sonic youth == public enemy == orne
Ralph Dumain
play? What vocal techniques have they mastered, other than those
that may be emplyed, say, in the course of an armed robbery?
Dan Levy
people in your post, please allow me a gentle flame in your direction.
Some rappers are good at what they do, some are not. They are singing.
Singing does not necessarily involve melody. Perhaps you would be happier
considering them "poets."
----------------- ---------------------
Dan Levy Levity: New York City
dan...@panix.com
Dan Friedman
Ahern) wrote:
> Ralph Dumain <rdu...@igc.apc.org> writes:
> > Since when do rappers qualify as musicians? What instruments do they
> > play? What vocal techniques have they mastered, other than those
> > that may be emplyed, say, in the course of an armed robbery?
Hmmm....
Interesting that you make this criticism when guys like Max Roach have
christened hip-hop as "The Child of Bebop". Look at Ron Carter's work with
a band like A Tribe Called Quest (on the "Low End Theory" album). Or
Branford Marsalis' work with, uh, darn it, can't think of the name now. A
rap group, anyway.
Or how about Guru's "Jazzamatazz: a Fusion of Jazz and Hip-hop" album, on
which such giants as Branford, Courtney Pine, Donald Byrd, and others
appeared? Or Miles' last album ("Doo-bop")?
It would seem that many of those who are "making it" in jazz today seem to
disagree quite whole-heartedly with your views of rap as unsophisticated
and associated only with crime.
On that point, how about checking out groups like A Tribe Called Quest,
Jungle Brothers, De La Soul, Leaders of the New School, etc. before making
such generalizations?
And finally, would you say such dj's as Terminator X have no skill in
layering eight or nine samples on top of each other to produce thick and
very complex harmonic AND rhythmic textures? If so, would you discount
similar works by Cage, Cardew, Stockhausen, Steve Reich, and their ilk?
In future, please make sure you've versed yourself in all aspects of a
genre of music before you discount it.
--
Dan Friedman
First Year Music, York University
yku0...@cawc.yorku.ca
--------------------------------------------
"Do not fear mistakes. There are none."
--Miles Davis
Brian R. Hunt
Oh, crawl back under your rock already. Me, I'd love to have a voice
as good as Chuck D's.
--
Brian R. Hunt
hu...@ipst.umd.edu
Doug Ahern
> Since when do rappers qualify as musicians? What instruments do they
> play? What vocal techniques have they mastered, other than those
> that may be emplyed, say, in the course of an armed robbery?
Actually, Good Rappers have a great concept of time. Ever listen
how they are accenting with relation to the beat? It's tough!
You shoud try it! Also, I think Chuck D (of Public Enemy) is part
of the team that puts down a lot of the drum/percussion for a bunch
of pop and rap stars (Janet Jackson included).
While we are talking about Rap, let's mention Snoop Doogie Dogg, this
guy is great, let the facts speak:
1.) First of all, his name is "Snoop Doggie Dogg"
2.) He is up for murder charges
3.) He's got the number one record in America!
Fantastic! This guy is great!
Kudos to Snoop!
Doug
Rolf hanson
> While we are talking about Rap, let's mention Snoop Doogie Dogg, this
> guy is great, let the facts speak:
>
> 1.) First of all, his name is "Snoop Doggie Dogg"
> 2.) He is up for murder charges
> 3.) He's got the number one record in America!
>
O.K., Doug, you started out making sense, but your "musical taste airplane"
suddenly lost engine power on both sides. I think it may have crashed some
where in Long Beach, CA. The pilot accountable for the crash probably had
his navigation system screwed up because someone on the plane had a Snoop
Doggie Dogg disc playing on his portable cd player.
love, rolf
Keith Hedger
>
>Hmmm....
>
>Interesting that you make this criticism when guys like Max Roach have
>christened hip-hop as "The Child of Bebop". Look at Ron Carter's work with
>a band like A Tribe Called Quest (on the "Low End Theory" album). Or
>Branford Marsalis' work with, uh, darn it, can't think of the name now. A
>rap group, anyway.
>
that echos his political/social agenda.
For instance marching into a Miles Davis Carnegie Hall concert when
the sponsers were beleived to be investing in South Africa.
I suspect Max's comparison was made based on extra-musical criteria.
>Or how about Guru's "Jazzamatazz: a Fusion of Jazz and Hip-hop" album, on
>which such giants as Branford, Courtney Pine, Donald Byrd, and others
>appeared? Or Miles' last album ("Doo-bop")?
>
Well I don't know if any of these guys are 'Giants of Jazz', but let's
be honest. None of the musicians on the album has ever had qualms
about signing onto any project that would make them a ton of money. I
just saw (can't remember where) an interview with Lonnie Smith saying
how they're touring Japan, making plenty of money, "even my record
people are excited." Enough said.
>It would seem that many of those who are "making it" in jazz today seem to
>disagree quite whole-heartedly with your views of rap as unsophisticated
>and associated only with crime.
Well I guess that's true....of course by "making it" we mean making
money...not art.
>On that point, how about checking out groups like A Tribe Called Quest,
>Jungle Brothers, De La Soul, Leaders of the New School, etc. before making
>such generalizations?
>
>And finally, would you say such dj's as Terminator X have no skill in
>layering eight or nine samples on top of each other to produce thick and
>very complex harmonic AND rhythmic textures? If so, would you discount
>similar works by Cage, Cardew, Stockhausen, Steve Reich, and their ilk?
>
This is the argument I love to tear apart....the use of the techiques
pioneered by the originators of 'musique concrete' are just
that....TECHNIQUES!
It's what an artist (and I don't use the term to refer to rappers)
accomplish using a technique that must be considered. Just because
rappers use these techniques does not make the result particularly
artful...
>In future, please make sure you've versed yourself in all aspects of a
>genre of music before you discount it.
>
What does that mean ? I have to be an expert on rap before I recognize
that it's worthless pop drivel? I have news for you, there's not the
great variety in rap that all of its' proponents like to cite so
often...but this is all starting to sound fa-fa-fa-fa-familiar.
>Dan Friedman
Keith Hedger
19th year serious musician
--
=============================================================
= Keith Hedger| "AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH" =
= | =
=============================================================
Keith Hedger
>Ralph Dumain <rdu...@igc.apc.org> writes:
>> Since when do rappers qualify as musicians? What instruments do they
>> play? What vocal techniques have they mastered, other than those
>> that may be emplyed, say, in the course of an armed robbery?
>
I just can't help myself !!!!
>Actually, Good Rappers have a great concept of time. Ever listen
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
So? That doesn't in itself qualify them as musicians.
>how they are accenting with relation to the beat? It's tough!
^^^^^^^^^^^
It's not that tough for any decent jazz musician.
>You shoud try it! Also, I think Chuck D (of Public Enemy) is part
>of the team that puts down a lot of the drum/percussion for a bunch
>of pop and rap stars (Janet Jackson included).
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The Janet Jackson !?!?! Oh, well that changes everything then !
..........other drivel deleted ...............
>
>Kudos to Snoop!
>
>Doug
keith
Adrian Bradley
In article <CJxpF...@HQ.Ileaf.COM>, k...@HQ.Ileaf.COM (Keith Hedger) writes:
>
> >Actually, Good Rappers have a great concept of time. Ever listen
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> So? That doesn't in itself qualify them as musicians.
>
Then what would *you* consider a musician? Also, when you think of rap, do
you think of lyrics talking about killing and shooting people in the name of
being "black?" If so, then you are only looking at one small part of the whole
hip-hop genre, and the negative part of it. There are many positive counter-
examples to this form of hip-hop that are doing quite well.
A couple of people have already responded enough about the musical talents of
recent rap producers/artists. But since all of this seems like nothing more
than an opinion, the old cliche goes here:
"One man's music is another man's noise."
Perhaps we should just leave it at that...
---------------------------------------
==Adrian Bradley, CAEN Operations
==email a...@engin.umich.edu
____ ____
| \ / |
| |\ \/ /| | \/_O
| | \ / | | /-
| | \/ | | /\
|___| |___|
---------------------------------------
Doug Ahern
To beat a dead horse:
Kieth Hedger writes:
>>how they are accenting with relation to the beat? It's tough!
^^^^^^^^^^^
>It's not that tough for any decent jazz musician.
It is tough, considering they are using their voice. Plus, at the
same time, some of the rappers are trying to make a statement and
deliver a message.
It is my opinion that anytime a musician desides a certain genre,
or sound has nothing to offer in the way of growth or knowledge,
the musician has limited himself with a boundary. Not saying
every jazz musician should experiment with rap, but it probably
deserves some unbias attention. That's my opinion.
Oh, and Keith, the Janet Jackson bit was a joke, I was waiting
on someone to call me on that, thanks. :-)
Doug
------------------------------------------------------------------
Doug Ahern ah...@harpo.dev.uga.edu
UCNS Network Support University Of Georgia
1964 Oldsmobile f-85 Cutlass 310hp 330cid High Compression 4bbl.
-1976 Travis Bean Standard #547 ----------------------------------
William Hsu
> >Or how about Guru's "Jazzamatazz: a Fusion of Jazz and Hip-hop" album,
> >on
> >which such giants as Branford, Courtney Pine, Donald Byrd, and others
> >appeared? Or Miles' last album ("Doo-bop")?
I've listened to long stretches of the Guru CD (but not the whole
thing). I thought it was saccharine and lame. I'm afraid that
too many musicians use "jazz/hip-hop fusion" as an excuse to
make boring music. Incorporating elements of jazz into rap
should not necessarily mean simplifying your groove, slowing
down your beats and layering smoky female vocals and cliched
saxophone solos on top of everything.
The jazz/rap fusion groups I've heard have not been studying
the right records. (By the way, I was remarkably unimpressed
by Us 3 as well.) There's *lots* of danceable jazz (no, I
don't mean Acid Jazz). There's lots of funky, groovy jazz
with vocals. I can fill a tape effortlessly with fast Mingus
tunes, Eddie Jefferson, Bob Stewart, World Sax 4-tet with
African drummers, Ornette Coleman/Prime Time, Defunkt, Ray
Anderson/Slickaphonics, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller...
However, I have to disagree with Keith Hedger as well (an
unusual occurence, but hey :-)):
> What does that mean ? I have to be an expert on rap before I recognize
> that it's worthless pop drivel?
So what rap groups have you heard, Keith? It's not *all* pop
drivel. I haven't been following rap closely for years, but
I do remember good stuff from Public Enemy, Jungle Brothers,
Eric B and Rakim... (it's quite silly to judge these groups
by the criteria of jazz "the beat's too rigid", "too repetitive",
but then it's equally silly to judge jazz groups by the
criteria of, say, Baroque music).
Bill
Keith Hedger
>
>In article <CJxpF...@HQ.Ileaf.COM>, k...@HQ.Ileaf.COM (Keith Hedger) writes:
>>
>> >Actually, Good Rappers have a great concept of time. Ever listen
>> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> So? That doesn't in itself qualify them as musicians.
>>
>
>Then what would *you* consider a musician? Also, when you think of rap, do
>you think of lyrics talking about killing and shooting people in the name of
>being "black?" If so, then you are only looking at one small part of the whole
>hip-hop genre, and the negative part of it. There are many positive counter-
>examples to this form of hip-hop that are doing quite well.
>
>==Adrian Bradley, CAEN Operations
>==email a...@engin.umich.edu
First of all, I look for a HIGH degree of skill (either natural talent
or learned) in playing an instrument, in real time. This skill should
also AT SOME POINT in the musicians' career have demonstrated in the
company of other musicians. If the player doesn't have a high degree
of technique (or what is considered to be the 'standard technique of
the day' (notice the quotes)) then I expect them to have done
SIGNIFICANT work to develop their own technique/language on their
instrument. Personally I also value a high degree of improvisatory
skill in many styles. I expect the musicians' playing to demonstrate
an awareness and ability to play within multiple harmonic contexts
('free' music, common practice theory, jazz, 12 tone, graphic scores,
etc.). But MOST important for me is a musicians' intent....I can
always get behind a musician who's trying...
The thing is (I'll say it once again...) RAP is pop music. The intent
in RAP has nothing to do with developing the artistic/musical skills I
mention above. It's about making a socio/political statement in a pop
context which will in turn generate (at least these days) huge record
sales...oh and I forgot....I guess people like to dance to it. Oh and
let's not forget the one of the most important aspects of RAP....it's
developed it's accompanying fashion agenda (a sure sign that it has
arrived as a recognized pop culture activity).
Hey, people can like RAP. People can think it's great. People can
dance to it and where Chicago Bulls warm up coats and gold chains. I
don't happen to like it and EVEN IF I DID you couldn't convince me
that RAPPERS are musicians.
Vijay S. Iyer
I had no desire to join this thread for a long time because our good
friend Keith is clearly not going to change or open his mind, no matter
what anyone says. But with all due respect, and at the risk of getting
labelled PC (and getting lumped together with this largely imaginary
thought-police bogeyman), I think that others like him should acknowledge
that there are other ways of defining musical prowess besides the ones
he lists. Have you ever heard a young rapper "freestyle," i.e. improvise
lyrics to a beat? On the streetcorners of Oakland and Berkeley I often
walk by circles of youths entertaining each other in this way, and man,
they TEAR IT UP. What do you think they would say to you if you said
to them, "I'm sorry, but your activities fail to interest me -- in fact
it's just worthless pop drivel and it has nothing to do with music"?
or, "Your music has nothing to do with the history of African-American
music?" Or, "You clearly have no musical abilities whatsoever"?
Frankly, Keith, they wouldn't give a damn about you, because you clearly
have no sense of the cultural relevance of jazz as an African-American
music. As for your little rant about the way rappers define a certain
clothing style, let's not forget the sartorial advances made by
generations and generations of boppers and hipsters. Would you
make the same statements about Dizzy Gillespie? If you had been
alive at the time, you probably would have. Why don't you go read
the new Down Beat magazine, in which (for their 60th anniversary) they
reprint the interviews that made jazz history. Contrast Bird's forward
-looking statements with Wynton's backward-looking ones. Bird tries
to break free of musical shackles; Wynton (like you), all of 21 at
the time, dictates with painful wrongheadedness what's jazz and
what isn't. What's the point?\
Thank you, Keith, for not holding back, and for educating me about
people like you.
Vijay Iyer
dudley
>Hey, people can like RAP. People can think it's great. People can
>dance to it and where Chicago Bulls warm up coats and gold chains. I
>don't happen to like it and EVEN IF I DID you couldn't convince me
>that RAPPERS are musicians.
Yeah, right, don't confuse him with facts...
For someone so ignorant of rap, you sure have it all figured out,
right down to the stereotypes. You are certainly free to dislike
rap if that is what you choose, but how can you make any sort of
blanket judgement without having the necessary facts.
Anyway, it's your loss, Keith, if you want to ignore some of the
best music being made today.
dudley
.
Charles R. Sullivan
>(it's quite silly to judge these groups
>by the criteria of jazz "the beat's too rigid", "too repetitive",
>but then it's equally silly to judge jazz groups by the
>criteria of, say, Baroque music).
Or for that matter to judge jazz groups by the criteria of
the Marsalis orthodoxy.
Charlie Sullivan char...@power.berkeley.edu
Stephen F. White
this. for some odd reason, i expected people to be more open-minded. i
suppose that's what you get for giving people the benefit of the doubt.
In article <CJzrC...@hq.ileaf.com>, Keith Hedger <k...@HQ.Ileaf.COM> wrote:
> First of all, I look for a HIGH degree of skill (either natural talent
> or learned) in playing an instrument, in real time. This skill should
> also AT SOME POINT in the musicians' career have demonstrated in the
> company of other musicians. If the player doesn't have a high degree
> of technique (or what is considered to be the 'standard technique of
> the day' (notice the quotes)) then I expect them to have done
> SIGNIFICANT work to develop their own technique/language on their
> instrument. Personally I also value a high degree of improvisatory
> skill in many styles.
what do you think rapping is all about? a couple of guys on a street
corner, improvising with some records, a turntable, and the freestyle
rhyming of their voice. that's where it came from, man.
to me, that's the essence. improvisation. maybe sometimes it gets lost
in studio trickery or clever sampling, but it all comes back to
improvisation.
> I expect the musicians' playing to demonstrate
> an awareness and ability to play within multiple harmonic contexts
> ('free' music, common practice theory, jazz, 12 tone, graphic scores,
> etc.). But MOST important for me is a musicians' intent....I can
> always get behind a musician who's trying...
do you think the people who originated jazz were in touch with "common
practice theory", "free music", "12 tone", or "graphic scores"?
no, but somehow they withstood criticism from "intellectuals" like you who
told them that "jazz isn't music", "you can't have 5 different people
improvising at the same time", etc.
meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
> The thing is (I'll say it once again...) RAP is pop music.
some jazz was once "pop" music as well. i don't think a lot of people
here would argue that the "pop" jazz music represents a large portion of
the jazz they like, or the "best". but again, these are subjective
criteria.
> ...oh and I forgot....I guess people like to dance to it.
people used to like to dance to jazz, too. then somehow it got lost in
analysis and theory and the heart and soul got sucked right out of it.
perhaps someday there will be effete white intellectuals
decontextualizing and analyzing hiphop music and arguing technical merits
and weaknesses based on so-called "objective" criteria, and on that day i
shall know that hiphop is dead.
-=- sfw
--
Stephen F. White
sfw...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca
gopher://descartes.uwaterloo.ca/h0/mathSOC/.csc/.www/.sfwhite/homepage.html
... reality is eighty million polygons per second ...
Andrew Farmer
> The thing is (I'll say it once again...) RAP is pop music. The intent
> in RAP has nothing to do with developing the artistic/musical skills I
> mention above. It's about making a socio/political statement in a pop
> context which will in turn generate (at least these days) huge record
> sales...oh and I forgot....I guess people like to dance to it. Oh and
> let's not forget the one of the most important aspects of RAP....it's
> developed it's accompanying fashion agenda (a sure sign that it has
> arrived as a recognized pop culture activity).
> Hey, people can like RAP. People can think it's great. People can
> dance to it and where Chicago Bulls warm up coats and gold chains. I
> don't happen to like it and EVEN IF I DID you couldn't convince me
> that RAPPERS are musicians.
