Even for a rap historian like myself (make that self-proclaimed rap historian) the article in last month's National Geographic (which you can easily access through their site: http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0704/feature4/ )was very well done, and informative.
I find it fascinating that people are always surprised to hear of my love for Hip Hop, and my eager willingness to defend its artistic merits to the death. Rap is true art in that it pushes convention, it alters our culture (how many words and phrases come from rap?), it is competitive, and it is subject to many readings. I love that I can hear a good rap song, and like it, and come back to it months later and notice a layer of sound in the background track that had been there all along- or when the image/metaphor/slang of a rapper comes together for me in a "ah-ha" and I enjoy the deeper meaning behind a catchy song all that much more.
The ability to layer mismatched sounds and beats into a melodic and original sound in the hands of producers like Dr. Dre or Eric "Vietnam" Sadler is akin to a huge collage piece in visual art or a pop-art musical concerto. History will remember these artists as today's most original musicians and composers for their ability to command a full range of contemporary "instruments" (sirens, bells, dogs barking, pianos, violins, drums) into large-scale compositions. The National Geographic article does well to trace rap's roots and its impact as an ambassador of American art and culture around the world.
I like layering. I like things that are easily accessible and invite an audience in (a catchy beat; a stunning image) and then encourage deeper and deeper inspection and reveal deeper and deeper meaning. I can see the impact of rap on my poetry (the ways I rhyme or make layered images are often cheap imitations of Raekwon or Ghostface) and on my art (layers, layers, layers that encourage continued inspection and reward that inspection with continued revelations and enjoyment and meaning). I love art that works on every level- surface, literal, metaphorical- and strive for this accessibility and layered-meaning in my own work.
One of the things I found most interesting about the National Geographic piece was on the roots of Hip-Hop:
"The artist whose work arguably laid the groundwork for rap as we know it was Amiri Baraka, a beat poet out of Allen Ginsberg's Greenwich Village scene. In the late 1950s and '60s, Baraka performed with shrieks, howls, cries, stomps, verse floating ahead of or behind the rhythm, sometimes in staccato syncopation. It was performance art, delivered in a dashiki and Afro, in step with the anger of a bold and sometimes frightening nationalistic black movement, and it inspired what might be considered the first rap group, the Last Poets."
-James McBride, National Geographic, 2007
How interesting to me, a longtime fan of the New York School of poets (Amiri Baraka changed his name from Leroi Jones and was a contemporary and friend of Frank O'Hara) as well as rap to see these two worlds colliding. O'Hara mentions Baraka (Leroi Jones) in his poem "Personal Poem" from his book "Lunch Poems," as well as in his write-up for "Personism," as quoted below:
"It was founded by me after lunch with Le Roi Jones on August 27, 1959, a day in which I was in love with someone (not Roi, by the way, a blond). I went back to work and wrote a poem for this person. While I was writing it I was realizing that if I wanted to I could use the telephone instead of writing the poem, and so Personism was born. It’s a very exciting movement which will undoubtedly have lots of adherents. It puts the poem squarely between the poet and the person, Lucky Pierre style, and the poem is correspondingly gratified. The poem is at last between two persons instead of two pages."
-Frank O’Hara "Personism: A Manifesto" from Yugen #7, copyright © 1961.
What does all this mean? I find it fascinating in life, as with art, when upon further investigation the layers of things reveal greater meaning. Personally, this connection between art and rap; poetry and the birth of Hip Hop, all in the hands of poets and people I already admired for other reasons is wonderful and meaningful to me. I know that my poetry and writing and art will continue to be influenced by this music that I discovered as a 11-year old from a cassette tape someone had made in the neighborhood off an AM radio broadcast of Slick Rich and Dougie Fresh.
This week I am painting to Kanye West and making layers of photocopies on a canvas while preparing to paint over it... all while reading the new issue of National Geographic on my breaks.
