RAP'S ROOTS
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
Column Written 7/17/01
All Rights Reserved"Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn." -- Charlie "Bird" Parker, Great Jazz Saxman
When rap music arrived on the scene, it came like a crazy uncle; loud, unkempt, and uninvited, yet still family.
It came like a bastard son; brash, loud and blazing with color, daring to be ignored.
It ripped out into the world, gnawing and snarling and howling it's way into consciousness.
For many of middle-aged character, it could not be more unwelcome.
For when it crashed the corporate party in the 1980s, it tore into the sweet, comfortable, purple haze raised by the era we now like to forget: disco. Disco was the electrification, computerization, prettify-cation, and de-escalation of a quickening social consciousness that was trending in urban music. It was the commodification of R & B and funk, by sweetening its bark and bite.
When reggae was jumping real strong, the "B" sides of many hits featured orchestration without lyrics. Savvy Jamaican DJs began creating their own lines to flow with the rhythmic backbeats and drumming, and toasting was born. Reggae, ska, mento and calypso has always had a powerful tradition of biting (yet humorous!) critiques of the haves vs. the have-nots.
That spirit of socio-political criticism was heard by African-Americans who shared their neighborhoods in Queens, Flatbush, Bed-Sty, South West Philly, Roxbury, with West Indians. That spirit passed over, and for many youngsters, it was more attractive than the champale-sweet of disco. It was more real.
As their elders and their ancestors before them, this generation produced and created a music form to fit their lived reality. If it was raw, that's because life was naked and raw. If it was angry, that's because anger is a natural reply to repression.
Only when big corporate music interests became involved did it begin to mellow, for, as in disco, marketing forces seek to erase that which is controversial, to insure a wider audience (meaning consumer base).
EVERY generation creates its own music. Years ago, the acclaimed Black writer, Richard Wright wrote, in his 12 Million Black Voices (Viking, 1941):
"Our blues, jazz, swing and boogie-woogie are our 'spirituals' of the city pavement, our longing for freedom and opportunity, an expression of our bewilderment and despair in a world whose meaning eludes us... " <128>
And just as culture created a music to give voice to the inner strivings of a people, so too did corporate interests seek to sweeten, homogenize, and de-blackify a cultural creation into a commodity.
Culture cannot be sold, but artifacts can be.
What of the oral mastery shown by rappers? Again, nothing creates itself.
Over a century ago, during slavery days, young men and young women engaged in a courtship ritual that was wonderful in its wit, and its sweetness. Historian John Blassingame, in his The Slave Community recounts how people interacted in the midst of the brutality of slavery:
"HE: My dear kin' miss, has you any objections to me drawing my cher to your side, and revolvin' de wheel of my conversation around the axle of your understanding?
SHE: I has no objection to a gentleman addressin' me in a proper manner, kin' sir.
HE: My dear miss, de worl' is a howlin' wilderness full of devourin' animals, and you has got to walk through hit."
This is the "rap game" of a people who loved themselves in a world that loved them not.
Perhaps such roots can heal the fruits we see and hear today.
Text © copyright 2001 by Mumia Abu-Jamal.
All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission of the author.International Action Center
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