An It Don’t Stop
In this article the
writer shows how a new form of music had some old grandparents.
In 1999 it was reported that, for the first time ever, Hip
Hop music was officially bigger than Country and Western. Rap had come as a
shock to the system in the mid-seventies and early eighties: the loudest, angriest,
funkiest music America
had ever offered the world. It must have been even more surprising that music based
around rhyming over other people’s records should have conquered the world and
created a billion dollar industry.
DJ Cool Herc moved to New York
from Jamaica
in 1967 bringing with him the sound systems and ‘toasting’ style of West Indian
DJs. In 1974-75 he was shifting his sound system around the block parties and
school dances of the West Bronx, sowing the
seeds of the movement known as Hip Hop. Larger-than-life characters such as Grandmaster
Flash and Afrika Bambaataa became the new DJs and MCs, and the music grew
steadily in popularity as an underground phenomenon throughout the decade.
Legend has it that playing a rap record from speakers
outside a record shop was once enough to bring hordes of kids in through the
door; yet it took until 1984 for a Hip Hop album, Run-D.M.C’s debut, to go gold, and 1986 for a Hip Hop
single to get into America’s top ten. So, rap took ten years to become a
success and another ten to take over. But some of the musical ideas it
popularized had been floating around for some time in the avant-garde.
The French composer Pierre Schaeffer pioneered the concept
of ‘performing’ recorded music. This idea might sound strange at first – surely all one has to do is hit ‘play’ on one’s
stereo? Classical music is about writing down ideas on paper and turning them
into music using instruments. Instead, Schaeffer’s ‘musique concrete’ starts
with finding a sound. One of his most famous pieces is Étude aux chemins de fer (1948), a recording of trains which he altered by
changing the pitch of sounds, playing some of them backwards.
Sounds fun? Schaeffer was also fond of ‘jeu’, the idea that
music should be enjoyable to make. This hardly needs saying; but think of the
long hours that a classical musician spends practising their instrument. Think
of a philharmonic orchestra: they might be playing their instruments, but they’re
not kids at play.
Perhaps the most important aspect of Hip Hop is that it is fun:
it is a leisure activity. While you can spend years getting good at scratching
and mixing records, you still wouldn’t expect to invest the same amount of time
as you would if you were training to be a concert pianist: you can invest as
much or as little time in this culture as you please. The beauty of Hip Hop is
that it allows for a huge number of professional artists to co-exist, along
with underground scenes and hobbyists.
These days, there aren’t enough jobs to go around -
unemployment is a fact of life for many of us. Unemployment equals boredom,
poverty and (perhaps stereotypically) crime: now modern cities across the globe
are depressing places in which to live. Clothes, music, rapping, dancing, even
graffiti can be a way of spending time and brightening up those grey concrete
streets. Hip Hop culture has something for everyone; and, while we won’t all
end up going platinum, to an extent we can all be artists, and can start making
better use of our time.
On the other hand, Schaeffer said that one of the aims of his
music was getting people away from ‘Doh, Reh, Me’, the scale we are taught as
young children. When you think about it, songs are a pretty easy thing to write.
Happy tune = happy words; sad tune = sad words. How about a music with no tune?
Won’t the lyrics have to be far more clever, funny, rhythmic, heartfelt, in
order to have an impact?
There is a rap song for everyone: from sentimental lyrics
about Will Smith’s newborn son to horrifying visions of urban decay courtesy of
NWA and the Geto Boys. Eminem came to the fore with the persona of a PC-baiting
thug but quickly attained broad mainstream appeal with ‘Stan’, the story of an
obsessive fan. The song took its chorus from a drippy ballad by Dido, which was
about nothing in particular. It just goes to show, songs without tunes can be
even better than songs with.
But is rap ‘music’ at all? After all, most of its musical
content has been borrowed – ‘sampled’, if you will - from existing music. Going
even further back, at the start of the twentieth century the Surrealists were
chopping up words and pictures and gluing them back together to create new art
works, something Rap has done with music from the very start. There are too
many magazines, too many records: we’d better start recycling before we use up
the rest of the world’s natural resources.
