Listen to these spoken word pieces and consider how we might trace the roots of hip hop to deeper black oral traditions (across the black diaspora) and American folk traditions.
What elements of rap and hip hop culture to you hear in these older pieces? Think about content (subjects) and form (rhythm, rhyme, style)? What do these tell us about the roots of hip hop? How can we use John Szwed's article to help us interpret these pieces? Can we
hear any of the musical effects that we think of as rap/ hip hop innovations in
these earlier rhymes/musical speech?
Toasts and Folk Songs
Stagolee
The Last Poets:
Muhammed Ali:
In The Real Old School, John Szwed asserts that “rap is rhythmic talk, talk leaning toward music,” later saying, “Rap, then, falls somewhere between the worlds of music and talk, but sharing with both” (4). RL Burnside’s, “Stagolee” (aka. Stagger Lee, Stack-o-Lee), The Last Poet’s “When the Revolution Comes,” and Muhammad Ali’s boasting verses each, in their own way, epitomize Szwed’s sentiment.
ReplyDeleteThese pieces, seen exhibiting repeating rhythms, political rhetoric, and colorful storytelling, (easily paralleling modern day elements of hip-hop culture/style) illustrate that the roots of hip-hop run much deeper than 1970’s block parties and gang wars. Below I have posted a few hip-hop songs that I believe draw a distinct parallel between DJ Justice’s examples of hip-hop roots.
Hip-hop narrative songs, in which a story is told through a sequence of events, have their roots in songs like RL Burnside’s “Stagolee.” Slick Rick comes to mind when I think of narrative hip-hop. His straightforward yet not overly simple story telling could easily be drawn from old blues standards like “Stagolee.” Immotal Technique’s “Dance with the Devil” is another example of this—perhaps even more fitting due to the sexual/violent themes and content.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjNTu8jdukA
The Last Poets evoke more hip-hop’s more politicized/consciousness-based artists of today. Artists like (but not limited to) Common, Yasiin Bey (Mos Def), Dead Prez, and KRS-One exhibit this sense of a greater concern for social issues (be it stopping the violence, advocating for revolution, or criticizing economic/wealth gaps). The Yasiin Bey video below resonates largely with “When the Revolution Comes”—although it’s almost as if the timelines are switched. “Niggas in Poorest” spends four minutes illuminating social concerns, whereas “When the Revolution Comes” seems to be a response to those concerns: poverty, racism, neocolonialism, etc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFg7-4vBPWM
Muhammad Ali’s rhymes are what hip-hop is, if it’s nothing else. Whether he’s picking on George Forman, Ernie Terrell, or Joe Fraizer, Ali smoothly boasts his own prowless with a catchy rhyming flow. As Szwed writes, “…Ali’s “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” boast is ‘the most famous rap lyric ever’” (10). Ali’s disses connote a trend that has permeated hip-hop for the past 30 years. Though perhaps not as pervasive as it once was (the 90’s come to mind), boasting and dissing other MCs has been almost a sub genre of its own. The most prominent of these disputes was between Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls. Dis tracks like shown below escalate and all of a sudden fighting words channel Muhammad Ali into real cases of violence.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-H1jkyfkgw
Violence is a common theme between these three pieces. The contents of each are all so different from one another, yet the foundations of each are similar.
ReplyDeleteIn Stack-O-Lee, RL Burnside uses storytelling as a framework for his song. He starts out by rhyming verses in between guitar segments, as a way to build up his story. He eventually begins speaking over the guitar, but it’s not just speaking as it’s more soulful and rhythmic. His words hold emotion, they groove with the guitar, giving it a very bluesy feel. As John Szwed writes, “Rap, then, falls somewhere between the worlds of music and talk, but sharing both,” which I believe emanates in Burnside’s song. Szwed also writes, “America has had a long romance with bandits, outlaws, and bad guys,” claiming that violence in music didn’t start with rap, but in folk tales and ballads from the west. Burnside uses rhymes tell the story of Stagger Lee (Stagolee, Stack-o-Lee) who is a bandit and kills mercilessly. He also talks about prostitutes as whores, which adds to the theme of misogyny occurring in hip hop which Szwed describes as “disrespectful music can scarcely be blamed on contemporary black males alone. In the first decade of this century, whites at Ozark county parties (where drunkenness, violence, gunplay, gangwars and sexual assault were common) square-danced to calls like this one: Log-chain your sweetie, log-tie your honey, stick it up her ass, get the worth of your money.”
