The Casino File
Those looking for relief from the same-old, same-old in their concertgoing lives are directed to Harrah’s Resort Atlantic City on Feb. 20. That’s when Black Violin will be weaving their singular musical magic.
Violinist Kev Marcus and viola player Wil B, who met in a high school music class in their native Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., have been mashing up hip-hop with classical music since the early 2000s. It’s a path they’ve travelled to critical and public acclaim, working with some of the biggest musical artists of the past 25 years and two Grammy Award nominations.
An ‘animated’ introduction
During a recent phone chat, Marcus (real name, Kevin Marcus Sylvester) recalled his introduction to classical music.
“Before starting the violin, it was like ‘Tom and Jerry’ and Looney Tunes cartoons,” he offered. “My mom had this image of me when I was wearing diapers and I was pretending like I was conducting in front of the TV.
“Cartoons back then used to be orchestrated. So that was, for most kids of my generation, our first exposure to classical music.”
From the start, remembered Marcus, he took to classical music like, well, a wise-cracking rabbit takes to carrots.
“It always did speak to me,” he said, “and people would just say I was always naturally really good at it. And I don’t ever remember it being difficult. It was something I did. I always remember being a natural and I was always gravitating to it.”
Seeds of an idea
Marcus, who identified violinist Boyd Tinsley of the Dave Matthewes Band as a particularly influential role model, pinpointed a couple of the key moments that put him and Wil B (real name Wilner Baptiste) on their genre-mashing adventure.
“I remember our school orchestra went to go get judged at a competition in like Central Florida or something” he explained. “We were all wearing tuxedos and we were playing Busta Rhymes’ ‘Gimme Some More.’ It had the theme of [the 1960 film ‘Psycho’] in it; it was just like this eerie violin line.
“We walked in playing that hip-hop version and all the other orchestras were like, ‘What’s that? How do they know that Busta run? Where’s the sheet music?’ But we just learned it by ear. And it was kind of an ‘a-ha’ moment because everyone was asking us how we did it.
“And then in college, [he and Baptiste] created a production company, and we had all of these [hip-hop] artists, and we did a showcase with the artists, and we played violin in the back, and everybody was just staring at us because they thought it was so different.
“We actually tried to keep hip-hop and classical separate from the beginning point of our career. It wasn’t until we noticed everyone looking at us like, ‘Wait, how are you doing that?’ And we’re like, ‘We don’t know how we do it. We just do it!’
“I think that was the thing that changed everything for us.”
Not that the duo enjoyed a universally warm reception at the start. Interestingly, noted Marcus, the early acceptance was weighted on the pop-music side of things.
“I think that the hip-hop side embraced it more,” he said. “I wouldn’t say that the [classical community] rejected us, but they weren’t as warm with the embrace.
“But the hip-hop industry seemed to be very, very interested in it. And they were like, ‘Oh, look at that!’ And Alicia Keys would bring us out on tour and Kanye West had us open for him. It’s because they all wanted to have some of that energy.”
But over time, he added, things have changed to a significant degree. “The classical-music world is “embracing it way more. And it’s a lot more of this all around the world now, where there’s sort of these crossings of popular music and classical orchestras.
“So, we play with orchestras all the time now. Hip-hop is all about disruption; classical’s probably not that, so it may have taken [the classical world] a little bit longer. And we still have our struggles in some classical circles, but it’s not really about rejection; it’s just about the level of acceptance, I would say.”
A wider musical palette
While the blending of hip-hop and classical is Black Violin’s calling card, they are hardly a two-trick pony. The duo’s material also includes heaping helpings of rock, pop R&B and gospel. That, insisted Marcus, is the pair’s secret sauce.
“I think we are really limitless when we approach creation and we just allow the violin to be the thread. And because of that, we can be rock on this song; we can be gospel on this song; it could be trap-hip-hop on the next song and then completely classical on the next song.
“But the violin is the thread that holds everything together. And we’re able to create from the law of potentiality. Anything is possible on our albums, and it’s really freeing to be that way.”
For tickets, go to ticketmaster.com.
Chuck Darrow has spent more than 40 years writing about Atlantic City casinos.
