Hip-Hop Under the Big Top

Cedric “Ricky” Walker, 43, president and founder of the Universal Big Top Circus, eases forward onto the edge of his chair to explain just how crazy he is.

“They all think it,” he begins. “They’ve told me that about everything I’ve done.” Walker is in Los Angeles to publicize his latest crazy idea, a “dream circus,” which will arrive Nov. 8 at Exposition Park for a one-month run.

“When I tried to create a rap festival, they thought I was nuts. In those days, no one had ever heard of rap, and here I was putting it in an 18,000-seat arena. Well, we sold out. And when I decided to do a black circus, they told me, ‘Ricky, you’re crazy, blacks don’t go to circuses.’ ” He slumps back in his chair. “Oh, yes they do,” he says, a smile appearing for the first time on his poker face.

Walker seems anything but crazy. His 3-year-old circus has been acclaimed as an artistic and technical triumph. The Journal-Constitution, in his home base of Atlanta, dubbed it “Cirque du Soul” when it debuted there in 1994 to a sold-out crowd. Circus Report, a trade weekly, characterized it as a “masterpiece of production, staging and promotion.” Its emphasis on positive cultural and spiritual themes earned it favorable reviews on the religion pages of the Chicago Sun Times and then on the entertainment pages of the Chicago Tribune.

The Universal Big Top Circus is the first circus in a century that is completely owned and operated by African Americans. It features a troupe of international performers, recruited by Walker from some of the world’s best-known circuses. Its stars are of African descent.

Furthermore, Walker is committed to placing his circus in African American communities that have been underserved by the entertainment industry. And all of the people involved in its maintenance, from the raising of the big top to the policing of the circus grounds, are contracted from the communities where the circus touches down. It’s a point of pride for Walker, who defies what he believes are false fears from critics.

“In Chicago,” Walker says, “our big top is in Washington Park. That park is flanked by some of the worst project areas in the country. We set that circus in there, in the midst of that community, and didn’t have one problem--because the community was so proud that someone was finally presenting an event that was the quality they deserved that, if you fooled around with the circus and did something wrong, you were labeled a community bad buy.

“And still people tell me, ‘Oh Ricky, that’s crazy, you can’t go there. It’s dangerous at night. People won’t go there. People get mugged; there are shootings.’ ” He shrugs his shoulders and says, “Humph, last month in Chicago we did 90,000 people. We had to put off our L.A. opening for a week.”

Walker’s troupe of 90 features 14 traditional circus acts, including aerial artists, a menagerie, acrobats and clowns. But if it can be said that jazz reinterpreted and transformed the music of Tin Pan Alley, the Universal Big Top has recast the conventions of the circus and set them to an African American beat.

Rather than “hear ye, hear ye, hear ye,” high-stepping ringmaster Casual Cal (one of the circus’ co-creators) greets the crowd with “yo, yo, yo, yo” and dance movements a la hip-hop and James Brown. The stilt-walking acrobats are arrayed in the ritual garments of the stilt-walking shamans of West Africa. The elephants are caparisoned in the war gear of Hannibal’s army and enact the saga of his crossing of the Alps. The clowns pratfall through the often-absurd history of blacks in American television.

The personal stories of the performers also constitute a chronicle of black struggle and achievement. The South African-born trapeze artists execute their routines 60 feet above the ring without a net, using nothing for their catches and flips but their legs and their “death-defying feet.” Rodney Van Reenen and Ivan Solomons, billed as the Ayak Brothers, developed their eye-popping skills as kids growing up under the apartheid regime of South Africa. When they were discovered by the traveling Boswell-Wilke Circus, it became their ticket out. They performed exclusively in Europe until Walker “rediscovered” them in 1993.

Contortionist Nayakata was born in Valencia, Spain, and raised by adoptive parents. Her act includes a maneuver in which, balanced upside down on her hands she holds a cup with her toes, lifts it to her mouth and drinks from a straw. Members of the King Charles Troupe, who play basketball and other games on unicycles, were raised in poverty in the Bronx and became, in 1969, the first African American performers hired by the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. They remained one of Ringling’s marquee acts for 20 years but had disbanded, for the most part, in 1989. Walker helped to bring the group back together when he started Universal Big Top.

Ted McCray, the lion tamer, one of the circus’ consistent show-stopping acts, accepted the role of Daniel in the Lion’s Den only as a favor to Walker, his cousin. It had been Walker’s governing dream in forming the circus to present a black lion tamer as an example and inspiration to urban youth. One month before his shaky debut in the cage with the big cats, McCray had been a Baltimore laborer.

All the Universal Big Top clowns are graduates of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College. Among them are summa cum clown Otis Garry Irvingwhite and London-based Danise Payne, who is billed as “the first African American clown to appear in a British circus.”

Trinidadian trapeze artist Pa-Mela Hernandez was a member of a renowned trapeze duo, Satin, another Ringling act. She was among the first women to perfect the strenuous--and dangerous--”strap and rings” routine, an act that had been performed exclusively by men.

“You’ve got to realize,” Walker says, sliding forward once more to the edge of his chair, “these guys come from all over the world and have never had the opportunity to stand before their people and do a performance. So their hearts and souls are there.”

