Arts & Entertainment

Hip Hop Orchestra Eyes MVFF34 Closing Night Show

LA-based 31-piece orchestra is raising money to fulfill an invitation from the Mill Valley Film Festival to perform at its closing night party at the San Rafael Community Center.

If they can pay for it, they will come.

That’s the mantra this week from the daKAH Hip Hop Orchestra, an Los Angeles-based band whose creator and conductor is the subject of a documentary that’s part of the , which kicks off Oct. 6.

The group, founded in the late 1990s by Geoff "Double G" Gallegos as a symphony orchestra augmented by turntables, rappers and a rhythm section, has been invited to play the festival’s Oct. 16 closing night party at the San Rafael Community Center. But in order to do so, it has to raise enough money to bring 31 people – the maximum number of musicians the community center can fit but much smaller than its normal size – to the Bay Area and get them a place to stay.

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Christine Lee, the filmmaker behind Hip Hop Maestro, says the group needs at least $7,500 to make it happen. They’ve created a fundraising campaign on Kickstarter, a ever-growing website used to create pledge drives for creative projects.

Lee says ideally the group could raise enough money to keep them in the Bay Area for more than a day, allowing them to play a show at a local school, as Gallegos continually reaches out to public schools to connect young people with the band’s unique blend of classical, jazz and hip hop music.

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Lee first connected with daKah in 2001 when she went to see them play at the Conga Room in LA.

“When I was in high school, I was in the orchestra, and let me tell you, I did not think it was cool," Lee says. “So when I went to see daKAH, I was just blown away. There were all these young kids playing with a very high level of musicianship, connecting classical with hip hop. I immediately fell in love with them.”

A central theme of the film is how Gallegos has managed to keep a band alive in a music business that doesn’t make it easy to earn a living when you’re splitting your paycheck as many as 50 ways.

Lee says Gallegos has a inimitable blend of charisma and modesty that allows him to talk to almost anyone.

“He can hang with classical musicians and even me – an Asian mom," she says. “There’s something about him – it just sucks you in and you just want to help him out.”

The 411: Hip Hop Maestro screens Oct. 15 and 16. Click here for ticket info. The band’s Kickstarter page has raised $2,270 towards its goal of $7,500. 


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