nilotabrizy

For my master’s project at Columbia University, I wrote a story about Jamaican-Americans and their place in hip-hop. This was a photojournalism and print hybrid master’s project with a 29-picture photo essay about Cory Flook – a Jamaican-American trying to make it in hip-hop. Check out the photos and the story below. I’ve included an excerpt of the story so if you’d like to read more, please contact me.

Them want come wreck ya: Jamaicans and their place in hip-hop
By Nilo Tabrizy (Copyright 2012)

With the sun setting outside his window, hip-hop artist Cory Flook records music from his 10^th-floor in Mount Vernon, a gritty section of Westchester County that sits just above the Bronx. Demo CDs are scattered on his windowsill and a broken Sony Discman covered in dust lies on the ground. Amid the disarray, Flook exudes a certain style and put-togetherness. His hair is bound into short, tight dreadlocks and he dons a green earth-tone long-sleeve shirt. That’s his Jamaican self, he says. Dark baggy jeans and a low-slung baseball cap form bookends to his outfit – the reality of the American culture in which he lives and performs.

To succeed, Flook is discovering his music must successfully, evenly, delicately straddle the same cultural divide.

Born in the United States, Cory Flook is half-Jamaican. His mother is from St. Catherine’s, Jamaica and his father is from St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Flook started performing when his mother put him in a talent show at 12 years old. There, he met producers who gave him his first experience in a recording studio. His musical roots come from his father, who was also a rapper. Until he was 17 years old, Flook was signed to Tycal Entertainment, a label so small that its web presence amounts to a MySpace page, that hasn’t been updated in two years. When Flook realized his deal with Tycal made money for his handlers and little for him, he started to produce his own music at 18.

Making it in the music industry is hard enough. Flook says to perform in Manhattan in before record labels, artists are often charged up to $150. But making it in hip-hop as a Jamaican – as a cultural outsider – is proving even more difficult for Cory Flook. When he performed at a free open mic at Karma Lounge in the East Village, no one showed up.  In a small basement area, below the main club, on a makeshift stage with a wavering spotlight, struggling artists like Flook rapped their songs nonetheless.

“No label wanted to sign Jay-Z,” Flook says by way of explanation, as much as a reminder to himself. “All the greats pop because they had to make it pop. Ain’t nobody believe in them, they had to believe in themselves.”

Jamaican immigrants certainly stood out in New York. There was a mass migration of Jamaicans to the United States after national immigration quotas were lifted under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Today, New York State has the largest number of Jamaican Americans in the United States.

Jamaican immigrants are widely credited with bringing the roots of hip-hop to the Bronx in the 1970s. Clive Campbell, deejaying under the moniker DJ Kool Herc, immigrated to the West Bronx from Jamaica in 1967. Kool Herc grew up with the large sound systems of neighborhood parties in the garrisons of Jamaica, called dancehalls and DJs improvising speech in between songs, called toasting. Toasting lay the foundation for rap – it involves improvising spoken, rather than sung, lyrics over a beat. Kool Herc was famous for throwing his own version of Jamaican dancehalls at his parents’ apartment building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in Morris Heights, Bronx. These were the first parties where hip-hop was played. Kool Herc would play popular funk records of artists like James Brown, and reggae music, then he would isolate the instrumental breaks and toast over these breaks.

Here’s a story I did on Kris Harris, a father of three, a husband, a high school career counsellor and a part-time concession stand worker at the Film Forum. I followed his life for two months and here are some photos, and a written profile about him.

Dec 16 – With his five-year-old son tugging on his grey sweat pants, Kristoffer Harris is trying to have a conversation with his wife, who also has an 11-month-old tucked under her arm. At the same time, their three-year-old son launches a lime green ball in the air from the other side of the room. With the finesse of father who is used to multi-tasking, Kristoffer Harris continues the conversation with his wife, all while kicking the ball back to his son.

Kristoffer married his high school sweetheart, Kristen Harris, in 2006 and soon after they started a family. They have three boys, five-year-old Joshua, three-year-old Ben, and 11-month-old Sidney. Kristoffer said he was born to be a dad, and he’s the happiest when he’s a father.

“I feel like it’s what I was made for. It feels very natural. I feel like I lucked out to have three boys.” Kristoffer said. “Now I’ve got my team that is literally mine. It’s of me, they are me, and I’m molding them. I’m being a coach all day 24 hours a day.”

Both Kristoffer and Kristen say they come from somewhat dysfunctional families. They also said their complicated family roots pushed them to be supportive and functional parents for their own children. Kristen’s father was largely absent in her life, and whenever he was around, he was often fighting with her mother. Kristoffer’s father had five children with four different women, and Kristoffer said he too was absent during his childhood.

The Harris family lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Kristoffer works two jobs to help provide for the family. Returning to a job he had in his twenties, Kristoffer works one night a week at the concession stand at the Film Forum. He said it’s a way to bring in some extra income for his family.

Kristoffer’s primary job is a career counselor at the Bronx International High School. He helps coordinate a student internship program between students at the school and organizations accepting student interns in New York. This school is aimed at serving the needs of newly immigrated students and their families. Bronx International High School accepts students who score below the 20^th percentile on the Language Assessment Battery, and have been in the country for fewer than four years. Kristoffer said this is a challenging environment to teach in, but it makes him feel fulfilled.

“I’ve always been good at helping other people say what they want to say. And helping them understand it, and translate their feelings into action or into coherent thoughts and words.” Kristoffer said.

Kristen agrees, she said that Kristoffer is a very talented teacher because he possesses a natural charisma and ability that shines in teaching. “You can’t teach somebody how to do youth work, and how to relate and connect. But he is able to find a commonality and connect very well. I think better than most people.” She said.

The couple have known each other since high school. With their similar first names, they affectionately label their relationship, “The Kris.” It’s an accurate description of how connected they are. Kristoffer characterized their relationship as easy, as if they always fit together. He said they never had to try too hard to get along.

Kristen is from Hartford, Connecticut where she attending Farmington High School, and Kristoffer attended boarding school nearby at Loomis-Chaffee School. Introduced by mutual friends, they dated from the time they were sixteen. They even jokingly had a pact that if neither of them were married by the time they were 30 years old, that they would marry each other.

After high school, Kristen moved up to New York and Kristoffer would come up and visit her. According to Kristoffer, the future of their relationship was solidified when Kristen cooked him “orgasmic” ribs for dinner. The easy-going nature of their relationship remained throughout their adult life.

But today, their relationship is not as easy-going. While both Kristoffer and Kristen said they love being parents, their new parental roles brought forward new tensions in their relationship. Kristoffer said that one of the reasons their relationship has always been so strong is due to his spontaneous nature.

“When you have three kids, you can’t really live a spontaneous life. There are aspects of our relationship and they’re completely new, and we still haven’t acclimated ourselves to, or made the necessary changes.” Kristoffer said about his relationship with his wife.

He said that while him and his wife are both wiling to make sacrifices in personal time for their children, it is harder for them to make those same sacrifices for their relationship. Kristoffer went on to explain, saying that they have to split their time between work and their children. And it’s hard enough to find enough time for each of them to have their own individual free time, let alone also finding time for them to spend together as a couple. Kristen said it was easier to achieve this when they had two children, but having a third child outnumbered the two parents.

“We used to spend 5pm to 9pm together, but now we spend five o’clock to nine o’clock [in the evening] chasing after the kids.” Kristoffer said with a laugh.

Both Kristoffer and Kristen said they look forward to striking a new balance in their relationship. One that allows them to find more time to be a couple, while still being “The Kris,” a parental unit that is devoted to hands-on parenting.