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Frightening feces (cRap)


“People who think they know enough about music to dictate such things to others are a truly frightening species.”

Hi J, I’m not “dictating” anything; I’m expressing an opinion, just like you. To me it’s equally “frightening” that our culture is dumbing-down enough that some people are willing to lower their standards to the point where a DJ can distort a musician’s work, and be considered a musician himself as a result. If I take an artist’s painting and deface or mutilate it, I’m a vandal, not an artist. I suppose some people consider everything music (or art). One might ascend, Zen-like, to the perception that water drops leaking from a rain gutter onto the hood of a car are music, or that the sound of a thunderstorm is a symphony, but that’s more about philosophy than music categorization. Conversely, one could say that someone tapping their fingers in the audience is suddenly part of the band and a bona fide musician – it all depends on how high (or low!) you choose to set your standards (or have them set for you by marketing parasites). I set my musical expectations higher because I want to continue to grow as a musician, so it stands to reason that I expect more from music than some hack distorting the recordings of musicians on a turntable. You’ve clearly set your standards differently, and I wonder - where do you draw the line? Is a kid playing air-guitar while going “neow-neow-neoooow” a musician? How about an infant with a rattle? Hell, my car’s suspension makes a rhythmic tapping sound when I drive over the stutter-bumps on the freeway – is it a musician as well?

To answer your question about Gil-Scott Heron, Linton Kwesi Johnson, and Ken Nordine; in all three cases, I hear guys talking over a band. The band members are musicians, but if the guys doing the talking aren’t singing or playing, then they’re just plain talking. Maybe they’re poets. Is an actor speaking his lines while a movie soundtrack plays a musician too?

Because I’m not willing to lower my personal musical standards to the lowest common denominator marketed to a musically bankrupt culture, I regard most rap as juvenile, mind-numbingly repetitive, illiterate prose, backed up by either a group of musicians (rarely), or (typically) a primitive sound-effects technician who distorts other people’s music because he’s incapable of creating his own.


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