- [Narrator] Production of Applause on Ideastream Public Media is made possible by The John P. Murphy Foundation, The Kulas Foundation, and by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga arts and culture.

(upbeat music) - [Kabir] Coming up, look back on a half century of hip-hop with the latest exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, meet the Athens mandolin maker whose instruments are internationally acclaimed, and marvel as the Cleveland Orchestra performs a classic written by a teenager in 1772.

Can you guess who?

Find out during this round of applause?

I'm your host, Ideastream Public Media's, Kabir Bhatia (upbeat music continues) It's been 50 years since a DJ in the Bronx laid the foundation for hip-hop, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland is celebrating with a new exhibit.

(bouncy music) When DJ Kool Herc brought two turntables and a microphone to a house party in the Bronx, he had no idea he was lighting the fuse for a musical revolution.

The Rock Hall recognizes that moment in August 1973 as the birth of hip-hop, and it's the starting point for the new exhibit, Hip-Hop at 50: Holla If You Hear Me.

(bouncy music continues) Kool Herc will be inducted this fall.

The Rock Hall has previously inducted several hip-hop acts including Public Enemy and Run DMC.

Darryl "DMC" McDaniels was at the opening of the exhibit saying that once hip-hop was born it was all about reinventing music.

- We sampled the funk, we sampled the soul, we sampled the rock, we sampled the funk, we sampled the folk music, and we produced it and presented it in a way that Black, White, Puerto Rican, young, old, Asian, Jewish could relate.

- The exhibit includes handbills, record albums, and even Questlove's Ludwig drum set, very similar to the one played by Ringo Starr.

During the opening, Chuck D of Public Enemy said that anyone claiming hip-hop isn't part of rock and roll is wrong.

- Hip-hop and rap music brought that rock and roll back into fruition.

'Cause a lot of times people like, "Oh, you rap, hip-hop.

That ain't rock.

That ain't rock."

We the roll, baby.

(audience laughs) We the roll.

And the fact that rock and roll brings it back to it's true beginning, you know, it truly was a voice, it truly was a spirit that spoke out and said, "Okay we ain't being heard too.

Hear us now."

(upbeat hip-hop music) - [Kabir] At the exhibit opening Rock Hall staff demonstrated the art of scratching with vinyl records, gave visitors a chance to spin the wheels of steel.

- Whereas you can just make your own beats just by scratching right here.

The thing that you wanna remember when you're doing this is you wanna keep a really light touch.

♪ Pay the fist, man raise the fist ♪ ♪ Well, we just can't miss.

♪ (record scratching) - That's the light touch.

Back and forth.

There you go.

♪ Well, we just can't miss with a beat like this ♪ (record scratching) There you go.

So you know what you're doing.

Shows what I know, huh?

♪ It's the joint.

♪ - Like that?

- [Host] Yeah, something like that.

Yeah.

(audience cheers) - [Kabir] As the science of scratching, mixing, and looping emerged in hip-hop, so did its social message.

Hip-hop legends, Roxanne Shante and Darryl "DMC" McDaniels commented on the important role that Cleveland played in the history of hip-hop.

- Well, I'm gonna tell you for me, when it comes to Cleveland, Ohio and coming here, there used to be a festival that took place here.

It was like a convention that took place here in Cleveland.

So for us, once you made it to the convention in Cleveland, then that meant you was a rap star.

You know what I'm saying?

When you was home in New York, you was a rapper.

You made it to Cleveland, to the convention center, then you was a rap star.

So that was one of the main things for us because we always looked forward to coming here, especially when it was time for Tour.

- Cleveland, I just met the promoter upstairs that first brought Run DMC to Cleveland way before there was MTV.

I'm talking about "It's Like That" and "Sucker MCs" So how does it feel to be here in Cleveland?

I could literally say a lot of this hip-hop stuff for me started here.

- If you're a hip-hop authority, you're gonna see stuff here that you learn.

And if you don't know a lot about hip-hop, you're gonna be inspired and blown away by the relevance and connectivity of it.

- This hip-hop wing that you guys added on to this Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is definitely historical.

And the reason why I say that is because all of this stuff that you see in here will be in here years and years after our death.