This isn't a personal flame aimed at the above poster but I have
to say that attitudes such as the above helped to keep me away from jazz
for a decade. For ten years I've been listening to funk, rap, reggae,
African and blues - all musics which owe a lot to jazz. I kept sniffing
around jazz but the whole stench of jazz (to my closed young mind)
was that of stuffy beardy people who were a) old, b) academic and
c) had an incredibly disparaging and supercilious view of music that
relies on things other than technical whizziness in order to make
the soul sing.
I've grown up (a little) now and though I still hate uptight
jazzniks with a vengeance, I've opened up to let Coltrane, Miles and
Dizzy join Elvis, Public Enemy, James Brown, John Lydon, Can and
Fela Kuti infiltrate my heart. I don't give two shits that Coltrane
can play more notes per second or whatever than Maceo Parker or that
guy out of Generation X. Music to me is about sex, style, crying,
laughing, singing. It's about all things which make our life the
bizarre journey that it is. If you reduce it to notes on a page
then you're missing out and that makes me sad.
Yours pretentiously,
arf
09y...@cua.edu
> What a stupid thing to say. Since you have flamed an entire class of
> people in your post, please allow me a gentle flame in your direction.
>
> Some rappers are good at what they do, some are not. They are singing.
> Singing does not necessarily involve melody. Perhaps you would be happier
> considering them "poets."
>
doesn't show off musically, it does not render him or her any less valid. I
can think of countless songs by Jack DeJohnette, Michael Brecker, Charlie
Haden, etc., etc. that were not musically sophisticated yet moved me more than
many technically oriented works out there.
Rapping is a form of expression which binds the worlds of music and poetry
in a way that really hadn't been explored before. Purists from either side will
argue until they're blue in the face, insisting that the music is a
bastardized, illegitimate form and should be ignored. Well, whatever. They're
the ones missing out.
This is all in response to the posting below:
> In article <1455400056@cdp>, Ralph Dumain <rdu...@igc.apc.org> wrote:
>
>> Since when do rappers qualify as musicians? What instruments do they
>> play? What vocal techniques have they mastered, other than those
>> that may be emplyed, say, in the course of an armed robbery?
>
> ----------------- ---------------------
> Dan Levy Levity: New York City
> dan...@panix.com
Bob Yori
09y...@cua.edu
Jeff Beer
Stephen F. White <sfw...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>> I expect the musicians' playing to demonstrate
>> an awareness and ability to play within multiple harmonic contexts
>> ('free' music, common practice theory, jazz, 12 tone, graphic scores,
>> etc.). But MOST important for me is a musicians' intent....I can
>> always get behind a musician who's trying...
>
>do you think the people who originated jazz were in touch with "common
>practice theory", "free music", "12 tone", or "graphic scores"?
For what it was worth, depending on the year you consider jazz to have
started, at best 12 tone theory was just being developed, and graphic
scores weren't yet invented. As for what is "common theory practice",
I would say Jelly Roll Morton was proficient in that. According to
Gunther Schuller's Early Jazz, there are quite a few other prominent
jazz musicians who were very proficient in classical music.
>people used to like to dance to jazz, too. then somehow it got lost in
>analysis and theory and the heart and soul got sucked right out of it.
Is that what you are saying about modern jazz, from Bird, Coltrane, to
the top players today? Braxton don't have heart and soul? Listen to
him on Reed Royalty.
I believe you are wrong, and you certainly are guilty of the same
ill-notions that you accuse Keith of having.
>perhaps someday there will be effete white intellectuals
>decontextualizing and analyzing hiphop music and arguing technical merits
>and weaknesses based on so-called "objective" criteria, and on that day i
>shall know that hiphop is dead.
well, note how much "sampling" and "sequencing" hip hop already uses,
those performance qualities are less direct than playing an instrument,
in the way that the jazz you call heartless and souless is today.
For what it is worth, I am not necessarily anti-rap or anti-hip-hop.
But I think they are missing some of the energy that was present in the funk
of James Brown or George Clinton, that is my opinion. I have heard
some layering of textures in rap that are captivating. They also might
have some killer grooves, but they are hardly unique in that respect. I
also hear much that is sophomoric. Like the rapper on Doo Bop.
I also don't hear many _players_ in rap, like there are in jazz and in
funk. You am not saying you cannot make a musical art genre without
players, but I think it will come back to haunt them if and when rap
tries to grow out of its current stage of developement.
I am also sure the rappers don't one bit what I think of them, so why
worry about it?
Jeff
Mark Henteleff
OK...I'll take the bite. Poppycock and horseshit, i say. Yet another
attempt at the elitists to make poor people feel stupid. Rap IS an
artform and it IS here to stay. Even though 90% of it (which, BTW..
could also be said of *jazz*) is useless drivel, some of it is
art on a high order. If musician is defined as one who makes
music...whether that be the primal smash of a primitive drum or
the mixes and samplings of a *rap artist* or the complex and highly
orchestrated scores of Braxton or Mozart...then music it is. What may
be cacophany to one might be the conference of the birds to another.
Ice Cube's *Lethal Injection* stands head and shoulders above
Zorn's Naked City or tribute to Morricone....on an artistic level
AND musical level. It is of no more concern to me that Cube
isn't a trained musician and Zorn is, than it is that Bailey
is and Hendrix wasn't. *Lethal Injection* kicks ass, flat out
simple and plain. Yes, it's violent, misogynist, politically
incorrect, and crude. But, none of that takes away from the fact
that it is an honest force of art, musically and lyrically.
I believe that it WILL stand the test of time as a work of
musical art (which is more than I can say of 90% of the crap
released on ECM or CTI in the 70s). Most people who don't like
rap are people who never really appreciated the genius of James
Brown. Brown almost single handedly invented R&B, then soul,
and then funk. His work with the JBs in the late 60s and early
seventies was as innovative in its own way as what Miles was
doing at the time. Rap is an homage to James Brown. It is
the logical extension and interpretation of Brown's and P-funk's
music of the 70s and 80s. To dismiss rap as *pop drivel* is
no less shortsighted than what jazz critics did to Parker at
the beginning of be-bop. The argument that at least jazz is
played by musicians and rap isn't is totally besides the point.
Anyone who makes music is a musician. Yeah, OK, so Zorn can play
an instrument and read and write music and Ice Cube is untrained
and musically ignorant. It is true that given this it is quite
amazing that the Cube is still gifted with a keener sense of musical
savy and know how than Zorn, Cage, or Reich. Hey, just goes to
show that some people work very hard and still never get it quite
right.
don't critisize what you can't understand
your sons and daughters are beyond your command
and the old order is rapidly fading
(or somethin' like that)
Mark H. (serious musician moojician of 23 yrs)
trained and overtrained and yes, i still think rap is music
Maybe when Ice Cube plays the Knitting Factory he'll get the respect
as an artist that he deserves.
p.s. Don't take *Jazzmatazz* as an example of good rap. It sucks.
Stephen F. White
Jeff Beer <uj...@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu> wrote:
> In article <CK0Hp...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
> Stephen F. White <sfw...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>> people used to like to dance to jazz, too. then somehow it got lost in
>> analysis and theory and the heart and soul got sucked right out of it.
> Is that what you are saying about modern jazz, from Bird, Coltrane, to
> the top players today? Braxton don't have heart and soul? Listen to
> him on Reed Royalty.
oh no, i didn't mean the musicians. i meant the theorists and
intellectuals. i dig lots of post-bop jazz. probably more than trad
jazz (have to find *some* way to rebel against my dad, don't i? :)
Steve Berman
To dismiss rap as *pop drivel* is
no less shortsighted than what jazz critics did to Parker at
the beginning of be-bop.
Hasn't rap been pretty widespread for at least a dozen years? Also, bebop,
or any other jazz subgenre, has never had its own Grammy category. It seems
to be pretty established now. Or has it evolved into really new forms? I
haven't listened to much rap lately, except for random radio listening, and
don't really know anything about gangster rap and hip hop and whatever
other subgenres there may be--how are these different from what, say,
Grandmaster Flash was doing in the early '80s?
--Steve
R. Lynn Rardin
>Dan Friedman:
>> >Or how about Guru's "Jazzamatazz: a Fusion of Jazz and Hip-hop" album,
>> >on which such giants as Branford, Courtney Pine, Donald Byrd, and others
>> >appeared? Or Miles' last album ("Doo-bop")?
>
>I've listened to long stretches of the Guru CD (but not the whole
I've not only listened to the JAZZMATAZZ CD, I own it (unfortunately).
And I, like Bill, was pretty unimpressed. His description hits the nail on
the head.
-Lynn (rar...@auriga.rose.brandeis.edu)
Keith Hedger
Well, to beat a dead horse some more:
In article <2hmkp1$r...@hobbes.cc.uga.edu> ah...@harpo.dev.uga.edu (Doug Ahern) writes:
>
>To beat a dead horse:
>
>Kieth Hedger writes:
>
>>>how they are accenting with relation to the beat? It's tough!
> ^^^^^^^^^^^
>>It's not that tough for any decent jazz musician.
>
>It is tough, considering they are using their voice. Plus, at the
>same time, some of the rappers are trying to make a statement and
>deliver a message.
Check out Jon Hendricks, Dizzy Gillespie, Betty Carter, etc.
enuff said
>
>It is my opinion that anytime a musician desides a certain genre,
>or sound has nothing to offer in the way of growth or knowledge,
>the musician has limited himself with a boundary. Not saying
You know I really hate this kind of reasoning. It seems to be very
popular these days. What ever happened to critical thinking ? What is
every artist supposed to just accept whatever comes down the pike and
becomes popular? I haven't limited myself in the least artistically by
refusing to 'play along' and acknowledge RAP as the important musical
idiom that it's NOT.
>every jazz musician should experiment with rap, but it probably
>deserves some unbias attention. That's my opinion.
First of all, what makes my opinion of it biased? I'm a musician. I
play a lot of different idioms. There's a lot of music I don't
particularly care to listen to yet I acknowledge its' importance. But
I'll say it again....RAP is pop music. Pop music is not Art music.
Period. There are only 2 reasons that I can think of for a jazz
musician to 'experiment with RAP'...1) to make some money or 2) to try
to use their visibility as a jazz musician to help legitimize a
popular idiom that they feel sends an important social or political
message.
>
>Oh, and Keith, the Janet Jackson bit was a joke, I was waiting
>on someone to call me on that, thanks. :-)
>
Glad to be of service...=:-)
>
>Doug
Keith Hedger
Now for some fun:
In article <2hpkti$d...@agate.berkeley.edu> vijay@physics2 (Vijay S. Iyer) writes:
>
>
>I had no desire to join this thread for a long time because our good
>friend Keith is clearly not going to change or open his mind, no matter
>what anyone says. But with all due respect, and at the risk of getting
>labelled PC (and getting lumped together with this largely imaginary
>thought-police bogeyman), I think that others like him should acknowledge
>that there are other ways of defining musical prowess besides the ones
>he lists. Have you ever heard a young rapper "freestyle,"i.e.improvise
So why should I redefine my concept of what constitutes musicianship ?
I really don't understand this point at all. Should I simply accept
whatever noise someone decides to produce as music ?
>lyrics to a beat? On the streetcorners of Oakland and Berkeley I often
>walk by circles of youths entertaining each other in this way, and man,
>they TEAR IT UP. What do you think they would say to you if you said
>to them, "I'm sorry, but your activities fail to interest me -- in fact
>it's just worthless pop drivel and it has nothing to do with music"?
>or, "Your music has nothing to do with the history of African-American
>music?" Or, "You clearly have no musical abilities whatsoever"?
>Frankly, Keith, they wouldn't give a damn about you, because you clearly
>have no sense of the cultural relevance of jazz as an African-American
>music. As for your little rant about the way rappers define acertain
Well, I've clearly struck some emotional ground here....uuummmm
if the guys on the corner in Oakland called me over and asked me my
opinion of what they were doing or tried to convince me that they were
great musicians....sorry, they'd get the same response you're getting.
I assume that since RMB is an open forum for discussion, responding to
posts here is sort of like responding to a question. No they probably
wouldn't care what I think....just as I don't care what kind of noise
they stand around on street corners making (I don't like Philly style
doo-wop accapella groups either). As for my sense of the vultural
relevance of jazz as an African-American music, well all I can tell
you is that I have devoted most of my life to practicing, playing,
studying the history, and thinking about jazz.
>clothing style, let's not forget the sartorial advances made by
>generations and generations of boppers and hipsters. Would you
>make the same statements about Dizzy Gillespie? If you had been
You make a good point here, one that I considered when I responded.
However, I do draw a little distinction between the two....when the
be-boppers happened on 52nd st. they were largely a sub-culture. While
they had their die hard fans, they were a mainstay of popular culture
(we had Pat Boone for that). However since the late 70s you can pretty
much index every little wrinkle in the pop music landscape by its
accompanying fashion trends. BTW this is not my idea...it comes from
Frank Zappa.
>alive at the time, you probably would have. Why don't you go read
>the new Down Beat magazine, in which (for their 60th anniversary) they
>reprint the interviews that made jazz history. Contrast Bird's forward
>-looking statements with Wynton's backward-looking ones. Bird tries
>to break free of musical shackles; Wynton (like you), all of 21 at
>the time, dictates with painful wrongheadedness what's jazz and
>what isn't. What's the point?\
>
Well if it's in Downbeat it MUST be true ! But seriously Vijay it's
clear to me that you don't read RMB much and that you have constructed
a HIGHLY biased conception of me, or you would know better that to try
to associate me with any attitude that that Marsalis clown holds.
>Thank you, Keith, for not holding back, and for educating me about
>people like you.
>
>Vijay Iyer
People like me, huh? Sounds a little non-multiculti to me Vijay.
Keith Hedger
>hmmm. i never expected my original post to spark a conversation like
>this. for some odd reason, i expected people to be more open-minded. i
>suppose that's what you get for giving people the benefit of the doubt.
>
>In article <CJzrC...@hq.ileaf.com>, Keith Hedger <k...@HQ.Ileaf.COM> wrote:
>
>> First of all, I look for a HIGH degree of skill (either natural talent
>> or learned) in playing an instrument, in real time. This skill should
>> also AT SOME POINT in the musicians' career have demonstrated in the
>> company of other musicians. If the player doesn't have a high degree
>> of technique (or what is considered to be the 'standard technique of
>> the day' (notice the quotes)) then I expect them to have done
>> SIGNIFICANT work to develop their own technique/language on their
>> instrument. Personally I also value a high degree of improvisatory
>> skill in many styles.
>
>what do you think rapping is all about? a couple of guys on a street
>corner, improvising with some records, a turntable, and the freestyle
>rhyming of their voice. that's where it came from, man.
>
Wait a minute! Read my whole paragraph above....
>to me, that's the essence. improvisation. maybe sometimes it gets lost
>in studio trickery or clever sampling, but it all comes back to
>improvisation.
>
>> I expect the musicians' playing to demonstrate
>> an awareness and ability to play within multiple harmonic contexts
>> ('free' music, common practice theory, jazz, 12 tone, graphic scores,
>> etc.). But MOST important for me is a musicians' intent....I can
>> always get behind a musician who's trying...
>
>do you think the people who originated jazz were in touch with "common
>practice theory", "free music", "12 tone", or "graphic scores"?
>
HEY...once again read what I said! See the 'notice the quotes'....see
the part about developing their own language?
>no, but somehow they withstood criticism from "intellectuals" like you who
>told them that "jazz isn't music", "you can't have 5 different people
>improvising at the same time", etc.
>
>meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
>
You are seriously confused.....mainipulating a turntable or sampler is
NOT equivalent to playing a musical instrument!
>> The thing is (I'll say it once again...) RAP is pop music.
>
>some jazz was once "pop" music as well. i don't think a lot of people
>here would argue that the "pop" jazz music represents a large portion of
>the jazz they like, or the "best". but again, these are subjective
>criteria.
>
>> ...oh and I forgot....I guess people like to dance to it.
>
>people used to like to dance to jazz, too. then somehow it got lost in
>analysis and theory and the heart and soul got sucked right out of it.
>
>perhaps someday there will be effete white intellectuals
>decontextualizing and analyzing hiphop music and arguing technical merits
>and weaknesses based on so-called "objective" criteria, and on that day i
>shall know that hiphop is dead.
>
I doubt it....it's not worth the time or trouble.
Keith Hedger
>> What does that mean ? I have to be an expert on rap before I recognize
>> that it's worthless pop drivel?
>
>So what rap groups have you heard, Keith? It's not *all* pop
>drivel. I haven't been following rap closely for years, but
>I do remember good stuff from Public Enemy, Jungle Brothers,
>Eric B and Rakim... (it's quite silly to judge these groups
>by the criteria of jazz "the beat's too rigid", "too repetitive",
>but then it's equally silly to judge jazz groups by the
>criteria of, say, Baroque music).
>
>Bill
Bill,
I agree that it's silly to judge RAP groups by the criteria I would a
jazz group....and I only did it because of the points made in previous
postings and responses to my postings. My point is simple RAP is pop
music. RAPPERS are not musicians. Simple. Playing a sampler is not
equivalent to even playing a musical instrument, much less attempting
to master one in some way.
keith
Keith Hedger
Allright, that's it. I'm TIRED! No more.....you win. RAP is jazz...no,
jazz is RAP, no....it doesn't matter, it's a postmodern world. Music
is music, doesn't matter whether it takes musicianship to produce it,
doesn't matter if the only actual music is sampled and played back.
It's all good....why would anyone want to poo poo on anything...let's
have a love-in....everything's equal there is no bad art just good art
because to be bad is an art and because it's artful it must be good,
so bad art is good art AND it sells...lot's of people like it so that
makes it good right?, plus it carries an important social
message...why clutter up a discussion about music by talking about
things like music?.....it's getting dark in here....I'm hot....I can't
feel my legsssss..........
dudley
> Should I simply accept whatever noise someone decides to produce as
> music ?
No, but how can you reject something as "noise" if you have never
listened to it? Your ignorance of the subject is obvious, as is
your lack of credibility.
dudley
.
Stephen F. White
> It's all good....why would anyone want to poo poo on anything...let's
> have a love-in....everything's equal there is no bad art just good art
> because to be bad is an art and because it's artful it must be good,
> so bad art is good art AND it sells...lot's of people like it so that
> makes it good right?, plus it carries an important social
> message...why clutter up a discussion about music by talking about
> things like music?.....it's getting dark in here....I'm hot....I can't
> feel my legsssss..........
