CBC Arts: Cambridge digs Canadian's 'Canterbury Tales' rap

This has been reported via NPR, Boingboing, and several other places. When all the publicity dies down you should be able to hear excerpts of him rapping Canterbuy Tales by visiting this site. (Server is currently overloaded) Perhaps this could get your library's teen group interested in Big Daddy C (aka Chaucer)?

CBC Arts: Cambridge digs Canadian's 'Canterbury Tales' rap: "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."