The Last Poets take a different approach to their music.They don’t rhyme their verses, but they psych up their audience through the beat of the drums and the pace in which they preach, not sing. They’re playing African drums to connect them back to their heritage and roots. The tempo is fast and exciting. The main “singer” frequently repeats the phrase “When the revolution comes” to instill it in the audience minds’ that it will indeed come. The background singers begin to chant “revolution, revolution, revolution,” which jazzes up the audience and gets them excited. They want to embed into their audience’s mind about the importance of starting a revolution and reclaiming their freedom and equality. Their song is a very politicized statement about black power and pride, and fighting the man. They mention when that when the revolution comes, there will be violence, blood will pour through the streets, police will be stripped of their guns, and black power will reign. But in the last few moments of the song, it seems as though all of their energy and beliefs in a revolt are shut down by the people who don’t care enough to participate in fighting for what The Last Poets believe is justice. The last few lyrics of the song are, “You know and I know niggas will party and bullshit and party and bullshit...” He highlights how no one is doing anything to fight the good fight.
Lastly, Muhammad Ali is a poet, rather than a musician. He uses words to fights his opponents when he isn’t physically beating them. He uses his rhymes as a way to assert his dominance, masculinity, confidence and power over his rivals. Using words to assert these traits is still very much alive in hip-hop today. It’s not just about style, but the way you present yourself. And Ali always presented himself as the strongest and baddest dude you’d never want to mess with. His arrogance made his rhymes popular and made him a better fighter.
As I’ve found in the past few weeks, tracing the roots of hip hop can occur way farther back in time than I had anticipated. Now I see the connections all the way back to the time of slavery; the beats in clapping and foot tapping to religious songs, the shared emotional struggle regarding field labor, and the release in dancing and listening to music to pass the time. (pbs.org) The videos posted by DJ Justice are continuations of these musical elements perpetuating the style of a culture as they navigate their way through history.
DeleteThe late ‘80s/early 90s recording of “Stagolee,” or “Stack-o-lee,” draws the listener in immediately with the story-telling effect, a usage common in modern-day rap. The lyric, “Frank, my man, I wouldn’t give a goddamn,” exemplifies the rebel attitude of John Szwed’s proclaimer that “America has had a long romance with bandits, outlaws, and bad guys.” The renegade persona of Stack-o-lee fits this concept and the unfolding of his murderous antics employ the “don’t mess with me” mentality, such as the outlooks of rappers today, such as, Notorious BIG. Stack-o-lee has been held in such a position of worthlessness in society that it means nothing to him to kill a person, similar to Biggie’s unself-conscious claim, “Niggaz say I’m strange deranged because I put the 12 gauge to your brain,” from the ‘94 track, “Ready to Die.” (azlyrics.com)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjYDZMRTt8U
Similar to some of the songs by contemporary rapper, Jay Z, the Last Poet’s 1971 track, “When the Revolution Comes” is a spoken word piece criticizing ignorance and mocking societal ineptitudes. The goal of educating is the motivation for this song, challenging listeners to think about the words they are hearing and implanting the concept of “when the revolution comes” by the group repetition. The song seems to exist to say this is what’s going to happen if we continue on this way, like Kanye West and Jay Z’s “Murder to Excellence.” They’re more explicit, but the lyric, “It’s time for us to stop and redefine black power, 41 souls murdered in fifty hours,” relates to “When the Revolution Comes” in posing challenges to the listener to better society.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yn5qj1pCj4
Lastly, we bring our attention to Muhammed Ali, not in the depiction that is most familiar to us, but Ali as a poet, rapper. Szwed highlights “the boasting rap, the song of self-praise, the self-advertisement,” which is precisely what Ali manages to achieve in his rhythmic couplets. Resembling “Stagolee,” Ali also puts out a “don’t mess” bravado meant to establish a reputation and embarrass opponents. His poetical conceits, “Ima handcuff lightning, throw thunder in jail” make a name for himself in a creative and artistic, yet aggressive way, common in modern rap and hip hop.
Consequently, the history of rap, in fact, does date back perhaps even beyond the era of slavery, yet with that time as a starting point, the examples posted are planted somewhere along the trail between then and now. History repeats itself and what we, as the current society, discover and enjoy today as rap and hip hop seems to be a re-emergence of values that have existed long before our time.
Within the three musical speech pieces, elements of the soon to come rap/hip-hop culture appear. In Stackolee, along with the guitar, there is a faint foot tapping that can be heard which can be seen as the beats being created in the then modern songs. Also, there are many instrumental interjections where the vocalist in Stackolee takes a break and allows for a guitar solo. This can be seen as the most prominent portion of the song within the ‘Kool Herc’ days.
