Steve Aoki & Datsik at the Bill Graham Auditorium

I accompanied my 16 year old son and his friends to the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium Saturday night to see Rockstar Energy Drink Presents Dim Mak's Deadmeat Tour featuring the young dubstep hotshot Datsik and superstar producer/DJ Steve Aoki. Crowd: 7000.

Okay, first of all I was one of the oldest people in the place. The kids all had a great time. Average age of the crowd: 17. Average girl's shorts length: micro-mini (not that I noticed). For boys in the target demographic, there's a lot to recommend about this concert.

I'm a big electronica fan, so I'm comfortable with the genre. Datsik had a strong set and tore up the joint. He was the reason my kids wanted to come; they didn't really know much about Aoki before tonight. I suspect a lot of the boys in the audience were brought in by Dasik, who plays a pretty industrial brand of dubstep.

The girls were there for Aoki and they went wild. For my money, his set was somewhat generic. I'm not into corporate-sponsored music, with tour sponsor Rockstar being a particular target of wrath, both for their connection to gaybasher/hatemonger Michael Savage and for just basically peddling addictive, caffeinated shit to young people. Largely absent was the spirituality and tribalism of a genuine rave. Aoki mainly set a tune spinning then got up and pranced around the stage like a rock star.

Aoki's schtick is spraying champagne and cake, which seemed kind of pointless to me. Is he trying to establish his punk bona fides? I guess I like my art to have a point. Color me picky. Years ago, raves eschewed cult-of-personality deification; they were all about the music and the tribal gathering. Raves were anti-establishment gatherings, often held in secret. How far we've come! (Fallen?)

I read somewhere that Aoki started out politically active. While at UC Santa Barbara he majored in women's studies and immersed himself in the punk scene. Somewhere along the way, he decided to let that go. Why? Perhaps that's a natural progression; Aoki is a 1%er from a world of 1%ers. His dad Rocky Aoki founded Benihana restaurants, his half sister is the supermodel Devon Aoki.

This concert felt like a well-oiled corporate machine. I was a bit put off that Aoki had a merch signing at 9, right in the middle of Dasik's set. The timing seemed pretty disrespectful toward his fellow artist. 


During the show, I and all 3 kids with me got separately approached and asked if we knew where to find "pills" (ecstasy). Although I'd prefer my son and his friends avoid such substances, I also want them to be safe. I warned my kids they should assume anyone asking like that is an undercover cop. Our toxic drug war and criminal justice system is far more dangerous to kids than any drugs.

Worst moment: After the show, we fought our way up to the front to quickly buy a couple of shirts then get in line to have them signed by Aoki (another signing). A particularly thuggish security goon named Rick (he tried to intimidate me when I asked his name) was yelling out, "IF YOU'RE GOING TO BUY SOMETHING, BUY IT! IF NOT, MOVE ON!" Then Rick yelled out, "HE WILL ONLY SIGN THINGS YOU BUY RIGHT NOW!" I explained that we were holding shirts we had just bought 30 seconds ago before we got in the signing line. Rick yelled again, "HE'S NOT SIGNING IT. HE'S ONLY SIGNING THINGS YOU BUY RIGHT NOW!"

So my son had to leave with his brand-new Aoki shirt unsigned. This abusive guard was yelling at all the kids ten feet away from Aoki and he never said a thing about it. Not a pleasant way to leave the show.

But all the beautiful kids had a good time, so I can't really complain too much. The high percentage of girls in attendance seemed to helped ensure all the boys pretty much behaved themselves. I never saw any unruly behavior or ill-treatment. 


Kudos to the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium for having water fountains on both sides of the hall. I assume they're required by law to have them (no doubt they eat into those $3/bottle water sales) but they make for a much safer and more pleasant concert experience for all the pacifier-sucking #MollyPills kids.


I dig Aoki's energy, and he seems like a genuinely nice guy. But I wish he held on to a bit of his early activism. He seems to have made peace with the establishment -- hell, he seems to BE the establishment -- and for an artist that's never a good thing.

The Weeknd

The Weeknd is a red-hot band right now, both because their music is fantastic & dark and for the mystery behind the story of how they got hot.

