Music 15 Hip Hop

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Music 15 Hip Hop

• WEEK ONE PreHistory

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The Dozens

• Competitive trading of insults, frequently
  rhymed.
• Yo mama jokes are the most common variety
  probably
• Prevalent throughout African American communities
  in the US and traceable to West African practices

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The Dozens in Music

• Frequently used as text for blues songs
• The trading back and forth trope becomes a
  standard part of blues, jazz and later hip hop
  mcing

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Jelly Roll Morton Dirty Dozens

• Jelly Roll Morton was the first major figure in
  jazz an influential bandleader, composer and
  arranger, whose career ranged from playing in
  brothels to composing serious music for
  recording.
• This track was recorded informally very late in
  his career and sets the dozens to a piano blues
  backing

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Bo Diddley Hey Man

• Bo Diddley was one of the most influential
  figures in early rock and roll, especially in
  establishing the new rhythms that marked the
  style
• Here he plays the dozens with his percussionist
  over one of his trademark beats

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Toasts

• Toasts were stock tales that were generally
  recounted in rhyme. Most are bawdy, violent,
  highly stylized and funny
• Many of the folkloric examples were collected in
  prisons, military contexts, barbershops, street
  corners etc
• While there is a finite number of these stories,
  theres a huge variety of ways of telling them

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Toasts continued

• As with the dozens, some trace their roots to
  West Africa
• Some of the most famous examples are The
  Signifying Monkey, Stagger Lee (Stackolee),
  Mexicana Rose, The Freaks Ball, Doriella Du
  Fontaine etc

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Comedy

• Both the dozens and toasts were mainstays of the
  repertory of African American comedians,
  especially in the first half of the 20th century.
  
• Some of these performers began in vaudeville and
  wound up working what became known as the
  Chitlin Circuit
• Some of the best known of these performers
  included Moms Mabley, Pigmeat Markham, Flip
  Wilson, Redd Foxx and Rudy Ray Moore

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Pigmeat Markham Here Comes the Judge

• Markham began performing on the vaudeville
  circuit in the early 20th century and continued
  well into the TV era.
• While African American, he performed in blackface
  well into the 1940s
• Late in his career he became a regular on the
  Laugh In mostly in his judge character
• This record is a cash-in on the TV character but
  comes close to presaging early rap

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Dolemite Signifying Monkey

• Dolemite was a performative alter ego of Rudy Ray
  Moore, especially when performing material based
  on toasts. Hes basically a kind of bad man
  figure from one of the toasts
• This version of the Signifying Monkey was hugely
  influential in rap (see Schooly D, ODB etc)

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Radio Disc Jockeys

• Many of the most popular radio disc jockeys from
  the 50s through the 70s developed often complex
  styles of jive talk and patter, often over the
  top of the music they were playing.

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Parliament The Mothership Connection

• George Clinton frequently used radio DJ personae
  and DJ-like catchphrases in his songs for both
  Funkadelic and Parliament. This is one of the
  most famous examples.

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Black Arts Movement

• Alongside the Civil Rights movement, many African
  American artists became more politically
  radicalized
• This term refers to the loose group of artists

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Last Poets Niggers are Scared of a Revolution

• The Last Poets were a radical performance poetry
  group that emerged from the Harlem Writers
  Workshop
• The main members were Jalal Mansur Nuriddin
  (Alafia Pudim), Umar Bin Hassan, and Abiodun
  Oyewole
• They declaimed their work over minimal percussion
  accompaniment
• Notice the use of repeated phrases to musically
  and verbally structure this piece

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Lightnin Rod Sport

• Lightnin Rod was an alter ego of Last Poet Jalal
  Narrudin when he performed non-political
  material.
• This is from an album entitled Hustlers
  Convention which is basically an extended toast
  (Players Ball).
• Musical backing is by members of Earth Wind and
  Fire and Kool and the Gang

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Music Made from Other Music

• One of the best ways of understanding the basics
  of hip hop is that it is a form of music made
  from other music.
• This is a circumstance that came about through
  the ubiquity of recorded music.
• The two other forms that worked in a similar way
  that fed into hip hop were disco and reggae

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Reggae

• Many of the important early figures in hip hop
  were Jamaican
• Both the sound of Jamaican music and the way of
  doing things had a huge impact on hip hop
• There were two main structural influences DJs
  who talked over music, and the dub practice of
  reusing instrumental backing tracks of already
  existing songs

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Soundsystem

• The primary means of disseminating music in
  Jamaica in the 1970s was the soundsystem
• This terms is more of a social structure/complex
  than a technological one
• It refers to the whole structure of putting on a
  dance or a party the speakers, the records, the
  DJ, the selector, the promoter, the dancers

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Talkover

• As in the US radio DJs in Jamaica developed
  flamboyant on-air personalities while talking
  over the music
• Many of these DJs also hosted dances or were part
  of soundsystems so the practice transferred to a
  performance context too
• At parties the standard practice became to talk
  over instrumental dubs of popular songs
• Eventually these performances were recorded and
  released as their own records

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Dub

• The word has a number of meanings in the Jamaican
  context it derives from duppy meaning ghost,
  it refers to duplicates of recordings, esp.
  dubplates or test-pressings of records
• Eventually it came to define the style of making
  mixes of other records that dropped out various
  elements and altered them, especially using echo
  and reverb

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Dr Alimantando Best Dressed Chicken in Town

• Dr Alimantando was one of the pre-eminent
  Jamaican DJ performers. His work often skewed to
  the more surreal and humorous as here

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Big Youth Can You Keep a Secret

• Big Youth was the first openly Rasta DJ
• This song is a version of Keith Hudsons Melody
  Maker rhythm

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Disco

• Disco, like hip hop was more of a social practice
  and context than musical style per se.
• Disco DJs played all kinds of records jazz,
  African, RB, exotic etc
• The practice of extending records to keep people
  dancing was pioneered in disco by DJs like Tom
  Moulton and Francis Grasso

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Eddie Kendricks Keep on Truckin

• This is a basic RB song that was popular in
  discos
• Compare the original to the edit by Tom Moulton
  which extends especially the instrumental builds
  and breakdowns to make the song more exciting
• Moulton used tape to edit songs but other DJs
  mixed between two copies of the same record as
  became standard in hip hop

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James Brown Give it up or Turn it Loose

• This is representative James Brown song from the
  early 70s. Brown had started as an RB singer but
  in the later 60s shifted his sound to what would
  become known as funk the emphasis shifted from
  the song to the groove
• The groove is expressed through the short
  repetitive interlocking parts played by the
  instruments in the band.
• This style of building up the rhythm layer by
  layer was a huge influence on hip hop production

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Chic Good Times

• Chic was a project of the duo of guitarist Nile
  Rodgers and bassist Bernard Edwards
• Rodgers had a strong jazz background, and had
  been a member of the Black Panthers, while
  Edwards was more of a straight RB musician
• Their concept was to take the energy of the
  breakdown sections in songs popular in discos,
  and to build more complex traditional pop songs
  on top of that

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Chic Good Times

• They essentially took the James Brown model and
  made it sleeker
• This song is a rather bittersweet invocation of
  the good life, which made it popular in both
  discos and at street parties
• It was one of the most popular records for early
  rappers to rhyme over

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