ReplyDeleteThe lyrics of Samuel L. Jackson’s Stagolee and The Last Poet’s When the Revolution Comes utilize jokes and obscenities to fuel the piece. Szwed states that performers were free again to insert jokes and insults into music during the rise of hip-hop and rap as well as their ability to “work sly insults” into conversational songs. These two spoken word examples show the roots of where these styles of music are today. Throughout the time of slavery, African Americans were incorporating hidden insults within their songs as a means of protest to their white suppressor. Artists in the formulation of the genres also utilized this tactic to place messages within their songs to attempt to have their listeners understand their opinion.
Szwed says that rap meant liberation at the time. Within all three videos, there is talk of violence. Rap started with a means to escape violence: they tried to avoid violence and thus began to discuss it within the lyrics. Rhyme is evident in Stackolee as well as Muhammad Ali, showing the prominent role it plays in the formulation the genres of rap and hip-hop. Within When the Revolution Comes, there is less rhyme and more repetition involved. Throughout, they repeat the phrase “When the Revolution Comes” as well as in the background the word “Revolution” is repeated over and over again, as if it were a constant thought within the listener’s mind.
The roots of hip-hop can be seen easily in the Muhammad Ali video, seeing as within his everyday life he would rhyme words together and allow them to flow. As Szwed states, rap is rhythmic talk leaning towards music. The roots begin to formulate through everyday talk as well as rhyme. As seen in the video, the modern artists are attempting to emulate Muhammad Ali’s style and manner of talking, however placing their own twist on it to create a form of modern spoken word.
Szwed says that “…they had liberated it from the ‘spoken word’ record binds and moved it in with music.” This exemplifies the morph of the genre from spoken word to that of hip-hop/rap. They began to place music and beats in along with spoken word, which in turn created a new form of music. Another innovation that can be seen within these spoken word videos that soon became hip-hop/rap would be how the artists were “making the sounds and words jump to a superimposed beat.” This is seen in any of the three videos; however it is prominent in When the Revolution Comes.
Finally, Szwed states that, “You’d be hard pressed to find any new electronic effects that don’t have their older African-American acoustic equivalents.” This can be exemplified through the foot tapping seen within Stagolee and the drums that are used in When the Revolution Comes that soon cause the incorporation of electronic beats within the formulation of hip-hop/rap music.
I wanted to comment partly on the reading that went along with this as well as possibly bring up some other ideas/examples of music that I consider very similar to some of the "rap/hip-hop" we hear. First off though, I would like to say that I love Ali's raps, he was the greatest.
ReplyDeleteFor years I've thought, why isn't some of Johnny Cash's music considered in rap, or at least reminiscent of rap? Szwed talks a lot about other types of music that has similar themes, and he mentions country/folk type music. He also talks a little about R&B and Blues. The three following pieces by Johnny Cash, I think, possess many traits that hip-hop shares.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GvD_NQrLFo
First lets talk about boasting. In "Jackson," Johnny cash is using an up tempo beat, boasting about how he's gonna go to Jackson and mess around, talks about how well he'll be received and that all the women are gonna "make [Johnny] teach 'em what they don't know how." He is countered in this song by June carter, the female side, who goads him and teases him by saying he's just boasting or bluffing and that he's not as big and bad as he says he is. This made me think a lot of the females' rebuttle to the males' womanizing/boasting that we saw in the video the other day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWsuVuw5JO4
Next we have a song about wishing he could be free (trapped and struggling), crime, and among other things, being a bandit (Szwed talks about our American obsession with bandits and bad guys). He talks about economic and social stratas, depreciation of society and about disrupting authority/order and making a change.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahbpzmir-k0
And this last one touches on some of the same principles that have been mentioned above: Violence, masculinity, being a bandit, being on the run. The tempo is very clear, there are obvious rhymes. This is also a great example of a story being told lyrically. Touching again the the Szwed article, when he mentions the line between speech/talking and music, making words, sentences and even stories melodic and into a song/music.
And then lastly, because dirty things are funny sometimes, I listened to Julia lee and a few other similar songs, both old and new. Fist we have Outkast with a song similar to Julia's "Don't come too soon", theirs is called "I'll call before I come." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyOeFiz80Cg). Bull Moose Jackson has this gem, titled "Big Ten Inch," AC/DC's "Big Balls," (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQSk0CYPvwE) and there are many more. These use the art of wordplay to say dirty things, in a socially acceptable way. Some songs are more direct:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GW0M2zEx-7g&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LLWVqUZvT0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mAJU_ZKhEM
as well as many others.