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mumia on rap
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.
(c) 2001
Mumia Abu-Jamal
