Serengeti
Kenny Dennis LP

The recording of "Boom Boom" (one of the most covered songs in the history of blues, by the way) by John Lee Hooker for the film The Blues Brothers by John Landis was done live. In short, in the scene of the "four fried chickens and a Coke" and the "dry white toast," where Jack & Elwood stop at the little restaurant where Matt Murphy and Lou Marini work to recruit members for the band, John Lee Hooker is actually playing Boom Boom in front of the venue on a corner of Maxwell Street in Chicago, and this moment, among many in the film, is perhaps the one that, more than any other, offers a realistic snapshot of the largest inland metropolitan area of the United States.

Historically one of the major strongholds of the Democratic Party; county seat of Cook County, Illinois, the city of Chicago boasts, considering the entire metropolitan area, "Chicagoland," about ten million inhabitants and, as it historically constitutes one of the main commercial and industrial centers of the USA, it has become one of the most influential cities in the world over the years. It is a multi-ethnic city, and musically, it is one of the cities where blues music has always historically had a central role, because, given the economic importance of the city, it became a destination for many African Americans migrating from southern states in the first half of the last century. Among these, among the blues musicians born in Chicago, it is impossible not to mention central figures in the history and evolution of the genre and American music like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. In short, in this sense, the fact that The Blues Brothers is set right in Chicago and the centrality of blues music in this film are not at all coincidental. After all, it was here that both the director, John Landis, and especially John Belushi, the true star of the famous film, were born.

Now, thirty years after The Blues Brothers and despite the economic crisis, as mentioned, Chicago has withstood and continued to grow and increase its cultural, economic, and social role within the USA and continue to be a destination and meeting point for people from all over the world and from all different ethnicities. This has meant that, over time, the multi-ethnic structure of the city, rather than giving rise to a kind of ghettoization and separate communities, has instead turned into a true ideal cultural center.

The rapper David Cohn, a.k.a. Serengeti, was born and raised in Chicago. His parents are divorced, so he spends half of his time in the South Side, inhabited mostly by blacks, with his mother, who works as a secretary, is an atheist and openly Communist; the other half of the time, he spends with his father in the suburbs of Olympic Fields, a stressed-out middle-class merchant. David Cohn is the nephew of Sonny Cohn, Count Basie's trumpeter for thirty years, but he came to music late. In any case, given all these premises... all these premises demonstrate how David Cohn, like Serengeti's music, while generally definable as hip hop or rap music, is rooted in the heritage of Chicago's blues and jazz music and is particularly influenced culturally by the great city of Chicago and the context in which he grew up.

Aside from this, listening to his recordings, it is evident how Serengeti's music is influenced by listening and mixing different genres, including electronic music and a certain American garage rock à la Ty Segall or Mikal Cronin and how not to mention the usual Beck Hansen, a master at the mixture and contamination of genres, just like Sufjan Stevens, a collaborator with Son Lux, of the same Serengeti first in the project s/s/s (from which the EP Beak & Claw in 2012) and in the recent project Sisyphus with whom they released an album in the early months of this new year 2014.

The themes discussed in Serengeti's songs, however, draw heavily from the cultural heritage of the city of Chicago. Avoiding the typical stereotypes of mainstream hip hop music, which David finds depressing and empty in content, he tries in his songs every time to depict a cross-section of his city and many times he does so by adopting the persona of various more or less characteristic characters. The most famous among these, indeed, is none other than Kenny Dennis. The character of Kenny debuted in the album Dennehy in 2006, was reprised in the Kenny Dennis EP of 2012, and definitively delivered to the history of American music and the collective imagination of what was precisely defined by Stevens as Illinois-e with this album here, the latest by Serengeti released in 2013, Kenny Dennis LP.

The album, produced by Odd Nosdam (Clouddead), was released with the independent Los Angeles label Anticon (the one among others of Son Lux, Tobacco, Why?) and received more or less universal critical acclaim and positive reviews and was also well received by the public in the USA, while in Europe and especially in Italy, his name continues even today not to be particularly famous and is only now beginning to circulate, following the collaboration with the more famous Sufjan Stevens.

More than Serengeti's previous productions, Kenny Dennis presents even more a narrative style that, despite due temporal and strictly musical genre differences, cannot help but recall the improvised street-blues of Johnny Lee Hooker or that almost spoken rock'n'roll typical of a certain Lou Reed, see/listen to New York. So, just like in New York Lou Reed tells stories, different snapshots of life in his city and particularly, as always, follows an idealist like Garland Jeffreys, particularly recounting the harsh reality of the marginalized, people living in a challenging context like that of a big city inhabited by people from all over the world and of every race, species, culture, and religion possible; in the same way, the character of Kenny Dennis constitutes a typical character of the city of Chicago. Kenny Dennis, in fact, is the city of Chicago, it constitutes his (relatively small) ideal world like Auggie's tobacco shop (Harvey Keitel) in Smoke and Blue in the Face by Wayne Wang. Only here the passion for the Dodgers is replaced by that for the Chicago Bears, and all sorts of possible references concern not Brooklyn in the nineties, but the city of Chicago of today.

So, who is Serengeti in the end? Who is Kenny Dennis? According to many, he could simply be just another damn rapper or a nerd just because he insists on wearing a baseball cap and those damn mustaches; or, according to many others, David Cohn would actually be what he is: a bluesman of our times who, in his songs and with his damned irony, strives to entertain listeners, but also to go beyond and tell stories, stories of everyday life that as such mean something for himself and for everyone else. Whether you are from Chicago or not, whether you are white or black, whether you were born in the USA or whether you are an Italian-American, a Hispanic. Anyway, brother, "Mi casa es tu casa."