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Dec. 7 - Dec. 14, 2003 |
Those Boyz R Back
JOB: The Philosophical Hip-Hop Epic in Second Rendition
By Sarah B. Hood
Originally Published: 2003-11-30
Good things come to those who wait. If you never saw JOB: The Hip-Hop Musical or its sequel, JOB II, you now have a chance to see them paired in one show that traces the stories of the biblical characters of Job, Cain and Abel in fast-paced hip-hop style. Along the way, Job: The Hip-Hop Saga's creators and performers Jerome Saibil and Eli Batalion pull together some pretty deep philosophical concepts, along with musical riffs from Mozart to McCartney and Beethoven to the blues.
The first show introduces hip-hop MCs Cain and Abel, who narrate the Job tale as if it was set in an urban record company. "They tell the story as though they were commissioned by their record label," says Saibeil. "At the end of the first show, they have so many arguments about how to tell the story that Cain shoots Abel in the head and kills him, just like the biblical Cain kills Abel."
The second show opens with Abel being rushed to the hospital with two bullet wounds to the head. "Cain is rushed to prison and is interrogated there," Saibeil explains. Then, Cain "is kidnapped by a mysterious man dressed as a nurse who takes him away to a remote place and starts training him as the Uber-Rapper. Cain escapes and vows to put an end to MC Abel once and for all."
Whereas JOB dealt with the theological question of why bad things happen to good people, in JOB II, "There's a close association with a Nietzschean concept known as the Demon of Eternal Recurrence," Saibil elaborates. "Basically, Nietzsche challenged his readers in The Gay Science (and in other books too), ''What if one day a demon would come up to you and tell you that the whole of your life would be repeated exactly as you have done it; would you fear this demon or would you welcome him?' "
In fact, JOB II features a character called Fred, who stands for Friedrich Nietzsche. "Nietzsche's whole project - now that 'God is dead' - is to explain to the reader that everything is okay; we can still go on," Saibil continues. "In the same way that we took questions of man versus god in the Job story and made them man (or woman) versus corporate authority, we are now dealing with hip-hop values. How does a rapper make every rhyme his or her own?"
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