ARRRR, we have him now, boys! chalk one up for the cabal! hail eris!
ke...@mhd.moorhead.msus.edu
>
>To beat a dead horse:
Plus, at the
>same time, some of the rappers are trying to make a statement and
>deliver a message.
==============OK, let's assume, though, that ALL rappers are
trying to make a statement and deliver a message. What does this
have to do whether rap is worth listening to or not? The Geto Boyz
are making statements and delivering messages - but I bet all you
pro-rappers out there think they are a disgrace. But, musically,
they offer some interesting things; so they ought to be heard just
like the rappers who think Malcolm X was a hero and those who think
cops ought to pay for their crimes.
You see, I don't think rap's legitimacy depends on critical acceptance,
use of rightous lyrics, sampling a wide array of samples, etc. I figure
if it is saying something to someone, it has fulfilled one of it's primary
purposes.
Attempting to make rap acceptable by attaching rather wholey critical theories
makes a mockery of a listener's intelligence. I think the music can stand
on it's own. It often helps to know about music theory, an artists life,
etc., but still the music ultimately rests on what you hear.
=======Bill Kenz
Benjamin List
>Well, to beat a dead horse some more:
>You know I really hate this kind of reasoning. It seems to be very
>popular these days. What ever happened to critical thinking ? What is
>every artist supposed to just accept whatever comes down the pike and
>becomes popular? I haven't limited myself in the least artistically by
>refusing to 'play along' and acknowledge RAP as the important musical
>idiom that it's NOT.
to examine the genre. I know, I know, you choose not to examine it,
then what is productive about criticizing? This appears (to the eyes
of one uninitiated in the ways of flaming) to be elitist.
>I'll say it again....RAP is pop music. Pop music is not Art music.
>Period. There are only 2 reasons that I can think of for a jazz
>musician to 'experiment with RAP'...1) to make some money or 2) to try
>to use their visibility as a jazz musician to help legitimize a
>popular idiom that they feel sends an important social or political
>message.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but where is it written that all rappers
make money. There is a strong force within rap that looks down upon
selling out (not "success" per se, but making ones style palitable for
the masses).
Why is it so hard to believe that "legitimate artists" would also
see artistic merit in this "popular idiom?"
As the question of "defining art" in relation to rap seems to have
arisen, do you suggest that poetry is not art? How about collage?
(as well as the in the sense of sound)?
Many are citing US3 as an example of "quality." I, personally, would
cite De La Soul's "Buhloone Mind State" as an example of high art.
>= Keith Hedger| "AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH" =
It may be my imagination, but I think the "AAAAAAARRRRGGGHHHH" is
getting longer every time...
-b
Harris Wulfson
hyperventalating...and I never even got to jump in and defend hip-hip
music. Oh well. Here's just a few points...
First of all, I think that people are having a problem articulating their
views because they are trying to grapple with rap music within the context
of other musics (and specifically jazz music) that are now more established.
To draw musical analogies between the two can be fruitful, but can also be
dangerous. This is because of what I see as one of the most valid analogies
between the two: they were both born as musically revolutionary genres. Jazz
has roots in African music, European (classical/romantic) music, and various
folk styles, yet it emerged as something quite different from anything that had
come before. As jazz musicians, we tend to forget that the idea of an
improvised solo (in the jazz sense) was essentially _invented_ (the legend is
that Louis Armstrong did it) or at least it was a synthesis of past ideas that
led to the genesis of something unique. Gregorian chant was invented
(presumabley by Gregory), and so was the soloist concerto (by Vivaldi?). Keep
in mind that the "inventors" in all of these cases were probably just the last
straw in a more collective developement.
Hip-hop is a genuinely NEW music. Even though it is 15-20 years old, it
still very much developing. It's developement thus far is not hard to hear.
Compare the doggeral strictly-metered ryhmes of the "old-school" rappers with
the relative (musical) sophistication of todays lyricists, for example. It
meets with a lot of resistance because it seems to go against some of the
cues we have constructed to help us determine what is "musical." Keith seems
fond of saying "Manipulating a turntable is not the same as playing an
instrument." Indeed. But this is because hip-hop music is so different from
how we suppose music is made. You cannot play a "tune" on a turntable. You
can't practice scales. True....And you can't play Indonesian Gamelan music
on a Western intrument (the intonation is different) and you can't create an
oil painting out of paper mache... So what?
Genre in art is defined by its limitations. If there were no limitations,
there would be no art. Keith is trying to say that Rap is not music because it
has different limitations than the ones he's familiar with.
As for MUSICAL analogies between Jazz and Rap... I'll start with the ones
that I feel aren't really valid...
Someone tried to make the point that hip-hop is "all about improvisation."
While it is true that many rappers can "freestyle" (something which just
amazes me), on actual records the music tends to be more "composed" than
improvised. The beats and samples are far from improvised, and the raps
have to be worked out pretty well. Jazzoids may snarl at the seeming lack
of spontaneity, however this allows hip-hop (like "classical" music) to be less
rigid, formally, than jazz is.
In addition, I'm a college music major, and I hate to say it...Rap is pop.
Jazz is pop. It's all pop. Everything is pop except European "art" music. To
be less facetious, Hip-hop does enjoy more popularity than bebop ever did.
Oops, I was going to stick only to musical analogies...OK here are the valid
ones...
Early jazz was characterized by short rhythmically simple phrases, and it
later developed into long lines flowing over the bar-line. I see the exact same
trend in hip-hop (where the raps are analogous to a horn). Just as Charlie
Parker created long polymelodic lines and uses smaller rhythmic , I hear some
rappers doing the same sort of thing thing. How can rapping be melodic (let
alone polymelodic)? you ask... Well first of all despite the fact that rap
is speech-like, it is, in fact, pitched. And good rappers pay very close
attention to the pitch of their voices. Bebop has often been called
"speech-like." There is another good analogy: both imitate talking. In
additon, melodic and cadential effects are achieved in rap using ryhme! In
fact, the musicality of ryhme has never been explored so fully as it is in
rap music.
I could go on...but I just don't know if it's worth it here. Maybe I'll
save it for my thesis...
Oh, I'll just respond to some strange statements before I sign off...
Keith Hedger (k...@HQ.Ileaf.COM) wrote:
: >
: >> First of all, I look for a HIGH degree of skill (either natural talent
: >> or learned) in playing an instrument, in real time. This skill should
Play an instrument? In real time? Why? You seem to expect rap muscians to
become jazz intrumentalists (or else they're not musicians). Some classical
musicians think that if you can't read, then you are not a musician. Yet many
of the early jazz innovators could not read. You also exclude vocalists of
all kinds and composers and cunductors in your insistance that
musician == instrumentalist. It just isn't so.
: >> instrument. Personally I also value a high degree of improvisatory
: >> skill in many styles.
So you tend not to consider classical instrumentalists to be "musicians"
either, eh? You're starting to alienate a lot of people...
But here's where you are lost...
: You are seriously confused.....mainipulating a turntable or sampler is
: NOT equivalent to playing a musical instrument!
No, not equivalent...but analogous. It is a way of producing sound.
Comments to: hjwu...@unix.amherst.edu
Sorry so long...But hey I had to read all 40 or so preceding articles.
-Harris Wulfson
hjwu...@unix.amherst.edu
ke...@mhd.moorhead.msus.edu
>My point is simple RAP is pop
>music.
=======OK, that makes sense.
But, your next line doesn't.
======
RAPPERS are not musicians. Simple.
======Wait a minute, Keith. You write RAP is pop music. But Rappers aren't
musicians? This doesn't compute. Rappers make rap, right? If
rap is pop MUSIC, then rappers are musicians. It seems what you are
really implying is that you don't think rappers are good or worthwhile
musicians. And that rap is just lousy music.
==========
Playing a sampler is not
>equivalent to even playing a musical instrument, much less attempting
>to master one in some way.
>
>keith
>
========^^^^^^^^^^here again your argument falters. I think music
(whether one accepts it or not) can be made with virtually anything,
including samplers. Samplers are musical instruments just as much
as saxes or trumpets are, especially the way rap uses them. Samplers
are a bum steer when they are used in the place of live musicians,
but rap doesn't usually use them for that purpose. Coming from a musician,
and a jazz musician at that, your argument is very odd - tho I agree with
you that alot of rap I've heard is pretty lousy as music goes - ever
heard Whodini? see below |
\ /
"AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH"
Bill Kenz
Keith Hedger
In article <2i2e4m$5...@amhux3.amherst.edu> hjwu...@unix.amherst.edu (Harris Wulfson) writes:
>
>First of all, I think that people are having a problem articulating their
>views because they are trying to grapple with rap music within the context
>of other musics (and specifically jazz music) that are now more
>established.
The reason for this is because people keep trying to draw a meaningful
MUSICAL analogy between RAP and jazz...I say there is none, and that
rappers are not really musicians at all....this is the context within
which I have made my statements. Unfortunately, many people only see
what they want to see in my posts...
>To draw musical analogies between the two can be fruitful, but can also be
>dangerous. This is because of what I see as one of the most validanalogies
I'd say REAL dangerous....because the analogies are really
nonexistent.
>cues we have constructed to help us determine what is "musical." Keith seems
>fond of saying "Manipulating a turntable is not the same as playing an
>instrument." Indeed. But this is because hip-hop music is so different from
>how we suppose music is made. You cannot play a "tune" on a
Right, but why do we 'suppose' music is made the way we do ? I mean if
you want to talk in the abstract, you can make a case that any object
that you can beat on the ground and get a sound out of is a musical
instrument. My position is that there are qualities that define what
music and musicians are. People can listen to what they want, but the
subtext that I'm drawing from people in this discussion is "anything
can be music, it all boils down to if you like it or not". The perfect
expression of the merchant mentality.
>can't practice scales. True....And you can't play Indonesian Gamelan music
>on a Western intrument (the intonation is different) and you can't create an
>oil painting out of paper mache... So what?
Yes but by practicing scales or trying to play Indonesian Gamelan
music, I'm engaged in the process of improving my musicianship and
hopefully my music. Spending several hours a day pushing buttons on a
sampler is NOT an artistic excercise...and before you ask, yes, I've
done it.
> Genre in art is defined by its limitations. If there were no limitations,
>there would be no art. Keith is trying to say that Rap is not music because it
>has different limitations than the ones he's familiar with.
No I said rappers are not musicians and that RAP is a pop music, meant
for quick mass consumption.
>Jazz is pop. It's all pop. Everything is pop except European "art"
>music. To
This is interesting....what's the difference between RAP and European
"art" music ?
>trend in hip-hop (where the raps are analogous to a horn). Just as Charlie
>Parker created long polymelodic lines and uses smaller rhythmic , I hear some
>rappers doing the same sort of thing thing. How can rapping be melodic (let
>alone polymelodic)? you ask... Well first of all despite the fact that rap
>is speech-like, it is, in fact, pitched. And good rappers pay very close
>attention to the pitch of their voices. Bebop has often been called
>"speech-like." There is another good analogy: both imitate talking. In
>additon, melodic and cadential effects are achieved in rap using ryhme! In
>fact, the musicality of ryhme has never been explored so fully as it is in
>rap music.
I've never hear bop referred to as 'speech like' (except maybe Clark
Terry doing Mumbles).
> I could go on...but I just don't know if it's worth it here. Maybe I'll
>save it for my thesis...
> Oh, I'll just respond to some strange statements before I sign off...
>
>Keith Hedger (k...@HQ.Ileaf.COM) wrote:
>: >
>: >> First of all, I look for a HIGH degree of skill (either natural talent
>: >> or learned) in playing an instrument, in real time. This skill should
>
>Play an instrument? In real time? Why? You seem to expect rap muscians to
>become jazz intrumentalists (or else they're not musicians). Some classical
>musicians think that if you can't read, then you are not a musician. Yet many
>of the early jazz innovators could not read. You also exclude vocalists of
>all kinds and composers and cunductors in your insistance that
>musician == instrumentalist. It just isn't so.
>
Well I have to respond to some strange statements. So you don't have
to be an instrumentalist to be a musician ? This IS interesting....so
what IS a musician. Maybe my problem is that I just don't understand
what one is.
>: >> instrument. Personally I also value a high degree of improvisatory
>: >> skill in many styles.
>
>So you tend not to consider classical instrumentalists to be "musicians"
>either, eh? You're starting to alienate a lot of people...
>
I didn't say that I said 'PERSONALLY I also...'. This was posted in
response to someone who asked me what I consider to be a musician.
>But here's where you are lost...
>
>: You are seriously confused.....mainipulating a turntable or sampler is
>: NOT equivalent to playing a musical instrument!
>
>No, not equivalent...but analogous. It is a way of producing sound.
>
So's farting. So what? Not equivalent, not analogous. See above.
>Comments to: hjwu...@unix.amherst.edu
>-Harris Wulfson
>hjwu...@unix.amherst.edu
Marcel Franck Simon
I will not join this debate
I will not... well, I can't resist.
Keith Hedger (k...@HQ.Ileaf.COM) wrote:
: So why should I redefine my concept of what constitutes musicianship ?
: I really don't understand this point at all. Should I simply accept
: whatever noise someone decides to produce as music ?
Keith Hedger adopts exclusionary Wynton Marsalis language. Who woulda thunk
it?
Keith, I have never heard of an 'objective' standard for music that does
not reduce to 'I like it' or 'I don't like it', followed shortly thereafter
by 'and so must you, because of this higher authority I'm about to invoke.'
Maybe you have found a new such standard, that truly is objective. Why don't
you describe it for us?
--
Marcel-Franck Simon min...@summit.novell.com <-- NEW ADDRESS
min...@usl.com <-- will work for a while
" Papa Loko, ou se' van, ou-a pouse'-n ale'
Nou se' papiyon, n'a pote' nouvel bay Agwe' "
Marcel Franck Simon
: mainipulating a turntable or sampler is
: NOT equivalent to playing a musical instrument!
I once saw Don Cherry and Nana Vasconcelos at the Cathedral of St. John
The Divine. Vasconcelos spent long minutes making sounds by manipulating
a cookie tin-sheet in front of a microphone, letting the echo bounce off
the ceilings, and then return to merge with the sounds of Cherry's
doussn'gouni.
Was Vasconcelos making music? Was he playing a musical instrument?
dudley
>subtext that I'm drawing from people in this discussion is "anything
>can be music, it all boils down to if you like it or not". The perfect
>expression of the merchant mentality.
My point is not whether rap is or isn't music as I couldn't care less
about the semantics. My point is that one should take more than a
superficial listen before making a judgement. I simply don't believe
that Keith has experienced enough of the genre to make a gualified
opinion.
>No I said rappers are not musicians and that RAP is a pop music, meant
>for quick mass consumption.
While this may be true of many rap groups, probably those you've had
the misfortune to hear, it is not true of all rap groups. There are
many groups who are exploring rap as an evolving art form, who have
not compromised their integrity for the sake of mass sales. Believe
me, if the only rap you've heard was on the radio or MTV, you haven't
heard the good stuff.
And the best is yet to come.
Now, I have a question: Is Frank Sinatra a musician?
dudley
.
SCW...@psuvm.psu.edu
>
>First of all, I look for a HIGH degree of skill (either natural talent
>or learned) in playing an instrument, in real time. This skill should
>company of other musicians. If the player doesn't have a high degree
>of technique (or what is considered to be the 'standard technique of
>the day' (notice the quotes)) then I expect them to have done
>SIGNIFICANT work to develop their own technique/language on their
>an awareness and ability to play within multiple harmonic contexts
>('free' music, common practice theory, jazz, 12 tone, graphic scores,
>etc.). But MOST important for me is a musicians' intent....I can
>always get behind a musician who's trying...
So you'd agree a rap DJ is a musician. His instrument is records and
a Technics 1200.
>Hey, people can like RAP. People can think it's great. People can
>dance to it and where Chicago Bulls warm up coats and gold chains. I
>don't happen to like it and EVEN IF I DID you couldn't convince me
>that RAPPERS are musicians.
Fine. A rapper is a vocalist. By your argument, Ella Fitzgerald isn't
a musician either.
>= Keith Hedger| "AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH" =
Peace.
Steve Wei
Lee Nave
>In article <2i2e4m$5...@amhux3.amherst.edu> hjwu...@unix.amherst.edu (Harris Wulfson) writes:
>>Keith Hedger (k...@HQ.Ileaf.COM) wrote:
>>: >
>>: >> First of all, I look for a HIGH degree of skill (either natural talent
>>: >> or learned) in playing an instrument, in real time. This skill should
>>
>>Play an instrument? In real time? Why? You seem to expect rap muscians to
>>become jazz intrumentalists (or else they're not musicians). Some classical
>>musicians think that if you can't read, then you are not a musician. Yet many
>>of the early jazz innovators could not read. You also exclude vocalists of
>>all kinds and composers and cunductors in your insistance that
>>musician == instrumentalist. It just isn't so.
>>
>Well I have to respond to some strange statements. So you don't have
>to be an instrumentalist to be a musician ? This IS interesting....so
>what IS a musician. Maybe my problem is that I just don't understand
>what one is.
Bingo! Keith, I must say, you hit the nail on the head with this
comment. I think we're making real progress here, folks!
-- Lee
Walter Davis
>>
>
>So's farting. So what? Not equivalent, not analogous. See above.
>
act in France around the turn of the century in which the guy
was reportedly able to play tunes by farting. Perhaps the
roots of rap go back farther than we thought.
-walt
Thomas Ford Brown
In article <16F49FDA...@uncvm1.oit.unc.edu> WDA...@uncvm1.oit.unc.edu (Walter Davis) writes:
>
>now you've gone too far keith! So happens there was a "vaudeville"
>act in France around the turn of the century in which the guy
>was reportedly able to play tunes by farting. Perhaps the
>roots of rap go back farther than we thought.
>
Monsieur Le Petomaine. I've seen a picture of him
"in concert", as it were, with his hands clenched
in front of him, and his cheeks pertly pouting out behind.
Apparently he performed clothed, which must have
dampened his tone considerably in those pre-electronic days.
Can you see him jamming with the Dead, plugged into a stack of Marshalls?
I'd kill to hear him blow "Smoke On The Water"
through a fuzz box.
