Baba Brinkman
Encyclopedia
"Baba" Dirk Murray Brinkman Jr (born October 22, 1978) is a Canadian rapper and playwright
best known for recordings and performances that combine hip hop
music with literature
, theatre
and science
.
, British Columbia, in a log cabin built by his parents, Brinkman is the eldest of three children of Joyce Murray
, a Member of the Parliament of Canada
, and Dirk Brinkman Sr, who is notable for having founded a company responsible for planting one billion trees. Dirk Sr gave Brinkman the honorific nickname "Baba
" at birth, because of his son's contemplative, Buddha-like expression. Brinkman's childhood was divided between Vancouver and the Kootenay
region of British Columbia. He attended Crawford Bay
School and Relevant High, a democratic school
.
Brinkman spent his early summers in remote tree planting camps,, and began planting trees himself at the age of 15. He worked for his parents' business, Brinkman & Associates Reforestation, for twelve seasons in British Columbia
and Alberta
, personally planting more than one million trees. During this period he also earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from Simon Fraser University
and a Master of Arts degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Victoria
, Canada. He studied human evolution and primatology with the orangutan researcher Biruté Galdikas
and wrote his thesis comparing modern Hip hop freestyle battling with The Canterbury Tales
by Geoffrey Chaucer
.
Brinkman's 2010 follow-up show, Rapconteur, premiered at the Edinburgh Free Fringe
and features hip hop adaptations of Beowulf
, the Epic of Gilgamesh
, and the Finnish Kalevala
. Because of his interest in merging hip hop and classic literature, Brinkman has referred to his style of rap as "Lit hop", which was also the title of his 2006 solo rap album.
by Professor Mark Pallen, a Birmingham University microbiologist
and author of The Rough Guide
to Evolution. The result was "The Rap Guide to Evolution," a hip hop homage to Charles Darwin
which Brinkman first performed in Britain for the Darwin bicentennial
in February 2009. Because the lyrics were fact-checked for scientific accuracy, Professor. Pallen calls it "the first peer-reviewed
rap". Brinkman cites Richard Dawkins
, David Sloan Wilson
, Jared Diamond
, Geoffrey Miller, and E. O. Wilson
as his influences in writing the show.
The Rap Guide to Evolution premiered at the 2009 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, winning a Fringe First Award from The Scotsman
for best new theatre writing. In 2010 the UK's largest biomedical charity, the Wellcome Trust
, provided grant funding for Brinkman to make a series of educational music videos based on the show, as a resource for biology teachers. The Rap Guide to Evolution began an Off-Broadway
run in New York City
in June 2011.
Brinkman followed up his Darwin-tribute with a sequel show specifically about evolutionary psychology
, The Rap Guide to Human Nature, which also premiered at the Fringe in 2010.
blog described it as "sadly reductionist", a creationist website decried Brinkman's "materialistic, Spencerian-Malthusian-Dawkinsian lyrics" and a science writer for The Scientist
Magazine called the project "misguided" and accused Brinkman of "if not misogyny, then at least sexism" for his use of "scantily clad women" in the Wellcome Trust music videos. Audiences also walked out of Brinkman's performances during a tour of the US South.
When asked what other subjects he intends to explore through rap, Brinkman responded: "Global warming, health care policy, religion, gender politics. As long as it’s controversial I’m interested."
2008: The Rebel Cell (co-written with MC Dizraeli)
2009: The Rap Guide to Evolution
2010: Rapconteur
2010: The Rap Guide to Human Nature
2004: The Rap Canterbury Tales
2005: Pandemonium
2006: Lit-Hop
2009: The Rap Guide to Evolution
2009: Apocalyptic Utopian Dreams in the Western Wilderness
2010: Rapconteur
2010: The Rap Guide to Human Nature
2011: The Rap Guide to Evolution: Revised
2011: The Rap Guide to Business
"The Speciation of Rap" The Evolutionary Review, Volume 2, March 2011
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
best known for recordings and performances that combine hip hop
Hip hop
Hip hop is a form of musical expression and artistic culture that originated in African-American and Latino communities during the 1970s in New York City, specifically the Bronx. DJ Afrika Bambaataa outlined the four pillars of hip hop culture: MCing, DJing, breaking and graffiti writing...
music with literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
, theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
and science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
.
Biography
Born in the remote community of RiondelRiondel, British Columbia
Riondel is a village of approximately 400 people. It is situated on the eastern shore of Kootenay Lake, located 90-minutes from Nelson, British Columbia, using the world's longest free ferry ride.- History :...
