Marshall's plan
A DJ who's also a scholar brings cultures together musically
CAMBRIDGE -- Sitting in a sun-dappled corner of his in-laws' Cambridge home, Wayne Marshall is speaking enthusiastically about Boston's ''rich, but sordid history" of cultural interaction and juxtaposition, segregation and integration. The Harvard University graduate sounds like a learned historian detailing the city's painful past of school busing, ''white flight" to the suburbs, racial turmoil, andreconciliation.
Then, pressing a few keys on his laptop, Marshall plays the skittery, soft-loud opening of the Cars' ''Just What I Needed," and perfectly bleeds it into the spare synth-bounce of Bell Biv Devoe's ''Poison" -- new wave meets new jack swing. As Cars' bassist and singer Ben Orr improbably sings over the late 1980s club hit, Marshall doesn't so much hear the differences in the music as the similarities bridging twocultures.
''When you think of certain sounds and music representing certain communities, you can get into some pretty interesting critical commentary when you put music together," Marshall says. ''Serendipitously, these songs signify each other."
Already one of the most sought-after DJs in the Boston area, Marshall is also an ethnomusicologist, studying music from a cross-cultural perspective and within the context of society and culture. In between gigs, the 29-year-old Cambridge native is completing his doctoral dissertation, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, tentatively titled, ''Routes, Rap, Reggae: Hearing the Histories of Reggae and Hip-Hop Together." Marshall, who performs as Wayne&Wax, will be a featured DJ at the Hip-Hop History Jam, sponsored by the Somerville Arts Council and presented by the Library of Vinyl Experience (L.O.V.E.) in Union Square tomorrow. Marshall's set will concentrate on rap's reggae ancestry.
Though he always loved music -- especially rap, after receiving as a Christmas present from his aunt a cassette of Run-DMC's ''King of Rock" -- Marshall attended Harvard as an English major. For years, he'd dabbled in music, rapping as a student at Cambridge Rindge & Latin and playing in bands in college. Still, his focus on music changed from a hobby to a vocation when he took a course on African-American music during his senior year.
''He was in a mix of about 20 students, and I remember him being very hungry to learn about black music -- not only its history, but in trying to develop a perspective informed by some of the more recent theoretical thinking about race and culture," said Ronald Radano, a University of Wisconsin professor of musicology and ethnomusicology. Radano was a visiting professor at Harvard when he taught Marshall. The class, Radano said, ''represented black music as part of the formation on racial ideology."
Marshall recalls that class as a revelation. ''I hadn't realized before that there was a way for me to unite my passion for music, my intellectual interest, and social activism because I'm interested in the way that music can tell stories about society and can challenge our assumptions."
Even a quick glance at the table where Marshall works on mash-ups for an upcoming show reveals the breadth of his interests. A copy of Frantz Fanon's ''The Wretched of the Earth" lies near Jeff Chang's expansive hip-hop history, ''Can't Stop, Won't Stop." Nearby, there's a copy of ''Solid Foundation," David Katz's oral history of reggae, amid stacks of CDs. Marshall wears an olive green shirt with Larry Bird -- Marshall is a devoted Boston sports fan -- on which the Celtics icon is outlined with the red, gold, and green colors associated with Rastafarians.
He speaks with equal authority about Kool DJ Herc, widely credited as the father of hip-hop, or an entertaining, much-circulated mash-up of Britney Spears and Eminem, ''Oops! Slim Shady Did It Again." He can trace the miraculous afterlife of the evergreen ''mad mad" rhythm -- or riddim, as it's called in Jamaica, which originated in the 1967 Alton Ellis reggae song, ''Mad Mad Mad." Its familiar zunguzung sound has since popped in such hip-hop tracks as the Notorious B.I.G.-led Junior M.A.F.I.A's ''Player's
His laptop, which is all he needs when he performs, is like a jukebox packed with 40 years of songs, sounds, and rhythms, both obscure and familiar.
That versatility shows on his CDs -- he's released several, most recently 2003's ''Boston Jerk," culled from a six-month sojourn in Kingston, Jamaica -- and in his performances; he approaches both as an educator and an entertainer.
''He's incredibly talented at bringing together diverse musical elements that don't necessarily appear together, but are related either musically, culturally, or in terms of the associations they evoke," says Pacey Foster, L.O.V.E. founder and the producer of Somerville's History of Hip-Hop event.
Foster mentions a recent Marshall creation, ''Boston Mashacre," in which Marshall pulled together such unlikely sources as Extreme's ''More Than Words," Tracy Chapman's ''Fast Car," Mr. Lif's ''Home of the Brave," and the Standells' ''Dirty Water." He also added ''field recordings" such as sounds from the Davis Square farmer's market and snippets of real conversations.
''He turned all these songs into a mix that references all these classic Boston bands," says Foster, who is also known as DJ Pace. (Technically speaking, the Standells weren't a Boston band, but their song is as much a part of this city as clam chowder.) ''What he does is educating people about music without preaching about music. It's fun, but if you dig in you realize there's all kinds of layers there."
Radano admits he was at first skeptical about Marshall's work as a DJ and producer.
''I'm 48, so we're generationally different. I didn't cut my teeth on hip-hop, although I have enormous respect for it," he says. ''But when I heard his work on CD -- he's very gifted. I'm amazed and impressed that he's both skilled as a scholar as well as a performer."
Marshall, who is married, hopes to have his dissertation completed later this year, and then get what he calls ''a real job" in the field of ethnomusicology. Whatever his path, he intends to continue nurturing both sides of his professional life as a beat scientist and an academic.
''I like the way these various roles overlap and inform each other," he says. ''My business cards say 'Scholar/Producer.' It's a little cheesy, but I can't underestimate the degree to which making music has informed my study of music, and vice versa."
The Hip-Hop History Jam featuring Wayne&Wax, DJ Yamin, DJ Def Rock, DJ Drama, DJ Flack, DJ C is tomorrow from 4 to 8 p.m. in Union Square, Somerville. Call 617-625-6600, ext. 2985 or visit www.somervilleartscouncil.org. Rain date is Sunday.