Walter Davis
tomb...@cats.ucsc.edu (Thomas Ford Brown) writes:
>
>Monsieur Le Petomaine. I've seen a picture of him
>"in concert", as it were, with his hands clenched
>in front of him, and his cheeks pertly pouting out behind.
>
>Apparently he performed clothed, which must have
>dampened his tone considerably in those pre-electronic days.
>
>Can you see him jamming with the Dead, plugged into a stack of Marshalls?
>
you know that was all that I was going to say, except that my
machine refused to post it saying "more included text than
new text." What a brilliant machine - I wish they all did that
or would we all just engage in babble to fill up space like
this?
ttfn,
walt
>
Kelly T. Conlon
it available only as an import?
KTC
--
KT Conlon, Mat. Sci & Eng: "Thanks for the American Dream... to vulgarize:
McMaster University : and falsify until the BARE LIES SHINE :
Hamilton, Ont. CANADA : THROUGH..." William S. Burroughs :
"NOTHING IS TRUE, EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED" - LAST WORDS OF HASSAN I SABBAH
Adrian Bradley
In article <CJzrC...@HQ.Ileaf.COM>, k...@HQ.Ileaf.COM (Keith Hedger) writes:
> In article <2hme2b$4...@zip.eecs.umich.edu> a...@franklin.engin.umich.edu (Adrian Bradley) writes:
> >
> >Then what would *you* consider a musician? Also, when you think of rap, do
> >you think of lyrics talking about killing and shooting people in the name of
> >being "black?" If so, then you are only looking at one small part of the whole
> >hip-hop genre, and the negative part of it. There are many positive counter-
> >examples to this form of hip-hop that are doing quite well.
> >
> >---------------------------------------
> >==Adrian Bradley, CAEN Operations
> >==email a...@engin.umich.edu
> First of all, I look for a HIGH degree of skill (either natural talent
> or learned) in playing an instrument, in real time. This skill should
> also AT SOME POINT in the musicians' career have demonstrated in the
> company of other musicians. If the player doesn't have a high degree
> of technique (or what is considered to be the 'standard technique of
> the day' (notice the quotes)) then I expect them to have done
> SIGNIFICANT work to develop their own technique/language on their
> instrument. Personally I also value a high degree of improvisatory
> an awareness and ability to play within multiple harmonic contexts
> ('free' music, common practice theory, jazz, 12 tone, graphic scores,
> etc.). But MOST important for me is a musicians' intent....I can
> always get behind a musician who's trying...
It appears that from your studies of music you have developed a definition
for it that limits "instruments" to tonal music. From this, it would seem
that you also could discount very good drummers as musicians because they don't
play "tones" (you can't play the chromatic scale with drums unless they are
tuned). And voices can be instruments too. According to your def. good singers
may well fit into your category, but good rappers have been eliminated, even
though rappers can do *significant* work in reciting their lyrics (forget what's
in the lyrics for a moment, and just on the rhythmic part, similar to drums).
They can often listen to a rhythm and come up with not only some words to put
to it, but there are different places in the beat where they may choose to put
words, and even in the "tone" of voice used can vary from line to line.
Not all of us have the time to develop the type of musical abilities that you
seem to have. Not all of us can sit and listen to concherto's or jazz pieces
and analyze them critically. Not all people are able to study music to such an
"elevated" level that anything below it doesn't make the true definition of
music. And a lot of people who are into rap will talk about heavy metal in the
same way (let alone the same people who consider rap as "non-music"). In fact,
heavy metal and rap are usually written off by... (guess who) older musicians
who base their decisions on skills needed to produce good jazz or classical
music. However the majority of people who listen to the music are *young* and
most likely come from middle class to poor homes. They aren't given the chances
to go out and develop their ear for the "finer" arts of music because all they
hear is rap/heavy metal and to fit in with their peers they start listening and
liking the art form. (I don't know if I could get you to agree that it's at
least an art form - your attacks seem to be on the musicianship of the rappers
based on if they could do jazz, classical, or other music forms just as easily,
not that they aren't very good at what they do for a living)
To agree with your other statements a little while back, yes rap is becoming
"pop" and starting many fads or fashions. You may not get into these, and
I don't personally fault you for not doing so. I still think you have a very
stereotypical view of the average "hip hop" fan, but that's not for me to
impose. I *will* say the same thing that I said in my last post, however (and
I apologize for not responding sooner.. I haven't even read through the rest
of this newsgroup's +200 messages). "One man's music is another man's noise."
All of your arguments about rap are very valid, but on *your* terms. If you
were to suddenly be thrust into the life of the person who became a hip-hop
star, you might start to see how rap can be called "music."
As far as my background is concerned, I was given an opportunity to be open-
minded about everything because my "instrument" was my voice.. I sang in a
high school choir that won international honors. From there I was able to pick
up a lot of things about classical music, and even note how different chords
tell different "stories." From listening to jazz recently, I can see how
different instruments, even drums, can tell stories, but of a different life
and background. And, being involved in making some hip-hop grooves, I've
experimented with different tones of that huge sounding electronic drum (off
of the TR-808) that produces that "annoying" sound you hear in cars. A lot of
people in hip-hop like that sound - most likely for the power it alone displays
(ability to break windows, etc :) ) The main instruments in rap are drums,
whether they be electronic, real, or triggered, a simple melodic tune, and the
MC's (master of ceremony, otherwise known as "rapper") voice. Rap depends a lot
on rhythm, which *is* a part of music. The rhythms aren't expressed in the
same complex ways that jazz, classical, and other forms can be expressed. It
seems designed to be a *simple* form of music to listen to for people who
*simply* enjoy it, and was probably not meant to be understood by those who
think music is what comes out of jazz or classical. (IMHO)
> Hey, people can like RAP. People can think it's great. People can
> dance to it and where Chicago Bulls warm up coats and gold chains. I
> don't happen to like it and EVEN IF I DID you couldn't convince me
> that RAPPERS are musicians.
I couldn't have summed it up any better. Until we could take you back in time,
change your circumstances and the people you hung around during your youth, I
don't think anyone can convince you rappers are musicians. Those of us who like
the music (as well as appreciate other forms besides rap) would like to think
of ourselves as "open-minded" and not set to a specific set of rules to
determine who's a musician and who's not. Your rules and my rules differ, but
that can be expected - we're two different people, and rap is not classical
or jazz music. For most of us who have lived the Black experience and/or have
studied the history of Blacks in this country, we can see similarities between
the jazz rhythms/notes and what's sampled in raps nowadays. We also feel that
our music has done more than just sound good to us, we use it to express *our*
experiences, problems in society, dreams, goals, and aspirations. I'd bet that
anyone saying "rap music sucks" or "rap is not music" doesn't have these same
goals/aspirations. Either that, or they just don't see things the way we do.
I've rambled enough to write a book.. Man... I got work to do. Feel free to
email - post about any of the stuff I wrote... I had to rush it near the end
'cause of stuff I have to do. But for me this is a very important topic about
all the "rap sucks" stuff I've heard. I tried to cross post this to alt.rap
to get some opinions... sorry it's long as hell. Peace out, no matter what
sort of music you like...
==Adrian
Adrian Bradley
> I agree that it's silly to judge RAP groups by the criteria I would a
> jazz group....and I only did it because of the points made in previous
> postings and responses to my postings. My point is simple RAP is pop
> music. RAPPERS are not musicians. Simple. Playing a sampler is not
> equivalent to even playing a musical instrument, much less attempting
> to master one in some way.
>
...Unless of course the sampler is used simply to capture a different sound,
and played like a piano. :)
(Trying to inject some humor in this discussion)
I don't think anyone's gonna be "in the right" in this thread. It does seem
that more people are willing to let rap be defined at least by those who make
it, and they have every right to call it music as do those that don't think it's
worth an "educated" consideration. I don't even think Keith is trying to make
us believe his views, but he is firm on his point. Those of us who are into
rap are firm on our points too, but it'll do us no good to continue arguing
when neither of us is willing to appreciate the other person's background. And,
as a few folks have basically said, they could care less what the other thinks.
I'm not trying to defend what Keith says is valid, 'cause music to him is some
level that most rappers won't attain. But he has a right to his opinions. And
we definitely have rights to ours, so as far as rap not being music, uhm...
(... enter the Energizer bunny, in sunglasses and TR808 drum machine ...)
Keith, in a previous post you mentioned this:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
As for my sense of the vultural
relevance of jazz as an African-American music, well all I can tell
you is that I have devoted most of my life to practicing, playing,
studying the history, and thinking about jazz.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I'll probably send personal mail later (I've sent enough bandwith as it is)
but I hope you study the reasons *behind* the jazz and what the early musicians
were trying to say through their music. It has a whole lot to do with the
Afro-American experience, which if you haven't lived, may well take your whole
life to understand. One point that I felt the whole group could comment on is
the oppresive nature of the "dominant society's" musical tastes - jazz in it's
early forms was considered "low, debased, etc..." Interesting that when whites
entered the jazz scene, it became more and more culturally acceptible. It is
now "America's contribution to music."
Here's something else for the group:
I also noticed that more and more groups on my local jazz station (one of my
favorites is Alex Bugnon and his band) are using the TR-808, which are pop-ish
sounds and famous for producing old rap. I felt this was some sort of connection
that some rap and jazz had - use of drum machines (and maybe samplers) to
produce music, even though different band members played the instruments. I was
always under the impression that improvisational jazz could be done with
anything as an instrument, whether it be a saxophone or the sound of a pop
bottle. To me the feelings *behind* the music were important, and the sounds
used to make the music play a big part in that. Some instruments might be made
to do stuff they weren't supposed to do (maybe); I had a chance to listen in
on a good jazz band and the guitarist made the guitar "weep," which worked very
well for the song but I didn't think the "weeping" was thought of when the
guitar was being built. (It sounded more like a "fantasy" patch on some synth).
That's enough rambling again, I guess (don't know why I'm in such a writable
mood... ) Oh well...
==Adrian
==Adrian
Harris Wulfson
: Can I jump in?
: Lesette Wilson. Her music goes from straight head jazz (I mean *straight*)
: to gangsta rapp (I mean *street*). Where would she fall?
: As a Jazz pianist who raps or a rapper who plays jazz.
More info, please!!! Sounds exciting. Does she have any records?
Where's she based? What label?...etc...
-Harris
-D.Moore
Lesette Wilson. Her music goes from straight head jazz (I mean *straight*)
to gangsta rapp (I mean *street*). Where would she fall?
As a Jazz pianist who raps or a rapper who plays jazz.
I'd probably have to say she trying to target 2 different markets.
It sounds like a decent marketing strategy except, my experience has shown
that jazz listeners will view her as a rapper and rap listers will view her
as a jazz musician.
Any commnets?
-Dale
"The Views and Opinions expressed are solely those of my own"
Harris Wulfson
: In article <CK559...@HQ.Ileaf.COM>, k...@HQ.Ileaf.COM (Keith Hedger) writes:
:I'm not trying to defend what Keith says is valid, 'cause music to him is some
:level that most rappers won't attain.
What level is that? I seems you believe in the same "objective" framework of
music as Keith, and instead of defending rap, you are apologizing for it.
Rap to me is on a level that Keith's "musicians" won't attain.
However, this is good:
: I'll probably send personal mail later (I've sent enough bandwith as it is)
: but I hope you study the reasons *behind* the jazz and what the early musicians
: were trying to say through their music. It has a whole lot to do with the
: Afro-American experience, which if you haven't lived, may well take your whole
: life to understand. One point that I felt the whole group could comment on is
: the oppresive nature of the "dominant society's" musical tastes - jazz in it's
: early forms was considered "low, debased, etc..." Interesting that when whites
: entered the jazz scene, it became more and more culturally acceptible. It is
: now "America's contribution to music."
You've hit the nail on the head. There is a racist subtext in rap-bashing
which was also present in criticisms of jazz until jazz became absorbed
by white society...
-Harris Wulfson
hjwu...@unix.amherst.edu
Dave Berry
>if you want to talk in the abstract, you can make a case that any object
>that you can beat on the ground and get a sound out of is a musical
>instrument.
There's a show on at the Sadlers Wells theatre in London which consists
of 100 minutes of percussion performed entirely on found objects - brooms,
zippos, oil drums, dustbins, plastic bags, stamping, clapping, etc. It is
captivating, and it is most definitely music.
(It's also fun to watch, with elements of physical theatre and deadpan humour.
The company is Yes/No People, who are also a band; the show is called Stomp,
and it has won several awards around the world, including the Edinburgh
Fringe.)
As for turntables, is Christian Marclay a musician?
Dave.
--
Dave Berry, Harlequin Ltd., Barrington Hall, Cambridge, CB2 5RG, UK.
MLWorks is a happy smiling product, and smokes a pipe.
Keith Hedger
>Keith Hedger adopts exclusionary Wynton Marsalis language. Who woulda thunk
>it?
>
>Keith, I have never heard of an 'objective' standard for music that does
>not reduce to 'I like it' or 'I don't like it', followed shortly thereafter
>by 'and so must you, because of this higher authority I'm about to invoke.'
>
>Maybe you have found a new such standard, that truly is objective. Why don't
>you describe it for us?
>
>--
>Marcel-Franck Simon min...@summit.novell.com <-- NEW ADDRESS
Well Marcel,
1) I never said that my standard for music was 'objective'.
2) The 'I do...' or 'I don't...' position has nothing to do with
whether I consider a piece of music...music. I can think of plenty
of music that I don't particularly care for that I will gladly sing
the merits of....I just may not like it. Wynton is a good example. I
hate his music....but, I cannot deny that he has displayed
considerable talent as a musician and considerable determination to
learn his craft.
3) I never said that I was a higher authority, or that RAP was any
worse than most other pop music. I have to wonder though, if I had
said that I don't consider Garth Brooks to be a musician, how many
people would have come out of the 'woodwork' to argue with me?
keith
--
=============================================================
= Keith Hedger| "AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRGGGGGHHH" =
= | "S-S-S-S-Stupid !" =
=============================================================
Walter Davis
if this starts a long, pointless thread. But...
In article <2i7gnn$3...@amhux3.amherst.edu>
hjwu...@unix.amherst.edu (Harris Wulfson) writes:
>Adrian Bradley (a...@franklin.engin.umich.edu) wrote:
>
>: I'll probably send personal mail later (I've sent enough bandwith as it is)
>: but I hope you study the reasons *behind* the jazz and what the early musicians
>: were trying to say through their music. It has a whole lot to do with the
>: Afro-American experience, which if you haven't lived, may well take your whole
>: life to understand. One point that I felt the whole group could comment on is
>: the oppresive nature of the "dominant society's" musical tastes - jazz in it's
>: early forms was considered "low, debased, etc..." Interesting that when whites
>: entered the jazz scene, it became more and more culturally acceptible. It is
>: now "America's contribution to music."
>
>You've hit the nail on the head. There is a racist subtext in rap-bashing
>which was also present in criticisms of jazz until jazz became absorbed
>by white society...
>
will point out, there were numerous white jazz musicians, fans,
etc. involved in jazz from a very early time. Jon even argues that
there was "black" and "white" jazz at that time due to segregation
and that these began to merge around 1930. There are plenty
of arguments against that, and I am not one to judge either way,
but there has always been a significant presence of caucasian
people in jazz. Perhaps I am mistaken, but these statements gave
me the impression that "whites entered the jazz scene" sometime
in the last 20 years or so.
I will agree that there were racial undertones in many criticisms
of jazz throughout its history...and this is true of rap as well.
But I don't believe that ALL jazz- or rap-bashing contains a
"racist subtext." If I've misunderstood the poster's meaning,
I'm sorry - but I did get the impression that he was saying
all rap-bashing is racist.
hope this helps, doubt it will,
walt
Walter Davis WALTER...@UNC.EDU
Department of Sociology WDA...@UNCVM1.OIT.UNC.EDU
Institute for Research in Social Science
UNC - Chapel Hill (take your pick)
Ed Price
[some stuff which inspired me]
For my first exercise in rap composition, I would feel obligated to use the
highly esteemed ostenato cantus firmus that I like to call "Wom Chika Wom",
which looks like this:
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
||: WOM CHIKA WOM CHIKA :||
Here's the tune (maybe it's not the best rap ever but hey give me a break
it's my first, and besides today is my birthday!):
+ 4 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 4+ 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
S- S- S- ||: Sampling! | S- S- S- | Sampling! |
1 2 3 1 2 (3) + 4 +
| Rap jazz | word bird S- S- S- || <BIRD BREAK> ||
1 + 2+ 3 + 4 +
| Sampling! <SCREECH> ||
(So the form is A A B break A coda, except that the break actually
interrupts the return of the A section, which I think is cool. The kind of
thing that might confuse a non-ideal rhythm section perhaps...)
<BIRD BREAK> is a short "break" where a sample of Charlie Parker is
inserted, and <SCREECH> is some weird sampled screeching noise that will be
the ending "cadence" (there should be a "fermata" over this). Actually, a
sample of Keith Hedger yelling "AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRGGGGGHHH" might
be a nice variation? :)
The "(rest) rap jazz" bar is half note triplets, that's what my numbering
means there. The next bar I think what I want is "word bird (rest)" as
half note triplets and the "S-S-S-" is lined up with + 4 + in normal 4/4 (I
guess I'm treating the bridge as a separate "voice").
There's lots of room for interpretation in this "score", of course. The
<BIRD BREAK> in particular would be a great place to try to do something
really sophisticated, perhaps using lots and lots of Charlie Parker samples
combined in a really dense and confusing way, which still resolve neatly
into the next part. Or one could take a fun sequence of different players
and come up with a composite break, say -- this is just a random idea --
starting with Lester Young, then Charlie Parker, then Coltrane, then Ayler?
Then resolve to: "Sampling"! Well, I think it would be amusing...
Ciao,
-Ed (artist or entertainer??)
