Holy Roller takes an in-depth look at 1980’s Downtown Impresario Michael Holman.

“We were mini Malcolm Maclarens.”

A  Hip Hop Secret

In an interview with Jarrell Mason of WUAG-FM, Michael Holman boasted that he happened to be the holder of many hip hop secrets.One of these secrets went like this… “If it wasn’t for the downtown New York punk rock and new wave scene, Hip Hop as we know it wouldn’t have happened.”

The implications of that statement are more far reaching than one can imagine. Does he know something that the forefathers of hip hop don’t, or are refusing to acknowledge?

Surely hip hop’s success worldwide is the result of a much more complex process of events, surely it was hiphop’s fresh new urban energy and growing demand  that catapulted  the music into the downtown clubs and beyond..wasn’t it due to this growing demand for rap music and hip hop culture that had more and more labels reaching for their cheque books, and what about the power, vision, experience, tastemaking and musical ability of DJ’s like Afrika Bambaataa, didn’t hip hop leave the Bronx when Bambaataa decided?

Isn’t hip hop’s dominance and survival in the music world due to the continual evolution of black music culture. Or is it’s success due to the same world that has continually stated even from the early 80’s that hip hop was a fad?

The implications of Michael Holman’s statement are so far reaching, that it would be a mistake not to question it. Michael Holman in an early 80’s interview said that: “the people (from hip hop culture) who are involved in shaping and creating and presenting hip hop, they are people I think the media and popular opinion in general would like to colour as social undesirables, uncultured losers, but what they are, are real winners, because they have come from nothing and made the most popular the most interesting sub culture happening now in the world ,i think”. (note at that stage of Micheal Holman’s involvement in hip hop, he did not give himself credit for forming the 5 elements of hip hop to ‘package it better to sell’ as he said n London this year.)

Has Michael Holman’s view point changed since the 80’s? Maybe he does have the handbook of hidden hip hop history, lets assume he does, and exchange notes with fellow legends. “ask Jazzy Jay, says Holman …”they (Jazzy Jay, Bam, and other dj’s etc)  were looking at it like, well we had a nice little run entertaining the ghetto kids”. But it is not as simple as that. Bambaataa and Jay (Zulu Nation) already had ideas of their own to expand their audience

Negril & The Roxy

Afrika Bambaataa saw hip hop as Planet Rock. His idea’s didn’t just expand, They exploded! In photographer Martha Cooper’s book The Hiphop Files Ruza Blue aka Kool lady Blue said  ”Negril started in October 1981 And finished in March 1982 . It ended because there were too many people coming to the club and the fire department closed it down”.

In an interview from Jeff Chang’s Cant Stop Won’t Stop, Jazzy Jay recalls ”We were schooling them (the downtown scene) on our artform. Bam would put these breaks on and drive them wild, then I’d get on the turntables and start cutting shit up and they’d be losing their minds”.

Michael Holman: ”In June 1982, Ruza Blue took the Hip Hop nights to the Roxy Disco Roller Rink, and with her went the Rock Steady Crew. She eventually became their manager, I was really about TV, I did not want to be a club promoter, so I went on to realise my idea of a HipHop TV show”.

The Celluloid Connection

It was at The Roxy where Bronx hiphop was exposed to all kinds of people including Bernard Zekri and Jean Karakos from the french label Celluloid.

Journalist Bernard Zekri befriended Afrika Bambaata and his Zulu crew from hanging out at the Roxy. From those meetings formed the New York City Rap Tour, the first tour of France and the UK featuring Afrika Bambaataa, DST, Fab Five Freddy, The Rock Steady Crew, Dondi White, Futura, and Phase 2. Some of the most seminal early hiphop recordings featuring  many of the participants of the NYC rap tour  were released on Celluloid.

Uptown Jack of all trades

Michael Holman is one of many who were in and around NYC’s downtown scene ”outsiders” who found their way into hip hop’s ranks. Everything man Michael Holman, the creative jack of all trades; film director, artist, journalist, manager of NYC breakers, scenster entrepreneur (Cant Stop Wont Stop pg.410) host of a 1980’s pilot for a hiphop tv show called Graffiti Rock, and member of the Jean Michel Basquiat band Gray.

This was a period in NYC’s history where Holman recalls “one could literally be who they wanted to be”.

The band Gray was formed in 1979 by Basquiat and Holman, it experimented with electronica and and played at downtown clubs like the Mudd. some of this experimental music was featured on the film Downtown 81 which also stars Basquiat. It was at the Mudd and similar downtown clubs that hiphop reached out to in the early 80’s.

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Gray ‘So far so real’.

