The Hip-Hop Education Center (HHEC) recently launched their 50 for 50 Film series to celebrate 50 years of Hip-Hop through the lens of cinema. As part of the series, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts presents a screening of the documentary A Wu-Tang Experience: Live at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, followed by a discussion with RZA, Wu-Tang Clan founder and co-director of the film. Combining performances and revealing interviews with group members and associates, classical musicians, and concertgoers, the film documents the extraordinary concert at the iconic Red Rocks Amphitheatre where the Wu-Tang Clan, backed by the 60-piece Colorado Symphony Orchestra, weaved together songs from their vast discography of group and solo albums. Their setlist created a live score to a real-time screening of the seminal martial arts film The 36th Chamber of Shaolin—the movie that largely inspired the Clan’s aesthetic and the title of their groundbreaking debut album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).
The documentary deconstructs stereotypes that limit classical music and Hip-Hop as mutually exclusive musical genres, dismantles these imposed limitations, and collapses boundaries and artistic mediums to amplify the ways classical music, Hip-Hop, and film can coalesce in beautiful, innovative union.
The event will also commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Wu-Tang Clan’s seminal debut album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), which revolutionized Hip-Hop upon its release on Nov. 9, 1993. There will be a special city hall presentation of a proclamation officially declaring Nov. 9 as Wu-Tang Clan Day in NYC. The night will also honor the memory of founding Wu-Tang Clan member Ol’ Dirty Bastard (Russell Tyrone Jones), born on Nov. 15, 1968.
