The Scotsman Sessions #446: Dave Hook and Kimberly Mandindo

“You can't make a historical rap musical and not connect it to that musical that shares its name with a certain South Lanarkshire town,” laughs Dave Hook, rapper, lyricist and performer in the musical Wallace, which has inevitably been described as a Caledonian Hamilton. “Yet I read someone say, ‘you might feel like the rap musical has already been done’, which you’d only say if you consider rap a novelty, not an artform. Has the musical been done? Has the play?”

After a compact, three-handed version of the show premiered last year as a Play, Pie and Pint and Raw Material co-production, Hook and playwright Rob Drummond’s piece about the titular Scots hero has doubled in cast size and length for this month’s new tour. Hook, formerly the driving force behind Scots rap group Stanley Odd, says blending rap and dialogue came really easily once he and Drummond began writing.

Dave Hook and Kimberly Mandindo | Contributed

“From a writer's perspective it's a joy, because there's so many strong historical characters in there that you can embody as different styles of rapper,” he says. “Hip-hop loves a villain, going back to Nas saying he’s ‘illin’ and rootin’ for the villain’, and there's strong reasons for that. Through an African-American lens, how many times do you see your heroes on TV? So why does the villain appeal?”

Wallace deconstructs the idea of national myths and heroes, asking how they’re made, who tells their story and why they may or may not be needed. This Scotsman Session, filmed at Glasgow’s Citizens’ Theatre, features three excerpts performed by Hook and Kimberly Mandindo, whose CV includes a two-year stint touring with Young Fathers.

“The first piece is the first direct introduction we get to Wallace,” says Hook. “It takes us on the journey of the Scottish national hero, before the rug’s pulled out from under him. Was he a hero? How much of him was myth? How would you feel if he was taken away and didn't exist at all? But at this moment, he’s being created in front of us.”

“In the second piece I'm playing Margaret, Maid of Norway, who’s being transported to become Queen of Scotland,” says Mandindo of the second scene, which features her beautiful vocal. “This song tells her experience of that journey, and how sad it is. She was only seven years old, probably not knowing what was going on, and she died before she even arrived.”

In the third scene Mandindo raps in the character of Andrew De Moray, whom she says was “a true Scots hero, although he was largely uncredited. He's described as the brains and the tactician behind victories like Stirling Bridge, although most people think of Wallace.”

READ MORE: Theatre reviews: Feel_Good | Six The Musical

If anyone still feels unconvinced by the idea of a Scottish rap musical, Hook is here to help. “If you understand hip-hop culture, you understand it came from a very localised place, that it was created by young African-American and Hispanic people out of poverty and deprivation in 1970s New York,” he says.

“As soon as hip-hop became global, though, that didn't take away its necessity for local roots, which is why it works everywhere it gestates. At its core, authentic hip-hop enables anybody to tell stories in their own voice, and it's a magpie music, which means we can bring Celtic instrumentation to it, to try and tell new, contemporary Scottish stories. That’s where the excitement is.”

Wallace: A Musical is at the Beacon Arts Centre, Greenock, on 23 September; the Pavilion Theatre, Glasgow, on 25 and 26 September and the King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, from 30 September until 1 October, see www.rawmaterialarts.com/wallace2

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