, British Columbia, in a log cabin built by his parents, Brinkman is the eldest of three children of Joyce Murray
Joyce Murray
Joyce Murray is a Canadian politician. She currently represents the electoral district of Vancouver Quadra as a Liberal Member of the Canadian House of Commons, and was previously a BC Liberal Member of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia from 2001 to 2005.-Background:Ms Murray graduated...
, a Member of the Parliament of Canada
Parliament of Canada
The Parliament of Canada is the federal legislative branch of Canada, seated at Parliament Hill in the national capital, Ottawa. Formally, the body consists of the Canadian monarch—represented by her governor general—the Senate, and the House of Commons, each element having its own officers and...
, and Dirk Brinkman Sr, who is notable for having founded a company responsible for planting one billion trees. Dirk Sr gave Brinkman the honorific nickname "Baba
Baba (honorific)
Baba is a Persian honorific term used in several Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures. It is used as a mark of respect to refer to Sufi saints....
" at birth, because of his son's contemplative, Buddha-like expression. Brinkman's childhood was divided between Vancouver and the Kootenay
Kootenays
The Kootenay Region comprises the southeastern portion of British Columbia. It takes its name from the Kootenay River, which in turn was named for the Ktunaxa First Nation first encountered by explorer David Thompson.-Boundaries:The Kootenays are more or less defined by the Kootenay Land...
region of British Columbia. He attended Crawford Bay
Crawford Bay, British Columbia
Crawford Bay is a community of approximately 350 people, situated in the Purcell mountain range on the eastern shore of Kootenay Lake in the Southern Interior of British Columbia, Canada...
School and Relevant High, a democratic school
Democratic school
This is a comprehensive list of current and former democratic schools. Most of these were modeled on the Summerhill School, the oldest existing democratic school founded in 1921...
.
Brinkman spent his early summers in remote tree planting camps,, and began planting trees himself at the age of 15. He worked for his parents' business, Brinkman & Associates Reforestation, for twelve seasons in British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
and Alberta
Alberta
Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...
, personally planting more than one million trees. During this period he also earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from Simon Fraser University
Simon Fraser University
Simon Fraser University is a Canadian public research university in British Columbia with its main campus on Burnaby Mountain in Burnaby, and satellite campuses in Vancouver and Surrey. The main campus in Burnaby, located from downtown Vancouver, was established in 1965 and has more than 34,000...
and a Master of Arts degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Victoria
University of Victoria
The University of Victoria, often referred to as UVic, is the second oldest public research university in British Columbia, Canada. It is a research intensive university located in Saanich and Oak Bay, about northeast of downtown Victoria. The University's annual enrollment is about 20,000 students...
, Canada. He studied human evolution and primatology with the orangutan researcher Biruté Galdikas
Birute Galdikas
Birutė Marija Filomena Galdikas, OC , is a primatologist, conservationist, ethologist, and author of several books relating to the endangered orangutan, particularly the Bornean orangutan. Well known in the field of modern primatology, Galdikas is recognized as a leading authority on orangutans...
and wrote his thesis comparing modern Hip hop freestyle battling with The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at...
by Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
.
Literature Rap
Brinkman first gained widespread media attention for his one-man show "The Rap Canterbury Tales", devised as a means of re-telling Chaucer's iconic stories for a modern audience. The show premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2004, and the following year Brinkman was sponsored by Cambridge University to perform the show in British secondary schools. The Rap Canterbury Tales was published as an illustrated paperback by Talon Books in 2006.Brinkman's 2010 follow-up show, Rapconteur, premiered at the Edinburgh Free Fringe
Free Fringe
The Free Fringe is an organisation that promotes free shows at the annual Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland. Free Fringe venues are commonly independently run bars and nightclubs which create performance spaces in their premises for the duration of the Fringe Festival...
and features hip hop adaptations of Beowulf
Beowulf
Beowulf , but modern scholars agree in naming it after the hero whose life is its subject." of an Old English heroic epic poem consisting of 3182 alliterative long lines, set in Scandinavia, commonly cited as one of the most important works of Anglo-Saxon literature.It survives in a single...
, the Epic of Gilgamesh
Epic of Gilgamesh
Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from Mesopotamia and is among the earliest known works of literature. Scholars believe that it originated as a series of Sumerian legends and poems about the protagonist of the story, Gilgamesh king of Uruk, which were fashioned into a longer Akkadian epic much...
, and the Finnish Kalevala
Kalevala
The Kalevala is a 19th century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Finnish and Karelian oral folklore and mythology.It is regarded as the national epic of Finland and is one of the most significant works of Finnish literature...