They put their music online, got rave reviews on Pitchfork (the most trusted independent music review website), upped their price to $25,000 a show and snagged $1 million in bookings. Not bad for a mysterious band that gave away their music for free.

Thanks to the great Bob Lefsetz for hipping me to the Weeknd story. As Lefsetz (and others) says, if you're amazing you can give away your music and fans will find a way to pay you. The Weeknd are pretty stunning. That first Pitchfork reviewer praised the dark narratives laid over "incredibly lush, downcast music."

Download both their albums for free: The Weeknd  A third album is apparently on the way soon.

I Am a Japanese Synthesizer

I was recently inspired to check the interwebs for Petr Skoumal's "I am a Japanese Synthesizer," which was a big hit when I was living in Prague back in '94. Not only is it glorious fun, but Skoumal was fifty-six at the time, a most welcome and delightful addition to all the twenty-somethings normally seen on the Czech version of MTV at the time.



I was dreaming that U.S. MTV would play this and make this guy a breakout star. Never happened, natch. The paucity of imagination on MTV by that point was complete.

BoingBoingey Goodness

I was just hipped to this talented 18-year-old French Canadian singer Beatrice Martin (Couer de Pirate) via the comments in a BoingBoing post (her music accompanies a lovely YouTube time lapse of an infant playing).

This led me to a few of her videos on YouTube (all in French):

Commes des enfants
Mange ta ville

Live clips

Ensemble (Featured in the above-mentioned time lapse video)
Corbeau

I really appreciate that these are all short and sweet. There's no substitute for real talent, amply on display even on these live clips.

I really dig the ink, too.

Listening to Eels right now, amazing. Also hipped from a great BoingBoing post.

As was Old Jews Telling Jokes.

Wow! Tay Zondy is sharp!

Tay Zondy's a strange dude. His YouTube smash hit Chocolate Rain was just voted most popular music video of 2007 despite -- or perhaps because of -- the fact he comes across as a humorless oddball with a marginal, though startlingly deep, voice. The song's catchy in that maddening commercial jingle way; once it infects you it doesn't let go easily (which may be why Chocolate Rain has inspired hundreds of parody responses, beginning with this hilarious remix).

Check out this interview with Zondy (nee Adam Nyerere Bahner), in which the 25-year-old doctoral student holds forth on selling out, Richard Wright, social justice, and media bias. He's a prickly interview subject, perhaps because he's way too smart not to sense the media narratives unfolding around him. My respect for Zondy just took a huge leap.

Tip of the old hat to Salon's Farhad Manjoo for the link.

Danny Elfman and the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo

I've been a big fan of Danny Elfman since the Oingo Boingo days, back when New Wave music was the hippest thing going. Hits like Little Girls, Dead Man's Party, and Stay will be instantly recognizable to anyone who watched MTV in the early days, when MTV was the most cutting edge cultural force in popular media. Only a Lad was probably Elfman's biggest hit but I couldn't find a video on YouTube.

I was as amazed as anyone when Elfman suddenly emerged with the quirky but brilliant soundtrack to Tim Burton's Pee Wee's Big Adventure. His follow-up film scores, including other Burton films like Edward Scissorhands and Batman, plus the opening song from The Simpsons have shown his range and remarkable ear for moody, kaleidoscopic tunes.

Before he became a rock star, Elfman and his brother Richard were part of the absurdist theater troupe The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, and it was in this role that they took the Gong Show by storm back in 1976. Check it out below; this is a loopy performance on one of the loopiest TV shows ever!

TOTH to BoingBoing for this one.

Tell Us The Mission (Accomplished)

Actor/poet Steve Connell slams the administration and its catastrophic war in this striking new video.

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I'm very late to the game here; this is the first time I've embedded a YouTube on my blog. The moment I posted this I got a jolt. What mind-boggling technology we've unleashed! The democratization of all media is extraordinary; in politics, this could quickly end up with our president impeached. Progressive hero Dennis Kucinich has just filed articles of impeachment against the Vice President.

Onward!

R.I.P. Dan O'Neil

Among the tragedy coming out of Virgina Tech this week is the loss of 22 year old Dan O'Neil, a talented musician. His website at www.residenthippy.com contains some beautiful songs you might want to check out if you feel like taking a little trip to sadville.

