It’s so funny going backward in music.\u00a0 Going back to the roots, so to speak.\u00a0 I once saw a mural that said,”From Be-Bop to Hip-Hop Respect your roots.”\u00a0 To that, I say, “AMEN!”<\/p>\n
It’s so funny how people forget so quickly while only holding on to the easiest bits of the past.\u00a0 Once I heard a rapper say, “Rock ‘n’ Roll is for old people .”\u00a0 My question is, “Where the hell do you think what you do comes from?”\u00a0 You sample from Rock, Jazz, Funk and even Classical but do you even respect it?\u00a0 I once asked a friend, “Why do you like Rap music the best?”\u00a0 His response was that Rap music was the purest form of African-American music around today.\u00a0 That it most accurately expresses the African-American experience today.\u00a0 Once again, I say, “Amen!” but\u00a0 . . . with some qualifiers (and I think my friend, Mo, would agree). Sometimes, it is commercial pimping and whoring (the same applies to rock and a lot of other forms of music whose only agenda is profit).\u00a0 I admire people like KRS One, Chuck D, and Ice T (I can throw a lot of other names, but you get the point).<\/p>\n
When Ice T formed Body Count, he got a lot of criticism for “selling out” by doing Rock.\u00a0 But his response was the same as Living Color’s which was, “Where the hell do you think Rock came from?” \u00a0 Rock descended from the Blues.\u00a0 Where did the blue descend from? \u00a0 European Folk and African Folk.\u00a0 The rhythm came from the African folk songs that gave the slaves comfort while being stolen to a strange land and ripped from their families.\u00a0 There was a storytelling tradition that helped them to remember where they came from.\u00a0 Though they were ripped from their families, at least in song they can still feel as one with them.\u00a0 This is the power of music no matter what culture it comes from, but when you are so forcefully ripped from your own culture it becomes more intense and the loneliness goes deeper.<\/p>\n
The Last Poets took their name from an African legend and took the storytelling to the streets.\u00a0 It was not only their way in the mid to late Sixties to tell the story of the African American plight but also to state the case from the streets.\u00a0 They did this without electronics.\u00a0 Their roots? Poetry, story telling, rhythm, conscience, purpose and communication.<\/p>\n
Then you get Love and Sly and the Family Stone, both integrated, both led by musical geniuses with strong personalities (and egos), both bands rich in musical diversity (especially Love) and neither one bowing down to pressure from pro\/anti black or pro\/anti white groups.\u00a0 Their message is growth and change.\u00a0 Sometime you have to draw the line, sometimes you have fight oppression by any means necessary but you need to do so with a clear mind, not fueled by hate but by purpose. There really is no black or white or left or right . . . only the points in between.\u00a0 This is what I think Prince was getting at with “Controversy.” \u00a0 (Side note: on Hit and Run Part One<\/strong> I love his reference to Ritchie Havens who is also my musical hero.\u00a0 I can write a whole other entry on Ritchie Havens).<\/p>\n Along Electric Light and Gas, they got a lot of pressure for being integrated.\u00a0 Electric Light and Gas got death threats galore and were almost killed on several occasions.\u00a0 Bix Beiderbeck and Louie Armstrong were good friends but they were not allowed on the same stage because of the prejudice of the times.\u00a0 Nowadays, a lot of people would give anything to hear a recording of those two playing together.<\/p>\n We need to expand our musical horizons.\u00a0 We need something more than empty gestures and lip service. We need to live together and be comfortable with it.\u00a0 We need to look at EVERYBODY with open eyes and hearts.\u00a0 We need to look at each other as human beings not as cardboard cutouts.\u00a0 This is not only for the expansion of music but for our only chance for existence as a species.\u00a0 This is not for black and white but yellow, red and brown as well.\u00a0 People whom we think dress funny, wear their hair in a way we don’t like.\u00a0 We talk of freedom so much but contradict ourselves every day when we open our mouths,\u00a0 Yes, lines have to be drawn every day but what is the thinking behind those lines?<\/p>\n We need to let our reason supercede our fear.\u00a0 Fear is not always tempered with reason.\u00a0 Personally,\u00a0 I don’t understand greed and racism. \u00a0 I can only see it as fear without reason.\u00a0 There is no reason to hate all white people.\u00a0 There is no reason to hate all black people.\u00a0 There is no reason to hate all brown, yellow or red people.\u00a0 I am Ojibwa, is that a reason for pride? Yes.\u00a0 Is it reason for hate? No. \u00a0 We know who we are.\u00a0 What more confirmation do we need?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s so funny going backward in music.\u00a0 Going back to the roots, so to speak.\u00a0 I once saw a mural that said,”From Be-Bop to Hip-Hop Respect your roots.”\u00a0 To that, I say, “AMEN!” It’s so funny how people forget so quickly while only holding on to the easiest bits of the past.\u00a0 Once I heard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,49,50],"tags":[43,168,162,166,165,161,17,163,159,164,167,44,21,88,170,169,160,33],"class_list":["post-262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-as-therapy","category-music-in-general","category-observations","tag-arthur-lee","tag-bix-beiderbeck","tag-body-count","tag-chuck-d","tag-electric-light-and-gas","tag-ice-t","tag-jazz","tag-krs-one","tag-last-poets","tag-living-color","tag-louie-armstrong","tag-love","tag-lyrics","tag-prince","tag-rap","tag-ritchie-havens","tag-sly-and-the-family-stone","tag-social-function-of-music"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themusicalalchemy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themusicalalchemy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themusicalalchemy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themusicalalchemy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themusicalalchemy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=262"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.themusicalalchemy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":263,"href":"https:\/\/www.themusicalalchemy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions\/263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themusicalalchemy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themusicalalchemy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themusicalalchemy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}