[mplpost] Rap - the folk music of today?

[Jory Nash]

This idea doesn't horrify me at all...I agree with Jesse that aspects of rap
and hip hop music and their roles in the cultures and societies they portray
afford direct parallels with many aspects of folk music, as defined by Jesse in
his original post.

Of course, one could say the same about jazz in the 1950's and 1960's and I
wouldn't disagree with you.

Rap music in the 1980's and early 1990's was largely underground, original and
often confrontational from an ideological aspect. Groups, and rappers within
like Public Enemy, NWA, Ice T and many others rapped about the conditions they
lived in, the violence of their cultures, and most interestingly to me, in
language that was normal to them but foreign to those outside the culture.
World music at its most microscopic.

Rap music became more commercially acceptable, and "mainstream" in the late
1990's, and the subject matter became less reflective and defining of the
culture it came from and geared more towards topics of sex, showbiz, and power
posturing. In my opinion this does not mean that rap music is less valid
(especially to those who dig the music. I alas, tend not to be one of them) but
it does suggest that the analogy with folk music Jesse alluded to has less
relevance today than it did say, 10 years ago. The popularization and
homogenization of the idiom has resulted in a distancing from the actual
culture it once celebrated and chronicled.

Off to the studio to finish mastering my new contemporary folk CD.

Jory Nash
http://www.jorynash.com



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