing board. The first time I went over there I was doing everything wrong. I plugged some stuff in and it exploded. I was totally up sh*t's creek that recording session. My cousin, who's a professional recording engineer and is a little older than me, he said, "Look, let me help you out here. I'll come over with you and we'll do it together, we'll co-produce this thing." His name is Dan Cantor, his production company is called Notable Productions. The two of us collaborated on that and came up with this mobile rig.

Some funny stories from the first session -- we were looking for some basic things that over here wouldn't be that hard to find. One being a quiet room, two being steady electricity with grounded current. Over there, it's really hard to find. The only place we could find was this community center. Half the time, it was quiet and we recorded the emcees in a closet inside a spare room in the library area. Literally apropos of nothing, people would just come in and start practicing with their band, taking no mind that there was a recording session going on. There was just a lot of space issues and, of course, equipment blowing up.

And then you brought all those tracks back to New York. Who did all the production?
I did all the production. I learned as I went along, started making the beats and bringing in live musicians to play along with it. I started working on the beats, and it was all electronic-based. I'm a musician; I live in New York and I play in a lot of bands. A lot of people I was working with are already connected with other bands like Antibalas and Sub-Atomic Sound System in New York. People started asking me, saying, "Hey, if you want me to come over and sample me playing trumpet, sample me playing conga, whatever it is, I'd love to be a part of the project." So, the final product ended up being this interesting mix of live performances with Antibalas and Dub is a Weapon and all these other groups.

Can you share some of your favorite tracks from what you've done so far?
On Depths of Dakar, I think my favorite track so far is the second track, by a rapper named Pato. It's a song called "Keep It Real." The beat was literally made in 10-15 minutes. It was one of those things that just came together. The thing about Pato is that he wanted a beat that was half-time; he was rapping at 114 BPM and he wanted a beat at like 70 BPM. We essentially double-timed the beat to sort of match his rapid-fire vocal style and it ended up gelling really well. I ended up producing a documentary film with my co-prducer Sol Productions called Democracy in Dakar which was about the role of hip-hop in the 2007 presidential election. And that ended up being the theme song and Pato ended up playing a major role in that as well.

Is the film in distribution?
We've been screening at film festivals, colleges, universities; different arts presenters have picked it up. We just won the Media That Matters award. It's been making its round on the film end of things. Probably gonna be in theaters in the next year or so. We do have it online as well. It began as a documentary series that we filmed and edited while we were in Senegal during the 2007 presidential elections. It was online, on YouTube, Brightcove, every viral media channel that we could find so people could watch as things were happening. So, it's a seven-part series that exists online, but we've also edited it into a feature-length version.

Do you have any new projects in the making? What's next for Nomadic Wax?
Right after the Democracy in Dakar film, we realized that France would be having their elections as well, like a month after we got home. We decided to keep going with the series.We did a film series calle Underground African Democracy in Paris (also co-produced with Sol Productions).

It's part of this whole theme now of looking at how young people are using their music to bring about political change, or at least trying to. The next project is going to be similar to what we did with Depths of Dakar but with French emcees. France has a really diverse hip-hop scene with West African immigrants, North African immigrants, Arab immigrants ... it's a really interesting mix of talent that they have there. After that, we're going to do a Cuban hip-hop compilation, and then a Cape Verdean and a Brazilian hip-hop compilation.

Comments

[rushay]

great stuff Ben Africa rise up