My history of hip-hop

I’ll give you my -50-cent - worth on the subject. The poetry of hip-hop comes derives from a distinct mood.

“Moods are translated by the poet into words, by me into tones that sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.”
-Ludwig van Beethoven

The mood of hip hop poetry is the mood of “Fight the Power” from the group Public Enemy:

It’s about the invisible man expressing himself out loud. Don’t need no expensive instruments or equipment, just a street corner and some balls.

But I think we should revisit your man Albert Murray’s main theory about the blues. Murray taught us that the blues lyrics may be negative (just as hip hop lyrics are), but the secret of the music lies in the affirmative nature of the beat and rhythm.

It was that sanguine brotherly rhythm that kept those people sane in the cotton fields and it’s the ass/fist shaking rhythm that kept the hopeless inner-city youth from complete nihilism. To dance is to live.

I think there are a lot of connections to be made here with Barack Obama. I think I’ve heard you say, Chris, that the music most important to us is what we hear as a young teenager (13 or 14). Well Obama was born in 61, and hip-hop took off in the mid seventies, so there you go. And I can see it in him. Miles said in his bio: “For me, music and life are all about style.” Obama has a hip-hop style: fist pumps, those handshake/half hugs, and the strut.

The last thing you said to me on the phone is “what’s the connection.” My humble feeling is it is not a coincidence that Barack has materialized as the tipping point in the hip-hop arch. Hip-hop was a reaction to malaise in the post 60’s civil rights movement. Half of the delay was the backlash to all that progressiveness and half was just letting some of those policies come to bear. Barack Obama is both the end and the fruition of Hip Hop, as we knew it. Its remnants will now be powerful but disparate – like modern jazz.

But most of all, Chris, as you know, Barack Obama has rhythm in his speech, in his cadence.

Just so you know, my favorite little know fact about Hip Hop is that it has it’s roots in Jamaica. There was a whole genre down there of djs like Lee “Scratch” Perry and King Tubby improvising rhymes over dub versions of records – remixing. One of those guys, Kool Herc, brought that shit up to the Bronx and the rest is history.

(Incidentally, Lee “Scratch” Perry stayed in Jamaica and discovered a guy by the name of Bob Marley).

So yea, current guys are Kanye West and NAS (whose recent track was “Hip Hop is Dead” and who is a rival of Jay Z).
But my guys are Biggie Smalls and Dr. Dre:

But the man who has the biggest street cred of them all is Jay Z. He the most popular among black people. He made his money as his own businessman i.e. w/o the white man. I’ve met many black guys who can recite his rhymes till the cows come home.

And one more thing. There is a huge connection between Hip-Hop and Jazz that I want to point out. In rapping it’s called “freestyle” It’s where they improvise the rhymes on the spot. Only the best can do it, and that is how they get their cred.

an ode to saloon players

The first impression I had as I listened to Dave McKenna's music was of intimacy. There is unhurriedness in Dave’s sound, sprinkled with gaiety - even the somber songs like Danny Boy. I’m sure part of what I’m hearing in these recordings is a reflection of his friendship with Chris, but mostly it must be the music of the man, cultivated from those glamorous saloons where he honed his craft.

When asked about his next gig in NYC, Dave described it as “A good barroom, an honest barroom, the kind of place I like.” When I heard Dave utter these words, I knew all I needed to know about the man.

A friend of mine who is an accomplished New England folk singer has played the same old wooden tavern every Thursday and Sunday night for 25 years. I asked him once the same question Chris asks Dave about people talking during his set. He told me that he looks at every night as a challenge to make them stop talking and listen. And I thought, what a fulfilling feeling it must be for him – and Dave – to hold court on those special nights. A disparate smattering of private confabs huddled over tiny cocktail lined tables transforms almost hypnotically into a gleeful communal submission.

I thought of Dave last night as I sat in the old divey Cantab Lounge in Cambridge MA. It was way past midnight and the Tuesday night bluegrass band were still putting their hearts into their fiddles – or maybe they were pulling the fiddles out of their hearts – but now it was the end of the night and the guys on stage outnumbered the crowd. For the last song one guy took the lead and sang as soulful a sad country song as I’ve ever heard in my presence. At one point I thought why is he giving so much when there is only a few of us listening. And then I though maybe it’s precisely because there is a few of us listening.

And then I thought of Dave McKenna – a man I never had the pleasure to see – and all those intimate evenings he must of presided over throughout the years, recorded by nothing but the few appreciative souls in attendance.

I have no doubt that Dave McKenna was a good jazzman, an honest jazzman, the kind of jazzman I like.

New Orleans

I lived in French Quarter for almost a year. $450.00 for a dilapidated one bedroom apt. I had no TV because it seemed ridiculous to watch TV when just out my window was a ticking clockwork of ravenous human drama. Don’t need no stink’n network stories when Storyville is around the corner.

Ahh Storyville, where the gutter met the glitz. To me that is what makes New Orleans unique, it’s a witches brew in the bayou, of high and low brow. You can taste the concoction when they blow those low-down blues through shiny high-and-mighty French horns. And Second-line drums lay the beat for unspeakable acts above on Spanish wrought-iron balconies. Alas, not nearly enough of those acts happened in my humble abode, but just to backup my theme here, my place was only a block away from the mansion that Nicholas Cage lives in today. The Vieux carre is a commune of the high-life. In this town, even the prostitutes eat exquisitely. When people meet you, they don’t ask what you do for work, they inquire as to your tastes. Culture pervades.

“There were all kinds of thrills for me in Storyville. On every corner I could hear music. And such a good music! The music I wanted to hear! It was worth my salary – the little I did get – just to go into Storyville. It seemed as though all the bands were shooting at each other with those hot riffs. And that man Joe Oliver! My, my, that man kept me spellbound with that horn of his…Storyville!”
-Louis Armstrong “SATCHMO My life in New Orleans”

Even more than Congo Square, the story of Storyville is the story of New Orleans. People confronted with Faustian deals on every corner. A den of sin and pleasure, and each soul playing out individual dramas of indulgence and will. Heaven and hell may be different places but it turns out the soundtrack is the same.

The locals say that New Orleans is the most northern Caribbean Island because it is surrounded by water on three sides. New Orleans is not part of Louisiana, (although Louisiana and it’s Cajun influence is part of the New Orleans). It has it’s own etiquette, and it has it’s own heroes. The aforementioned King Oliver, but also Buddy Bolden, Buck Johnson, Professor Longhair, Jelly Roll Morton, and (still kicking ass today) Kermit Ruffins.

Thank you for this program and the incite into the Diaspora. We could talk about this for weeks. I had the pleasure of visiting Brazil during Carnival and I will always remember those drums – the beat of which echoes of eons. It’s as if the African Rhythm is a bush and each one of these locations of the Diaspora (Brazil, Cuba, Jamaica, New Orleans, ext) have carved out their own image in that bush.

In New Orleans they are still carving, and I can’t wait to go down there and dance to the new beat.