Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic
Date:         Fri, 24 Jul 1992 09:32:45 EDT
From:         "Michael H. Bloom" <MHB@MITVMA.BITNET>
Subject:      Walk a mile in my shoes

From:         Sonia Kovitz <skovitz@MAGNUS.ACS.OHIO-STATE.EDU>
Subject:      Re: rap

> precursors of rap: not sure about musical precursors but rap itself comes out
> of a long folk tradition of black rhythmic talk : "signifying" - it's kind of
> interesting how the talk and the music were separate strands for a long
> time, and then when they crossed, you got rap.

Musically, there was a tradition of "talking blues," where the performer would
spin verses and sarcastic asides on a given topic for long stretches. The form
was much beloved of the protest singers of the '60s; "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream"
is one of my favorites.

Several jazz singers used to incorporate unpitched, rhythmically tricky parts,
and I've heard at least one of these guys say, "Rap? That's just talking over
a groove, and we'd been doing that for years!"

From:         Jeff Beer <ujwb@UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU>
Subject:      Re: rap

> Violence?  If you have a rap concert in which members from several rival
> gangs attend, when they run into each other, there will be problems.

Of course there's a lot of precedence for this. Remember the mods vs. rockers
warfare dramatized in the movie of _Quadrophenia_? That was genuine historical
fact. I vaguely recall being told that there was similar violence at the old
Alan Freed package tours in the late '50s, for the same reason-- gangs would
take the opportunity to settle some old scores. The Cincinnati Who concert was
an accident, aggravated by pinhead policies of the stadium and the promoter.
The root cause of Altamont was that Mick Jagger hired the Hell's Angels to do
stage security, and didn't understand that whereas England's Hell's Angels
were relatively gentle hash smokers, American Hell's Angels really get off on
violence.

Violence at rap events is gonna get a disproportionate amount of newspaper
coverage, because it's those horrible threatening black folks doing it, not
your fine upstanding white suburban children who just wanna drink a few beers
and get loose and really didn't mean anything by it when they had that big
brawl after the hockey game...

> The other sounds, they sound like loops of sampled stuff.  or someone
> running a scratch.  I seldom hear much happening in this, even from the
> big names like Public Enemy, although a few weeks ago I heard something
> by them that sounded better.

Yeah, it's just like Eno's _Music for Airports_, only it's not the soundtrack
for the waiting room, but the soundtrack for the baggage claim area. (Of course
the mechanics listen to Zeppelin, as auto mechanics have for time immemorial.)

From:         DMetcalf%IC-LOG@WALKER-LTT.ARMY.MIL
Subject:      RAPSNOT

> Boogie Too - not in the LEAST inclined towards violence, 'less S-E-X =
> violence (s'pose, for SOME misguided individuals, it COULD lean that way) -

Are you by any chance referring to Andrea Dworkin?

> that COOKS.  Some of those segments were patterened (albeit, subconciously)
> on pieces that Gil-Scot Heron had done with a (pre-rap rap) group by the
> name of "The Last Poets", I think out of L.A.

Damn right! They had a magnificent proto-rap called "The Revolution Will Not
Be Televised," which was the blueprint for the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy,
parodying American consumer culture-- it was both truthful and humorous.

>                                                I must agree with M. Bloom
> (& others) that MUCH of the rap today is inclined towards VIOLENT protest
> that offers no SOLUTIONS... how about this?  Is there any chance we can
> find a rap outfit out there (black, white, brown or indifferent) that will
> expend ALL their energies in preaching NON-violence in an articulate &
> entertaining fashion?  Worth asking, anyway, ya' know, take a CHANTS!

I don't even think it's anywhere near the majority of rap, just that I don't
wanna meet Sister Souljah in a dark alley...

I keep thinking about Sly Stone singing "We gotta live together," and whether
there's anyone out there now with both the musical stature and the strength of
character to try and foster that again. Woodstock Nation was all-embracing--
provided of course that your hair was long enough, your record collection was
groovy enough, and you despised the war powerfully enough-- but a great part
of the nostalgia us old farts have for the '60s was, it was the last time in
American popular culture that we evidenced loyalty to a principle the size of
an entire nation. Now we're all factionalized to hell and gone, and pitifully
ineffective as a result.

By the way, Zzaj, do you vote in American elections?

Your final pun is execrable. Keep 'em coming!

From:         Mike Masuda <MASUDA@SJSUVM1.BITNET>
Subject:      rap

> Something to think about:
>
> There were certain songs that may have been precursors to rap music:
>
> "Goin' Down"--The Monkees
> "Like a Rolling Stone"--Bob Dylan
> "I am the Walrus"--The Beatles
> "Let It All Hang Out"--(I forgot who)

Don't remember the Monkees tune. The Beatles tune doesn't have any more to do
with rap than Shakespeare (who's responsible for the spoken word bits) does.
(Ever hear XTC's parody, the Dukes of Stratosphear's "Mole from the Ministry?"
They declaim old proverbs, like "Fish and visitors smell after three days.")
Dylan always sounded like that, except for the "Lay Lady Lay" period when he
quit smoking and took up crooning, so by this logic, he was the original rap
artist-- which makes a certain kind of sense, given rap's purpose as protest.
I believe the group responsible for "Let It All Hang Out" was the Hombres,
dating from a period in 1966-67 where everybody wanted to be Dylan.
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