Your Hometown Virtual Conversation with Darryl McDaniels of Run-DMC

In this live (on Zoom) virtual edition of the new podcast "Your Hometown," musician and rapper Darryl McDaniels of famed hip hop group Run-DMC talks with host Kevin Burke about growing up in Queens in the 1960s and '70s.

This is a virtual event which will take place via Zoom. Registrants will receive a link in advance of the event.

This is the first event in our series of virtual conversations Your Hometown. For more information, click here. 

About Your Hometown:
Your Hometown is an innovative new live event and podcast series conceived and hosted by historian Kevin Burke, prominent and everyday guests from a diversity of generations, geographies, and fields will be interviewed about when and where they grew up and how that intersection of time and place shaped them. Rooted in a deep sense of place, time, and memory, the series will utilize the power of storytelling to underscore the importance of hometowns at a time when many, due to breathtaking advances in technology, feel placeless, empathy is at a deficit, and polarization is extreme. 

About the Guest:
Darryl DMC McDaniels is a musical icon and one of the founders—along with Joseph “Rev. Run” Simmons and the late, great Jason “Jam Master Jay” Mizell—of the groundbreaking rap group Run-DMC. With a fan base that rivals some of the biggest acts in rock and roll, Run-DMC has sold more than thirty million singles and albums worldwide and has helped transform hip-hop into one of the most popular musical genres of all time. In 2009, Run-DMC was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2014, McDaniels launched the comic book company Darryl Makes Comics and published the graphic novel DMC and the memoir Ten Ways Not to Commit Suicide. His work with the Felix Organization, a nonprofit he cofounded, led him to speak at the White House and to appear before Congress and various state legislatures on behalf of adoptees and foster children. When he’s not on tour speaking or performing, he lives in New York City.

About the Host:
Kevin Burke is the founder and CEO of Kevin Burke Productions, Inc., a New York–based film company, and director of research at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. With Henry Louis Gates Jr., Burke is co-author of the book And Still I Rise: Black America since MLK (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2015) and co-editor of the Norton Critical Edition of Solomon Northup’s 1853 memoir, Twelve Years a Slave (W. W. Norton & Co., 2016). Burke’s film credits include working as the senior story producer on the popular genealogy series Finding Your Roots, now in its sixth season on PBS, and Reconstruction: America after the Civil War (PBS, 2019), winner of the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award. He also was a senior historical adviser on the Emmy Award–nominated Black America since MLK: And Still I Rise (PBS, 2016) and Africa’s Great Civilizations (PBS, 2017).