Dylan Hears a Who - UPDATED

Via BoingBoing, here's a fantastically funny pseudo-mashup [No longer available here. See UPDATE below.] of "Bob Dylan" singing Dr. Seuss. The Cat in the Hat is a particular standout.

UPDATE 4/13/07: Apparently, the Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss) estate has no sense of humor and Kevin Ryan, the creator of the clever Seuss/Dylan mashup, had to take it down or risk costly litigation. Salon has the full story here.

Dylan Hears a Who is still available via P2P, naturally. The Dr. Seuss people come off as the ineffectual culture bullies they are.

Copyright laws these days punish creativity. Here's a great article about copyright and intellectual property by a musician who decided to post all his music on the Web for free. He also recounts the story of his gifted 18-year-old student whose creativity was rewarded with 2 -- two! -- cease and desist letters from big corporations. Recommended.

Amazing Coldplay Cover

Check out 81-year-old Fred Knittle's quietly devastating live cover of Coldplay's I Will Fix You.

The clip is from a documentary about Knittle and New England's octogenarian Young at Heart Chorus that aired on the BBC. Apparently, Kittle was supposed to sing with another man named Bob Salvini -- but Salvini died of a heart attack the week earlier.

YouTube creates another phenom. Knittle must be tickled...

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Here's the original Coldplay video, by the way. It's a good song, but I think Coldplay kind of peaked with A Rush of Blood to the Head. Everything I've heard off their latest album seems a bit like Coldplay lite, including this song. I much prefer Knittle's version.

And while you're at YouTube, you definitely want to join the 6.5 million others who have watched this now-famous laughing baby.

Gnarls Barkley sings "Crazy" (live)

I hardly have a story here, except that I fell in love with Crazy the moment I first heard it. "Gnarls Barkley" consists of the vastly gifted rapper/R&B singer Cee-Lo and the equally formidable DJ Dangermouse, creator of the infamous Beatles/Jay Z mashup The Grey Album. Their Gnarls Barkley album St. Elsewhere just came out last month, although Crazy has been bouncing around for a while. Crazy has the historical distinction of becoming the first song in England to become a Number One hit based solely on digital sales.

This stupendous live version really shows off the soaring, angelic performance of Cee-Lo, anchored by the tight rythmic construction that Dangermouse brings to the table (and note how cool the Mouse looks behind the keyboards!).

The Evolution of Dance Updated!

I guess I'm a little late to the game, since I see on the YouTube page that the six-minute The Evolution of Dance has been viewed just shy of five million times. That should tell you all you need to know; the collaborative nature of Web 2.0 means that genuine crowd pleasers rise to the top, voted on by five million clicks from all over the world.

I'm sure it's all over the Web by now, but I'll post it anyway, since it's a blast -- and "Inspirational Comedian" Judson Laipply is definitely a talented guy.

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Update: September 9, 2006. This clip has now been viewed 32 million times. Think about that.

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Hat Tip, BTW, to MySpace buddy Wisteria for the heads up.

Jackson Bollocks

Happy Holidays, everyone!

I'm in the middle of a fun back and forth with an Anonymous commenter who apparently takes exception to the premise of my previous post, the idea that mashups are worthy of consideration as Art. I've decided to pull the discussion out of the Comments section and relay them in this new post rather than spending all my energy on stuff that many readers will likely never see. (I'm leaving all original comments in place, too.)

I'm assuming that all the Anonymous commenters are the same person. If they're not, well, they are now.

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Here's the exchange so far (although I flipped the order slightly to improve the flow). Anonymous' comments in italics:

"The best mashups match beats and rythms, blending or contrasting tone and theme, into wholly new and original works."

WHOLLY NEW AND ORIGINAL WORKS???

Surely you jest...

...and the analogy to Picasso is absurd - Picasso mastered the form. Very different from taking two paintings and digitally laying them one over the other.

And my response:

Rare indeed is the work of art which does not in some way build upon existing sources. When two or more elements are combined to create a new work which comments on and expands on the sources, the new work is an original work of art.

I used Picasso to make a point, but I acknowledge in retrospect it may not have been the best choice since he DID in fact invent Cubism. But I think you'll find if you study Picasso that he lifted many forms from African art. This is the nature of art and culture.

