Tulsa hip-hop movement Fire in Little Africa bringing message to OKC
TULSA — Rhyming through his song “Visions,” Steph Simon paid homage to homegrown legends Wayman Tisdale and Charlie Wilson while looking ahead to the future of Tulsa hip hop and the Greenwood District.
“I wrote that song five, six years ago for today, for 2021. We here now,” Simon said from the stage last Saturday as he performed at the dedication of the Tulsa Race Massacre Memorial Tree at Carver Middle School.
“I used to play in this field, so this is dope.”
For the past few years, Simon has been making music in and about Greenwood, the district historically known as Black Wall Street that was burned down during the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Now, he’s an executive producer for Fire in Little Africa, a coalition of
Oklahoma rappers, musicians and artists who initially came together for a single project — to record a compilation hip-hop album — that has since blazed into a multimedia movement receiving national notice.
“It was everybody getting on board for a cause, which is not only spreading awareness of Black Wall Street, but taking that history and that mentality and instilling it into people going forward,” Simon told The Oklahoman.
“It’s catching like an organic wave where people are talking about — and that’s exciting because you don’t see that these days in music. But music hasn’t came with such a powerful message like this in so long, and people are hungry for or thirsty for this type of message.”
Largely kept apart for the past year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 30 artists will perform “An Evening with Fire in Little Africa” on Saturday on the North Lawn of the Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center in downtown Oklahoma City. Oklahoma Contemporary Artistic Director Jeremiah Matthew Davis described Fire in Little Africa as a movement of “explosive creativity and extraordinary scale.”
“Fire in Little Africa is history in the making. With a rare combination of vision, creativity and intellect, the largerthan-life collective mines the histories of Black Wall Street, both known and untold, to craft a new form of musical exploration,” said Davis in an email.
Compilation album
Performers for Saturday’s OKC event will include Simon, Dialtone, St. Domonick, Ayilla, Hakeem Eli’Juwon, Ausha LaCole, Tony Foster Jr. and Ray June. OKC rapper and activist Jabee will be emcee.
Although in-person tickets are sold out and a waitlist has been started, the show also will be live-streamed at okcontemp.org/FILA, facebook.com/ OklahomaContemporary, facebook.com/fireinlittleafrica and on Fire in Little Africa‘s YouTube channel.
“The performance at Oklahoma Contemporary, the collective’s first in the state capital, will weave elements of visual art, storytelling and history to create a hip-hop experience unlike any other,” Davis said.
He said Saturday’s event will kick off a series of exhibitions and programs at Oklahoma Contemporary that explore the legacy of Civil Rights in Oklahoma and the reverberations of the Tulsa Race Massacre.
That mission has ignited Fire in Little Africa into a homegrown hip-hop movement, said Stevie “Dr. View” Johnson, Fire in Little Africa executive producer and the manager of education and diversity outreach for Tulsa’s Woody Guthrie Center and Bob Dylan Center. Although he and Simon started Fire in Little Africa to create a compilation album to mark the Tulsa Race Massacre centennial, it has grown into much more.
“We both recognize that, hey, the only reason why people are even talking about this centennial because Black people were killed 100 years ago. If we were flourishing and all these great things 100 years later, we wouldn’t even be having these conversations. So, we just felt like if anybody was going to take advantage of that moment and truly commemorate the ancestors and really bring the attention to folks to what’s happening in America but also in Tulsa, we could be those voices,” Johnson said.
Last March, 60 rappers, poets and producers from Tulsa, OKC and Lawton gathered in Greenwood to record an album to speak to the truth of what happened on May 31-June 1, 1921, when a white mob descended on the streets of Greenwood — at that time one of the wealthiest Black communities in the United States, earning it the name “Black Wall Street” — and burned down the business district, destroying roughly 1,500 homes, killing hundreds and leaving thousands of Black Tulsans homeless.
“We recorded 143 songs in five days. We recorded at the Greenwood Cultural Center, which is on Greenwood. It’s not a recording space, so we literally made something out of nothing. Then, we also recorded at the Skyline Mansion, which used to be called Brady Mansion,” Johnson said.
The Skyline Mansion is the former home of the late Tate Brady, a Ku Klux Klan member and instigator of the Tulsa Race Massacre. It is now owned by Tulsa native and former NFL running back Felix Jones, who has turned it into an event center.
“I think that’s what the ancestors wanted: They wanted us to be on Greenwood. They wanted us to to reflect. ... That weekend was in of itself a successful Fire in Little Africa, because we got this many artists to focus on this project and we didn’t have any hiccups, none whatsoever. It was truly a peace that passeth all understanding type of moment,” Johnson said.
“Then the pandemic shut down everything. So, people couldn’t really go anywhere, and we really just had to strategize how we keep this thing afloat.”
Legendary label
During the pandemic, the Fire in Little Africa project began to develop into a full-fledged movement, which now includes a streaming concert series at Tulsa’s Mercury Lounge, two podcast series and an upcoming documentary.
Working primarily through Zoom, the group narrowed the compilation album from 143 songs to 21 tracks. Johnson shared the rough cuts with Bob Dylan’s publicist, Larry Jenkins, who passed them along to the head of Motown Records/Black Forum, which will release the album May 28, in time for the Tulsa Race Massacre anniversary.
“Fire in Little Africa is a powerful and timely project that provides a platform and outlet for the incredibly talented and thriving music community of Tulsa, Oklahoma,” said Motown Records Chairman and CEO Ethiopia Habtemariam in a statement. “Carrying the legacy of the Black Wall Street community, Fire in Little Africa is a body of work filled with purpose and prolific storytelling. I am honored and feel privileged to have Motown Records/Black Forum partner with Dr. View, the Bob Dylan Center and Guthrie Center to release this impactful hip-hop album.”
Continuing mission
In addition to partnering with Oklahoma Contemporary, Fire in Little Africa will be teaming at Saturday’s event with Justice for Julius, a coalition advocating for Oklahoma death-row inmate Julius Jones.
“It’s the first time people are going to be able to get a taste of what were doing, and I have a lot of friends and family in Oklahoma City that are rooting for us. So, I’m just happy to bring it out there to it, and then get ready for the big day, the centennial weekend,” Simon said.