In 1986, Vanderbilt’s campus radio station, WRVU-91.1 FM, released City Without a Subway, a compilation LP of various underground rock acts from Nashville. It was an attempt to shed light on local music in a town that was always being identified with the product coming out of Music Row. The album created something of a local stir, and if nothing else was a notable achievement for a college radio station. But today it is more of an artifact than a good listen.
Nearly 15 years have passed, and WRVU has finally released its second-ever record, one that shows how much Nashville and the station itself have grown. The opportunity presented itself when jazz legend Weldon Irvine had been invited to headline the 1999 “Ultimate Breaks and Beats” benefit, a WRVU-sponsored show at 328 Performance Hall featuring recognized hip-hop artists and deejays. It was a landmark achievement for Nashville, and was largely due to the organization and guidance of WRVU’s station manager at the time, Eothen Alapatt. Alapatt had always dreamed of an event that would help “reenergize the Nashville hip-hop community,” and this one-of-a-kind meeting between independent hip-hop artists and a musician of Irvine’s stature seemed the perfect opportunity. After the overwhelming response to the concert, Alapatt thought, why not release a recording of the performance under the aegis of WRVU? One year later, the result is Weldon Irvine: Live in Nashville.
For Alapatt, who graduated from Vanderbilt this past spring, the 12-inch vinyl EP was the culmination of his lifelong love for hip-hop and the jazz/funk artists who kindled it. “I fell in love with hip-hop,” he says, “mainly because of an excellent college radio station out of New Haven, Conn. [where he grew up]. When I was in high school, I was exposed to the world of funk first through the realization that hip-hop songs were based on funk samples.” It was only a matter of time before Alapatt became an archivist, searching out obscure soul, funk, and jazz discs.
In 1996, Alapatt enrolled as a freshman at Vanderbilt. Although at first glance Nashville might have seemed an odd choice for a fan of hip-hop culture, he soon got deeply involved at WRVU, hoping to establish the station as “a haven for progressive hip-hop in an important but overlooked market.” As the host of both the popular 911 Emergency show (with cohost Count Bass D) and the Origins of Hip-Hop broadcast, he helped educate local listeners about new, independent hip-hop and obscure vintage soul and R&B, even going so far as to interview many of the original players on those funk records, among them James Brown alumni Clyde Stubblefield, Bobby Byrd, and Lyn Collins. “I realized that I should attempt to contact the actual artists who made funk possible,” he says, “as I was part of the last generation that would have easy access to these legends.”
Eager to take his hip-hop advocacy even further, Alapatt (whose on-air handle is “DJ Egon”), became program director at WRVU and launched the monthly “Shapes of Rhythm” show at the Mediterranean Cuisine restaurant across from Vandy. The live-music event, which brought in deejays and rappers from around the region, became a huge success, averaging about 300 audience members per show—“not a bad crowd,” he says, “for performers such as The Mighty VIC and Massinfluence.” From there, he decided to put together a big, year-end blowout, “Ultimate Breaks and Beats.” The concert’s moniker was taken from the landmark 1980s series of LPs that introduced many in the hip-hop generation to funk for the first time. In this spirit, Alapatt envisioned an evening where hip-hop artists from across the country would share a bill with a recognized musical legend who’d helped lay the foundation for hip-hop. It was a rare event for a city whose appreciation of urban music had never been affirmed in such a unified fashion.
Weldon Irvine was the perfect choice for this inaugural installment of “Ultimate Breaks and Beats”: He was a pianist and songwriter who’d played with Nina Simone in the ’60s, and his own jazzy, funk-tinged solo recordings had been sampled by a number of rap artists, among them Boogie Down Productions and A Tribe Called Quest.
“From the moment I spoke to Weldon on the telephone, I realized that he understood hip-hop culture better than most,” Alapatt writes in the liner notes to the disc. “While many of his contemporaries regard hip-hop as a gross mockery of the funk movement, Weldon regards it as a continuation.” Listening to the record, Irvine’s kinship with modern hip-hop is indeed unmistakable. His trio of local players, including Mark Nash on guitar, Bill Bowles on bass, and drummer Lemar Carter, had only one hour to rehearse, but they came together with startling spontaneity. Irvine’s Fender Rhodes piano shimmers against a taut groove on classics like “Mr. Clean” and “Turkish Bath,” and the cheering crowd in the background only affirms what a spectacular night it must have been.
The show’s success convinced Alapatt that Irvine’s performance needed to be released to the public. “Weldon was cool,” he says. “He knew there wouldn’t be much money in the issue, but he basically did it as a favor to me.” Thanks to the cooperation of several local businesses, including United Record Pressing, manufacturing costs for the 12-inch record were modest, and the expenses were funded entirely through WRVU’s annual budget.
The response to the record, which came out several months ago, has been heartening: Chicago’s DustyGroove.com, the taste-making jazz and funk online retailer, says the record is “right up there with Weldon’s best work ever.... In a way, this is the most all-out funky Irvine album ever waxed.” According to Alapatt, the disc has almost sold out of its initial run, and record buyers can look forward to more WRVU releases in the near future. He’s currently putting together an “Ultimate Breaks and Beats” CD for release in August; the compilation will feature performances from both last year’s concert and this year’s follow-up show, “Ultimate Breaks and Beats 2,” and will include artists such as DJ Signify, the Breakestra, and Peanut Butter Wolf.
Although Alapatt has relocated to Los Angeles, he’s continuing the work he began at WRVU. Currently, he’s helping legendary Hair composer Galt MacDermot, who headlined the “Ultimate Breaks and Beats 2” concert, release a compilation of unissued tracks from the late ’60s and early ’70s entitled Up From the Basement. It’s scheduled to come out in early August on MacDermot’s own label, Kilmarnock. Alapatt has also put together a full LP of MacDermot’s Nashville performance, Galt MacDermot: Live in Nashville, for release in early September. Finally, the “Origins of Hip-Hop” show that began so humbly at Vanderbilt has gotten a second life, on L.A. radio station KPFK, with Alapatt hosting.
It’s a long way to come for the wide-eyed hip-hop fan who first made his way down to Nashville four years ago, but Alapatt’s enthusiasm is as strong as ever. And the success of the “Ultimate Breaks and Beats” concerts, coupled with WRVU’s newly rededicated record label, shows just how much that kind of enthusiasm can bring about palpable results. Nashville has benefited from Alapatt’s humble wish to “bridge the funk and hip-hop generations,” and hopefully the city will continue that vision in his absence.
