If you had to pick a pair of musical genres furthest apart from each other, opera and hip hop would be a fairly safe bet. One thing they do share is sizable purist fan bases, which, whether they use the phrase or not, prefer practitioners to keep it real. Nonetheless, these star-crossed genres are coming together in a performance called The Hip Hopera, a new collaboration by the Canadian Opera Company and the Royal Conservatory of Music.
"I don't really know how that's going to work out, but sure, I'd be willing to sit down," was DJ lil Jaz's initial reaction to the proposed mash-up. "I wasn't skeptical so much as wondering what the hell would come out of it. What were we going to do?"
Jaz is a former world champion DJ who has worked with k-os and Nelly Furtado (with whom he has a daughter) and teaches turntable fundamentals at the Royal Conservatory alongside DJ T.R.A.C.K.S. The duo teamed up with COC soprano Teiya Kasahara and baritone Justin Welsh to bring their respective specialties together.
"To fuse hip hop and opera isn't exactly a new idea," Jaz acknowledges, "but I don't think it's been done to the degree that we did it." Indeed, the term hip hopera is usually used like rock opera - Beyoncé starred in MTV's Carmen but sang R&B while Prince Paul's classic rap album Prince Among Thieves was opera-like only in its narrative structure.
COC soprano Teiya Kasahara and DJ lil Jaz are spearheading a project that fuses opera and hip hop. (Jim Ross for The Globe and Mail)
"With my bosses, maybe there was a little bit of trepidation because [hip hop] is more foreign to them," Kasahara says. "But with our generation, growing up with it in the house, it was familiar."
It's safe to say hip hop's familiarity is what sparked the fusion - and what better way to make a 16th-century art form relevant to a young 21st-century audience. Atlanta Ballet recently tried a similar, albeit more ambitious, collaboration with OutKast rapper Big Boi, though National Public Radio reported some ballet traditionalists were initially "freaked out."
For any similar doubters, Kasahara notes that opera and hip hop have more in common than many realize. "Years ago, opera was a way for composers and librettists to create political and social messages. They were criticized and censored, but it allowed them to express themselves and challenge government. Today, genres like hip hop [raise] social and political issues."
Kasahara acknowledges that younger audiences don't know much about opera and that hip hop is a whole new world for opera fans - a fact she hopes this production could help to change.
"We weren't thinking 'How can we make this for the traditional Toronto opera audience?' We didn't want to be inhibited by that. It's not opera and hip hop side by side - we're trying to create something new."
It is structured like an traditional opera, with a dramatic arc about defining identity in today's society, and there's no actual rapping. The hip-hop elements arrive through beats, classical samples and live turntable scratching.
"I think anyone could get with the program. We're not taking it to the grimiest areas of hip hop. It's understandable by anyone who listens to pop music today," Jaz says. "Over all, it is just two genres trying to transcend what they're traditionally classified as.
"It's time to evolve. To start mixing and matching."
Special to The Globe and Mail
The Hip Hopera is performed today at 5:30 p.m. at the Four Seasons Centre's Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre, Toronto. Admission is free.
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