Wednesday February ., 2006 arts. michigandaily. com artspage@michigandaily.com al e £irbiotiun DUN tRTrS 5 S ONE MAN CREW K; Happy 250th, Mozart 2 LIVE CREW'S FRESH KID ICE ROLLS INTO A2 By Anthony Baber Daily Arts Writer For some contemporary critics and conservative folk alike, rap music is all about misogynistic ideas and the systematic degradation of women. Conventional wisdom holds that rappers have no respect for women and play off the clas- sic belief that sex sells. Modern artists such as Ludacris, Ying Yang Twins and David Banner Fresh Kid Ice Tonight at 11:30 p.m. Touchdown Cafe have all caught heat from big-name political commen- tators like Bill O'Reilly and other anti-rap officials for their sexually explicit lyrics. Though 2 Live Crew is in the spotlight now, the ten- sion between rap and censorship began long before any of today's rappers had even picked up a microphone. In the '80s, rap groups such as N.W.A. and 2 Live Crew were the epitome of hip hop, already pushing the limits of censorship. They also happened to be two of the most offensive musical acts around. Probably the most influential groups during the past 10 years of rap, they never conformed to the expectations held by the print and television media. Certain songs and albums were considered so explicit that Florida banned 2 Live Crew's As Nasty As They Wanna Be on the grounds that it was legally obscene. But the censorship didn't hold for long and the Supreme Court overturned the ruling in the name of free speech. Suddenly 2 Live Crew's work was in the same boat as J. D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" and other pieces of art that challenged America's free- speech laws. Though the group has changed members several times and hasn't been around in recent years, original member Fresh Kid Ice will bring what's left of the powerhouse to Touchdown Cafe tonight. "I've been going out for the past three years with myself, the dancers, Fish & Grits and my DJ, Big Ed," said current frontman and original member Fresh Kid Ice. After the loss of former members such as Luke and veryone's gone a little Mozart- crazy these days. The 250th birthday of the superfluously praised Austrian composer has the high- culture clan atwitter trying to find their own unique way to celebrate the man, his impact and his nearly innumerable compositions. While the New York Times even manages to get Mozart into their science section, expounding on his influence on Einstein, the University has also done its part. This semester brings a flurry of Mozart-related events sponsored by the University Musical Society." There will be local and Jap- anese quartets, and there ALI was the Norwegian pianist - and, perhaps most O grandly, the England-based Orchestre R6volutionnaire et Romantique and Mon- teverdi Choir did two of Mozart's most beloved works, his Mass in C Minor and his unfinished Requiem. You should recognize these two pieces - they were featured prominently in Milos Forman's 1985 "Amadeus," the former as aural narrative of the compos- er's life, and the latter most memorably as a creepy presage and accompaniment to his cinematic death. While last month's program at Hill Auditorium of the two works was pretty much breathtaking, it's the film - which won eight Academy Awards and was wildly popular at the time - that has come to propagate the genius of Mozart, and at the same time, his so-called vul- garity, loutishness and general insanity. To set the record straight, this particu- lar account of Mozart's life is exaggerat- ed, if not plain wrong. Forman and Peter Shaffer, playwright of the original stage version of "Amadeus," both say as much. "From the start we agreed on one thing: We were not making an objec- tive Life of Wolfgang Mozart," Shaffer once said. "This cannot be stressed too strongly. Obviously, Amadeus on stage was never intended to be a documentary biography of the composer, and the film is even less of one." So what's the difference? For one, Antonio Salieri, the jealous and vengeful villain and narrator - whose plotting drives Mozart slightly mad - damns the great composer as "spiteful, sniggering, conceited, infantine ... who has never worked one minute to help another man!" SC i0 That is, he damns him in the play and movie. In real life, Salieri and Mozart were modest friends, not rivals. Salieri was even teacher to Mozart's son. But it's not as if you can blame the Sal- ieri on screen and stage for his vendetta against Mozart. If there's one thing most viewers probably take away from the film, it's Mozart's abundant childishness, immaturity and combativeness - that inces- sant giggle, proclivity for the toilet humor and ability to push everyone's buttons. While no saint (but ironically the composer of more than two-dozen choral masses) and unquestionably weird (he may have had Tourette's ON Syndrome), the real Mozart kept his potty mouth confined to the home. A genius beyond his age, Mozart was still a businessman, selling his musical wares. Forman and Shaffer do a hack job with Mozart's integrity, but in true dramatic fashion, they give him a little too much credit for his natural ability. In the film, an envious Salieri mourns God's gift to Mozart: "His drafts showed no correc- tions of any kind. He was simply writing down music already finished in his head, page after page as if he were taking dic- tation. ... Displace one note and there would be diminishment, displace one phrase and the structure would fall." But this doesn't account for years of study with Haydn, the hard work and immense knowledge of musical tradition and history. By his own admission, or perhaps admitted out of pride, Mozart said, "People make a mistake who think my art has come easily to me. Nobody has devoted so much time and thought to composition as I." Two-hundred-fifty years after his birth, Mozart - as we know him - is best known because of a movie. But it's the music in the first place - whether begotten by birth or by hard work, and whether received with glee or resent- ment - that continues to inspire the likes of Einstein, Beethoven, Shaffer and Forman. Mozart may not like what many think of him nowadays, but he need not fret over what we think of his music. Happy birthday, Wolfie. Courtesy of Fresh Kid Ice 2 Live Crew's Fresh Kid Ice will perform tonight at Touchdown Cafe. Brother Marquis, Ice maintains the group's legacy. "I haven't been (in Ann Arbor) in a few years, so I just want to bring back some of the music to the people. It's been over three years," he said. As creators of one of the original molds for South- ern rap, 2 Live Crew has affected most hip hop in heavy rotation today. "Without 2 Live Crew, hip hop would be kind of bland;' he said. "Not too many groups (would have taken) the chance that we and N.W.A. took at that time with the music and standing up for what we believed." Ice added that Southern-style, 2 Live Crew-inspired hip hop has had a rebirth in recent years. "(Southern hip hop) is getting back to the club style kind of music," he said. "A lot of people out there right now are going to the club and relaxing instead of taking on the stress, and trying to have a good time." Because 2 Live Crew inspired much of the music that comes from the South today, Fresh Kid Ice can empathize with artists who are dealing with issues of censorship. Songs considered offensive or immoral for their anti-female and violent content still exist in the catalogs of rappers today. "You're always going to get critics, and for them to be artists, they have to go out and express themselves how they want" he said. "People are going to like you because of your music and critics are going to criticize you (because of) your subject matter, but they have to just keep being themselves and keep going with it" Many rappers forget where they began after hitting it big and leave smaller venues in the shadows, but Fresh Kid Ice's return to Ann Arbor proves he hasn't forgotten his roots and the people who supported him in the beginning. "It's the people who make us by ... buying records or coming to support us at shows" he said. - Go transmits evil keg viruses via Mozart CDs. Trust us. 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