Klarinet Archive - Posting 000560.txt from 1996/02

From: "Susan E. Pontow" <FBVB@-----.BITNET>
Subj: rap music continued
Date: Sun, 18 Feb 1996 20:01:09 -0500

from Chaika, "Language: The Social Mirror"

p. 222

STREET POETRY AS ART

Perhaps a defense is in order of the proposition that the toasts
parallel the great epics of the past. It is very easy to look at the topics of
the toasts: the profanity, the lawbreaking, the nonstandard speech forms, and
dismiss them as being unworthy of scholarly attention. However, examining such
productions tell us a good deal about the lives of the people who composed and
recited them. It tells us how they saw the world they lived in and why they
held certain attitudes. Granting all that, still, why call the toasts poetry?
Yes, they had heroes of a sort. They told their listeners how life should be
lived: stoically, unromantically, unpityingly. This makes them epics, but
does it make them poetry? Without any philosophical haggling about Art and
what it is, we can see that the toasts made use of all the devices of poetry
and did so skillfully. Poetry manipulates language while expressing even
ordinary meanings (Keyser 1976). Often this manipulation makes us see old
things in new ways.
Rhyme is a frequent, but not a necessary, feature of poetry. If it is
used, in order to detect rhymes, poetry must be read in the dialect in which it
was composed. For instance, in order to appreciate the skilful rhyming in the
toasts, the reader must realize that the following sets of words rhyme in
BE(5): odds, cards; cell, jail; deal, field (fiel'). It is not easy in any
dialect to find rhyming words that can fit in the rhythm of a poem as well as
give the poet's desired meaning. Still hundreds of lines of toasts and other
African American oral activities manage perfect rhyme, many highly clever and
unusual. This feat is all the more impressive when we consider the intricate
rhyming scheme of the toasts. The basic scheme of many toasts consists of a
long line divided in two, with internal rhyme, as in:
-------------------------
(5) Other dialects rhyme some or all of these pairs. For instance, in my
dialect, "odds" and "cards" rhyme, but not the other pairs here.
----------------------------
p. 223

She tricked with the "Greeks", the Arabs, and "freaks"
...
She tricked with the "Jews", Apaches, and "Sioux"
(from "The Fall")

He said, "I'm not "cryin'" 'cause the agent was "lyin'"
...
That I was a big "deal" in the narcotics "fiel'".
(from "Honky Tonk Bud")

These long lines form sequences with short lines that rhyme with each other as
in:

...To her they were all the "same"
She tricked with the Greeks, Arabs, and freaks
And breeds I cannot "name"
She tricked with the Jews, Apaches, and Sioux.

and

He said, "I'm not cryin' 'cause the agent was lyin'
And left you all with a "notion"
That I was a big deal in the narcotics fiel'
I hope the fag cops a "promotion".

Another very important feature of poetry is figurative language such as
metaphor. The image of addicts a vicious felines is reinforced both by the
metaphor of people as jungle animals (as the game stalked their prey ...Where
the addicts prowl...) and is tied together by the rhyme of "prowl" and "growl"
and "prowl". The metaphor of the city streets as a jungle in which game stalks
prey sets the moral tone as well as the physical aura of " The Fall". "And the
cold was crime on the neon line" emphasizes the misery and ugliness of the
streets. Jungles can be warm and beautiful as well as vicious and unlawful,
but these lines make it clear that only the latter meanings are to be taken.
Images of heat are followed by images of cold throughout "The Fall". The winos
have canned heat such as sterno, but still die in the snow. Even at the end
the sun rises, but it is the morning chills that put the slumbering beast to
rest. The word "slumbering" itself is one that even in Standard English (SE)
is literary, even poetic. This is another instance of the supposedly unletterd
being familiar with the language of books. Throughout, this toast shows
skillful use of language, all bringing

p. 224

to us vividly, as only poetry can do, the terror and the feel of the city
jungle, the contemptuous feeling for women, the bravery and resignation of the
heroes.