The ex-Wall Street Junior investment banker turned hiphop impresario credits himself for making the first film Catch a Beat, on super 8, of what we have come to recognise as the hiphop movement. Holman went on to capture many visual images of the growing hiphop movement and even launched them on cable TV in the early 80’s. It is also said that it was actually Holman who introduced Bambaataa to the late Malcolm McLaren. Of course there is the other  versions of  McLaren meeting Bam in Manhattan, which we will look at later.

Bankers and B-boys

Holman of part Jewish, part African American descent, seems to be natrually selected for the role of  scenster entrepreneur, his education, eloquence and charisma gave him the perfect tools to charm bankers and b-boys alike. Holman came to New York in the late 70’s. He was working on Wall Street as a junior investment banker circa 1978, where he says he  first discovered hip hop. After seeing a full blown burner on a train and wondering how the kids were getting away with making these paintings. From that moment, Michael Holman found his way into hiphop. He now boasts early doors status standing alongside Fab Five Freddy as one of the original bridge of the streets, the downtown scene, and the media.

Ghetto Gold Rush

It is said that as well as making the first film, Michael Holman was the first to put the word ‘hiphop’ in print in a magazine. Holman has placed much emphasis on being the ‘first’ to do many things in hip hop, but in 1980 the hip hop trend was spreading, moving quickly towards the inevitable commerciality. Holman could see it coming and wanted his piece of the cake. There was an increasing interest in all aspects of hiphop culture from the media and the mainstream, and many were cashing in. Holman was no exception, another looking to be ahead of the gold rush.

Graffiti Rock

His pilot showing of Graffiti Rock in the 80’s predated Yo MTV Raps!, and had a kind of  hiphop Soul Train energy, but for various reasons explained by Holman doesn’t get past the first episode. One reason given was that the companies he approached couldn’t see the difference between Graffiti Rock and Don Cornelius’s long running Soul Train. Graffiti Rock’s failure to explode into commercial sucess left Holman jaded, resulting in his return to film school.

Graffiti Rock was geared towards a young white audience, the diluted breakdown of NYC hiphop style, speak and scene, is simplistic in approach. the dance crowd is predominantly of the high yellow hue, were’re guessing mainly hispanic, with sprinklings of whites, and a small number of dark skinned black’s thrown in. Holman justifies this in an interview with Jarell Mason on WUAG/FM where he  states “I was told that the station managers at the time were against showing black kids in general, even polite nice black kids… to the degree that I had the set looking street, I’m happy with what I had. They were not gonna have some street looking kids coming on their TV”. But in an earlier TV interview Holman stated “Hiphop is such a strong, pure and powerful subculture that only IT will dictate the commerciality of it, only IT will dictate how it is exploited”. Maybe Michael Holman regrets his compliance to what he thought those TV bosses wanted, or maybe not. But the limited success Holman achieved in securing a TV deal was probably due to the fact that he was attempting to sell a dumbed down version of hiphop as the real thing.

Graffiti Rock’s opening scene starts with a close up of Jimmy Jazz ’s hand scratching the recording on the Enjoy label, a very significant label that released  Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s Super Rappin‘(one of the very first hiphop records) in 1979.  Kool Moe Dee and Special K introduces Holman, who spits an off beat novelty rap recital inviting the public into the world of Graffiti Rock. A world that is pretty close to what hiphop is all about…No, Scratch the last statement, we meant – not as diluted as it could have been. The staged MC  battle between Run DMC and The Trecherous 3 slightly trivialised the concept of MC battling, with freestyles that struggle to pass as real battle rhymes. While Graffiti Rock represented a toned down image of hiphop in the eyes of many, it’s possible that Michael Holman was doing what he thought was neccesary to get his foot in the corporate door. When Holy Roller asked Holman his thoughts on the show not being picked up, he replied “How do you think I feel? if Grattiti Rock had been picked up I would have become a millionaire!”

Graffiti Rock was an unthreatening, choreographed portrayal of hiphop culture. This one-off 80’s pilot show conjures a reluctant image of  the hiphop eco system, all the so called ‘5 elements of NYC hiphop’ were represented; the graff, the mcing, the fly girls and b-boys chanting “graffiti rock, graffiti rock!!” and breakers on the floor. The NYC Breakers throwing down to Planet Patrol ‘Play at Your Own Risk’, can be seen as the high point of the show, and if there was a low point it would have been DJ Jimmy Jaz’ scratching…but he was faded out before he did too much scratch damage with his very basic ability. When Holman said “Don’t try this at home with your dad’s stereo, only under hiphop supervision!” the statement was not to be taken lightly!

The show remains a valid piece of history simply because it is the first attempt at presenting hiphop culture on TV. Holman’s entertaining but corny use of hiphop speak can leave viewers cringing, but overall the sugar coated Graffiti Rock is quite addictive. A brief look the sanitized graffiti rock hiphop image  will always pose the following question…

Was real hiphop in the building?

