Re: Hiphop

["bob brown" <vacirca@xxxxxxxxx>]

some very good points stan, again welcome to the list bob
--
"solidarity means sharing the same risks" - Che
( la solidarita significa correre gli stessi rischi)

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>From: bon moun <sherrynstan@xxxxxxx>
>To: M-Fem@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: Re: Hiphop
>Date: Fri, Jun 23, 2000, 5:28 AM
>

> At 07:27 PM 6/22/00 -0500, you wrote:
>>Stan, yes, most rap is bought by whites -- as you say,partly because
>>whites outnumber nonwhites by so much. Even if every single black person
>>bought rap, which of course they don't, that is only 12 percent of the
>>pop. But you know even really well off white kids go for rap and the
>>whole hiphop thing.  My cousin's son, who is twelve, showed up at my
>>dad's 80th birthday outfitted entirely in tommy Hilfiger -- huge falling
>>off pants, the whole bit. anmd don't foget eminem -- the white guy who
>>likes to rap about killing his girlfriend.
>
> Gosh, I don't want to get into an endless set of comparables.  "I killed my
> love today, will you cry for me?"  Rock lyrics from today, among many
> others.  All I'm saying is that this stuff, where it is as excreble as some
> is, is not a reflection of one genre, but of the general jadedness of youth
> and the escalating threshhold to shock and titillate and find new ways to
> inappropriately express anger.
>
>>  As for rap not being worse than rock and roll -- well, much of rock
>>and roll was pretty macho, and I'm no rock scholar,but i can think of
>>only a few songs that were openly contemptuous of women ("Yakkety yak,
>>Don't Talk Back'which was just a novelty song), or that glorified male
>>violence ("Johnny get Angry," "He Hit me and it Felt Like a Kiss"). The
>>rolling Stones were about as far as it got in the crude sexual
>>objectification line -- remember how shocking that album cover with Mich
>>Jagger's zipper was considered at the time? But -- correct me if I'm
>>wrong -- rock and roll--not to mention Motown, my personal favorite pop
>>genre, although I also like country music -- also had lots of really
>>romantic songs, full of vulnerable male swooning for girls and vice
>>versa. the dominant mood wasn't hostility at all! Rap doesn't seem to
>>have many songs in which men express affection or admiration for women,
>>or vulnerability, or longing for more than a blow job from a woman.
>
> Again, I would hesitate to pin the rap on rap (-:  Doesn't Aerosmith
> celebrate this level of relationship just as much as Snoop Doggy Dogg?  And
> many female artists are just as forthcoming in their lyrics... which isn't
> necessarily a bad thing, depending on the contest of the whole tune, given
> that women's lyrics are no longer roped out of portraying physical
> desire... something that used to be forbidden.
>
>>  What do your kids and their friends like about it?
>
> The same thing everyone likes about music.  The interesting and patterned
> production of sound, the social activities that grow up around music, and
> the (often imperfect) expression (call it objective correlative, if you
> like) of things they feel.
>
> and how do you feel
>>about it?
>
> Some of it I like, some of it I fnd tolerable, and some of it doen't do
> anything for me.  But it wasn't imprinted on me like Temptations, Carole
> King, Doors, Joni Mitchell, the Beatles, James Brown, Aretha, et al.
>
> I'm way past the age when kid's pop music speaks to me. so
>>maybe I'm missing the point. I miss melody, though, and people who can
>>actually play an instrument other than the tape recorder.
>
> I spend a lot of time in Haiti, where the hip-hop sounds are being very
> creatively blended with Voudon rhythms and Rara, and it's very good stuff.
> All I'm saying is I wouldn't be too generally dismissive.  Though
> commercialized and distorted by many of the dominant values, this music
> came from urban streets, and is an expression of incredible creativity on
> the part of its originators.  It doesn't displace melody and instruments,
> which are both creeping back into hip-hop as it becomes blended into newer
> music--a truly dialectical process (-:
>
> I would never ask someone else to share my aesthetic values.  You don't
> have to like rap/HH.  But don't judge the entire phenomenon by some bad
> lyrics.
>
> Take care.
>
> Stan
>
>
>
>
> "If insurrection is an art, its main content is to know how to give the
> struggle the form appropriate to the political situation."
>
>    -Vo Nguyen Giap
>
>
>
> "Rather than seeking comparabilities in statistical terms among what are
> all too often superficial features of different situations, comparabilities
> must be sought at the level of determinate mechanisms, at the level of
> processes that are generally hidden from easy view."
>
>    -Eleanor Burke Leacock
>
>
>
> "Every day one has to struggle that this love to a living humanity
> transform itself into concrete acts, in acts that serve as examples, as
> motivation."
>
>    -Ernesto "Che" Guevara
>