Sampling is basically ‘capturing’ sound electronically. By
the 1980s, samplers were little machines that could capture a bar of music from
a record and ‘loop’ it, setting it on endless repeat, plus adding some extra beats.
It’s a lot more Zen-like to find music rather than make it.
As young children, we are exposed to music while watching
our TV adverts. Happy music when they want you to buy something; sad or scary
music when they want you to stop doing something. In fact, we are constantly immersed
in sound from the day we are born: unless you grew up in a rainforest, TV,
music and advertising were never far away from your impressionable young ears.
Sampling, then, is making use of something we take for granted: a hit from our
parent’s era; a TV theme tune; even an advert.
Critics of Hip Hop see it as low-brow junk culture. As time
goes on, rappers such as Fifty Cent and Puff Daddy have been accused of dumbing
down and selling out; it has to be remembered that in a vast musical community,
some artists will appeal to the masses rather than just the hardcore fan. In
some ways, Hip Hop is a victim of its own success: less adventurous, less
talented people have been able to find their way to the top by the virtue of a
catchy chorus and a heavy bass: sometimes the actual rhymes can be less clever
than the choice of music.
But even a rap-hating friend of mine has to concede: ‘Rap
music is dumb. It just sounds good.’ Monsieur Schaeffer would have been proud.
Paragraph 1:
1. How does the tagline for this article emphasize that Hip
Hop was influenced by some ideas from the past?
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2 / 1 / 0
2. Why is the phrase ‘sowing the seeds’ an effective image
for the development of Hip Hop?
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2 / 1 / 0
3. Write down a phrase which emphasizes how powerful Hip Hop
became.
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2 / 0
Paragraphs 2 and 3:
4. How does the passage help you to understand the meaning
of ‘larger-than-life characters’?
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2 / 1 / 0
5. Write down an expression which emphasizes that Hip Hop
introduced unfamiliar concepts to a mass audience.
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2 / 0
6. How does the writer help the reader to understand that
the rise of Hip Hop was a slow process?
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2 / 1 / 0
Paragraphs 4 and 5:
7. In your own words, what is strange about the idea of
‘performing’ music which is recorded?
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2 / 1 / 0
8. Show how the author creates a link between paragraphs
four and five.
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2 / 1 / 0
9. How does the author use sentence structure to make the
reader aware of the time and effort involved in making Classical music?
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2 / 1 / 0
Paragraphs 6 and 7
10. What about Hip Hop does the author suggest is the most
useful?
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2 / 1 / 0
11. Write down a word from paragraph six which shows that
Hip Hop can play a huge role in people’s lives.
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2 / 1 / 0
12. What social problems does the author mention in respect
to modern life?
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13. Using one of these problems, explain why it is it causes
unhappiness, in your own words.
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14. Why might the author add the phrase ‘(perhaps
stereotypically)’?
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Paragraphs 8 and 9
15. Do you agree with the statement that songs without a
tune will have to be ‘far more clever, funny, rhythmic, heartfelt’?
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2 / 1 / 0
16. Show how the context helps you to arrive at the meaning
of the word ‘persona’.
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2 / 1 / 0
17. How does the author reveal his attitude to Dido’s music?
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2 / 1 / 0
Paragraphs 10 and 11
18. Why might the author put the word ‘music’ in inverted
commas?
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2 / 1 / 0
19. What do the Surrealists have in common with people who
make Rap music? Answer in your own words.
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2 / 1 / 0
Paragraphs 12 - 14
20. According to the author, how is music used to manipulate
people?
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2 / 1 / 0
21. How does the author defend the Rappers who have become
millionaires from accusations of ‘selling out’?
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2 / 1 / 0
22. How is the last paragraph an effective conclusion to the
passage?
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2 / 1 / 0
Think about the passage as a whole:
23. What examples does the author use to convince the reader
that Hip Hop is great music? Choose two
and explain how effective you find each one.
i)
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ii)
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24. Do you agree with the statement ‘Rap music is dumb. It
just sounds good.’? Answer with reference to the passage.
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2 / 1 / 0
Total: 50 marks
