Re: What is a folk song - thge heretical view

Date: 22 Jul 2003 12:04:01 GMT
Newsgroups: rec.music.folk
Size: 1,392 bytes

> The hip-hop slip slop vitorlic violent vulgarity is NOT folk.
> It may mean something to the frozen chosen but it ain't folk
> music, it ain't even music.
Hip-hop has folk roots that go back a very long way. You get the same
kind of rhythmic-improvisational verbally intricate chanting all over
the black Americas, e.g. the "toasting" and calypso of the Caribbean.
I heard people doing stuff that was clearly the antecedent of hip-hop
when I was living in Pittsburgh in the 1970s, as a street art form.
I don't know what they called it; I thought it was some of the most
amazing stuff I'd ever heard anybody do with their voice. I don't
think you could ever find it on record, it wasn't seen as a product
that could be sold. The content was more like the Caribbean forms
that what is sold as hip-hop today, i.e. witty and topical but not
notably violent or stereotyped.
I'd agree that the limited range of current hip-hop is unnecessary and
driven by commercial pressures, but that verbal creativity is still
there and its folk roots aren't something you can argue away.
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