After we die, our stuff is gonna still be here.

- [Kabir] The message and the medium, sampling songs to make new songs, is famously displayed in Public Enemy's chart topping, "Fight the Power."

♪ Fight the Power ♪ ♪ You got to fight the power's that be.

♪ ♪ As the rhythm designed to bounce ♪ ♪ What counts is that the rhymes ♪ ♪ A work of art ♪ ♪ To revolutionize make a change nothing's strange ♪ ♪ People, people we are the same ♪ ♪ No we're not the same ♪ ♪ Cause we don't know the game ♪ ♪ Fight the power ♪ - [Kabir] Hip-Hop at 50: Holla if You Hear Me is on view now at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

For this Columbus artist, photography is more than simply taking a pic with a smartphone.

Instead, Holly Romano goes old school with cameras that allow her to experiment in Ohio's natural landscape.

- I started out as a graphic designer and did that for many years.

And then I became a stay-at-home mom and still needed a way to be creative.

I used photography as a way to document my kids' experience of COVID and the pandemic and being together all the time.

And in that, I was hoping to try to find ways to still do photography, but also hands-on.

When I learned it in college, we still had dark rooms, and film, and processing, and that's just not available anymore.

So I found my way into experimental photography and alternative processes.

So using a lot of like instant film, vintage cameras, UV sensitive papers, manipulation techniques, things like that.

I've always felt a deep connection to nature.

Even as a kid, I spent many, many hours outdoors playing and it's always been a way for me to calm down, reconnect, kind of de-stress.

And doing the lumen prints with nature is kind of my way of honoring that relationship.

And I feel like the prints themselves are like exposing the energy and the spirit of nature.

A lot of that work relies on the weather and the plant materials.

So if it's hot, if it's cold, if it's humid, how many hours of sunlight, the temperature, if the plants are fresh or dried, all of those things create different effects on the prints.

And so I think of us as collaborators together.

I kind of assemble everything and then nature does the rest.

(light-hearted guitar music) I try to compose, depending on what kind of, I'm feeling from the plants, or what type of concept I'm trying to put together.

I'll put the plants together on top of the paper.

Sometimes I'll add maybe water or vinegar, or something 'cause I can get different effects.

And then I put a piece of plexiglass over top and I clamp them together.

And then I place them outside.

And depending on the weather, if it's a hot sunny day, the print could take about an hour.

But if it's winter and cold, that's the opposite extreme.

That could take two to three days that I will leave it outside.

And then I bring them in back into my dimmed basement and I take it all apart.

(light-hearted guitar music continues) I gotta be careful not to tear the paper.

So you can see here it created this circular kind of shadow.

And these, on this paper the lilies look almost like ghosts pedals.

(light-hearted guitar music continues) As kind of a like final support to nature, I actually don't use chemicals to process the prints like you would in traditional darkroom practice.

I scan them instead on my scanner and then my digital file becomes my like final original.

Sometimes if there's a piece of dirt, or mulch, or a bug, or maybe there was a bug on the leaf that I didn't notice and creates a empty spot, then I'll fix it at this point.

Or sometimes the plant materials dry and almost adhere to the paper.

So they're, I can't get them off without tearing the paper.

This is where I fix those little, I don't wanna call them imperfections, but.

And then if I wanna do any color adjusting, if I want the colors more saturated or less saturated.

I try to stay as true to the original.

There are some instances where I have completely changed the coloring.

For example, the ones that I've left out in the snow those tend to have a blue tint because I wanna honor the fact that it was winter when I made them.

I heard about art spot from an art friend of mine and the focus was to bring attention to the fact that while climate change and global warming feel like really big topics for people and you think, "I don't know where to begin.

Like that's too too big of a topic for me to tackle," my idea was you could do something as simple as create a pollinator garden in your yard, even if you have just a few feet of square space.

My display is called "The Pollinators" and it's named that because I've used native Ohio plants and then also other plants that are known to attract the bees, the butterflies, the moths, and use those to make my prints along with like a circular shape, which is supposed to represent earth, sun, cycles of nature.