Perhaps Roy Lichtenstein would be a clearer example of a major artist who appropriated material from popular culture and turned it into new works of art.

In music, avant-garde composer John Cage famously had a composition in which a bunch of people turned up radios set to random stations on pre-arranged cues. Imagine if some RIAA goon had been sitting in the audience taking notes ("Let's see, 12 seconds of The Beatles Lovely Rita, twenty seconds of Miles Davis, twenty-two seconds of Sinatra's Love and Marriage..."); Cage literally would have been unable to perform the work!

At any rate, I think American Edit is a superb work of art which is fundamentally different from Green Day's American Idiot. Obviously, "Dean Gray" took advantage of excellent source material, and their mashup honors Green Day while creating an original and fantastically energetic soundscape.

Remember, too, that this was a NON-COMMERCIAL work of art; no one ever attempted to make any money on this. The idea that artists can't freely make art unless they get "permission" strikes me as deeply offensive and anathema to a society that prides itself on its free exchange of ideas.

"In music, avant-garde composer John Cage famously had a composition in which a bunch of people turned up radios set to random stations on pre-arranged cues."

And it famously wasn't very popular. Coincidence? You decide...

Where did popularity enter the picture?

Kinda then depends on your definition of "make art."

If any hack with a computer can then sling together two existing works, then where's the art?

Here, I'll play: I'll drop paint splatters on a Sex Pistols album. Boom! Jackson Bollocks! See? I've made art!

[For my less hip readers, Anonymous is suggesting a hypothetical mashup between Abstract Expressionist genius Jackson Pollack, he of the "Action" paintings, and the seminal punk album, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, which sports one of the most famous covers in rock history.]

Jackson Bollocks? Brilliant! Pollack was the punk artist of his day!

In fact, sometimes inspiration like that can be better than you think; "Jackson Bollocks" would be a hell of a tee shirt! Of course, Art also depends on context; the same "Jackson Bollocks" tee shirt would have a different meaning coming from, say, David Byrne than it would if you saw it for sale at The Onion store. But I hate the idea that neither you nor I could legally create the shirt, regardless of context, even if we wanted to GIVE THEM AWAY and ask those who receive them to donate to alcohol and heroin rehab programs for starving punk painters.

Regardless, it is NOT the case that "any hack" slinging together two existing works can produce American Edit, any more then my ten-year-old slinging paint at a canvas can produce a Pollack. You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but if you can't see the Art in excellent mashups like American Edit or The Grey Album (or in Jackson Pollack, for that matter), then we probably don't have much more room for discussion.

There's a huge difference between 'influenced by' and 'lifted outright.' If you don't see that then we're speaking two different languages.

The term "lifted outright" is the same as "stolen," which seems a ridiculous term for an openly acknowledged remix. After all, American Edit is very much a tribute to American Idiot, and as such it has a significanly deeper meaning if you're familiar with the original work and understand the relationship between the two -- and the social and political meaning of mashups in general.

Incidentally, if you want to see "lifts," go check out The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, a film in which half the shots (the interesting ones) are lifted straight from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Strange, I didn't see any attribution in the credits...

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[A big shout out to Anonymous for the title of this post -- which I shamelessly appropriated.]

Fun with Mashups

'Tis is the season of the mashup. Mashups are the combining of two or more songs into a new musical collage. The best mashups match beats and rythms, blending or contrasting tone and theme, into wholly new and original works. The concept of mashups has been around for years; one of the earliest popular examples, a 1978 novelty song known as Stairway to Gilligan's Island, inserted the lyrics to the Gilligan's Island theme song into the music of Stairway to Heaven. (Full story here).

Back in the day, such mashups had to be done acoustically; with the rise in digital media extraordinary musical collages can now be done by enthusiastic fans with computers and talent.

Unfortunately, such mashups don't sit well at all with the recording industry, which prefers to attack fans rather than encourage them. Stairway to Gilligan's Island was banned almost from the moment it first appeared (but -- thank God for the Internet! -- it's once again widely available via P2P). The most famous example occurred with last year's The Grey Album, DJ Dangermouse's excellent collage mix-up of The Beatles The White Album and JayZ's The Black Album. Despite being selected as the number one album of the year by Entertainment Weekly, The Grey Album received a "cease and desist" letter from Beatles song publisher EMI, which effectively outlawed the music. (Have no fear; it's still widely available here and via P2P, samizdat music for a revolutionary digital generation.)

