Cambridge digs Canadian's 'Canterbury Tales' rap

A Canadian performer has been hired by Cambridge University in Britain to perform his hip-hop version of the ancient tales to British high school students.

Baba Brinkman's The Rap Canterbury Tales was a surprise hit at last year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival. That sparked an invitation from the esteemed institution to be part of its "Aspirations" program, designed to raise awareness of English literature in high schools.

"They're using me as a kind of hook," Brinkman told CBC Radio. "I go into schools and do the Chaucer rap and that's the kids' introduction to medieval literature."

Brinkman, who has been writing and performing original rap/spoken word poetry for eight years, has the literary chops, too. He holds a masters degree in medieval and Renaisssance English literature from the University of Victoria.

Brinkman has also performed his rappin' Tales in Prague, Montreal and San Francisco.

The performer says the idea of retelling The Canterbury Tales, written between 1387 to 1400, came to him when he was working on his undergraduate English thesis.

Chaucer's lively story centres on a group of thirty people who travel as pilgrims to Canterbury, England The pilgrims, who come from all layers of society, tell stories to each other to kill time while they travel. Brinkman sets his up as a competition among rappers on a tour bus, on which he, as a narrator, has stowed away.

"If I can show them that Chaucer was really kind of the rapper of his day, then everybody kind of wins on that one."

Brinkman likens the competitive nature of telling entertaining stories to the rap freestyling seen in Eminem's movie 8 Mile. He spent three years on his translation of the Tales and now presents four of them: The Pardoner's Tale, The Miller's Tale, The Wife of Bath's Tale, and The Tale of Sir Topas.

"I chose the tales that have solid endings, that really lay out a clear narrative thread," Brinkman said in a March Fresno Bee article. He says he'd like people to see both Chaucer and rap with new eyes.

Brinkman says he's gotten all kinds of reaction to his Tales from indifference to enthusiasm.