“Initially I only wanted real hiphop kids,but the investors forced me to make the audience more inclusive, apparently they were concerned about selling a show with an all black and puerto rican crowd, later on I learned that they were right to be concerned.“ (Quote from his website)

Holman assures that he got into the movement well before it was called hiphop. Some semi-known scensters lurked in the studio audience of Graffiti Rock, the actress Debbie Mazar, Loose Bruce, electric boogie boy Normski (seen in the late Malcolm McLaren’s Buffalo Gals video and Flash Dance), and Gray band member come actor ‘Prince Vince‘ Vincent Gallo. Gallo helped in casting the Graffiti Rock studio dancers.

Downtown Calling

On Sunday the 25th of April 2010 Holy Roller was present at Pop up Cinema at Village Underground for the only UK showing of Downtown Calling, a film by Shan Nicolson and co-produced by none other than Michael Holman. Downtown Calling is a film documenting the impact New York’s downtown scene has on the U.S. and the rest of the world. The irony is that it really seems to be about the impact the Bronx had on the rest of New York the  U.S.A and the rest of the world.

This film, whilst placing so much emphasis on hiphop, missed opportunities to give much credit to the true pioneers of hiphop. Footage used in Downtown Calling came from various sources including Beat this! A Hiphop History, a film by U.K. filmmaker Dick Fontaine. In one specific scene Holman says that he introduced Malcolm McLaren to Afrika Bambaataa, . In the following recording McLaren explains his  first meeting with Bambaataa.

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Malcolm Mclaren

Shottsman asked Michael Holman to elaborate on the statement he made that hiphop was dying until the downtown scene was exposed to it. Here is Holman’s answer:

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Micheal Holman 1

He says that rap was not an important element of hiphop. But lovers of old school hiphop tapes from those days strongly question that.
In this segment Holman says that the 5 elements of hiphop is something himself and Fab 5 Freddy put together as a package to make it easier to sell.

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Micheal Holman 2

In this next segment Holman talks about Graffiti Rock. He jokes that he suffered from “Trend-heimers disease“ meaning he’s always 5 years ahead of his time.

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Micheal Holman 3

Glorifying the tastemaker

In the promotion of Downtown Calling, one writer used these words to describe Michael Holman’s influence on Hip Hop:

“Holman’s nights at Club Negril became the launching point for the globalization of hip-hop culture (mostly due to his personal crusade to cross pollinate New York City’s uptown and downtown music scenes). Having graduated New York University’s Graduate School of Film, Holman directed Catch a Beat (the first B-boy/breakdance film (1981), associate produced Beat Street (the first hip-hop feature film) for Orion Pictures (1984)”

The writer incorrectly stated Beat Street was the first feature film, of course we know that the first feature film is Wildstyle released in 1983. Does the writer suggest that Michael Holman is solely responsible for hiphop’s worldwide success? Is there a danger in over romanticising certain individuals roles?

The Questions Remain

Much bigger forces than just Michael Holman were at work in bringing hiphop to the rest of the world, this much is clear, all the right answers are there but to get to them we must be in search of the right questions. Holy Roller  always has a bunch of questions feel free to add yours beneath and we’ll discuss the answers.

Shouldn’t the Bronx Block parties be credited as the launch pad of hiphop to the rest of the world as opposed the downtown NYC?
Why does ‘The Downtown’ take credit simply because journalists were not comfortable in going into the Bronx to witness real hiphop?
Does the credibility of inner city phenomena depend on who’s looking at it in the wider world?
Who has the right to dictate the sell by date of inner city phenomena?

Unsung Godfather?

Hip hop did not die in the late 80’s as the media and Michael Holman have suggested. The timeline between his entrance and exit of the culture strangely coincides with his rendition of the culture’s so called birth and ‘death’.

Hip hop has been subjected to these types of slurs ironically by the same people who feed off her. The image and reputation of hiphop culture has been tarnished, smeared, sabotaged, emulated and exploited time and time again… Yet it still it lives to fight another day.

Here’s a Micheal Holman related recording we found at the Record And Tape Exchange, Camden Town.

YOU CAN DO IT! BREAKDANCE was K-TEL recording advertised on television in 1984 .It taught kids to “Moonwalk,body pop and electric boogie”. This record featured unheard of artists such as B.T and the City Slickers, Joy and the Sticks Alex and the City Crew and non other than Michael Holman with the song New york City Breakers, a crew he managed at the time.This record was doomed for the bargain basement bins, but is definately worth the asking price of £ 2.50

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michael holman… the new york city breakers