EMI's heavy-handed attempt to ban the album earned them much contempt in cyberspace, and on Grey Tuesday (February 24th, 2004) hundreds of Websites carried mirrors of the complete Grey Album in protest. Far from stopping this new work of art, EMI in fact brought it worldwide exposure.

BoingBoing's Cory Doctorow summed it up nicely:

Copyright maximalists like to contrast copyright with the old system of patronage, when you could only make art if you could convince the Pope or a duke or a king that your art was worthy. Patronage really distorted creative expression, and copyright did indeed promise to decentralize authority over what kind of art was permitted.

But the EMI rep's answer to the Grey Album is patronage. "You must not make this art unless we permit it." If you work for one of a few big record companies, you can use their legal apparatus to clear the material you want to use in a mashup. Otherwise, your art is illegal and will be censored.

I think patronage is wrong -- I agree with the maximalists here. Let's end it. Let's share these mashups, make samples without permission, and continue to produce art without permission from the latter-day aristocracy of creativity.

Cut to the present. Another great mashup, this one a remix version of Green Day's phenomenally popular American Idiot called American Edit. The mashup's creators, who go by the Green Day-flipping handle "Dean Gray," release their extraordinary album and ten days later they, too, get a "cease and desist" order, this one from Warners, Green Day's label. Another "Grey Tuesday" (December 13th, 2005), roughly a quarter million downloads, more embarrassment for the recording industry, and worldwide publicity for American Edit, which is still also available all over the Net via P2P (and HIGHLY recommmended by yours truly).

Here are a couple of other mashup albums to whet your appetite:

Q-Unit: Greatest Hits combines 50 Cent and Queen. The results are fun, if less revelatory than those in American Idiot. The back cover art is a terrific visual mashup: 50 Cent reimagined as Freddy Mercury!

And, just in time for Christmas, the funky Santastic: Holiday Boots 4 Your Stockings.

Imagine if Picasso had received a "cease and desist" order from reps for the African sculptors who inspired his seminal 1907 classic Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. He might have painted Blue and Rose people for his entire career!

Hip Hop: A Love Story

Beautiful. Salon has the best love letter to Hip Hop by a Hip Hop-hating white liberal I've seen anywhere. A masterpiece.

Okay, it's also about survival and poverty and racism and classism, about the social forces that shape our lives, and about paedamorphosis, evolutionary change happening in the young and moving upwards. There's a stunning moment in which the author, Camille Perri, realizes that her Hip Hop son is far more Progressive than she is. I realized then that all that time while we were thinking that Joe was moving off on his own, he had been moving us with him.

Said essay is excerpted from "Because I Said So: 33 Mothers Write About Children, Sex, Men, Aging, Faith, Race & Themselves, edited by Camille Peri and Kate Moses. Published by HarperCollins and coming out in paperback in January 2006, by the way.

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You will need to watch a short ad in order to read the essay. Or, better yet, subscribe. Salon is consistently one of the most valuable sources for uncorrupted news anywhere, a diamond. I'm a subscriber, which means I pay my hard-earned money to read Salon every day. And I don't like spending my hard-earned money on nuthin.

Bitch.

Music from the End of the World

I haven't posted these last few days because I've been too busy working the Comments to my A Funny Thing post. The first comment took me totally by surprise, coming out of left field to accuse me of "stealing music" and thus setting a bad example for my son. Much back and forth merriment ensued, with an old friend stepping up to the plate in my defense.

An unrelated comment (unrelated to the Comment discussion, but related to the original post) led to my opining on filmmaker Wim Wenders' Until the End of the World, a flawed but intriguing film that somehow generated one of the greatest soundtrack albums in the history of film. If you haven't heard this soundtrack, I urge you to sniff out a copy. Take a look at these Amazon reviews if you don't believe me.

Go ahead, check 'em out. I'll wait until you get back.

Wow, that's a very moving set of Amazon reviews, isn't it? They really reveal the deep, deep reservoir of love and loyalty to this album. Count me among its devotees.

