GZA attacks Iowa City

GZA performing his classic album "Liquid Swords" at the Englert on April 1? Surely this is an elaborate April Fool's joke, right? Made nasty by gathering concert-starved Midwestern rap fans and telling them at reveal of no performer, how absurd it was to think they could expect someone from the Wu-Tang Clan to grace Iowa City with a visit. Well, apparently not. GZA truly opened the Mission Creek festivities this Wednesday to a sold out crowd of rabid Iowans.

Before I went to this concert, I kept in mind my mission to evaluate this concert from a poetry-minded perspective. I expected difficulty to form such a review for some reason, but actually the whole night played out as a devoted cel

ebration of the lyrics GZA wrote over ten years ago when he released the album in 1994.

I should probably include a little back story for the uninitiated. GZA hails from Brooklyn, New York where he developed his skills as a rapper with his cousins in the exploding hip-hop scene. He and his cousins eventually united to form the all-star team of the infamous Wu-Tang Clan. Wu completely changed the game of hardcore rap once they released the album Enter the Wu-tang (36 Chambers), which married themes of martial arts with their memories of violent street life, and demonstrated the RZA's unique production style which would go on to influence an entire decade of hip-hop. Members of the Wu-Tang Clan went on to make their own groundbreaking solo efforts including Raekown's Only Built for Cuban Linx..., Ghostface Killah's Fishscale (A personal favorite), and of course GZA's Liquid Swords.

Anyways, I expected a crowd consisted of an interesting mix of locals and both undergrad and grad students. Instead, a diverse mix of people filled the theater with a large proportion of the local residents. The show sold out and the bulk of crowd showed up before the openers started, showing just how psyched up this crowd had been. After the opening act ended the restless crowd threw up folded pairs of hands in the shape of a “W” famously symbolic of the Wu-Tang Clan. The crowd erupted when GZA took the stage, backed by a single DJ. GZA broke out into the first song, laying down a specific tone for the rest of the night. From that first song the crowds repeated the lyrics in step with GZA, like a minister in a rousing sermon. Throughout the songs GZA and the DJ would suddenly stop for an instant so the audience could fill in the end of a verse. It took me completely by surprise to see such a huge amount of people in Iowa so familiar with such a strange album. The material covered GZA’s hood experience told through a Shaolin warrior’s lens, as he extolled his toughness by demonstrating his mastery of the street experience, like Ramses II engraving his name over the buildings of conquered civilizations. I wondered how this crowd could possibly relate to these lyrics. But maybe instead of directly relating to the GZA’s lyrics, Iowa fans loved the album in more of an escapist sense, transporting them into dramatic scenes of hood life.

As the night progressed GZA’s performance increased in intensity. At one point he took the hand of a boy and let him on the stage. As GZA continued the song the boy danced and mouthed the words along until GZA hugged him and let him back off stage. At another point he let a girl up on stage to dance too. Between songs GZA overflowed with appreciation as he admitted he doesn’t get the chance to pass through here often.

However, the show was not without its snags. After the first song, GZA requested the “sound man” to turn his mic up. The sound guy didn’t quite respond as GZA asked and so GZA spent some minutes nearly demanding for his mic’s volume to be turned up. From the perspective of the audience, it seemed the sound guy denied the GZA because they feared it might get out of hand. However, GZA clearly wanted to give the audience the best experience possible, regardless of any other consequences. The sound problem never came to an ideal solution; I stood maybe a quarter of the auditorium’s length to the stage and even then I couldn’t hear the lyrics particularly clearly.

In the end, the pure energy of the show as created by the sheer exuberance of the audience in their love for the record made for a great experience. I would imagine that it must be every rapper’s dream to make an album so great that you can tour the country of the record to the masses even as you pass your creative prime. The GZA show makes those comments in the nineties of the limited existence of hip-hop look absurd and antiquated. The classic poets never achieved the kind of god like fervor from the masses as rappers. And yet rap doesn’t really derive from those poetic traditions, instead arising naturally from experience like a chemical reaction. It is artists like GZA who can take those natural forms and bend them to their artistic vision.

-Abhijit Pradhan