. Because of his interest in merging hip hop and classic literature, Brinkman has referred to his style of rap as "Lit hop", which was also the title of his 2006 solo rap album.
Science Rap
In 2008, Brinkman was commissioned to write a new rap show about evolutionEvolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
by Professor Mark Pallen, a Birmingham University microbiologist
Microbiologist
A microbiologist is a scientist who works in the field of microbiology. Microbiologists study organisms called microbes. Microbes can take the form of bacteria, viruses, fungi, and protists...
and author of The Rough Guide
Rough Guides
Rough Guides Ltd is a travel guidebook and reference publisher, owned by Pearson PLC. Their travel titles cover more than 200 destinations, and are distributed worldwide through the Penguin Group...
to Evolution. The result was "The Rap Guide to Evolution," a hip hop homage to Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
which Brinkman first performed in Britain for the Darwin bicentennial
Anniversary
An anniversary is a day that commemorates or celebrates a past event that occurred on the same day of the year as the initial event. For example, the first event is the initial occurrence or, if planned, the inaugural of the event. One year later would be the first anniversary of that event...
in February 2009. Because the lyrics were fact-checked for scientific accuracy, Professor. Pallen calls it "the first peer-reviewed
Peer review
Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...
rap". Brinkman cites Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
, David Sloan Wilson
David Sloan Wilson
David Sloan Wilson is an American evolutionary biologist and a Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences and Anthropology at Binghamton University. He is a son of the author Sloan Wilson.-Academic career:...
, Jared Diamond
Jared Diamond
Jared Mason Diamond is an American scientist and author whose work draws from a variety of fields. He is currently Professor of Geography and Physiology at UCLA...
, Geoffrey Miller, and E. O. Wilson
E. O. Wilson
Edward Osborne Wilson is an American biologist, researcher , theorist , naturalist and author. His biological specialty is myrmecology, the study of ants....
as his influences in writing the show.
The Rap Guide to Evolution premiered at the 2009 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, winning a Fringe First Award from The Scotsman
The Scotsman
The Scotsman is a British newspaper, published in Edinburgh.As of August 2011 it had an audited circulation of 38,423, down from about 100,000 in the 1980s....
for best new theatre writing. In 2010 the UK's largest biomedical charity, the Wellcome Trust
Wellcome Trust
The Wellcome Trust was established in 1936 as an independent charity funding research to improve human and animal health. With an endowment of around £13.9 billion, it is the United Kingdom's largest non-governmental source of funds for biomedical research...
, provided grant funding for Brinkman to make a series of educational music videos based on the show, as a resource for biology teachers. The Rap Guide to Evolution began an Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...
run in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in June 2011.
Brinkman followed up his Darwin-tribute with a sequel show specifically about evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology is an approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations, that is, the functional...
, The Rap Guide to Human Nature, which also premiered at the Fringe in 2010.
Controversy
The Rap Guide to Evolution has been viewed unfavourably for a variety of reasons. One ChristianChristian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
blog described it as "sadly reductionist", a creationist website decried Brinkman's "materialistic, Spencerian-Malthusian-Dawkinsian lyrics" and a science writer for The Scientist
The Scientist
The Scientist: Magazine of Life Sciences is a professional magazine intended for life scientists. Coverage includes reviews of widely noticed research papers, informing its audience of current research, updates to technology, updates to career information, profiles of scientists achieving...
Magazine called the project "misguided" and accused Brinkman of "if not misogyny, then at least sexism" for his use of "scantily clad women" in the Wellcome Trust music videos. Audiences also walked out of Brinkman's performances during a tour of the US South.
When asked what other subjects he intends to explore through rap, Brinkman responded: "Global warming, health care policy, religion, gender politics. As long as it’s controversial I’m interested."
Theatre
2004: The Rap Canterbury Tales2008: The Rebel Cell (co-written with MC Dizraeli)
2009: The Rap Guide to Evolution
2010: Rapconteur
2010: The Rap Guide to Human Nature
Discography
2004: Swordplay2004: The Rap Canterbury Tales
2005: Pandemonium
2006: Lit-Hop
2009: The Rap Guide to Evolution
2009: Apocalyptic Utopian Dreams in the Western Wilderness
2010: Rapconteur
2010: The Rap Guide to Human Nature
2011: The Rap Guide to Evolution: Revised
2011: The Rap Guide to Business
Writings
The Rap Canterbury Tales, Talon Books 2006"The Speciation of Rap" The Evolutionary Review, Volume 2, March 2011
External links
- http://www.bababrinkman.com/
- http://www.rapguide.com/
- http://www.rapguidetoevolution.co.uk
- Presenting at Cusp Conference 2010 (video)