This haunting collection has been in heavy rotation in my life on and off since it came out. Until the End of the World doesn't quite come together as a film, in my opinion (apparently it was heavily butchered by the studio before release, and a redeeming five-hour cut may one day be released), but Wenders' tremendous gift for illuminating love and human connections in the midst of isolation and despair permeates this extraordinary album. The consistency of tone is extremely Wenders-like, despite the amazing diversity of artists contained within.

The Amazon reviews do a fine job covering specific tracks by the likes of U2, Talking Heads, Jane Siberry, Daniel Lanois, R.E.M., Elvis Costello, Lou Reed, and many others; suffice it to say that all these talented artists seem to have been magically inspired to produce at a special meta-level for this soundtrack. Wenders asked the artists (in 1991) to produce the music they thought they would be making in 1999, the year in which the film is set. The result has the feeling of a dispatch both from and for the future.

Wenders cemented his genius as a filmmaker with Wings of Desire, but it is with the Until the End of the World soundtrack that his vision finds its perfect aural complement.

A Funny Thing

The other day, as my nine-year-old son Daniel sat on the couch leafing through a book called Star Wars: Incredible Cross-Sections, I began ripping Marianne Faithfull's 2000 CD Vagabond Ways onto my iBook.

For readers unfamiliar with Faithfull, she was a beautiful but vapid teenage folkie with a string of minor (and quite ghastly) hits in the mid-sixties who became famous as Mick Jagger's girlfriend, got heavily into drugs and alcohol, wound up a homeless junkie, then somehow re-emerged in the Eighties with the most extraordinarily poetic whore and whiskey voice ever heard in rock and roll (she also sings Kurt Weil, brilliantly).

I had gotten Vagabond Ways out of the library and I hadn't actually listened to it yet. As the eponymous first song was ripping it began playing -- a haunting, plaintive lament delivered with fifty-four-year-old Faithfull's world-weary grace.

Oh, doctor please, oh, doctor please.

At this point Daniel looked up from his book and said, "Dad, can we listen to something else?"

Well, there's no accounting for taste, I thought. I said, "This is great stuff..."

I drink and I take drugs, I love sex and I move around a lot.

At this point, I was looking right at Daniel, and he at me. I think I managed a slight comic roll of the eyes as I made my way calmly to the laptop to pause it and find "something else."

I had my first baby at fourteen.

Picture the scene. The music has stopped. Daniel and I are looking at each other. He has obviously heard this lyric, but I see no particular reaction -- though no particular disinterest, either. So I start laughing. And he starts laughing. And next thing we know we're both in hysterics, I because I have no idea what he's making of what we just heard, and he for some unknown reason -- perhaps because he's smart enough to know transgressive when he hears it.

Beautiful moment.

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We spent the rest of the afternoon listening to Beethoven's Wig.

UPDATED: Hip-Hop and the Mainstream - Growing Pains

It seems that whenever I post about hip-hop my darling readers become inflamed, but in this case I can't resist. The SF Chronicle has an article in the Datebook section today titled Who would have thought it? Rap legend RZA hangs out, chats at Commonwealth Club gig.

It's a pleasant enough article, but the premise -- that it's somehow newsworthy when a hip hop artist gets taken seriously by the straightlaced Commonwealth Club -- demonstrates clearly just how out of touch the mainstream press really is, even in left-leaning San Francisco. After all, as a founding member of the seminal hip-hop collective Wu-Tang Clan and a successful film composer to boot, the 39-year-old RZA is a major modern artist by almost any standard. The fact that he's (presumably) virtually unknown to a large percentage of the Chronicle's readership is as much a commentary on their ongoing failure to adequately cover an important artist than on the supposed "clash of cultures" being covered.

My fur ruffled a bit at the opening paragraph:

What becomes a legend most? When the legend in question is the man behind one of the most influential hip-hop crews in history, the answer is not a public affairs forum such as the Commonwealth Club. But then, most musical artists don't philosophize about chess and martial arts and Islam and the mythology of organized crime.

Notice the patronizing tone and assumption of that last sentence, that "musical artists" (a clever shorthand for "hip-hop artists") are not cultured, educated about their work and the world around them, or diverse in their interests. If you doubt my take on this, try to imagine that a pop writer like, oh, Stephen King was the subject of the article instead. But then, most writers don't philosophize about chess.... Or how about if the article was about a different kind of "musical artist?" But then, most opera singers don't philosophize about chess....