I most often will go to one of the city parks, but I like to find the areas of the park that are more wild and less taken care of and manicured because I wanna get a more like authentic nature experience.

And I also have been known to pull over the side of the road and walk under a bridge to look at a stream or a creek and see what's under there and what plants are under there.

I do a lot of experimenting.

I use an app on my phone when I'm out foraging for plants to help me identify the plants, especially if I'm looking for native plants or invasive plants.

I wanna know what I'm collecting.

And then also if I use them for a print, I wanna be able to, I always write what plants I've used so that way I can keep it for my own information.

So it says those are possibly fig buttercup.

It all started because I cared about the planet, was trying to live more sustainable, which then led to me wanting to be outdoors, which then led to me wanting to make sure I had the right plants in my yard, which then led to me seeking out what are those plants and then finding out that some of those things are endangered, or the bees.

And so I thought, how can I get this message out through my art.

Also, yeah I do have to consider where I'm sourcing my materials.

That's why I've consciously made the choice to have a lot of pollinator plants in my yard because that is at my disposal.

I can do whatever I want with those.

When I'm foraging like this out in the wild, I try to minimize my impact.

So if it is a piece of bark on the ground, I'm gonna take it.

Yes, I did trim some flowers today, but in my mind the message I'm trying to get out, and the impact I'm hoping to make is gonna be worth the risk that I might be taking.

(light-hearted guitar music continues) (horns blaring) - [Kabir] From humble beginnings in Canton more than 50 years ago, the blue coats have evolved into a world-class drum and bugle core.

On the next Applause, learn what keeps this group of performers at the top of their craft.

Plus meet a muralist decorating Columbus with a passion for critters, flowers, and color.

And watch as this singer-songwriter serenades, the rooftops of Cleveland, making the most of a dreary day.

All that and more on the next round of Applause.

♪ Cruising around on our bikes to go ride down to the rock ♪ ♪ Go get high like back when we were 15 ♪ - [Kabir] The beloved sound of the mandolin is a staple of American music, and one of the finest luthiers in all the world resides in Athens, Ohio.

Let's travel to the Appalachian home of Don MacRostie and his Red Diamond mandolins.

(bright folksy music) - I moved to this farm a little over 40 years ago.

I've been out here about 41, 42 years.

Moving here there was a machinery shed that I thought that would make a nice shop.

I think I got kind of interested in the guitar in high school.

It was during the folk revival of the fifties and sixties and I was interested in that music and trying to learn that.

My name is Don MacRostie.

I own and operate Red Diamond Mandolins here in Athens, Ohio.

I graduated college in '66 and that was around the start of the Vietnam War.

So I wound up in the Navy.

I was in Vietnam, I was on an aircraft carrier.

I got out of the service in '70.

I decided to use my GI bill and go back to college.

And I came to Ohio University.

I enjoyed not only, you know, going to college, but I loved the area.

I saw a lot of the county and a lot of the southeast Ohio and I've been here ever since.

My sister-in-law had a mandolin, so I was looking at that and I don't have a lot of space.

It'd be a lot easier to build a smaller instrument.

So that's how I got to pick the mandolin.

I was thinking about a name that I could put on the Peghead and I was reading a book about a fellow who in the 1800s was traveling Europe hunting Stradivarius violins.

And one of the names of the Stradivarius violins was the Red Diamond.

And I said, "Ah that's a name.

I'll use that."

I've been building for close to 50 years.

Seeing how instruments come through to the audience.

And there's an instrument that seems to, for bluegrass music, really project out a sound, and that's the Gibsons of the early twenties.

They were signed by Lloyd Lore.

- Don MacRostie is one of those guys that was always on the search for the secret formula to the best sounding mandolin.

And in my opinion, he found it.

What sets Don's mandolins apart from the rest in my opinion, is the constant pursuit of the golden era sound.

And when I say that, I mean the mandolins of the early 1920s that were manufactured by Gibson.

He's come up with this really interesting process of measuring the flexibility of the top and back of some of those legendary mandolins and then using those measurements to kind of guide his own building process.

(water sizzling) - When I build mandolins, I start out with the sides.

I make the blocks, I bend the sides, and glue them up into a rib assembly.

