In the first of a two-part interview, Kevin Burke speaks with Darryl McDaniels, the legendary hip-hop artist from Hollis, where he and his two friends formed one of the truly pioneering groups in American music: Run-DMC.
Part two of our interview with Darryl “DMC” McDaniels. Hear DMC talk about his childhood passion for comic books, how they introduced him to his hometown of NYC and inspired his creativity as a rapper, and how they ultimately informed his search for meaning and identity.
ABout the show
Our hometowns – and the years we spend there growing up – loom large and cast long shadows. Whether we stay, move away, or eventually come back, they mark a permanent geography within our very beings. Our experiences there are foundational, our memories of them visceral – their needle ready to drop – and, in the rearview … they’re almost mythic. In this series, I want to discover where we’re from and when we’re from and how that unique crossroads in our coming of age years shapes us forever. One guest. One interview. One hometown at a time.
Check out the NYC Series Trailer
Share Your Hometown
Series one
New York City
Local engagement is vital to the mission of Your Hometown, with the series aspiring to visit a variety of iconic cities and towns for a deeper dive on each place as a hometown. This model is being launched through a first-season focus on New York City, and is a co-presentation with the Museum of the City of New York. Many think of New York as a place where people move to in order to realize their dreams, but it is critical to remember that it is also a place where young people grow up – a series of hometowns within the larger metropolis that shape rising generations through the day-to-day texture and details of family, neighborhoods, schools, and boroughs that will become the origin stories of their lives, creativity, work, and contributions to society as a whole. That is the New York this series seeks to illuminate and reveal.
Events

March 7, 2021, 2:00pm
Award-winning playwright Lynn Nottage speaks with host Kevin Burke.
Part two in a series of virtual conversations in partnership with the Museum of the City of New York.

Thursday, April 8, 7:00pm
Designer Daneille Guizio speaks with host Kevin Burke.
Part three in a series of virtual conversations in partnership with the Museum of the City of New York.
Your Hometown Host

Creator & Host / Executive Producer
Kevin Burke
Hometown: Newburgh, NY
Kevin Burke is a historian, journalist, and documentary film producer who has developed the podcast series “Your Hometown,” which he also hosts and produces. In addition to serving as the director of research at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University, he is the founder and CEO of Kevin Burke Productions, Inc., a New-York based company. His film credits include working as a producer on the popular genealogy series “Finding Your Roots”, now in its seventh season on PBS, “The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This is Our Song” (PBS, 2021), and “Reconstruction: America after the Civil War” (PBS, 2019), winner of the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award. With Henry Louis Gates Jr., Burke is the coauthor of 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 graduated from Harvard College in 1998 and from Harvard Law School in 2003. He received his master’s degree in History and Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization from Harvard in 2004 and 2006, respectively. A member of the New York State Bar, Burke serves on several boards, including as chair of the Hudson River Valley Greenway Conservancy and president of the Downing Film Center in Newburgh, New York, his hometown. He and his wife live with their two children in New York City. You can follow him on Twitter @Kevin_M_Burke.
Executive Producer
ROBERT KRULWICH
Hometown: New York, NY
Researcher
Shakila Khan
Hometown: Astoria, Queens, NY
Editor/Sound Design
Otis Streeter
Hometown: New York, NY
Composer/Performer
STERLING STEFFEN
Hometown: Austin, TX
Musical Consultant
Henry Pearson
Hometown: Rye, New York
Brand and Web Development
Michael Tama
Hometown: Mahopac, NY
Social Media Manager
Jessica Sain-Baird
Hometown: Wamego, KS
Support
Your Hometown is made possible in part with support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Additional support provided by Joan K. Davidson (The J.M. Kaplan Fund), Rudolph Rauch/Lanegate Foundation, Lori and John Berisford, Claudette Mayer, Paul Sperry, Victoria F. Morris, Peter M. Wolf, Kenneth J. Halpern, the Newburgh Institute, David Phelps Hamar, and an anonymous donor.