Halfway through a conversation with Geoff “Double G” Gallegos—composer and conductor of daKAH Hip-Hop Orchestra—and a few of his musicians, a theme emerges.
“I want daKAH to have a Muppet rendition,” says cellist Vanessa Freebairn-Smith.
“daKAH is The Muppet Movie,” Gallegos replies excitedly. “Think about it. The movie’s whole story is about a group of different people who come together and have a similar dream.”
There are also references to Soul Train and looking like a Benetton ad, but the point is made. daKAH, an L.A.-based collective that started playing together in 1999, is a giant collection of up to 80 musicians—from harpists and trombone players to MCs—that all somehow fit together onstage to make orchestral hip-hop music that reflects the diversity of its membership, incorporating pieces of jazz, reggae, classical and heavy metal. “In daKAH, there’s every race, every age, every style and pretty much every kind of human being you can imagine,” says Freebairn-Smith. “And it’s really cool, because you look onstage and everybody’s vibing together.”
The brainchild of Gallegos, 35, who studied at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, daKAH was formed from the similarities he saw between traditional orchestration and hip-hop music. “The first time I saw MCs going around, trading conversation and rhyming, it blew my mind,” he says. “I had the same feeling the first time I saw a symphony orchestra play.”
Both kinds of groups, he says, are “trying to perform well, not miss cues and stay together,” so it only makes sense that the music would fit.
“To me it’s so obvious,” adds Freebairn-Smith, “because when you listen to hip-hop, even the stuff that’s pretty mainstream on the radio, they’re constantly sampling orchestral loops.”
And when Gallegos began trying to orchestrate classic hip-hop, like tunes from Gang Starr’s DJ Premier, the similarities were more apparent. “When I sat down and dissected what [Premier] is doing, I realized, he’s a composer—just with a different palette.”
With this synchronicity in mind, and with a tight connection to the huge base of freelance musicians in Los Angeles, Gallegos started daKAH by working closely with different musicians—string players here, horn players there—and piecing together compositions. The orchestra then works around rhymes that the MCs—all eight of them—create, something lead MC Leggo says is an incredible feeling. “Having an orchestra playing the music you’re rapping to is a dream come true,” he says. “It’s something you never even think about happening.”
DOING IT FOR THE LOVE
Like most of the group’s members, Leggo joined daKAH after hearing about it from other musicians who earn money primarily through backing other artists in recording sessions and on tour, and are willing to play with daKAH for little or nothing. “We all do other things, but when it comes to daKAH, it’s for the love of it,” says Freebairn-Smith. “And you can tell everybody has so much fun and they wouldn’t have any other reason to play if they weren’t enjoying themselves.”
This system has succeeded so far: the group has moved from early gigs in tiny clubs in L.A. to recent shows at the Hollywood Bowl and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and to distant festivals. They’ve put together one studio album, Unfinished Symphony, and Gallegos has a new CD in the planning stages, aimed for March. “It’s going to be 13 three-minute pieces,” he says—more radio-friendly than their previous works, which can sometimes breach the half-hour mark.
Lately, daKAH has also had full rehearsals in space borrowed from a local high school, another advance. “We normally rehearse in sections, so this has been great,” says Gallegos, promising that as soon as they start really making money—which has been increasing—it will go to rehearsal time.
His experience with daKAH, a word he says means “one” in a Ghanian language, has given him skills in areas he never expected: “After this, I could run any company selling any commodity,” he says. But it’s made him appreciate being a conductor, something much different from the composer he planned to be. “It’s not like being a dictator,” he says. “It’s more like being the captain of a ship, because if it goes down, I’m going down with it.”
But failure seems far from imminent. After a successful run at this year’s SXSW, Gallegos has plans for a 2006 national tour, and daKAH’s underground fan base continues to grow. “People keep hearing about this crazy orchestra,” Freebairn-Smith says. “It’s such a bizarre thing, they remember it.”
Gallegos is still just pleased he’s kept this group together; no easy task for an outfit made up of so many talented people involved in so many different projects. “By the time this is over, it’ll be a whole orchestra of rock stars,” he says. And Gallegos is up for challenging the naysayers constantly telling him what his orchestra will never accomplish.
“The big one was, ‘You’re never going to get out of L.A.,’” he says. “Then it was California, then, ‘you’re never going to get on an airplane.’”
But daKAH has jumped every hurdle, and Gallegos can’t see why this trend won’t continue. “Now I’m hearing, ‘you’re never going to get to Europe,’ or, ‘you’ll never be on the radio,’” he says. “Watch what happens when you tell me that.”