In any of the above examples, readers would immediately smell something foul. "What do you mean, 'Most writers don't philosophize about chess...?' Writers are an intelligent, worldly lot!" Apparently, this kind of inherent respect doesn't extend to hip-hop artists, at least in the SF Chronicle.

Somewhat later in the article (on the back page), writer Neva Chonin asserts: It shouldn't have worked, this collision of disparate worlds of a stodgy public affairs forum and a profane street poet.... This would seem to score one for hip-hop, but is it necessary to refer to one of the most successful and influential recording artists of the last decade as a "profane street poet?"

Just calling out for a little respect, that's all. The day hip-hop is truly accepted as another valid art form will be the day a visit to the Commonwealth Club by a hip-hop artist ceases to be news.

UPDATE - August 31, 2005

Today's Chronicle has a letter to the editor (scroll down a bit) from one Max Woodworth in Taipei, Taiwan (I guess the mail from Taiwan travels really slowly). Woodworth essentially covers the same ground I did (though much more eloquently) in six paragraphs. I like his closing section:

...The forum could not have been a testament to hip-hop's "new place in the cultural canon" for the simple reason that hip-hop is not new, neither as an art form nor as part of our cultural canon. Practically every facet of our popular culture bears the marks of hip-hop, and this has been the case for about 20 years.

From speech to clothing to mannerism, hip-hop is everywhere and has been for a long time. The real shock should be that RZA hadn't been invited a decade ago to the Commonwealth Club. But I'm grateful, at least, that the forum was covered. It's a start.

As an update to my update, I Googled "Max Woodworth Taipei Taiwan" and discovered that he is a correspondant for the Taipei Times. At least, I assume he's the same Max Woodworth; I'll let you know if anything else turns up.

Hip Hop Comments and Reactions

My last post generated some heated comments from Katterfelto and a couple of "Anonymous" posters. Ay Caramba!

The first Anonymous accuses me of saying somewhere in my post(s) that anyone who dislikes Hip Hop or Rap is necessarily a racist. I said nothing of the sort; to the contrary, I specifically said in my last post that it's fine to dislike a musical genre (and used opera as an example of a genre that doesn't work for me). It's when people dismiss a genre as valueless that I start looking for something deeper.

And, incidentally, when I said, I wonder if [Anonymous] would be so tolerant of Thelonious Monk if it were 1963? I wasn't refering to racial tolerance but rather to artistic tolerance. It's easy to love a long-accepted artistic genre; how much harder it is to find the "meat" in newer artistic forms. Improvisational Jazz (like Abstract Expressionism and Beat Poetry) was radical and alienating when it first showed up, and even today it remains fairly difficult to access. But at least no one's seriously arguing any longer about its worth.

Katterfelto accuses me of dissing opera (!) when all I said was that I don't personally like it. There's a difference between not liking a genre and dismissing it as worthless. I'm quite sure opera is a beautiful, deep art form filled with brilliant talents, it's just not to my taste.

In any case, I concede (slightly) and I back off the racist charge a bit. Many of the comments I hear from people who don't like Hip Hop and Rap -- that it is violent, misogynistic, and that it glorifies sexual promiscuity and conspicuous consumption -- are the same arguments previously used against Heavy Metal and before that good old Rock and Roll. So maybe I'm overstating the case.

That said, the willingness of many so-called Progressives to completely dismiss the possibility that there is any value to Rap and Hip Hop feels a little unclean, to me. Let's leave it at that.

Every musical genre is a language, and Hip Hop/Rap in particular is a very specific language with parameters different from most other music. It is well known that the younger you are the more easily you acquire new languages. Maybe that's why most major artistic breakthroughs seem to catch on among the young and only become mainstream when those young people grow up and become middle-aged adults fluent in the new language.

[The late Arther Koestler believed that the evolutionary concept called Paedomorphosis (also known as "Juvenilization") -- which is the notion that evolution happens through some useful evolutionary novelty that appears among the young and then carries over into adulthood -- applied equally to humans and their culture as to amphibians. Is Pop Culture, including Hip Hop, a Paedomorphic force?]

