At the prestigious Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the violinist and assistant composer-in-residence Dr. Daniel Bernard Roumain—whom the New York Times recently hailed as “a dreadlocked, hip-hop–embracing composer”—has been winning kudos for groundbreaking work and an education program that is drawing a number of gifted young string players and composers into the realm of hip-hop–influenced classical music. At a 2005 recital at the Studio Museum in Harlem, Roumain—director of St. Luke’s acclaimed Young Composer’s Program—showcased the works of five students (Nate Sloan, Whitney Williams, Melanie Charles, Kasaun Henry, and Wynne Bennett) as well as his own Hip-Hop Study and Etude in C# minor for two violins and cello (see an excerpt on pages 26–27of the summer 2006 issue).

The program led the usually staid Times reviewer to opine that the young educator “is creating a miracle” at the St. Luke’s program: “Mr. Roumain has taken a handful of teenagers (and two people in their 20s), got them fired up about the possibilities of classical composition, and inspired them to write short but probing, vital concert pieces.”


There’s no doubt that blending hip-hop and strings can lead to a creative workout.

“Hip-hop is a lot more sophisticated than a lot of people realize,” says Roumain, whose website describes him as “one of the few composers to have danced alongside Bill T. Jones, played with Philip Glass, and jammed with Cassandra Wilson.”

He also ranks among the very few (perhaps the only) classically trained players/composers to have conducted scholarly musicological dissections of hip-hop music. His Hip-Hop Studies and Etudes features short compositions that Roumain has written, one in each key, in which he demonstrates the five parameters of hip-hop: sound, harmony, melody, rhythm, and form.

In hip-hop, he makes it clear, there is quite a bit more going on than many have noticed.

“If you were to notate exactly what goes on in one track by Kanye West,” Roumain says, “I can tell you that it is just as complicated and just as complex as anything by Sofia Gubaidulina. Absolutely.”

Roumain, who now lives in Harlem, New York, grew up in South Florida, where at the age of five, he began playing the violin as part of his elementary school’s (now eliminated) musical arts program. His earliest performance memory is of playing “Hatikva,” the Israeli national anthem, at a Jewish retirement home.

As a teen, it was his turn to be turned-on by hip-hop, while still retaining his love of Mozart and Beethoven. He went to college, earned a PhD in music composition and theory from the University of Michigan, and became proficient as a player of classical music, but never lost his love for hip-hop. It’s only natural, he asserts, that with his background, he’d be eager to blend the sounds of Bach and Tupac.

“I grew up with hip-hop music,” he says. “I went to college and I got my training in classical music, but I never stopped listening to hip-hop. So now, I’m trying to find a way to integrate and reflect all these things, and to borrow a hip-hop term, to also ‘keep it real.’ I’m not trying to assimilate or make reference to hip-hop. I’m asking an orchestra, for example, to use a drum-kit player. I composed a piece called Harlem Essay, which has a drum-kit player, and then I went out and sampled people in my neighborhood, so it’s a piece for orchestra and tape.”

That piece was performed at Carnegie Hall in 2001.

“I believe that, to the extent that jazz has had a very real impact on classical chamber and orchestral music, hip-hop will have an even more profound effect,” Roumain says. “I already see that happening, and I believe that hip-hop is going to exceed the influence that jazz has had on the classical musical world.”

That influence, he predicts, will be strongest on the next generation of string players, possibly those young people who write to him by the hundreds, telling him how they’ve been inspired to study music, to pick up the violin or the cello, because of what they’ve seen young hip-hop players accomplish.

“I do a lot of workshops with younger people, and I work with a lot of youth symphonies,” Roumain says. “These are classically trained kids, and while a lot of them may not know about Palestrina, or they may not really know the principal theme of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, one thing they all share is that they all know who Snoop Dogg is, and they all know Jay Z. Whether we want to admit this or not, the music that we listen to becomes a part of our musical DNA. It does. I’ve worked with some of the great professional orchestras of the world, but some of the best performances of my music have come from youth orchestras, younger chamber-music ensembles, and that’s simply because they get it. They get it.

“They understand the rhythm, the nature, the musical politics, if you will, of what it is I’m trying to do.”

Ultimately, Roumain asserts that hip-hop is the perfect vehicle for musical composition and experimentation in that it is flexible enough to enclose all musical styles and traditions.

“The hip-hop style and language supports classical music, country music, blues, electronic, rock,” he points out. “Hip-hop may be the most supportive musical style ever. It’s so fluently and effortlessly able to support and incorporate other forms of music. Hip-hop will be part of the future of music.”