Harris Wulfson
: For my first exercise in rap composition, I would feel obligated to use the
: highly esteemed ostenato cantus firmus that I like to call "Wom Chika Wom",
: which looks like this:
: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
: ||: WOM CHIKA WOM CHIKA :||
: Here's the tune (maybe it's not the best rap ever but hey give me a break
: it's my first, and besides today is my birthday!):
: + 4 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 4+ 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
: S- S- S- ||: Sampling! | S- S- S- | Sampling! |
: 1 2 3 1 2 (3) + 4 +
: | Rap jazz | word bird S- S- S- || <BIRD BREAK> ||
: 1 + 2+ 3 + 4 +
: | Sampling! <SCREECH> ||
Wow! This has got to be one of the best posts in the flamewar (er...discussion)
Actually, I've been writing lots of raps lately, and I always write the
beats (1..2..3..4..) over the lyrics. You're the only other person I've ever
seen do this! My rapper friends think I'm crazy...but then, they forget
their rythms.
-Harris
dudley
>They can often listen to a rhythm and come up with not only some words to put
>to it, but there are different places in the beat where they may choose to put
>words, and even in the "tone" of voice used can vary from line to line.
Imagine a song with the following simple beat:
chum-chum-cha-cha-chum
chum-chum-cha-cha-chum
Now imagine using rhyming words which have the same natural rhythm:
Dumb bum had bad fun,
Some rum sad lad numb.
Now imagine a more complex beat using multi-syllable-rhyming words in
the same tone as the *other* instruments...
dudley
.
Marc Sabatella
> I have to wonder though, if I had
> said that I don't consider Garth Brooks to be a musician, how many
> people would have come out of the 'woodwork' to argue with me?
That would be different. You didn't ciriticize one particular rap artist; you
wrote off the entire genre. The correct analogy would be if you said you don't
think *any* country/western performers are musicians, and tht C&W was not in
fact a form of music. In that case, I do believe I'd have the same objections.
--
Marc Sabatella
ma...@sde.hp.com
--
All opinions expressed herein are my personal ones
and do not necessarily reflect those of HP or anyone else.
Jeff Eldredge
their
> views because they are trying to grapple with rap music within the
context
> of other musics (and specifically jazz music) that are now more
established.
is pop.
> Jazz is pop. It's all pop. Everything is pop except European "art"
music.
Why all of a sudden this bizarre exception for "European art music" in the
midst of an otherwise relativist discussion?? The way I see it, you're
right, it IS all pop now, as long as you're talking about the modern world
with Tower Records and HMV right down the street. You can get anything
you want there. It's mass-disseminated on cassette or CD or whatever.
Soon it will all be available courtesy of the information highway, or so
they say.
The pop/folk/classical paradigm is almost out the window. There's
probably still some real "folk" music if you venture into extremely remote
areas of the world. But this is an extremely small percentage of what's
out there. On the other hand, there's music that mimics popular music:
amateur music, perhaps musicians striving to BECOME popular. This is
anything from a chamber group playing Beethoven at a community center to
your local bar band playing at a pub for social and dancing purposes.
Perhaps this is the closest thing we have to "folk" now.
As for the rap/jazz argument, it's somewhat interesting, but then again
it's somewhat ludicrous. If you believe that John Cage destroyed music,
then you probably believe that rap is destroying music's reputation as
well. But it's near futile to try to argue someone one way or the
other....almost as difficult as it is to be a Cage fan and to attempt to
figure out how to reconcile his work with everything else that's going on.
The recorded versus live performance issue [in rap] is interesting here.
From a critical standpoint, I have heard VERY few live rap performances
that have "moved" me, whatever that means. Too often these take the form
of much strutting and grunting (and microphone abuse) and not enough
skillful turntable/technology manipulation and rhythmically interesting
rapping.
On the recorded side, something like FEAR OF A BLACK PLANET is a textural
delight. But, in general, I find the "beats" on rap albums to be real
snoozers. Just slammin' it on two and four!! As bad or worse than Disco
(not that I dislike all "Disco"). Thus, I personally need there to
interesting layering and/or excellent ryhmes and/or sophisticated vocal
rhythms......
But, I'm still willing to listen to anything....I gave up with labels long
ago.
Jeff Eldredge
Gregory Taylor
>Imagine a song with the following simple beat:
>the same tone as the *other* instruments...
What dudley is describing in an intuitive way is what linguists call "stress
timing" in speech. This is a feature of English, as opposed to, say, Spanish
or Japanese [which are referred to as being "syllable timed."] As anyone who's
listened to even the slightest amount of rap will no doubt mention, that mixing
of duple and triple groups in the stress group is a characteristic feature os
some kinds of toasting and rapping. Further, I think that one of the interesting
frontiers of the form involve deliveries which liberate the content from the
more heavy reliance on rhythmic accent, resulting in something which more
closely resembles traditional metric structures. It's only a matter of time
before we have Byronic stanzas as a rap form.... ;-)
--
In the desert I prayed only for mercy, not happiness, not vindication,
willing to settle. No price can be too high, no cruelty excessive if the
end finds cruelty exhausted and mercy audible as a hammer's sound in rain.
Gregory Taylor/email: gta...@heurikon.com/voice 608-828-3385 or 608-246-9621
Stephen F. White
Jeff Eldredge <j...@beefheart.cc.columbia.edu> wrote:
> The recorded versus live performance issue [in rap] is interesting here.
> From a critical standpoint, I have heard VERY few live rap performances
> that have "moved" me, whatever that means. Too often these take the form
> of much strutting and grunting (and microphone abuse) and not enough
> skillful turntable/technology manipulation and rhythmically interesting
> rapping.
funny. when i saw PE live at the twist in waterloo a few years back,
they were the first live act in ages that blew me away. i left saying to
myself, "now *that* was a show. rock bands have forgotten how to put on
a *show*". (uh oh, now i'm backstabbing rock for hiphop. oh well).
although terminator-x's performance was a bit lackluster (no dazzling
dj zero-style techniques or inspired riffing), chuck d & flav just
*worked* and *worked* to move the crowd. politically, culturally,
musically.
of course, this belongs someplace else.
-=- sfw
--
Stephen F. White
sfw...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca
gopher://descartes.uwaterloo.ca/h0/mathSOC/.csc/.www/.sfwhite/homepage.html
... reality is eighty million polygons per second ...
Can You Say Puyallup?
> My point is simple RAP is pop music.
> RAPPERS are not musicians. Simple.
> Playing a sampler is not equivalent to even playing a musical instrument,
> much less attempting to master one in some way.
First off, I'm jumping in to the *discussion*, and not the flame-war. Second
of all, I'm doing this late, so I admit I could be missing essential details,
although I read the 34-and-counting followups, as well as the base article.
Third of all, the snippet taken above is quoted as "in-context" as I can make
it from one of Keith Hedger's earlier posts, so it's not "current" as far as
chronology goes. All of that said, and leaving the man behind the words out
of it for a moment, I'd like to take this excerpt apart a bit, and open the
floor for a more interesting discussion. I hope. :)
"RAP is pop music" or "simple RAP is pop music" (depending on how you read it):
I take this first as a pejorative statement, i.e. pop music is bad in some way,
perhaps simplistic, perhaps formulaic, perhaps boring (I won't say things about
any other criteria other than strictly sonic/structural/acoustic ones). If
this is true--assume it is for the moment--then it doesn't take a rocket
scientist to see that rap is similarly simplistic, or formulaic, or boring
music.
Somebody along the line then said that it follows necessarily that rappers must
be musicians, since although the music they're making is "pop" music, it is
still music. To give Keith the benefit of the doubt, perhaps he's claiming
that rappers aren't musicians, because all the rappers do--AS RAPPERS--is
speak rhythmically into a microphone, and, Keith might go on, anyone can do
that and it's not music. This sort of forces me into looking at statement
number two, that "RAPPERS are not musicians".
This point can be granted just for the sake of argument. Let's assume that.
All right, so we've got folks like Ice Cube who speak rhythmically into a mic,
and although the composite result of their efforts and their band's/dj's/
producer's efforts is "pop music", their individual contribution is not music.
This can be held without too much of a problem: in just the same way, if I
screech horribly into a Karaoke microphone (names have been changed to protect
the innocent) over an instrumental track, the composite result is music, even
though I am not a musician, and am not singing music. (That's the best I
can do for Keith's position on this issue, anyway...maybe someone can do
better).
Put that on the back burner for a moment: that it is not inconsistent or
ridiculous to *claim*, at any rate, that rappers are not musicians while
also claiming that rap is pop music.
Then we run smack dab into statement number three, namely that "playing a
sampler is not equivalent even to playing a musical instrument." This is the
one that I just can't swallow (I pat myself on the back for getting through
the first two). It's also difficult, if not impossible, to figure out exactly
what Keith means here. I want to try on the possibilities for size.
First, the easy ones. He cannot take "sampler" to mean something like an
88-key controller running a MIDI box programmed to kick out a sample of a
Steinway playing a middle C when middle C is struck on the controller. That's
a one-to-one correspondence of controller-note to sampler-note: you play a C,
and provided that all your cords are plugged in right, you get a C out the
speaker. (And to belabor the obvious, assume the MIDI box is a true sampler,
and you spent all day multisampling your 9' Steinway grand as perfectly as
you could into the MIDI module). If this is what Keith means by "sampler",
then he cannot claim that playing it is not equivalent to playing an instrument
unless he wants to claim that all jazz played on sampling keyboards (like
the piano emulator I use on gigs) is not being played by musical instruments.
That taken to its logical conclusion would mean that any so-called music played
on a sampling keyboard is not music at all, because music is played by instru-
ments, and clearly playing a sampler is not equivalent to playing an instru-
ment.
Okay, so if he can't mean all *that* patently ridiculous stuff, what can he
mean? Well, I take it that he's trying to claim that a sample of someone
saying, oh, gee, "Fight the Power" tuned to an A 440, and emanating from
a sampler is not the sort of thing that a musical instrument produces, or, at
the very least, if you master the ability to play that rhythmically at certain
points in a backbeat, you haven't mastered a musical instrument, much less
played one, and therefore haven't made music.
Now, go back to the back burner and pull off the bit that says that it's
possible to say that rap is pop music and rappers aren't musicians in the same
breath.
While that may be true, if rap is any music at all, and Keith maintains it's
pop music, then we have to say: where are the elements in the rap song that
make it music? Keith tells us they're not in the rapper himself, since he
just speaks rhythmically into a mic. Well, now he says they can't be in the
sampler either, because playing a sampler is NOT the same thing as playing
a musical instrument. Would the music then be in the drumbeat? Problems;
the drums in nearly all rap songs come from--yup, that's right--samplers.
What's more, nearly NONE of the loops are played live by someone standing over
a drum machine and banging away on the pads; usually they're preprogrammed.
Isn't this the same thing as playing a sampler? We've already said that Keith
has to allow that *playing* a keyboard-sampler (my piano emulator, remember?)
is okay, and, similarly, *playing* a one-to-one drum machine is okay. But
that's not how the beats are made, for the most part.
So the musical elements can't be in the drum loops, the rapper, or the sampler.
Well, clearly they must be somewhere else, Keith might say, if he were to
defend the rap-is-pop-music thesis. But in songs like L.L. Cool J.'s "Rock da
Bells", there's nothing ELSE.
I'm running out of time, and boring thousands of people across the world, but
even with as thorough an attempt as this to try to understand Keith's "simple"
points, I can't do it. I can't take them all together.
Attacks? Defenses? For God's sake, no flames.
LAiRD
--
..
/\.. prism magazine (pr...@amherst.edu) | laird j. nelson
::/__\.. amherst college, amherst, ma | ljne...@unix.amherst.edu
..
Can You Say Puyallup?
First, Keith Hedger (k...@HQ.Ileaf.COM) wrote:
> My point is simple RAP is pop music.
> RAPPERS are not musicians. Simple.
> Playing a sampler is not equivalent to even playing a musical instrument,
> much less attempting to master one in some way.
Then he said:
> I'll try to clarify...when I say 'pop music', I use the word music as
> a matter of convenience....sorta like when I talk about the 'music
> industry'.
This statement is okay, especially coupled with the statement that I forgot
to quote, where Keith holds that rap is "not music". That's a position one
can take. Step one.
(And, to be fair, the following point should go with the above:)
> One more thing, I never said that rap or pop music were necessarily
> bad or evil. I do have certain problems with pop music and the
> industry that has been built around it, but, hey, I've been known to
> listen to a Steely Dan record now and then.
Keith followed his first statement with:
> I guess what I would say is that their [rappers] individual contributions are
> not those of *musicians*, but rather those of crafty technical
> wizards.
This is, thankfully for me, centered on the issue that got me intrigued in
the first place.
Let's assume that the backing DJ with his turntables and "Fight The Power"
samples put a given track together, produced it, spun the wheels, played
the samples at the appropriate places, and generally laid down a groove--
a prepackaged groove, to be sure, but a groove nonetheless. Then Ice Cube,
or whoever we want, comes out, and, in line with uncontested assumptions I
made in my last post, does nothing more than speak rhythmically into a mic,
something which Keith and anyone of his position claims is not the sort of
thing that requires any musical skill.
In this case, I assume that the DJ is the "crafty technical wizard" who knows
everything about mixing, about his samplers, about his turntables, and about
what sorts of elements mixed together make a good groove. There should be no
problems with that.
Secondly, I assume that if you wanted to you could classify our strange
hybrid Ice Cube (who seems to be rapping with Public Enemy on this track...
hmmm...) as a "crafty technical wizard"--he knows about mic technique, about
which words will work together well and what will sound square or stupid,
and things of that sort--but we can probably leave him out for the moment.
So here's our DJ, mixing away, staying up until the wee small hours of the
morning, producing this killer rap track. It is not music, according to the
position we're currently holding, because rap as a whole is not music. Nor
is the DJ a musician; he is simply a techie, who may indeed know a lot about
what he is doing--whatever that may be--but who is not making music.
Two analogies are possible, each of which relates to this situation in a
different way.
The first: Imagine a really amazing lyricist, like Cole Porter, say, only
without any musical skill at all. He cannot play the piano to save his life,
has never seen a wind instrument, and thinks that gut strings are found
exclusively on tennis rackets. What's more, he can't carry a tune any better
than his dog, and certainly has no ability to tell any piece he hears apart
from any other. But he can write lyrics that fit rhythms, and he does this
very well.
He approaches his friend, who has a similar disability. His friend is a
composer, but with a small problem: he's never played a musical instrument,
can't sing, and doesn't even know how the instruments in a big band work.
But he does know ranges, and he knows the appropriate harmonies and things
that he is permitted to write on music paper, because somebody at his grad
school taught him. So here he is, idly diddling on a piece of music paper.
The lyricist approaches him and gives him these stunning lyrics he's just
written. He points out the meter and the rhythm that his words follow, and
asks the composer to write a song around them. The composer does so, and
a local big band and vocalist play the composition to rave reviews.
Is the composer a musician? Or a technical wizard? If a musician, then the
DJ is a musician no less. If a technical wizard, which seems a little odd--
one would like to think of composers as musicians, I think--then Keith's point
can at least resist this analogy.
The second analogy: Joe is a member in a handbell choir at his local church.
He cannot play any musical instrument other than the two handbells that have
been allotted to him. At first, when the director pointed at him, Joe would
ring the appropriate bell, depending on the director's hand signal. But
gradually, after playing for quite a while in the choir, Joe could hear things,
and could anticipate the right place to ring his bell. In a surprise turn of
events, the handbell choir moves to playing jazz. Joe can hear well enough
to know when ringing one of his two bells in a certain rhythm sounds good
or bad.
Is Joe a musician or a technical wizard? If a musician, then the DJ is a
musician no less; if a technical wizard, then so is the crash cymbal player
in an orchestra, the clave' player in a latin band, and one of those funky
looking swiss guys who plays the alpenhorn. These are claims we don't want
to make: the first two examples, anyhow, are pretty obviously musicians.
Okay, more later. Gotta give the masses time to respond. :)
Keith Hedger
>be musicians, since although the music they're making is "pop" music, it is
>still music. To give Keith the benefit of the doubt, perhaps he's claiming
>that rappers aren't musicians, because all the rappers do--AS RAPPERS--is
>speak rhythmically into a microphone, and, Keith might go on, anyone can do
>that and it's not music. This sort of forces me into looking at statement
>number two, that "RAPPERS are not musicians".
>
I'll try to clarify...when I say 'pop music', I use the work music as
a matter of convenience....sorta like when I talk about the 'music
industry'.
>This point can be granted just for the sake of argument. Let's assume that.
>All right, so we've got folks like Ice Cube who speak rhythmically into a mic,
>and although the composite result of their efforts and their band's/dj's/
>producer's efforts is "pop music", their individual contribution is
>not music.
I guess what I would say is that their individual contributions are
not those of *musicians*, but rather those of crafty technical
wizards.
>First, the easy ones. He cannot take "sampler" to mean something like an
>88-key controller running a MIDI box programmed to kick out a sample of a
>Steinway playing a middle C when middle C is struck on the controller. That's
>a one-to-one correspondence of controller-note to sampler-note: you play a C,
>and provided that all your cords are plugged in right, you get a C out the
>speaker. (And to belabor the obvious, assume the MIDI box is a true sampler,
>and you spent all day multisampling your 9' Steinway grand as perfectly as
>you could into the MIDI module). If this is what Keith means by "sampler",
>then he cannot claim that playing it is not equivalent to playing an
>instrument
No...that's not what I meant at all. Much has been said to defend rap
on the basis that rappers use techniques used by the musique concrete
composers of the classical field. My point is that the skills required
to sample material and put together this material in the context of
rap, does NOT require any *musical* skill. Even if you think rap is
music, it's such a simplistic form (I'm talking musical form here)
that to me, it's ridiculous make a case that a *musician* is needed to
produce it.
>
>While that may be true, if rap is any music at all, and Keith maintains it's
>pop music, then we have to say: where are the elements in the rap song that
>make it music? Keith tells us they're not in the rapper himself,
>since he
> .... long explanation deleted ...
>So the musical elements can't be in the drum loops, the rapper, or
>the sampler
Well see my note above about the term 'pop music'. I really don't find
anything in rap that I would call music.
>Well, clearly they must be somewhere else, Keith might say, if he were to
>defend the rap-is-pop-music thesis. But in songs like L.L. Cool J.'s "Rock da
>Bells", there's nothing ELSE.
>
They are nowhere else....I couldn't possibly defend rap as music,
cause I don't think it is.
One more thing, I never said that rap or pop music were necessarily
bad or evil. I do have certain problems with pop music and the
industry that has been built around it, but, hey, I've been known to
listen to a Steely Dan record now and then.
