Gefilte
Fresh (formerly MC Mitzvah) is the founding member of the seminal
Hebrew Hip-Hop Crew K.W.C. (Kikes with Chutzpah), dedicated to doing
exactly what 2 Live Jews did 20 years ago--making terrible Jewish
jokes in a Hip-Hop idiom (as well as apparently reppin' the JNST, as
in their breakout hit "Fight the Admin", in no way modeled
after Public Enemy). To put him in his own words:
My
Bubbe used to make me gefilte fish / now my homies, they call me
Gefilte *Fresh* / some know me as a culinary terror / from the old
country era / but my rhymes will show you, how they're in error. /
They've never known the good stuff / only bitch-ass emcee's claimin'
that they hood 'nuff / --whether up at the mic / or in the kitchen /
Gefilte Fresh cooks it up, hot like a mission / to Mars / and all the
haters out there are gonna' start seein stars / when G-Fresh, and his
smokin' crew / lay it down K.W.C. style--then you might have a clue.
Drop
the mic.
All
facetiousness aside, though, I've never had much of a relationship
with Hip-Hop. As a kid, I never even really listed to music--I never
really liked any modern pop styles, and never really hung out with
anyone who did either. It wasn't until a chance encounter with the
soundtrack to The Big Chill, the classic Baby Boomer nostalgia film,
introduced me to Soul music (which I originally thought was "Jazz")
that I even started liking music at all (I listened to that tape so
many times I can't hear Marvin Gaye's I Heard it Though the Grapevine
or Smokey Robinson's I Second That Emotion without being taken back
to it). Later, as an angsty teenager, I enscewed the aggressive
masculinity of Hip-Hop for the nebulous interioirty of Dylan--I
wasn't drawn to outward rebellion, but more towards a dark and
brooding lonesomeness, a self-imposed exile in which echoed the
haunting songs of a mad prophet whose voice seemed to contain within
it the end of everything. Dylan lives in his own little universe and
it's easy to get lost there.
From
Dylan I would move into Blues and Country music (and a little bit of
Rock and Folk too), the real sites of my expertise. Eventually I
would even come around to real Jazz and Classical music, however,
Hip-Hop remained outside of my purview. It wasn't until I began to be
able to articulate the cloying whiteness of my upbringing, that I
began to want to look into things outside of it, into things that it
had disparaged and declared dangerous (I come from the sort of
wealthy white neighborhood where walking while being ethnic is a
crime--despite, or perhaps even because of, “liberal”
pretensions, hysterical fear of contact with brown people is endemic,
becoming even a much hated part of myself. We like them fine, just
not in our backyard). Coming to a place where Hip-Hop wasn't an
object of revilement, it took a while to acclimate myself, and I
think my interest in it was sparked primarily by two classic "golden
age" groups--Public Enemy and N.W.A..
At
first I didn't quite know how to take their music, but there was
something about Public Enemies attitude that deeply attracted me to
them. They talked back to the sort of obnoxious self-satisfied white
people that I had lived my whole life around, and it was compelling.
They spoke out in a way that challenged the most fundamental
injustices that powered that world and that everyone there took for
granted. As a cultural critic, I was deeply attracted to that power.
Then there was N.W.A., who spoke to me on a much different level.
Before I hadn't really liked the sound of Hip Hop—I had no way to
get at it, I didn't understand what I was supposed to do with it. But
N.W.A., with there James Brown samples and expressive flow, was funky
in a way that I understood and could grok, in a way that lead me to
be much more receptive to the entirety of the Hip-Hop world—perhaps
there was something to this stuff after all.
In
this class, I will be more relying on the expertise of other to teach
me about the world of hip-hop--what I brig to the table is very
different, so I approached my mix a lot differently than the rest of
the class. Since I don't really know very much Hip-Hop, I decided to
curate a short list of things from my knowledge base that I thought
create an interesting dialogue with it--something that I will be
working on significantly over the course of the semester. Starting
off the mix is some classic Soul and Blues numbers that a very much
connected in some way or another to the roots of Hip-Hop.
