It was the beginning of the summer of 2009 and a group called nuAi hatched a plan to start an open mic. The group started organizing events in the early 2000s in San Gabriel and created their first successful series at the East Side Cafe in El Sereno shortly after.
With Moses living in El Sereno, Aaron and Moses would often freestyle at Alhambra Park. There was a rotating cast of graffiti writers and freestylers at this convergence of San Gabriel Valley and El Sereno with names like: Note, Serve, Micro, Cessos and C4 aka the "Caterpillar People". But there was a new element in the neighborhood, the "East Side Cafe" - A budding community center on Huntington Drive. Founder Roberto Flores got a hold of Moses and learned about the park hosted sessions. "Why don't you guys start an open mic at the Cafe?".
Roberto and the East Side Cafe kicked us off with some fundamental values, and at their core was the ability to be self sufficient. Not quite "do it yourself" but with the community in autonomy. And with that - we took the park scene indoors and started our first series. As we started planning our first show, Roberto put us in contact with an artist by the name of Olmeca, and a radio host Fidel Rodriguez from KPFK's Divine Forces. William got involved and started plugging in resources and artists from mid-city. Dario Debora of Misol brought in extra gear and the LA breakers for our first event... We didn't know it yet, but the HNDP era had started
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Fast forward to 2009 - now its Stephen Saiz opening up a new set of doors for an open mic at Self Help Graphics and Art in East LA. We find ourselves in a familiar setting in a community of artists with Sister Karen Boccaleros goal to foster emerging artists and we got to work. By June of 2009 we've started our first Friday open mic's and a scene is starting to form. Just like in El Sereno at East Side Cafe, and up north at Lyrical Discipline in San Jose, the local community ends up being the strongest element in every production.
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When we arrived, Self Help was known for throwing big ska shows, and had a strong music history, but regular hip hop events were not a thing. In the parking lot at SHG on Gage, there was a beautiful mosaic statue of the virgin. Her area was often home to late night hangouts. While SHG art was being organized upstairs, local kids would stay outside below in her shade. Our first week we introduced ourselves and invited them up, by the second week they had poked their heads in and done a walk-around, and by the end of the third week - they knew every friday night inside SHG was their hip hop home-base. After just a few weeks of open mic's we started recording songs in the closet and teaching music production with students like Alderz, Gary, Solo, and Kenny.
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With Yuri and Marcos hosting the after school shift, the LA breakers brought life to SHG's brown hardwood floor, often with the likes of DJ victorious spinning funk music, Eric on his MPC or just Marcos's iPod. This lead to random chance encounters like breakers from Tokyo and Mexico City showing up separately on the same day to practice for international battle in town.
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Not wanting to pigeon hole the open mic, SHG provided giant rolls of butcher paper so we invited artists like Julian Aquino to conduct drawing workshops. There were regular silk screening sessions with HNDP resident team "Peace Be With You" where you could come have a hands on experience printing posters. HNDP was an odd collage of collaboration and expression perfectly at home in East LA.
Around the same time, our newly formed community had decided we should be throwing shows and so the HNDP showcase series was born. Our first show included over 30 artists printing stickers with Sticky Rick, performing music and spoken word, live painting, MC battling and a breaking battle. It was a 2-9pm hurricane of hip hop featuring hip hop themed food by June Bugg and even a xbox 360 tournament. Dumbfoundead hosted the MC Battle and Fresh of the LA Breakers hosted the bboy tournament, we had performers like Adriana Garcia arrive from San Jose, Ca all the way down to Sekreto from Mexico DF plus some Lemiert folks courtesy of Natural High.
"aaron: So we're going to start the series in about a month... what should we call it?
william: I dont know man, but we gotta go hard n da paint ...
aaron: ....
william: .... so we should call it "hard n da paint" then?"
and we haven't stopped since.
HHNDP Blog Team
HNDPLA Recaps by HNDP LA BLOG TEAM. Photographs by HNDP LA.