>LAiRD
Ty
The key point here is (obviously) what we define a musician to be. If we
define a musician as one who has demonstrated proficiency at playing a
musical instrument (although the "proficiency" part may be debatable), then
a DJ like the one described above is certainly not a musician. However,
there is more that goes into musicianship than merely being able to play
a musical instrument well.
Enter the artistic factor!
OK, hypothetical situation:
Joe piano player has been playing ever since he was a child. He has
displayed remarkable technical skill and virtuosity at the piano;
however, his playing has one major flaw. It is completely void of
musical expression. I can guarantee, that while Joe may be a musician,
he will never be a GREAT musician until he can learn to put some
feeling and personal expression into the music.
I happen to be a trumpet player myself, and while I often am frustrated
by a lack of superb technical ability, I feel I can compensate by
*playing MUSICALLY*, where I use the term "musically" to represent
phrasing, dynamics, and that intangible factor of expression... the
ARTISTIC factor.
Anyway, my point in all this is that while the DJ described above may
not be a *musician*, he is clearly an *artist*. Yes, there is a
technical factor invovled (the "wizardry" factor mentioned previously;
the know-how of mixing), but the actual creation of a rap-track, or
mix, or whatever it's called, is certainly an ARTISTIC PROCESS!
Therefore, the DJ should be at least awarded credit as an artist, if not
as a musician.
Ty
Keith Hedger
>
>Why do you (Keith) intist on mystifying the Musician? What is so magical and
>unapproachable about what he does? What makes musicians somehow
>different
I don't insist on mystifying the Musician, but I DO NOT believe that
everyone is capable of performing (or composing) music on a high
level. If that makes me old fashioned....well...I guess I am.
>from everyone else in the world? Do you mean someone who is trained as a
>musician (like someone trained as a plumber for instance)?
>At what point is a person awarded his musician "diploma" and told,
>"Congratulations. You are now a member of an elite group of special individuals
>and you cannot reveal our secrets to commoners?"
It's not a matter of being awarded a diploma (although that can be
part of the process)....it's more a matter of striving to acheive a
high level of musicianship through committment, hard work, and, well,
talent. I would say that the 'diploma' (your word) comes when you are
recognized by your peers as achieving (really beginning to achieve,
it's a lifelong struggle) the level of skill you have been pursuing.
As far as revealing secrets I don't know what you're talking
about....musical information is available to anyone with an adequate
combination of talent/determination to absorb it.
> In addition, you insist on the idea of individual and isolated Authorship.
>Musical creation, to you, is individual and personal (or at best interactive
>between few individuals). Of course you would attack a music like hip-hop
>because hip-hop defies Authorship and unmasks the elitist Musician.
>Your arguments are specious because the assumptions under which you operate
>strive for objectivity. If I only knew about Classical music, then I would say
>that musicians must read music. And if I only knew about jazz, I would say that
>musicians must improvise. The objectivity that you cling to is only one of
>many "objectivities."
> I've tried explaining the music's merits in "musical" terms (if you
>remember my first post...) but your last statement forced me to break
>out to postmodernist stuff. Sorry if you get pomo-sick...
>
See, I seem to be having trouble being understood here: I never
claimed to be objective about this. I simply don't adhere to all of
this new-age bullshit, non-critical approach to art. If I'm
understanding you correctly, what you're saying is that I'm clinging
to an old set of values about what constitutes a musician or music;
that these values no longer apply; and that I hate rap because it
by definition, exposes my outdated thinking. I refuse to acknowledge
this assesment. I don't believe that everybody has it within them to
be a serious artist or musician, and frankly, if it's not serious
music (as in a 'serious' endeavor) I have no interest in it. It
doesn't mean that I think a 'serious' musician has to have a college
degree (I don't have a college degree and I'm a REAL serious
musician). It doesn't mean that new ground cannot be broken. It simply
means that there are a variety of criteria that I use to make a
critical analysis of the music that I hear. When I apply these
criteria to rap....guess what? I meets none of them, therefore, as far
as I'm concerned, it's not worth my time.
keith
>-Harris Wulfson
>unix.amherst.edu
Can You Say Puyallup?
[Joe, for those jumping in late, is a mythic member of an equally mythic
handbell choir, who can't read music, knows nothing about musical concepts
as formally taught, but only knows when to ring his bell when called upon.
In my last post, I argued that if you say Joe is a musician--and it seems
that we normally call such people musicians--then the DJ of a rap group (at
the very least) must be a musician as well. For more on this debate, read
the previous followups. I asked whether Joe was a musician or not.]
> I'd say no.....Joe has never attempted to build upon some raw talent
> that he discovered in himself. He has done nothing to improve or
> refine his raw skills.
I am not a quibbler by nature, but just to clarify: that's why I built the
example the way I did--Joe learned by *listening* when to ring his bell. That
*is* improving on his raw skills. Similarly, I myself wouldn't know how to
scratch on a turntable if my life depended on it. But I could learn, and
I could learn what sounds good, and how to do it well. And I have *no* skill,
believe me, so any progress would *have* to be in the upwards direction. :)
> He has not spent anytime listening to the
> history of music, or learning about the aesthetical issues that
> accompany the act of making music....he simply stumbled upon the fact
> that ringing the bell in the right place sounded right.
Consider Hermeto Pascoal, a modern-day Brazilian jazz composer/musician/per-
former, who stumbled upon the fact that blowing through a filled teapot with
a trumpet mouthpiece sounded right, and performs on his new-found instrument
rather regularly. (Aside: it really is a sight, and, surprisingly, sounds
hauntingly beautiful). Is he a musician, or a technical wizard?
If a musician, then so is Joe, and the DJ. If but a wizard, then thousands
of rabid Brazilians chanting Portugese battle cries will no doubt descend upon
you rather bloodthirstily, I'm afraid. :)
Then there's the whole issue of "learning about the aesthetical [sic] issues
that accompany the act of making music". I suppose, as always, it depends on
what you mean. If learning about the aesthetic issues in music is somehow
related to learning what "sounds right", or the codified list of things that
have proven themselves to "sound right", then you might be on shaky ground.
Not to drag out the whole multicultural bashing apparatus, but consider a
very strong example: Indian music. Here is a system of music, performed by
some of the most talented and dedicated musicians on the face of the earth,
which, to me, sounds awful. But to claim that those Indian musicians are not
really musicians because they aren't playing something that conforms to the
II-V7-I progression, or the IV-V-I progression, or any of the other resolution
patterns that our music (yes, our music, by which I mean American, European and
other musics based off the eight-note scale with similar theory rules--no
flames please, it should be sufficiently clear what I mean) more or less
adheres to? Seems a bit ridiculous, and I don't think you'd do that.
Moreover, Joe knows more about what sounds right in a handbell choir than
either you or I *ever* will. He's been studying it for {pause to invent
mythic number}...oh, some four hundred years now. Studying it: continually
honing his technique and his rhythmic sense, knowing how to get the right
dynamics out of the bell, knowing how to read the director's signs almost
before she makes them. Note that this still requires (a) no teaching, (b)
no ability to read music, and (c) no boning up on the history of his music.
It just takes many years of playing the same *kind* of music over and over
again, to learn by listening about its finer points.
So to *that* extent, you can argue either way: either Joe doesn't know what
"sounds right" because he can't read music, and he
doesn't understand its theory, in which case I think you'll find he's a
musician no less, or Joe knows *exactly* what sounds right, because he's been
in the same goddamn handbell choir since 1594--a fact which strengthens his
musicianship all the more. After all, James P. Johnson was one *hell* of a
musician, and I'll personally rip the arms off anyone who says differently. :)
Perhaps you mean intellectual or mental events concerned with such questions
as: When I make this music, what is it that I am creating? For surely Joe does
not think of this; he simply likes the sound of his bell when played in a
place where (a) he's supposed to and (b) that sounds good to him. Agreed, but
this doesn't disqualify him as a musician, I don't think. Why? Simply
because few, if any but the most twisted genius musicians among us, think
this way. And yet there is no question that they are musicians.
(And, of course, even if Joe *were* to think this way, his response to "Pardon
me, Joe, but what is it that you're creating?" he will say something along the
lines of "I am taking my essential place in this handbell choir, and producing
some of the most soothing music in the world." Or perhaps, "I am creating
this music, however humble my contribution may be, for the grace of God." Or
whatever.)
Let us remember: Joe is not an idiot. Neither is the DJ--well, not
*necessarily* at any rate. :)
Of course, Joe *does* think about what it *means* to make music in a handbell
choir. He knows *about* written music, even if he can't read it, and he
knows that there are some times when he should ring his bell even if he doesn't
like the sound, and he knows that there are appropriate places where although
ringing the bells would sound wonderful to him, he cannot, because of the
constraints placed upon him as a member of the ensemble by the composer. These
are different issues than aesthetic ones that accompany the making of music,
but they are all that *I* can come up with as possible interpretations of
what you mean by "aesthetic issues".
And, to belabor the obvious, I argue that the DJ has the same thoughts, or
is certainly not prevented from having them. He knows a good drum loop when
he hears one (some of these people, I learned the other day, grab loops off
of WALT DISNEY SINGALONG albums, and they're funky as hell, but I digress),
and knows where in the track it will sound good, and where it will not. He
also knows what it means for his producer to tell him to stick thus-and-such
a sample in at thus-and-such a rhythmic location, and can do it or suggest
otherwise if he thinks the producer is in error. If asked what it is he
thinks he is creating, well, one only need turn to the pages of the thousands
of magazines out there to read that. Perhaps *that* issue goes on a bit too
*much* in rap.
> BTW, you'll
> find few latin percussionists simply know where to play a clave. There
> is a amazingly complex and large body of knowledge that these guys
> have to attain before they can really function effectively in a band.
This is a true enough point. After all, *I* can play a clave. But then
again, is it really relevant? It seems that I would be a musician no less
if Tito Puente came up to me and said, in translation, "Okay, Nelson, play
your clave on the first, fourth and seventh eighth-note pulses of the first
bar, on the third and sixth pulses of the second bar, and then repeat the
phrase until I motion you to shut up." Granted I couldn't do the same thing
if he told me to do 64th-note triplets on the timbales in 5/4 while the rest
of his band chugged along in 12/8. Does that mean I'm not a musician? I
hope not, because if so, then Joe and the DJ get shafted, and I get insulted.
I appreciate the non-flame tone of this discussion so far; it's a breath of
fresh air. {rings bell} Next!
Harris Wulfson
: No...that's not what I meant at all. Much has been said to defend rap
: on the basis that rappers use techniques used by the musique concrete
: composers of the classical field. My point is that the skills required
: to sample material and put together this material in the context of
: rap, does NOT require any *musical* skill. Even if you think rap is
: music, it's such a simplistic form (I'm talking musical form here)
: that to me, it's ridiculous make a case that a *musician* is needed to
: produce it.
:
Why do you (Keith) intist on mystifying the Musician? What is so magical and
unapproachable about what he does? What makes musicians somehow different
from everyone else in the world? Do you mean someone who is trained as a
musician (like someone trained as a plumber for instance)?
At what point is a person awarded his musician "diploma" and told,
"Congratulations. You are now a member of an elite group of special individuals
and you cannot reveal our secrets to commoners?"
In addition, you insist on the idea of individual and isolated Authorship.
Musical creation, to you, is individual and personal (or at best interactive
between few individuals). Of course you would attack a music like hip-hop
because hip-hop defies Authorship and unmasks the elitist Musician.
Your arguments are specious because the assumptions under which you operate
strive for objectivity. If I only knew about Classical music, then I would say
that musicians must read music. And if I only knew about jazz, I would say that
musicians must improvise. The objectivity that you cling to is only one of
many "objectivities."
I've tried explaining the music's merits in "musical" terms (if you
remember my first post...) but your last statement forced me to break
out to postmodernist stuff. Sorry if you get pomo-sick...
-Harris Wulfson
unix.amherst.edu
Keith Hedger
>
>The second analogy: Joe is a member in a handbell choir at his local church.
>He cannot play any musical instrument other than the two handbells that have
>been allotted to him. At first, when the director pointed at him, Joe would
>ring the appropriate bell, depending on the director's hand signal. But
>gradually, after playing for quite a while in the choir, Joe could hear things,
>and could anticipate the right place to ring his bell. In a surprise turn of
>events, the handbell choir moves to playing jazz. Joe can hear well enough
>to know when ringing one of his two bells in a certain rhythm sounds good
>or bad.
>
>Is Joe a musician or a technical wizard? If a musician, then the DJ is a
>musician no less; if a technical wizard, then so is the crash cymbal player
>in an orchestra, the clave' player in a latin band, and one of those funky
>looking swiss guys who plays the alpenhorn. These are claims we don't want
>to make: the first two examples, anyhow, are pretty obviously musicians.
>
that he discovered in himself. He has done nothing to improve or
history of music, or learning about the aesthetical issues that
accompany the act of making music....he simply stumbled upon the fact
find few latin percussionists simply know where to play a clave. There
is a amazingly complex and large body of knowledge that these guys
have to attain before they can really function effectively in a band.
>Okay, more later. Gotta give the masses time to respond. :)
>
>LAiRD
keith
Keith Hedger
>Ty (be...@expert.cc.purdue.edu) wrote:
>> The key point here is (obviously) what we define a musician to be. If we
>> define a musician as one who has demonstrated proficiency at playing a
>> musical instrument (although the "proficiency" part may be debatable), then
>> a DJ like the one described above is certainly not a musician.
>
>that no one would quibble with the fact that within rap, the turntable and the
>record selected together constitute a perfectly valid musical instrument. If
>there's a problem here, I'd love to hear what it is.
>
Untrue....the DJ doesn't produce music of his own....he replays the
music of others....
>I saw one street performer--a wonderful musician--who had taken a single
>sheet of flooring plywood, and by soaking it in various places with various
>substances, had altered the pitch of the board across its surface. He was
>whacking away at it with a pipe wrench, and it sounded like a strange cross
>between a steel drum and a xylophone. Musical instrument? Most
<would say yes
Most??? How did you arrive at that conclusion?
>and, if pressed to explain why, would cite the sound, or the way it was being
>played, or, more importantly, the fact that it was being used in a certain
>way, namely, to make music. "But it's just a plywood board," you might say.
>True, but in this particular case it's a musical instrument.
>
How is whacking away at a piece of plywood with a pipe wrench making
music? Music consists of more than just raw sounds...
keith
>
>LAiRD
Ty
> Ty (be...@expert.cc.purdue.edu) wrote:
> > The key point here is (obviously) what we define a musician to be. If we
> > define a musician as one who has demonstrated proficiency at playing a
> > musical instrument (although the "proficiency" part may be debatable), then
> > a DJ like the one described above is certainly not a musician.
>
> Certainly? Hrm. I don't think this is clear; one of the things I assumed was
> that no one would quibble with the fact that within rap, the turntable and the
> record selected together constitute a perfectly valid musical instrument. If
> there's a problem here, I'd love to hear what it is.
Maybe I'm a little in the dark about the "DJ" we're referring to here. I was
under the impression that this DJ was a "mixer"; in other words he didn't
"scratch", but simply (well, maybe not so simply!) collected musical "samples"
and mixed them together to create a "mix". But if he scratched, then I most
certainly WOULD consider him a musician (assuming he knew what he was doing).
I don't know anything about record scratching, but it seems to be very close
to a percussion instrument, in that the rythym is what really matters. In
this case, I would consider the record/turntable a valid instrument.
I would also have to add that this instrument is in no way "inferior" to
any other instrument. More limited perhaps, but not inferior. For example,
I would consider a talented scratch-DJ to be a better musician than a
mediocre piano player.
Ty
Mark Henteleff
>In article <2ip1rq$1...@amhux3.amherst.edu> ljne...@unix.amherst.edu (Can You Say Puyallup?) writes:
>
>>Then there's the whole issue of "learning about the aesthetical [sic] issues
>>that accompany the act of making music". I suppose, as always, it depends on
>>what you mean. If learning about the aesthetic issues in music is somehow
>>related to learning what "sounds right", or the codified list of things that
>>have proven themselves to "sound right", then you might be on shaky ground.
>>Not to drag out the whole multicultural bashing apparatus, but consider a
>>very strong example: Indian music. Here is a system of music, performed by
>>some of the most talented and dedicated musicians on the face of the earth,
>>which, to me, sounds awful. But to claim that those Indian musicians are not
>>really musicians because they aren't playing something that conforms to the
>>II-V7-I progression, or the IV-V-I progression, or any of the other resolution
>>patterns that our music (yes, our music, by which I mean American, European and
>>other musics based off the eight-note scale with similar theory rules--no
>>flames please, it should be sufficiently clear what I mean) more or less
>>adheres to? Seems a bit ridiculous, and I don't think you'd do that.
>>
>geography. The music of India is fundamentally different than the
>music of America or Europe. That said, I think that any musician in
>America has a responsibility to learn as much as possible about the
>music he or she plays, AND any other musics possible. This does not
>HAVE to be done in an academic setting. It doesn't mean that what he
>or she learns has to dominate his or her approach to music, BUT the
>experience of studying these subjects will help him or her to better
>understand their art. So, for example, if someone claims to be a musician,
>I expect them to either a) have at least a fundamental understanding
>of Western music theory or b) have at least a fundamental
>understanding of another indigenous music or c) worked (I mean serious
>work here, not just buying some equipment and proclaiming it) toward
>developing their own theory and practice of music. I've found that the
>musicians who truly achieve 'c' have usually done significant work
>towards 'a' and 'b'.
>
>keith
>
Pure and unadulturated horseshit. Understanding of Western music
theory??? JEEEEEEEEEz, maybe you should consider studying music a
little less and PLAYING it a little more. As Hendrix once said, ( to
paraphrase) a musician hopefully, if he is pure and driven, will be as
UNTOUCHED by the world and MAN as possible...only then can he be
creative...or something like that. Serious work??!#@#$%%^#!@...
that's the whole goddamn problem here, KEIth...try having some
fun.
drunk, stupid, proud, ignorant, untrained, and STILL...a musician
Mark H.
*claims to be a musician*...claims......how goddamn arrogant!!
shoot heroin, not hoop
Rava...@debug.cuc.ab.ca
Well, firstly, I'd argue that this base is not really the place to discuss
the musical merits of rap. But, seing eing as the first stone has
been cast, don't mind if I grab sm ome gravel and join in.