THE BLUES

Erickson (1984) shows that conversations are characterized by a
rhapsody which "stitches" utterances to each other. this is achieved partially
by shared knowledge both about the world and about the rules for discourse in a
given culture. Disjointed sentences are transformed into a coherent
conversation by such shared knowledge. This applies as well to art forms
including popular songs.
Jarrett (1984) describes the blues and demonstrates that they make
sense only to an audience that knows the rules for the genre. The same
audience would know if a verse could even belong to that genre. What strikes
an outsider as incouherent and meaningless may be perfectly coherent to member
of the culture itself. If we analyze what the audience knows and expects, we
see that is what makes for cohesion (p. 156). Jarrett suggests that the genre
by itself is a pragmatic device "which constitutes a kind of signal with which
to orient an addressee (p. 160)." The blues are songs of complaint, but not
just any old complaint. Both in the verse structure and in permissible topics,
there are powerful constraints on the bluesman in the guise of a narrator, who
is presented by the singer-composer of the song.
This narrator sings only of what one person can subjectively know (p.
167) so that the singer is, in effect, commenting on life. It is for this
reason, I think, that the ordering of the Blues is not temporal. That is,
there is no "first this happened, then that" (p. 163).(6) The Bluesman is not
interested in nature; therefore, a song which sang of someone's going out to
look at the moon would not be acceptable to the Blues (p. 161) audience. The
Bluesman, however, is knowledgeable about women, booze, and preachers. The
form that these comments are encased in is a stanza with the first two lines
repeated and the third one as a comment which rhymes with the other two, as in

Baby you so beautiful, you know you're gonna die someday
Honey, you know you beautiful, you gonna die someday
All I want's a little loving, before you pass away.
(p. 160)

This is highly reminiscent of the humorous wordplay of sexual
invitation that we saw with Claudie Mitchell-Kernan. Notice the wheedling
---------------------------
(6) This effectively rules out "Frankie and Johnny" as being a genuine Blues
song, since it is temporal, recounting what seems to be an actual event.
---------------------------

p. 225

logic, the implication of 'c'mon baby, what's a little sex among friends?'(my
interpretation, not Jarrett's).
Jarrett shows what an audience has to know to interpret the blues
correctly. He claims that Hispanic and white listeners experience such lyrics
as incoherent, but African Americans, understanding their conventions, have no
difficulty with them.

11. Oh, I wish I had me a heaven of my own Great God Almighty
Yeah, a heaven of my own
Well, I'd give all my women a long, long happy home
Oh, I have religion on this very day
Oh, I have religion on this very day.
But the womens and the whiskey they would not let me pray.
(p. 162)(7)

Jarrett explains that in order to understand such lyrics, one has to be aware
that there is a long tradition of teasting preachers for being hypocrites. He
point out the satire in many Blues lyrics, including this one, in that they
incorporate regular calls heard in very serious church services, such as "Great
God amighty," "Lord have mercy," and "amen"(p.165). We see virtual parody of
church in

Oh, I'm gonna preach these blues and choose my seat and set down
Oh, I'm gonna preach these blues now and choose my seat and set down
When the spirit comes sisters, I want you to jump straight up and down.

As with M's rap to Mitchell-kernan, skillful double entrendres abound.
The currently porpular rap songs are very much in the tradition of
toasting and the Blues. In them, too, one might find references to preachers,
as in "Yvette" in which L.L. Cool Jay raps,"The preacher says that you are
God." to the promiscuous girl of the title. Rap songs also owe a great deal to
the dozens and to sounding. Noticing the continuity of themes, rhyme, and
beat, one of my students, Crystal Jones, examined the tradition that has
produced rap songs. She call the raps "toasts set to music," noting that they
"insult all women, talk a lot about sex and drugs." Like toasts rap songs make
extensive use of internal clever and even improbable rhyme.
-----------------------------------
(7) ("Preachin' the Blues". Recorded on "The Legenday Son House: Father of
Folk Blues". Columbia CS 9217)
-----------------------------------

p.226

There appears to be no change in the kinds of insults thron at women in
rap.

(to be continued)