Pre-order Oakland in Popular Memory today!

My first work of nonfiction, Oakland in Popular Memory is being published on May 15, 2012. It's available to pre-order from Thought Publishing for $15. ISBN 978-0982689837.
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Interview with Daveed Diggs from the Broadway show Hamilton

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Interview with Daveed Diggs in 7x7 Magazine Back in 2012, I called Daveed Diggs's Small Things to a Giant my favorite album of the year. I liked how he addressed gentrification in Oakland , made Gertrude Stein references, and put together a stunning album with his collaborators Rafael Casal and Chinaka Hodge. Well, he's back, and this time with a Grammy. Diggs is an Oakland hip hop artist/actor who's currently starring in the hit musical Hamilton on Broadway. He won a 2016 Grammy award for his performance on the Hamilton cast album, and 7x7 Magazine recently published my  interview with Daveed Diggs . The 7x7 interview is just an excerpt, and I've put the full interview below. Meet the Oakland-Native Who Stars in Hamilton Interview by Matt Werner Transcription by Korin McGinty Broadway’s breakout musical Hamilton is coming to San Francisco in 2017. Daveed Diggs, a rapper who grew up between Oakland, Albany, and El Cerrito, plays two of the leads: Marq...
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What is Hyphy? (1st draft of introduction to Oakland in Popular Memory)

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“What is hyphy?” a Scottish DJ asked me at a Fresh Air: The Alternative meeting in fall, 2008. I had just started grad school at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and was attending my first meeting with the student radio club. I had mentioned that I was thinking of doing a show featuring hyphy music. I explained to the first-year undergraduate that hyphy is a fast, hyper-active style of hip hop music from Oakland, California where I was born. I continued, clarifying that hyphy doesn’t involve just music, but it’s an entire movement, which embodies a culture, lifestyle, attire, and an ever-evolving patois consisting of words that for the most part originate from 3 men named Mac Dre , Keak da Sneak , and E-40 . He was intrigued. I went on explaining that the Hyphy Movement involves sideshows, which are wild rallies, often in abandoned parking lots in East Oakland, where people “go dumb,” doing wild car tricks involving “ghost riding the whip,” which is when t...
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From ‘Hipster Ariel’ to Sparkle Pony, Meet Molly Gallagher from Burning Man: The Musical

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Molly Gallagher performing as Sparkle Pony Molly Gallagher plays the character Sparkle Pony in Burning Man: The Musical . We caught up with her to discuss her experience on the first video shoot, her theater training at NYU, and how her character is a Disney princess meets a badass ninja warrior. You can watch her and others perform the opening to Burning Man: The Musical live at the 10-minute musical theater festival Sound Bites on January 18, 2015 in New York City. - Burning Man: The Musical team How did you first get involved with Burning Man: The Musical? Matt Werner (the writer) saw me in other videos on YouTube and thought I would be good for this project so he asked me to play Sparkle Pony! I got extremely lucky. How did you prepare to sing all of the female vocals on the opening track? What was that experience like? I was first sent a recording of the composer singing the song and a lyrics sheet. I listened to it a million times before I went to record. When I g...
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