The opinion that rap (or hiphop I guess, since that moniker includes all
of the elements, not just the vocalizing) has no musical merit is pretty
widespread and I've seen it almost inspirt e debaters to the point of
blows. The general theory behind the rap<>mis usic opinion from what
I've hear in d on the coffee shop circuit is taht htat at because
rap is "pre-constructed" for the most part and is heavily comprised of
lifted riffs and lines it doesn't require the creative muscle to clasify
it as music. Any idiot, they claim, can program a sm imple drum track and
then lift a bass line from some long-forgeo otten 70's rock tune and with
the addition of some simple vocals have a hit.
Well, any idiot can make a small dot of paint on a canvass, too.
Not any idiot can be Seurat.
J. Eric Townsend
ray> Appropriation is nothing new: it is one of the biggest driving
ray> forces behind jazz, blues, rock, reggae...and rap. The means of
ray> appropriation differs among all of these genres.
I'm watching an old tape of Stevie Ray Vaughn on MTV. H just did an
extended bridge that had several 'traditional' blues riffs included...
My elements-of-jazz practice books not only go through common
patterns, they often refer to specific recordings I can listen to to
get an idea of what I could do with those riffs...
ray> DoD#372 : '88 Honda Hawk (borrowed)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
uh-oh. what happened, ray?
--
j...@netcom.com -- J. Eric Townsend -- '92 R100R: "CLACKER"
"If you're so special then why aren't you dead?" -- the Breeders
J. Eric Townsend
edp> I have a question for you, Keith, just out of curiosity, do you
edp> consider John Cage's music to be music? Seems to me that he
or for that matter, something as tame as Einsturzende Neubauten (sp in
error, probably)..
Ray Peck
>How is whacking away at a piece of plywood with a pipe wrench making
>music? Music consists of more than just raw sounds...
Did John Cage make music?
--
Ray Peck
>
>I have a question for you, Keith, just out of curiosity, do you consider
>John Cage's music to be music?
Damn. Beaten to the punch.
>Do you preprocess the "raw sounds" to make sure
>that they conform to your idea of what music should be before you even
>start to perceive them as music?
Cage was very interested in breaking down the barrier between found
sounds and music. There are a couple essays on the topic in the
booklet for the recent "a chance operation" Cage tribute.
--
Victor Eijkhout
Good DJs are simply using music itself as another instrument.
So what's the difference between this type of DJ and the
old-fashioned kind who simply make a nice sequence of
records to fill an hour or radio air time? Is he a musician too?
After all, the hour of air time is a new musical work.
--
Victor Eijkhout ................................................. They
Department of Computer Science ............................ often call
University of Tennessee ............................ this .sig `speedo'
Knoxville TN 37996 ................................. but its real name
+1 615 974 8298 ....................................... is Mister Earl
Stephen F. White
not interested in being other than bull-headed about this issue.
what i would like to point out is that if all hiphop music is the same
and none of it takes any talent, why is it a form which has withstood
the test of time? people are not stupid. they get bored. if they hear
the same drum beat, or the same rhyme structure, or the same samples
over and over again, they will get bored and listen to something else.
so there is *something* in hiphop which allows innovation, which allows
freedom of expression, and which opens up new avenues for musicians (yes,
musicians) to explore. otherwise it would have been a closed-off chapter
in the history of music.
like it or not, hiphop is here to stay.
Dean Hegazi
>The opinion that rap (or hiphop I guess, since that moniker includes all
>of the elements, not just the vocalizing) has no musical merit is pretty
>widespread and I've seen it almost inspirt e debaters to the point of
>blows. The general theory behind the rap<>mis usic opinion from what
>I've hear in d on the coffee shop circuit is taht htat at because
>rap is "pre-constructed" for the most part and is heavily comprised of
>lifted riffs and lines it doesn't require the creative muscle to clasify
>it as music. Any idiot, they claim, can program a sm imple drum track and
>then lift a bass line from some long-forgeo otten 70's rock tune and with
>the addition of some simple vocals have a hit.
>Well, any idiot can make a small dot of paint on a canvass, too.
>Not any idiot can be Seurat.
You're really digging in here... The way i see it, is that around 80% of
the non-rap groups i like, are with rap or have the RESPECT not to pay
out, but acknowledge it. It isn't something i've looked for, and it sure
as hell ain't coincidence. My general taste includes a lot of rap,
with a lot of "alternative" "grunge" :) These words just don't mean
anything anymore...
I'm sure somebody must've mentioned this, but give the Judgement Night
soundtrack a listen. Most of the rappers on that can lyrically crap all
over the average indy vocalist!!
I would love to see all the people paying out on rap to list their
musical taste, so I can see whether you're even worth replying to...
--
Zikzak public access UNIX, Melbourne, Australia.
Steve Monroe
Well, it's just my opinion but...nope....not really...
Just a bunch-o-noise.
I hesitated to jump into this 'discussion', because I really
didn't (and may still not) know much about rap. Soooooooooo,
I tuned in to "yo, mtv raps" and watched for a week...
Since this is simply opinion, I must state that rap really
doesn't "float my boat." It's just plain boring homogenious
stuff. Banal, and not very clever at all. Most of the
vocals all cadence the same. No harmony, even less melody,
and pretty boring rhythms (just plain ol stoopid 4, every
dang time...yuk).
--
"Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art"
Charles McCabe SanFrancisco Chronicle
---
email reply : Steve_...@stortek.com
Can You Say Puyallup?
> In article <2iubme$d...@amhux3.amherst.edu> I wrote:
> >Is the time spent learning and improving a necessary condition of being a
> >musician? If so, how much time is required before someone attains musician
> >status? I don't think this position works.
> Absolutely!!! True musicianship is not something developed in an
> 'instant' even by the most naturally talented players...
Granted freely. But I'm still curious about the question. How long does
a kid have to play the flute before he's a musician? Three weeks? Until
he knows what the keys do? Till he can play a Claude Bolling piece? Till
his tone sounds like Rampal? I guess I'm still waiting for an answer to
the second question of mine above.
> See this is
> the problem; non-musicians just cannot understand the amount of time
> and work that goes into developing these skills.
Permit me briefly to vent a little. You may meet me after the next quote if
you don't want to read this.
1. The above is a patronizing remark directed at me. I don't appreciate
that. I've kept the discussion out of the frying pan. I've tried on
your positions to see how they fit. When they don't fit, I try to read
you more generously. Finally, when *that* fails, I ask questions about
your position, because I want to see *how* someone can hold your view.
As a general piece of information, I really do *not* like rap at all.
As a product of being a member of GenX, I've heard a hell of a lot of it.
I think it's music, as bad as much of it is. That's my position, as
you, and the lurkers out there, know. It does not in any way call any
aspect of my own musicianship or non-musicianship in question, nor does
it relate to my ability to understand issues related to making music.
Why not? Read on.
2. I'm 21 years old. I've played piano for almost nineteen years. I have
sixteen years of classical training under my belt. I have thirteen years
of jazz performing and training under the same belt as well. In addition,
I have a professional quartet (it's how I'm making money this year, and
how I'm supporting myself this summer), have anchored the Amherst jazz
band at the piano, and play frequently in at least two other ensembles
that I can think of offhand. Then there's my sub role in a local gigging
blues band. Add to that six years of drumming experience in jazz, blues,
and rock contexts. I have sat through more rehearsals with bands of
more different skill levels in drumming and piano/keyboard/SAMPLER
capacities than I care to remember. In short, I know *exactly* what is
involved in making music, and I am MORE than qualified to understand
what have been, so far, very simple points.
3. Assumptions about things that do not concern the discussion itself are
what drive people away. I'm frankly rather amazed that I've listened for
so long. Now that all that crap is out of the way, let's get back to
the *discussion*: personally, in every other area of my life, I don't
*care* what your position is, I simply want to see if one can both (a)
hold your position, (b) know what one is saying and (c) defend it
logically.
> As far as how
> long???....depends on the person, but most serious musicians will tell
> you that they never stop studying....
Back to the discussion. Vent's over. :) Here's the hypothetical situation
that is giving me a problem: here we have a student of the piano. He's just
discovered the instrument and is banging away at it. His teacher tells him,
"No, to play this instrument correctly you have to blah blah blah." The kid
starts practicing. To predicate musicianship of this kid, according to
your definition, means that we *must* know how long the kid must study his
instrument before he becomes a musician.
Are you sure you want to define musicanship in such terms? If so, you must
be prepared to tell the intelligent questioner just when it is that a student
of an instrument ceases to make noise and begins making music. Is it when
he can make the noise he wants out of it? What if he makes what everybody
else thinks is the wrong noise? I have no answers to these questions; they
are merely hypothetical. But they could very well be asked innocently of
someone who defines a musician in your way.
Plus, I'm not sure how I see this as being relevant. Assume for a moment
that a turntable can be a musical instrument in the same way that a crash
cymbal can be. Provided that the scratching DJ has studied this instrument,
to use your terms, why is he then not a musician? Note that by "studied" I
mean, following your use of the term, practiced the different techniques of
backing the record up to the beginning of the "hit" that he wants so that
he can get it each time, varying the speed and style of his scratches, etc.:
in short, "studying" the turntable would equate to "getting the turntable
to produce the sound you want it to", just as "studying" the piano, or at
least piano technique, is "getting the piano to produce the sound you want
it to". Then the DJ who truly *scratches*, as opposed to the moron (like me)
who slaps a record down and rubs it back and forth while trying to look hip,
is a musician. Well, according to your definition, anyhow.
If the turntable is not a musical instrument, with its ability to make sharp
percussive sounds, and, depending on the way it's played, human-like noises,
then neither is the crash cymbal. That's another issue entirely, and another
where I think your position might have problems. See below.
> >So because of his having worked on certain kinds of instruments (you cite
> >orchestral ones) for a certain amount of time, Pascoal is a musician. Without
> >working on those particular instruments, he is not. Am I understanding
> >this correctly? It *sounds* again like you really are trying to postulate
> >that one of the necessary conditions for one's being a musician is that he's
> >(a) practiced, learned, etc. for X amount of years/months/hours on his
> >instrument(s), and (b) those instruments must be of type Y.
> Well if you by 'type y' REAL musical instruments, then yes, I think a
> real musician must adhere to a and b.
Okay, I'll reformulate your definition here:
Two of the necessary conditions for one's being a musician are that he's
(a) practiced, learned etc. for X amount of years/months/hours on his
instrument(s) [this still needs working out, I think, as I pointed out a
couple of screenfuls ago, since X is indeterminate], and
(b) those instruments must be REAL musical instruments.
From what I think is a generous reading, (a) is indeterminate, and (b) is
problematic at best. The very obvious question is almost not worth asking:
what constitutes a REAL musical instrument? Are there false musical
instruments, and, if so, what are they? What's the difference between a real
musical instrument, a non-instrument (if these exist), and a false musical
instrument? These are not accusations, just questions: I don't understand
your distinction.
For example, I assume that the set of REAL musical instruments will include
all the instruments in the classical orchestra (violins, french horns, tympani,
etc.). And I assume it will include instruments in the jazz realm (saxophones,
trombones, guitars, pianos, etc.). Next we have the musical instruments
about-which-ignorant-slobs-like-me-(this is self-ironic, folks)-don't-under-
stand category, which includes things like the lute, the sitar and that funky
drum thing called something like a djideridoo (oh help, someone). But the
comb with a piece of tissue paper over it is not a REAL musical instrument,
according to you, is it; nor is the turntable, nor is the sampler (this one
bugged me from the beginning; I've posted a *lot* on it, and I'm not going to
add to it now), nor is the tuned plywood board, and nor is the handbell.
One: what are these? Two: why *aren't* they REAL musical instruments?
> The people who play alternative
> music and instruments that I appreciate,
...I certainly hope this is not the definition of a REAL musical instrument,
although since this quote immediately followed the previous one in the
original post, it has a nasty tendency to sound like it...
> [...]usually (not because I
> require it but just as a matter of fact) have a lot of traditional
> musical training...
Agreed. Note again that this is not a requirement of musicianship; only
condition (a) from your previous definition, which specifies that a putative
musician must have played, studied, learned etc. his instrument for some X
amount of time, is relevant. Briefly, the *time* put into the instrument
and the *instrument played* are the two conditions that you're suggesting
are necessary for one to be a musician. Nowhere do you mention the *type*
of study, learning, training, etc. required.
> [R]appers haven't put in the time or the work that I'm talking
> about....
Here you confuse your own conditions. The real problem, if I play devil's
advocate for a second and adopt your position, is that rappers, though they
*may* put in a lot of time *and* work on what they consider their instrument,
cannot possibly be musicians because they do not play REAL musical instruments.
{End devil's advocate.}
Even if we assume that condition (a) of yours is tenable as it stands, i.e.
it doesn't matter that X is indeterminate, rappers still put in a lot of
work studying *something*. You can't get them on that charge. But what you
*can* get them on, if we briefly assume that (b) holds as well, with all its
problems, is that they aren't putting in time studying REAL musical
instruments.
But, of course, (b) is far from clear, and a bit weird, in my opinion. If
you use it as a condition for musicianship, you're obligated, as a responsible
debater, to tell me, or anyone else, what constitutes a REAL musical instru-
ment. That's a quagmire as well, because then you need to offer necessary
and sufficient conditions for *it*, before you can justify your necessary
conditions for what it means to me a *musician*. A better starting point
might be to duck out of that conflict and grant that just about anything
can be a musical instrument if, say, played in a certain way, or, and I don't
know whether or not I want to hold this, with a certain intent. Hmmm.
{Ponder, ponder.}
> if you want an example of a musician who, in my opinion meets
> these criteria then you would have to look at an Ornette Coleman or a
> Cecil Taylor.
...thus putting the tenor and the piano into the realm of REAL musical
instruments. Note that the only thing that prevents me from claiming
that Dr. Dre and {insert really amazing DJ name here} meet the same criteria
is the fact that, cryptically, they aren't playing REAL musical instruments.
Weird, man; weird.
> But what's interesting is that a lot of the people from
> other musics who express appreciation for these artists don't really
> seem to be equipped to understand them or their music in a broad way.
Is this related? Help me out here. It's *interesting*, true, but...?
> >Unclear. I agree. James P. Johnson (and actually, it could have been the
> >Lion instead...whatever) couldn't read music, didn't understand its theory,
> >but was a hell of a musician. That was all.
> Wrong....anyone one who plays the music that Johnson played on a
> harmonic instrument (piano, guitar, etc.) BY DEFINITION understands
> the theory....
What? Then explain to me after the fact the rationale I could have possibly
had for intensely studying jazz theory for four years, even though I could
*play* the music well enough to get gigs. Perhaps I was young and foolish. :)
After all, why waste the course credit if I already understood the theory?
I just played and improvised what sounded good, actually. *Then* I learned
the theory. What did *you* have in mind?
> >Again: is the crash cymbal player in an orchestra just a guy with two metal
> >discs? Is a gong player just a weightlifter with a soft hammer? Sigh.
> No, but the reason they are not is because of the training they have
> had....take your average rapper (or Joe), stick him in a symphony
> percussion section, and tell him to hit the cymbals or gong anytime or
> in any fashion that 'sounds right' to him. It may be interesting =:-)
> but it will definitly not serve the music being performed.
Point taken, to a point. :) I agree that to be consistent with your
definition of a musician the crash cymbal player and the gong player must
have trained. ("But for how long?" comes the long lost cry.) And the
crash cymbal and the gong are hereby indoctrinated into the mystic realm of
the REAL musical instruments. So why, again, isn't the turntable a REAL
musical instrument? Old questions.
> >When the discussion gets old is when we don't bother to read the examples.
> >If Joe is in a handbell choir, he is being instructed on where to ring the
> >bell. "Ring it...*now*," the director says, in Joe's training period. Then:
> >"Have it ready to ring and when I point to you *this* way, ring it like
> >*this*." Finally, the director just looks at Joe, knowing that Joe can hear
> >his "cues". And, indeed, Joe *has* learned where his cues are in a given
> >piece of music. This is no different than the crash cymbal player, the clave
> >player or the DJ under the thumb of Quincy Jones.
> Well, I don't know how many rehearsals you played at, but generally
> musical organizations don't rehearse by having the director
> specifically cueing every entrance or note by a player or group of
> players. That's what I'm talking about....there are musicans, who read
> music and KNOW when to play, not because it sounds good, but because
> the composer specifies when to play on the score.
Whoops! If I didn't know better, I would think that we've found another
necessary condition of your definition of a musician: the ability to read
music in some form. Yikes; I don't think you want to say that: Goodbye,
Art Tatum. See ya, Marcus Roberts. Nice knowing you, George Shearing. :)
That said, what if an organization *does* begin the rehearsal of a new piece
by cueing in, say, sections of a jazz band who have copped their parts off
a record, but don't know where they fit? If they don't know where those
parts fit, are they therefore not musicians? That would have patently dire
consequences.
> >Is this equivalent to saying that without them one cannot be a musician?
> >Again, as with your previous conditions, I want to know: for how long must
> >one do these things? And if one does not do *any* of these things *except*
> >learn to play an instrument, is one still not a musician? That seems really
> >ridiculous. Moreover, what constitutes a "real" instrument? This whole
> >passage above may well have some worthwhile positions, but as presented, it
> >is inconsistent and untenable.
> >
> Not inconsistent and untenable to me at all. The more of these
> qualities that a person gains through study and work, the better
> musician they will be. When enough of these skills have been
> developed, a person can function as a real musician, i.e. play their
> instrument.
Oh HELP. Slow down a bit here. :) A new distinction has entered the fold.
This is between the (marginal?) musician, the better musician, and the real
musician. I think from this I can say, faithfully (to Keith's position):
1. The marginal musician is a musician who has just started.
2. The better musician is a musician who has trained for longer than the
marginal musician.
3. The real musician is a musician who has "developed" "enough of these
skills", i.e. who has trained more than the better musician, and to
such an extent that some aspects of his training are somehow pronounced
"developed", such that he can now "play" his instrument.