Ball
of Confusion, The Temptations/Inner City Blues, Marvin Gaye: These
two pieces are both “message songs” from the late era of Classic
Motown. They both combine funky beats with socially conscious lyrics
about the problems accompanying the end of 60's. Both speak very
strongly to the roots of socially conscious Hip-Hop, as they lay out
a series of grievances against injustice in America in a musicianly
and lyrically sophisticated fashion. In addition, they both speak
very strongly to the growing problems of post-civil rights urban
Blackness, from which Hip-Hop would be born.
Money,
Barrett Strong: Money takes us back 10 years before Ball and Inner
City, to the founding of Motown in 1959. Although it is realsed on
the Black-pop Motown label, Money shares more in common with its hard
edged 50's R&B counterparts than it does with later Motown pop
hits like “My Girl” or “Please, Mr. Postman”. Money speaks
very strongly to the Hip-Hop tradition of talking back—from the
Message song to the Diss track to the “Crew” which takes turns
with verses, this back and forth is central to Hip-Hop culture. Money
is a sassy response to the traditional love song, with its platitudes
about “no matter how poor we may be, we'll always have each other”.
Money turns that formula on its head, rebuking it with a
tongue-in-cheek embrace of crass materialism: “Your love gives me
such a thrill / but your lovin' don't pay my bills.”
Bad
Like Jesse James, John Lee Hooker: Bad Like Jesse James speaks to the
Hip-Hop idiom on many levels. While an anomaly for a Blues piece
(which are rarely so aggressively violent), it is one of the finest
early examples of many currents that would go into the shaping of
Hip-Hop. Firstly, people talk about the relationship between beats
and lyrics but this isn't only true for Hip-Hop, in fact, in the
sophisticated back and forth we can see on this track, between
Hookers titch and complex vocals and his sophisticated guitar
picking. As well, it is an excellent early example of the
performative “badness” associated with Hip-Hop culture, whereby
one establishes one's masculine chops through braggadocio regarding
ones “stone cold ruthless” ways.
Backdoor
Man, Howlin' Wolf: Backdoor Man also has a lot to do with the
masculine braggadocio, but this time in the sexual sense (one much,
much more common to the Blues idiom). The Wolf tells the world of how
his sexual prowess is so great married women swoon all over him
(increasing his accomplishment because of how he unmans his
“rivals”). Don't tell me the overlaps aren't obvious.
We
now come to what I see of the most interesting aspect of my dialogue
with this course. Perhaps even more common as an than "I like
all types of music but Hip-Hop" is the ever-ubiquitous "I
like all types of music except Country". Hip-Hop is not the only
American musical style with racialised underpinnings, although the
racialization of country is much less overt (as it is with all things
White--its whiteness hides in plain sight). In this course, I would
not only like to explore the operation of race within Black spaces,
but within White ones as well. I choose three songs to introduce some
of the ideas I will be looking at.
(Listeners
in this class will probably not enjoy the Country music very much.
However, if you can get over that immediate visceral disgust, you may
find the experience valuable, if not necessarily entertaing.)
Country
Blues, Doc Boggs: This song is a classic Appalachian mountain ballad,
with roots in folk song going back hundreds of years. I included it
to indicate the way in which themes of poverty and violence are not
new to the White or Black vernacular musical styles in the United
States. Long before Gangsta' Rap came out raw from the ghetto,
marginalized communities, both Black AND White, in America were
expressing themselves in very similar ways. Also interesting about
this track is the cross-pollination it shows with African-American
forms of music making—the banjo is a traditionally African-American
instrument, however, by the 20's when this was originally recorded,
it had become integral to many forms of White music making.
Okie
from Muskogee, Merle Haggard and L.A. Blues, Tom T. Hall: I choose
both of these songs to close out this set for the way in which they
highlight Country musics place as a symbol of a certain type of rural
Whiteness—one we might almost see as diametrically opposed to the
intense urban Blackness of Hip-Hop. They both express an extreme
ambivalence about urban lifestyles and people, creating by contrast a
sense that the “true America” rests not in our unmoored and
directionless cities, but in the hardy and strong White back-country.
Yet there is more at work here than simply a subtle racism—by the
70's when both of these were released, rural (especially poor) whites
had become themselves a marginalized group within American society
(think about peoples answer to the question about musical taste—there
is not only a desire operating there to distance oneself from overt
Blackness, but from certain strains of Whiteness as well). Songs like
this can also be seen as an attempt for them to legitimize there
identity in a society that increasingly sees them as inbred
imbeciles worthy only of contempt.