This is NOT the view taken by the original Anonymous (Don't you guys have some sort of name or handle?), who dismisses ALL Rap and Hip Hop as "talking over someone else's music." This view is simply ignorant and silly, and anyone who knows anything about the genre knows that it is a mischaracterization. Some hip hop uses sampling as an integral part of its pastiche, much of it uses wholly original music, and some uses atonal rhythm in lieu of melody (hence the frequent use of samples from avant-garde minimalists like Steve Reich and early Industrial pioneers Kraftwerk).

To the first commenter, I would recommend starting out with the widely acknowledged classics. Check online for lists of "top ten" Rap and Hip Hop albums. This is how I learned who's who and what's most highly regarded; look for the albums and artists who crop up consistently and look for reviewers who seem literate and intelligent. [Kudos once again to the web for the rise of orthogonal trust networks.]

And get over the language; much has been made in the mainstream press of the extensive use of the F-word and especially the N-word, and the truth is if you can't get past it you'll never "get" Hip Hop. A friend of mine recently told me he didn't approve of Hip Hop for just that reason; he doesn't approve of the use of the N-word. I tried to explain that "Nigger," and the related "Nigga," are broadly-used terms, meaning different things in different contexts (rather like that other versatile word, "fuck").

This site has a good overview of the etymology of the N-word, along with this summation:

Oxford Dictionary of New Words

Nigga / ’nig∂ / noun A Black man. A representation of American Black English pronunciation of the word nigger. This and other forms of nigger have been in use within the African American community and have been recorded in print since the twenties. However, recent usage of nigga, and its plural form niggaz, represents a conscious, politically motivated reclamation by blacks of the term nigger. This term, which had been regarded as typifying offensive and derogatory attitudes within the white community, was adopted by the black community as a form of self-assertion, with the aim of reducing the term’s derogation. (A similar development may be seen in the adoption of the word queer by the gay community…)

And here's an interesting review of Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy's book Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word.

By the way, I want to thank everyone for reading and caring enough to post comments. I don't pretend to be an expert on the subject of Hip Hop and Rap; I'm an outsider looking in and starting to grok the contours of the language. As I have become more attuned to the nuances of Hip Hop I have begun to encounter an increasingly dense set of cultural beliefs and trends which I am only now beginning to unpack. Stay tuned and be gentle; anything I post to this blog should be considered embryonic at best!

Hip Hop - An Alternative View

Thanks to Anonymous (boy, he posts a lot of comments!) for this silly comment to my Hip Hop post:

I have to say...you are dead wrong. I don't like hip-hop. I find it maddenly repetitive and uncreative. My opinion doesn't "betrays a subtle and unacknowledged dismissal of the power, intelligence, and creativity of the mostly-black Hip Hop community." I love Jazz. I love Soul. Both of which were and still are predominately black enterprises. Jazz is commonly considered the only original form of music to come out of America. I just think hip-hop is nothing more than glorified plaguerism. Call it "sampling"...it is still taking someone else's music and talking over it. I don't find that to be original or creative.

Let's take a closer look at this, shall we?

Anon is correct that his opinion doesn't "betrays [sic] a subtle and unacknowledged dismissal of the power, intelligence, and creativity of the mostly black Hip Hop community." There's nothing subtle or unacknowledged about his ignorance and dismissal. It's only surprising that he's willing to say it publicly (albeit anonymously).

The fact that he does supports one of the premises of my original post, that many of those who dislike Hip Hop think there's no "there" there. It's fine to dislike a major art form (personally, I can't really stomach opera), but to dismiss it in its entirety brands you as clueless at best. That's great that Anonymous loves a fifty-year-old musical genre; I wonder if he would be so tolerant of Thelonious Monk if it were 1963?

Jazz is commonly considered the only original form of music to come out of America.

Actually, Jazz, the Blues, and now Hip Hop and Rap have all been tagged as American originals.

I just think hip-hop is nothing more than glorified plaguerism [sic]. Call it "sampling"...it is still taking someone else's music and talking over it.

This sweeping mischaracterization illustrates better than my original post the kind of Hip Hop bashing I described. Thanks for providing a concrete example of the silly anti- Hip Hop rhetoric I've been talking about!