Note that I'm not going to quibble with degrees of musicianship: Horowitz was
a better musician IN KEITH'S SENSE than Count Basie, because he's obviously
learned more about the piano and how to play it. I can swallow this. But
remember that to be a musician in the *first* place presupposes an undefined
amount of training. The distinction here allows this question: when does the
student of an instrument amass enough knowledge to be admitted into the
Musician and Marginal Musician camps? The Better Musician camp? Furthermore,
when can someone "play" their instrument? Does this mean "never make a
mistake"? Or does this mean "make the instrument play any note you want it
to, however you want it to"? Weird criteria.
This whole thing about musicians and musicianship, music and instruments, is
brought up to ask, of course, why rappers can't be musicians, as Keith main-
tains they cannot, and why, therefore, rap can't be music, as Keith also
maintains *it* cannot. A dash of relevance added to the philosophical soup.
> I was thinking about this whole discussion this weekend and I think
> I've come up with a better analogy. To me, the rapper is like the cut
> up artist. Now, I can cut words out of different publications with an
> xacto knife, I can copy down a word a see on a billboard, etc. I can
> then arrange these 'cut outs' onto a poster in any order that I want,
> to produce what I feel is a work of art. I'm arranging words in a
> certain way, I might even make certain profound points and affect
> people who see the work in certain ways.
> Am I a writer? My answer is NO.
> [Calling me a] writer (as you would James Joyce, Shakespeare or Hemingway) is
> ridiculous.
A noble example. But except for the exacto knife, the billboard and the
publications, that's exactly what a writer or a poet *does*. Without taking
this into the realm of the truly irrelevant, I might note, somewhat "in
reverse", that what you have described is to writing just as rap is to music:
namely, a particular area of it. If you want to really thrash out this
point, let's move it off this newsgroup to alt.philosophy.bizarre.analogies. :)
Okay. Summary: you need to reformulate your criteria for what it means to
be a musician.
Eagerly awaiting it.
William Hsu
> : Did John Cage make music?
Steve Monroe:
> Well, it's just my opinion but...nope....not really...
> Just a bunch-o-noise.
Haven't heard the string quartet or the prepared piano pieces,
have you?
> I hesitated to jump into this 'discussion', because I really
> didn't (and may still not) know much about rap. Soooooooooo,
> I tuned in to "yo, mtv raps" and watched for a week...
That's kinda like tuning into your local commercial elevator
jazz radio station to find out what jazz is all about, right?
Bill, very tired of blanket condemnations in this group
Charles L Isbell
| I hesitated to jump into this 'discussion', because I really
| didn't (and may still not) know much about rap. Soooooooooo,
| I tuned in to "yo, mtv raps" and watched for a week...
Oh my God. Not Yo! MTV Raps.
Yuck.
| Since this is simply opinion, I must state that rap really
| doesn't "float my boat." It's just plain boring homogenious
| stuff. Banal, and not very clever at all. Most of the
| vocals all cadence the same. No harmony, even less melody,
| and pretty boring rhythms (just plain ol stoopid 4, every
| dang time...yuk).
I have a hard time putting PE, Das EFX, Arrested Development, Lords of
the Underground, The Coup, Paris, Us3, A Tribe Called Quest and Ice
Cube in the same category as it is....
--
Peace.
"Never believe any experiment until
it has been confirmed by theory."
-Arthur Eddington
-\--/-
Don't just adopt opinions | \/ | Some of you are homeboys
develop them. | /\ | but only I am The Homeboy From hell
-/--\-
Keith Hedger
>
>>How is whacking away at a piece of plywood with a pipe wrench making
>>music?
>
>struck with a pipe wrench really that different from a drumset? Is Joey
>Baron a musician? (My *guess* is that most would say yes -- even if he was
>playing a board.)
>
I didn't make myself clear.....I don't object to the plywood, what I
object to is the notion that anyone just *whacking* away at a piece of
plywood is a musician.
>>Music consists of more than just raw sounds...
>
>I agree in the sene that music is really in the MIND of the listener (and
>the performer, composer, etc.). If Joey Baron decided to play a solo piece
>on a playwood board with a pipe wrench, he would be thinking musically, I
>would be listening musically. Apparently you wouldn't? Actually, that
>seems pretty incredible! Do you preprocess the "raw sounds" to make sure
>that they conform to your idea of what music should be before you even
>start to perceive them as music?
>
>I have a question for you, Keith, just out of curiosity, do you consider
>John Cage's music to be music? Seems to me that he might be far worse an
>offender against your principles than most rappers. So, I'd be interested
>to know what you think on this.
>
>-Ed
See my statement above....keith
Keith Hedger
>In article n...@amhux3.amherst.edu, hjwu...@unix.amherst.edu (Harris Wulfson) writes:
>>Keith Hedger (k...@HQ.Ileaf.COM) wrote:
>
>>: ...composers of the classical field. My point is that the skills required
>>: to sample material and put together this material in the context of
>>: rap, does NOT require any *musical* skill. Even if you think rap is
>>: music, it's such a simplistic form (I'm talking musical form here)
>>: that to me, it's ridiculous make a case that a *musician* is needed to
>>: produce it.
>
>>Why do you (Keith) intist on mystifying the Musician? What is so magical and
>>unapproachable about what he does? What makes musicians somehow different
>>from everyone else in the world? Do you mean someone who is trained as a
>> <Lots of very interesting stuff deleted>
>
>This was one of the best postings I have seen about what is wrong with Hedger's
>argument. In some societies, everyone is a musician. We should strive for the
>same.
>
>Jeff
Why should we???
Keith Hedger
>Well, what about people, such as yourself, who don't care to listen to
>something before they engage in postulations and attacks linking their
>prejudices and lack of knowledge to what they believe to be the truth?
>
Jeez....why can't people remember the discussion here? This whole
discussion was started by my stating that rap is not music and rappers
are not musicians. I said this in response to a thread which attempted
to link rap with jazz....so, what I meant by not postulating...etc.
was referring to the whole point that started this discussion !
>If you are an example of a musical scholar, I'm certainly glad I didn't
>take that path because I have the ability to enjoy music. You may shut
>yourself away in your ivory tower and continue your elitist diatribes,
>but you should learn some reading comprehansion before you make statements
>as ridiculous as the one above.
>
I think it's you who should learn some reading comprehension....read
my statement above...
>I have never tried to "postulate or defend statements linking what [I'm]
>hearing to other musical idioms". You are the one doing that.
>
Au contraire....remember what started this discussion? something about
a supposed relationship between rap and jazz ?????
>dudley
>.
Keith Hedger
>i refuse to address keith's concerns directly, since he's obviously
>not interested in being other than bull-headed about this issue.
>
Why am I bull-headed? Because I refuse to cave in to your opinions?
Nobody has posted anything yet that makes a case for rapper as
musician. As a matter of fact, I find it interesting that the
pro-rappers seem to focus more on process than result, then accuse ME
of focusing on the process.
>what i would like to point out is that if all hiphop music is the same
>and none of it takes any talent, why is it a form which has withstood
>the test of time? people are not stupid. they get bored. if they hear
>the same drum beat, or the same rhyme structure, or the same samples
>over and over again, they will get bored and listen to something else.
>
I never said that it didn't take any talent....I said that it didn't
take any *musical* talent....
>so there is *something* in hiphop which allows innovation, which allows
>freedom of expression, and which opens up new avenues for musicians (yes,
>musicians) to explore. otherwise it would have been a closed-off chapter
>in the history of music.
>
How can anyone turn on a radio for 1/2 an hour and then make a
statement like this? Wake up...this is a money based culture. Anything
that sells sticks around. And you can sell anything to a noneducated
public.
>like it or not, hiphop is here to stay.
>
Now this is a statement I can agree with....
>-=- sfw
>--
Jeff Spirer
|> In article <2ipffr$b...@jethro.Corp.Sun.COM> jsp...@spider.Corp.Sun.COM writes:
|> >argument. In some societies, everyone is a musician. We should strive for the
|> >same.
|> >
|> >Jeff
|>
|> Why should we???
Because most people love to make music (ever notice how much most people like
to sing?) and are discouraged by the musical elite, the teaching community,
and the music industry in their portrayal of the concept of "musician."
It is self expression. Why shouldn't we?
Jeff
Andrew Farmer
> Jeez....why can't people remember the discussion here? This whole
> discussion was started by my stating that rap is not music and rappers
> are not musicians. I said this in response to a thread which attempted
> to link rap with jazz....so, what I meant by not postulating...etc.
> was referring to the whole point that started this discussion !
Stating that "rap is not music" is patently wrong. According to
the definition of "music" and "musician" in my Oxford English Dictionary,
rap is quite obviously music and rappers are quite obviously musicians.
There simply cannot be any debate about it. You might just as well assert
that a chimpanzee isn't an animal if you are going to ignore the
actual meanings of words in your arguments.
The problem with saying that "music genre xxx isn't music" is that
it isn't correct English. What these people are usually saying is that
music made in "genre xxx" doesn't conform to certain aesthetic parameters
that they themselves have made up in their own heads.
Rap is music. At least, it is if you speak the same English language
as me. You just don't like it and you have no respect for the values,
culture and ethos of rap. Fine. Why can't you just say this?
Oh and by the way, black is white, two and two makes five, war is
peace and freedom is slavery.
Cheers,
arf
Harris Wulfson
: Stating that "rap is not music" is patently wrong. According to
: the definition of "music" and "musician" in my Oxford English Dictionary,
: rap is quite obviously music and rappers are quite obviously musicians.
: There simply cannot be any debate about it. You might just as well assert
: that a chimpanzee isn't an animal if you are going to ignore the
: actual meanings of words in your arguments.
: The problem with saying that "music genre xxx isn't music" is that
: it isn't correct English. What these people are usually saying is that
: music made in "genre xxx" doesn't conform to certain aesthetic parameters
: that they themselves have made up in their own heads.
: Rap is music. At least, it is if you speak the same English language
: as me. You just don't like it and you have no respect for the values,
: culture and ethos of rap. Fine. Why can't you just say this?
I think that pretty much somes it up, Keith. It is self-evident that rap
is music. "We" (the people whose arguments do not convice you) have been
beside ourselves trying to make you understand this. A certain genre of
music is a subset of all music. It really does seem like you are using a
different language...your own.
-Harris
drensber
> Andrew Farmer (a...@hplb.hpl.hp.com) wrote:
>
> : Stating that "rap is not music" is patently wrong. According to
> : the definition of "music" and "musician" in my Oxford English
Dictionary,
> : rap is quite obviously music and rappers are quite obviously
musicians.
is more like saying that a mule is not a horse.... its sorta right. i
suppose by strict definition rap is indeed music, but if you listen to
most rap acts primarily for the musical aspect then you're a moron and
you're missing the point. Rap differs from other genres such as jazz or
classical in that those who truly apprecitate it focus primarily on what
the rapper is trying to say (i.e. the lyrics).. after the 'musical'
portion of <most> rap songs is completely un-original. Sure, every once
in a while something like P.M. Dawn or US3 comes along that sounds
completely different and unique, but you can bet your house that within
the next few months there'll be about 3000 US3 soundalikes. the same
applies to a lot of rock music (although here i think there is a much
greater percentage of acts who are worth listining to because of the
'musical' aspect of what they do.) after all, bob dylan didn't become
famous for being a great guitarist, did he?
Adrian Bradley
In article <CL831...@HQ.Ileaf.COM>, k...@HQ.Ileaf.COM (Keith Hedger) writes:
> In article <CKvrE...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca> sfw...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (Stephen F. White) writes:
> Nobody has posted anything yet that makes a case for rapper as
> musician. As a matter of fact, I find it interesting that the
> pro-rappers seem to focus more on process than result, then accuse ME
> of focusing on the process.
No one will, either. It seems you are so stuck on your beliefs that no
matter where we argue from, you will find it invalid. That is why it's
really worthless to argue to you (and those like you) that say rappers
aren't musicians. Sure, you're attacking the musicianship of rappers. There
are many who would disagree with you (that I know personally, and they
have no contracts or anything - they are just rappers that I know).
We *know* that you don't think rap is music. That is your opinion. It is not
the same as mine. Some of the stuff you may listen to I won't particularly
care for, and I may even claim it's not music by my (or my friends) own
standards. Stick in an old Dizzy Gillespie tape, or a tape of Gregorian Chants
in the tapedeck of a car with good bass response, and they'll probably say
"what the hell is this?" and throw it out. Who's wrong here, them for not
appreciating old classic jazz or Gregorian Chants? Most "underground"
streetwise rappers that you mentioned a while back as having "bulls" starters
and stuff never grew up around classical music (though they may have had
parents with classical jazz). So there is no way that they will care about
"being a musician" in the definition you posted a while ago.
> >what i would like to point out is that if all hiphop music is the same
> >and none of it takes any talent, why is it a form which has withstood
> >the test of time? people are not stupid. they get bored. if they hear
> >the same drum beat, or the same rhyme structure, or the same samples
> >over and over again, they will get bored and listen to something else.
> >
> I never said that it didn't take any talent....I said that it didn't
> take any *musical* talent....
>
Based on your definition, no it doesn't. But based on a lot of our definitions,
it does. We think differently from you on the subject of what music is, and
that's about the size of it.
> >so there is *something* in hiphop which allows innovation, which allows
> >freedom of expression, and which opens up new avenues for musicians (yes,
> >musicians) to explore. otherwise it would have been a closed-off chapter
> >in the history of music.
> >
> How can anyone turn on a radio for 1/2 an hour and then make a
> statement like this? Wake up...this is a money based culture. Anything
> that sells sticks around. And you can sell anything to a noneducated
> public.
>
First of all, hip-hop is not just limited to the radio, it has an "underground"
that never gets radio play. Without growing up in the culture, you may never
see this "underground" hip-hop because it isn't on the radio - it's in the
minds and hearts (and freestyle sessions) of average ordinary folks.
I'll take this "you can sell anything to a noneducated public" to be a general
statement, no matter whether it's music, media, or even false information about
themselves. I don't think this newsgroup is the proper place to discuss
dealing with a "noneducated" public - sounds more like a social issue. And
arguing with you or anyone else on this newsgroup about social issues will
lead to the same place this discussion has - with two definite opposing sides
that won't budge. *Plus* no real resolving of anything.
==Adrian
Ed Price
>[...] i suppose by strict definition rap is indeed music, but if you
>listen to most rap acts primarily for the musical aspect then you're a
>moron and you're missing the point.
I'm not thrilled by this statement. Why am I a moron if I listen for
musical value in something (*anything*)?
>Rap differs from other genres such as jazz or classical in that those who
>truly apprecitate it focus primarily on what the rapper is trying to say
>(i.e. the lyrics)..
Bullshit! That would make it impossible for me to appreciate Yamatsuka
Eye's "Audiosports". And yet I do. My brother was making a mix tape at my
place the other day and he always seems to use this one tune from that
album. It's got a fast bassline with nice simple funk changes in the A
section, typical sample-based bridge, and Eye rapping in very fast (and
rhythmically cool) Japanese. I have no idea what he's saying; I simply
love bopping along with the music!
>[...] 'musical' portion of <most> rap songs is completely un-original.
>Sure, every once in a while something like P.M. Dawn or US3 comes along
>that sounds completely different and unique, but you can bet your house
>that within the next few months there'll be about 3000 US3 soundalikes.
Saw a US3 video on MTV recently. Personally I thought it was completely
boring. But listen to whatever you want; I won't consider you a moron for
appreciating US3 as music.
-Ed
Andrew Farmer
> well, i wouldn't say its that <obvious> saying "rap is not music"
> suppose by strict definition rap is indeed music, but if you listen to
> most rap acts primarily for the musical aspect then you're a moron and
> you're missing the point.
Don't call me a moron, moron. I listen to music for all sorts of
reasons. There are countless "types" of music in this world and countless
ways of receving music. Aren't you being just a little bit egocentric
here in assuming that your little set of values are the same for
everybody? I listen to rap. I generally ignore the lyrics.
By your definition, then, I'm listening to rap "primarily for the musical
aspect", whatever the bollocks that means. I never really thought of it
like that. I find myself listening to rap because I like the grooves, I
like the feel, I like the energy and excitement, I like the sense of time
and place it carries with it. To a "musician", those are probably shallow
(maybe even "moronic") reasons to listen to music. But the fact is that
I am a receiver of music and receiving music enriches my life.
So what makes you better than me?
arf
kenz william
: Keith Hedger (k...@HQ.Ileaf.COM) wrote:
: > Jeez....why can't people remember the discussion here? This whole
=========Folks, lets let this one die. Keith is just pulling your
legs - he's not at all serious about his position, only trying to get
your goat.
Let it rest in peace.
Bill Kenz
Keith Hedger
Yeah I guess so, but the argument about other societies seems a bit
specious to me. The reason that everyone is a musician in many ethnic
cultures is that music serves a different role in those socieities
than it does (or ever can) in ours.
Music is regarded as part of those peoples' everyday lives and is used
to serve everyday functions (a visit to the shaman, the mating dance,
the hunting song, etc.).
In our valueless, capitalistic society nothing serves a purpose except
to make a profit....profit = mass acceptance, mass acceptance =
appealing to the lowest common denominator.
Adrian Bradley
In article <CLFE1...@HQ.Ileaf.COM>, k...@HQ.Ileaf.COM (Keith Hedger) writes:
[mass deletions]
>
> In our valueless, capitalistic society nothing serves a purpose except
> to make a profit....profit = mass acceptance, mass acceptance =
> appealing to the lowest common denominator.
>
In general terms, maybe yes this is true, but I'm sure that there are enough
individuals in our society that just listen to or play music just for the
hell of it - no money, no anything, but make their best music of whatever form
just for the hell of it.
This includes even serious jazz musicians, I *hope*... can't sit around all
day analyzing music when the real reason for liking it is to listen and enjoy
it. Guess it depends on the individual...
==Adrian
Can You Say Puyallup?
> In our valueless, capitalistic society nothing serves a purpose except
> to make a profit....profit = mass acceptance, mass acceptance =
> appealing to the lowest common denominator.
Oh *help*. Where's my kill file...'s here somewhere...
Jeff Spirer
|> =========Folks, lets let this one die. Keith is just pulling your
|> legs - he's not at all serious about his position, only trying to get
|> your goat.
|>
|> Let it rest in peace.
So insulting people's tastes, questioning their ability to recognize music,
and being belligerent is what you would call a perfectly acceptable way of
"pulling your legs"? How far do you and Keith have to go before you would
call something rude, demeaning and totally stupid?
Jeff