I’m rolling with the big timers: the executive director and founder of a community circus arts program, an after-school program b-boy teacher, the most beautiful family in Bay Area hip-hop, and my boyfriend, who is snapping photos on his Nikon of the rest of us. We’re standing under the high ceiling of Acrosports, in a room filled with trapezes, a balancing beam, an over-sized trampoline, and the contorting, jack-knifing bodies of young, aspiring circus professionals. The people assembled (minus me and my man) are using the power of hip-hop to bring a cultural skill swap to underprivileged youth in Zanzibar.
It’s a feel good moment, particularly because it comes during a week that hosted some of the darkest days in the past century of the labor movement, the start of unimaginable hardship in Japan, and disheartening scenes from our nation’s leaders’ announced Muslim witch hunt. But enough of that for now, Zumbi’s talking:
“This is the first time we’ve done a tour that benefited charities, which is cool… but it’s like, why has this taken so long to do? Why don’t more people do this?”
The emcee from Zion I is makes uplifting Bay Area hip-hop without major label representation, and now it’s been announced that his, DJ Amp Live, and the Grouch’s upcoming tour will be benefiting local community organizations at each of its 36 gigs on its “Healing of the Nation” tour — which is named after the artists’ second collaboration album, Heroes in the Healing of the Nation.
In the Acrosport’s basement, breakdancing students get their new skills battle-ready. Photo by Erik Anderson
“This album, it’s more focused, it’s about communities, families, self. It’s needed! These days, you’ve got Charlie Sheen occupying more time onscreen than the Middle East. Everybody’s all caught up on tiger blood,” Zumbi tells me. It’s positive music, much like the first Zion I-grouch collab, 2006’s Heroes in the City of Dope, but it’s far from Public Enemy-style protest rap.
Track eight on the new album is entitled “Be A Father To Your Child,” in the chorus of track two the Grouch asserts “I’m a leader/I don’t want to be a follower,” pledging allegiance to self-motivation. There’s a song called “I Used to Be Vegan” on the album that I find particularly resonant given my own struggles with evading cheese. The message is: be a positive force, don’t get swept up in the forces that try to disempower you and make you sad. It’s conscious music, but conscious music meant to have a good time to.
Today we also meet Zumbi’s beautiful partner Tiffany and their three-month old prince, Kodi Shaddai. They pose prettily by the catapulting acrobats behind them and Zumbi tells me that Kodi may well make a cameo appearance in the album’s upcoming music video. He tells me he used to do capoeira himself and jokes about his bad knees with B-Boy Black, a.k.a. Ed Johnson, Acrosports’ outreach director and breakdance teacher who will be one of the leaders on the Zanzibar trip.
Acrosports’ professional track performers practice across the street from Kezar Stadium. Photo by Erik Anderson
Is Zion I’s hip-hop philanthropy new? Certainly not, but what is novel is the group’s maturing image. Zumbi says that Heroes in the City of Dope was “more commentary, more getting fresh.” Heroes in the Healing of the Nation focuses more on creating positive space — reflective of the three men’s new roles as fathers and, gulp, role models. Looking into the future (though he’s far from hanging up his touring hat), Zion I’s emcee tells me that he sees his role in hip-hop as that of mentor to youngsters coming up in the ranks.
My star-struckedness aside, I should probably be spending more of this article talking about Acrosports and its planned trip to Africa. You wanna see bringing uplift to the people? The place is pretty incredible, offering classes in breakdancing, capoeira, tumbling, and parkour to community members from 10 months of age and up. They run after-school programs in over 20 school, YMCAs, and Boys & Girls Clubs whose philosophy is to empower kids through positive motivation and access to non-traditional sports.
Community activist Dorrie Huntington founded the place 20 years ago when she realized the building she lived next door to was sitting empty after years as a high school, and then a homeless shelter. Some unemployed members of the Moscow Circus proposed that they start teaching tumbling classes. Soon the team was repurposing sleeping mats from the homeless shelter and donated paint to create the center, all with very little resources. “It took a lot of sweat equity,” Huntington smiles. But that was 20 years ago and the perspiration paid off – now the city has a place where people of all ages and levels of fitness can come to learn how to move their bodies in joyous, creative ways.
In 2009, Huntington went to Africa to volunteer in a Tanzanian orphanage, and on a vacation ran into some kids flipping out on a beach in Zanzibar. “Their skills were so amazing. They had this truck tire wedged in the sand and they were doing flips off of it.” She struck up a friendship with the amateur acrobats and vowed to return with teachers that could help the kids develop their performance skills.
It’s a mission that resonates with her staff. “Growing up in a black community,” says Johnson, “going to Africa was seen as learning about your roots. I want to go out there and meet these amazing artists.” I ask him how he felt when he learned that Zion I and the Grouch were dipping into ticket sales to help him and his team realize the dream and he gets a little bashful. “I had to keep my composure,” he tells the group, and turns to Zumbi. “I have the vinyl record of The Bay! I don’t even have a record player, I was just like, I got to have that album!”
Inspiring people creating space for each other to make great things happen. Like a little feedback loop of positivity, it was. And a real good break from the heartache of the news channels.
Zion I and the Grouch
Sat/19 9 p.m., $25
The Fillmore
1805 Geary, SF