As disco turned to house
music, you could easily dance a seamless full hour to the adrenalin-boosting
bass, if you could stand the deglamorizing effects of sweat. In the dance
clubs you could see that the flowing syncopations of disco were being replaced
by the halting violence that house music was becoming. Starting as a way for
DJ's to keep people on the floor, and thereby avoid the awkward 'uh ya wanna
dance' phase of partying, house music soon became an expression of the DJ.
Mixing is the bringing together of several different songs to create a new
song. Multiple turntables or dubbing tape equipment is needed. The
proficiency with which the DJ accomplishes 'mixing' determines his
success. Before long, mixing was an art, and the artists wished to be
known, so DJ's performed or were accompanied by rapping. The Bump, The
Ronald Reagan, The Hustle, The African Queen, and The Cabbage Patch dances
faded with disco, as the moves of the breakdancers were appropriated from their
cardboard-box stages on the streets and into the dance halls themselves. The
aggressive energy of breakdancing is the perfect accompaniment to the violence
of the DJ's art. From this: breakdancing, DJ'ing, and rap, hip hop was
born.
As far as I can tell,The DJ,
the boombox, the rapper, and the dancers form the hip hop team. The DJ
collects the beats from a variety of sources and that collection forms his oeuvre.
The boombox, serves one or two functions, he or she can be the human-made
sound of instruments or machines, kind of like when Ella Fitzgerald scats in
jazz, and/or he or she can be the one who encourages the crowd to participate,
kind of like what Spliff does with Busta Rhymes. The dancers are the two
or more performers that 'do the moves' that relocate from the street. The
dancers also represent the audience, and the historical idea of community
participation in black art.
By the time rap first broke
big with Grand Master Flash, the Sugar Hill Gang, Run DMC and others, I was too
old and set in my twenties to really get into it. I appreciated the fact that
Run DMJ gave new life to the group that wrote "Walk This Way" and
revitalized rock while performing rap. I appreciated the fact that hip
hop was a burgeoning new art form that was going to change the face of
music. I even anticipated the fact that, Vanilla Ice, notwithstanding,
rap would become "Elvis Presley'd"-- appropriated by and a source of
wealth for whites. I further expect that the embrace by popular culture
will lead to rejection of the form by authentic creators and to new forms that
are fomenting in the subcultures as we speak. I appreciated very much the fact
that rap is poetry, but its class orientation for the most part was wrong for
me. I was a business woman running my own computer programming and
analysis business in Chicago's Loop. I was a doctor's wife living in a
high rise condo with the wealthy white retirees and young professionals. Sure,
I lived during desegregation and through white supremacy, so I had lived
in my share of ghettoes, but I wasn't trying to go back.
Back then I thought that
while rap wasn't exactly beneath me, I just couldn't find a point of connection
beyond the literary, and I was none too motivated to explore that in my busy
life. I still attended things like Baraka and Morrison readings, or Chicago
Cultural Center's Black History Month offerings by notables like Leon Forrest
and Cyrus Colter, so I wasn't looking for new material. The fact
remained, however, that I am black, hip hop is black music and dance,
therefore, it is my mine. I was just having a hard time relating to most of the
stories that rappers were telling. Much like the black middle-class and
religious community's objections to blues in the thirties and forties, rap just
didn't seem to be about uplift. Uplift, the Du Boisian theory of the
"talented tenth" leading and mentoring the 'lower classes' into
mainstream America was more my aim. Rap made me respect the fact that
although blackness is not monolithic, my black consciousness demands that
I listen and try to find my place within the blackness unfolding before us.
Treach on Soul Train
My first real sense of
connection came with the number "Ghetto Bastard" by Naughty by
Nature. Treach, the group's rapper, is handsome, so looking at his group
on the MTV was a pleasure, but listening to the lyrics is what connected me. I
had help with the lyrics from www.acelyrics.com
and the Lyricsearch on Ask Jeeves, but neither of these sources nor I, provide
the authentic version, just what listeners transcribe. You could call it
"neoOral history in practice." Check them out: Lyrics
to "Ghetto Bastard"
Written in the mid-1980's
partly as an answer to the politicians and community leaders that were blaming
rap for the ostensibly dramatic "moral degradation" of African
American youth, then eighteen year old Treach's lyrics makes critics aware that
the music is a reflection of the life, and the children are not creating the
lives they want for themselves, rather, they are doing their best to survive a
life in which the odds of just living are against them. Elements of the "This
Little Piggy" nursery rhyme in the phrase "some get a little,
some get none", and the comforting words of the chorus that repeats
"everything's gonna be alright" accentuate the fact that Treach
is an American, with knowledge of U.S. folklore, and that Treach is also a mere
adolescent. He is essentially powerless. He is representative
of the many, many others not born on the gravy side of the train. In
"Ghetto Bastard", Naughty by Nature notifies listeners that
ghetto youth reject the scapegoat's mantle society wishes to place on their
shoulders. They refuse to bear the guilt of blame in addition to all the
ills that poverty and racism assure them in the future.
So how did this connect
me? Here's the irony-- it connected me by telling me that I don't
have to be connected in any obvious way. "Ghetto Bastard" tells
me that unless I am coming to the plate with realistic plans for change, plans
that empower the people, plans that improve the quality of life-- not my
'uplift' goals for the community, but the community's goals for itself-- unless
I am coming with that-- I can take a tip from Mystikal and "Move. Get Out
the Way!"
Have I 'copped out'? I
don't think so. Let me tell you why.
To get right to the point,
Naughty by Nature tells me that I am ignorant. I don't know the reality,
so my expectations of the people are functions of my imagination. The lyrics
tell me that maybe if I listen and am able to hear, and maybe if I look and
find that I can see, then maybe I can help. They tell me that it would be
arrogant of me to imagine that I could impose a solution when I don't even
appreciate the scope and details of the problem. Microcosmically, it is as
unconscionable as one nation invading another nation, imposing their will and
deciding what is good for everyone. Listening, I hear that
outsiders who judge and cast blame cannot be trusted. The presentation of
the song makes me 'know' these things while denying me the sense of superiority
that evoked pathos could bring because Treach ends with a warning that negates
his self-pity and appoints himself as a guardian. He raps: "If you
ain't never been to the ghetto,/ Don't ever come to the ghetto,/ Because you
wouldn't understand the ghetto./ So stay the fuck out of the
ghetto!" Well, I've been to the ghetto and lived in the
ghetto, but not the ghetto that has become since I was a child, not the one
that Treach means. My door is open. I'll be waiting at the threshold, and I can
go either way.
Busta from the MTV site
I have to content myself with
being black where I am. I've seen Busta Rhymes and the Flipmode Squad along
with about seven other artists in Hartford. I listen to Hot 93.7.
Missy Elliot is brilliant. I love Beyonce and Jay-Z, think that LL Cool Jay is
making 40 look good with that buff build, and laugh aloud each time Cam'ron
sings "Hey Ma." Yeah. I like rap. And it is always going
to be more to me than just music and dance. Like Motown, it is defining
part of my present, so it will be of value when I historicize my past. But... I
must admit that some days, this old lady just can't take the explicit sexuality
and patriarchy of the lyrics. The valorization of being high on alcohol and
drugs is another source of dismay. But damn! They sing about it
with such bumpin' beats and impressive creativity that I resign myself to just
endure the lyrics.