Photo above:
Allen Ginsberg, Frank O’Hara, Le Roi Jones (Amiri Baraka) at the Living Theater, 1958. From www.jonasmekas.com
I find it fascinating that people are always surprised to hear of my love for Hip Hop, and my eager willingness to defend its artistic merits to the death. Rap is true art in that it pushes convention, it alters our culture (how many words and phrases come from rap?), it is competitive, and it is subject to many readings. I love that I can hear a good rap song, and like it, and come back to it months later and notice a layer of sound in the background track that had been there all along- or when the image/metaphor/slang of a rapper comes together for me in a "ah-ha" and I enjoy the deeper meaning behind a catchy song all that much more.
The ability to layer mismatched sounds and beats into a melodic and original sound in the hands of producers like Dr. Dre or Eric "Vietnam" Sadler is akin to a huge collage piece in visual art or a pop-art musical concerto. History will remember these artists as today's most original musicians and composers for their ability to command a full range of contemporary "instruments" (sirens, bells, dogs barking, pianos, violins, drums) into large-scale compositions. The National Geographic article does well to trace rap's roots and its impact as an ambassador of American art and culture around the world.
I like layering. I like things that are easily accessible and invite an audience in (a catchy beat; a stunning image) and then encourage deeper and deeper inspection and reveal deeper and deeper meaning. I can see the impact of rap on my poetry (the ways I rhyme or make layered images are often cheap imitations of Raekwon or Ghostface) and on my art (layers, layers, layers that encourage continued inspection and reward that inspection with continued revelations and enjoyment and meaning). I love art that works on every level- surface, literal, metaphorical- and strive for this accessibility and layered-meaning in my own work.
One of the things I found most interesting about the National Geographic piece was on the roots of Hip-Hop:
"The artist whose work arguably laid the groundwork for rap as we know it was Amiri Baraka, a beat poet out of Allen Ginsberg's Greenwich Village scene. In the late 1950s and '60s, Baraka performed with shrieks, howls, cries, stomps, verse floating ahead of or behind the rhythm, sometimes in staccato syncopation. It was performance art, delivered in a dashiki and Afro, in step with the anger of a bold and sometimes frightening nationalistic black movement, and it inspired what might be considered the first rap group, the Last Poets."
-James McBride, National Geographic, 2007
How interesting to me, a longtime fan of the New York School of poets (Amiri Baraka changed his name from Leroi Jones and was a contemporary and friend of Frank O'Hara) as well as rap to see these two worlds colliding. O'Hara mentions Baraka (Leroi Jones) in his poem "Personal Poem" from his book "Lunch Poems," as well as in his write-up for "Personism," as quoted below:
"It was founded by me after lunch with Le Roi Jones on August 27, 1959, a day in which I was in love with someone (not Roi, by the way, a blond). I went back to work and wrote a poem for this person. While I was writing it I was realizing that if I wanted to I could use the telephone instead of writing the poem, and so Personism was born. It’s a very exciting movement which will undoubtedly have lots of adherents. It puts the poem squarely between the poet and the person, Lucky Pierre style, and the poem is correspondingly gratified. The poem is at last between two persons instead of two pages."
-Frank O’Hara "Personism: A Manifesto" from Yugen #7, copyright © 1961.
What does all this mean? I find it fascinating in life, as with art, when upon further investigation the layers of things reveal greater meaning. Personally, this connection between art and rap; poetry and the birth of Hip Hop, all in the hands of poets and people I already admired for other reasons is wonderful and meaningful to me. I know that my poetry and writing and art will continue to be influenced by this music that I discovered as a 11-year old from a cassette tape someone had made in the neighborhood off an AM radio broadcast of Slick Rich and Dougie Fresh.
This week I am painting to Kanye West and making layers of photocopies on a canvas while preparing to paint over it... all while reading the new issue of National Geographic on my breaks.
Photo above:
Allen Ginsberg, Frank O’Hara, Le Roi Jones (Amiri Baraka) at the Living Theater, 1958. From www.jonasmekas.com
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