The two-hour circus is staged at what Walker terms “a high-energy, hip-hop speed,” to the accompaniment of gospel, jazz and blues music.

“No act is longer than three or four minutes,” he says. “They are in there, they amaze you, and the next amazement is on the way.”

As in the other so-called new wave circuses, the Universal Big Top circus show unfolds in the intimate setting of a single ring. Its 2,500-seat, European-style big top arena is state of the art, with computerized special effects, a rock-style laser show and high-tech sound.

“Our technology is second to none,” Walker says. “Our creative director and producer, Tom Marzullo, designed road tours for Prince, KISS and Guns N’ Roses. The technology for this show is just as expensive as the show itself. It moves on about 10 trucks. Tommy makes it an art form.”

Walker asserts that his circus also differs from both the new wave and the traditional circuses in that “we wanted to express the culture of a people.”

“We wanted to have more of an impact than just having black people performing circus feats--that in itself was going to be great. But we wanted to actually make a difference, to track black entertainment from slavery to now,” he says.

To criticism that the Universal Big Top smacks of a 20th century minstrel show, Walker retorts that his circus is the mirror opposite of minstrelsy. That form, created by 19th century whites for the pleasure of whites, presented comics in black face acting out grotesque depictions of blacks in demeaning, ridiculous spectacles.

This, Walker says, is precisely the sort of stereotype his circus was created to debunk, with its positive images of black life and achievement lovingly (and astoundingly) portrayed. But Walker sees such controversial issues as slavery, stereotypes, racism, minstrelsy and the spiritual virtue required to overcome them as appropriate future themes for his circus.

“I have to find a way to transform them into entertainment,” he says. “We want to put in the Buffalo Soldiers, the Negro Baseball Leagues, the Tuskegee Airmen. How I deal with these issues had to be very careful. I can do it because I’m black, and I can present an era of time. Right now, we are highlighting history and spirituality. I want to maintain the focus of the expression of a people and a culture.”

Walker spins quite a tale, of course. An all-black circus dreamed up and produced by blacks. The opposite of minstrelsy. Race-conscious but not racist. International and all-American. The glowing big tent in the tough part of town. And the motley troupe--from Africa, Trinidad, England and Spain and straight out of America. The stilt walkers, the gaggle of clowns, the wire walkers, the peanut vendors and the ringmaster, all of them daughters and sons of Africa.

And the story he tells of his own American odyssey is quite a fable as well. He was a business-minded church boy from Baltimore who became a wayward street tough. He was a Tuskegee University dropout who went on the road with the Commodores (his uncle’s then little-known house band). Next came his storybook life as a fast-lane R&B; promoter--with the obligatory sex, drugs and blues and the inevitable crash and crawl up from the bottom.

In the 1980s, after his season in hell, Walker became one of the first to recognize the significance of hip-hop. In a two-year association with then-neophyte mogul Russell Simmons, Walker mounted rap’s first national tours. Then again: “I squandered it. Lost the money. Lost the acts. I started over again.”

From 1990 to 1994, Walker was an investor in two wildly successful moralistically themed musicals, “Mama Don’t” and “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” The plays centered on problems afflicting African American urban life: drugs, dysfunctional families, crime.

It was during this period, Walker says, that he began to notice that “people were bringing their kids in at 11 o’clock at night because they wanted their children or husbands to hear the message--and I said we need to develop a different kind of entertainment because kids 5, 6 and 7 years old were coming to these plays.”

With Atlanta-based entertainer Cal “Casual Cal” DuPre and others, Walker began researching live family attractions for a modern black audience. They discussed animal acts, vaudeville, variety shows and hip-hop musicals. One night, while going over the list, DuPre said, “Ricky, it sounds like we need to do a circus.” Through a chance encounter with a collector of black circus memorabilia in Manhattan, Walker learned of “Professor” Ephraim Williams, impresario and owner of the first all-black circus (circa 1886-1902) in Wisconsin. The collector put Walker in touch with a network of African American circus performers and trainers.

“Everybody knew somebody else,” Walker recalls. “They were so elated that someone was going to put something together that was going to reflect their own presentation in some way; they were very supportive.”

As a young boy in Baltimore, he dreamed of running away with the circus. But the only role models available to blacks in the itinerant mud shows that rolled through town were janitors.

“When I first saw a lion tamer, I loved it, but I never aspired to be one,” Walker says. “When you see someone that you can relate to doing it, you can aspire to be it. I saw black folks being janitors, so I wanted to wear one of those red or blue outfits and scoop up the elephant do-do. That’s how I figured I could be a part of the circus.” Now that he is founder and president of the first African American circus in nearly 100 years--literally, his dream come true--he is asked if he has other dreams yet to fulfill.

“Yes,” he says, with a bemused grin. “I want to create a black Disneyland--a black theme park. You can quote me on that because they won’t believe me anyway. They all think I’m crazy.”

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* Universal Big Top Circus, Exposition Park, Vermont and Leighton avenues. Nov. 8-24. Tuesdays through Fridays, 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays, noon, 4:30 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, noon, 3:30 and 6:30 p.m. $12.50 to $30. School shows only, Tuesdays through Fridays, 10:30 a.m. $10. Ticketmaster: (213) 480-3232.