That's the first step.

And I even put the linings in that allow the tops and the backs to be attached to the side.

Then I'll carve tops next.

The tops will be carved and glued on and at that point I'll voice it to some extent, that means make it of a flexibility that will produce a good sound.

It's the combination of the art shape, the flexibility, the species of wood, and many of the things that produce a sound.

Once that's done and the neck is fitted in, I'll glue the back on, which makes the rib assembly, the body assembly, very rigid.

And then you can put the neck back in it and set your angle and finish up the neck.

It'll get a fingerboard, it'll get a peg head for mounting tuners and decoration of the peghead.

It's traditional for a good mandolin to have a darker finish.

It's a sunburst they call it.

So it's a shaded finish from a bright sun in the center, golden to a darker edge.

Once the instrument is completely done, you put strings on it.

I was building mandolins in mid-seventies, and it turned out that there was a company here in Athens that did instruments.

There were, it was called Stewart-MacDonald.

And then I got into product design with them.

I was able to do things there because of my prior building experience.

And the things that I was doing there I was able to bring home and better do my building.

For bluegrass and a lot of other styles of music, the F-5 mandolin is what's desirable.

It's beautiful, the design is incredible.

It's attractive.

A lot of people buy kind of on reputation.

If I build instruments that really please other people.

I get customers.

People are excited about playing music.

They want a good instrument.

They love it and they share with their friends.

- I think Don is helping to strengthen the arts in Ohio by building the best instruments possible.

And I would consider Don's mandolins to be some of the best in the world.

You see him across the bluegrass scene.

Alan Bibey, a really great bluegrass mandolin player, plays his mandolins regularly.

Josh Pinkham, another amazing kind of world-renowned mandolinist, plays Don's mandolins.

And it makes sense that his mandolins are some of the best in the world because he is a sensitive person that way.

You know, he can see what you need and what you're looking for in an instrument and wants to make a product that fills what you need.

It almost feels like a family relationship when you purchase an instrument from Don.

I own two Red Diamonds and when I look at every nook and cranny and corner, everything is just perfect.

There's not a single thing out of place.

And it's really interesting to kind of look at a mandolin and then hear the sound that comes off of it.

The lows are rich and sustaining.

The highs aren't too shrill.

They're very glassy and bell like.

So it's really interesting to play a Red Diamond compared to some of these other mandolins.

There's life in every single note all across the fingerboard.

Not only is he building the best instruments that he possibly can, he's bringing attention from around the world to central and southern Ohio through the kind of craft that he's chosen in his life.

And I think that's really important because it brings fresh musicians and fresh perspectives to this region.

And then they take a little bit of Ohio back with them whenever they take one of his mandolins.

- And as I started building mandolins, I started learning to play mandolin too.

By playing you're able to understand musicians that you're building for.

I play with a couple of guys regularly right now.

We've played together for 40 years probably.

Music has allowed me to buy a farm, raise a family, and love what I do.

There was a term back in the sixties that I latched onto, it's called "Right Livelihood."

And it meant what you're doing, you know, in your working life has to be right or, you know, contribute to the the planet, the world, the neighbors, and not be destructive.

And I think that building instruments and playing music is right livelihood.

I was able through both Stewart-MacDonald employment at Stewart-MacDonald and my building to do well, you know, to have a good life.

- [Kabir] The Cleveland Orchestra is not known for performing compositions written by teenagers, unless that teenager happens to be Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Recently, Franz Welser-Möst delighted the severance audience with this Mozart classic that he wrote at the age of 16.

(bright classical music) (bright classical music continues) To enjoy more of this Mozart masterpiece visit the Cleveland Orchestra's Adella app.

And to welcome a little more Applause into your life, anytime you want, surf over to the PBS app.

That's it for this edition of Applause everyone.

Thanks for watching.

I'm Ideastream Public Media's, Kabir Bhatia.

Until we meet again, my friends, on the next round of Applause.

(bright classical music continues) (bright music) - [Narrator] Production of Applause on Ideastream Public Media is made possible by The John P. Murphy Foundation, The Kulas Foundation and by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga arts and culture.