Hey all

I just would like to say that those of you who share the standpoint of Chet and Alice seem to me no better than the straight-lacers and rigid conservatives of old who immediately dismissed any form of black music until at least a few decades after it came into being. The exact same thing happened with jazz and blues. Scott Joplin was forced to play in only the sleaziest of bars an restaurants. King Oliver's Creole Band, one of the turning point ventures in jazz and Louis Armstrong's first professional job, was dismissed almost automatically by white society. In this sense, jazz and blues took over 20 years to be accepted as legitimate musical genres. Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight", the first rap record ever, came out in 1979. If rap does not become a significant part of modern and "folk" music to people like Chet and Alice soon, then it will be way behind in the trend.

To answer the ultimate quetion: Rap most definately is folk music. That is, by my own personal definition it is. I consider folk music any music which is considered an original art form and influences other art forms. Rap music started with the street gangs of upper Manhattan and the Bronx, who long before the era of drug trafficking and drive-by shootings competed in 3 areas: beat-boxing, break-dancing, and rapping. Rap was a form of self-expression and competition, and when Wonder-Mic and Master Gee recorded it with the Sugar Hill Gang in 1979, it became one of the most influential forms of music ever. It spawned the entire hip-hop culture, which by my prediction will soon be accepted as an art form of the masters, respected as highly as jazz or blues. Furthermore, in response those of you who think that rap is all bllod and guts and sex and drugs, you obviously have not had a taste of the cream of the rap crop. Try these names for size: Spearhead, Us3, Arrested Developement, Black Star, The Roots (who recently went multi-platinum for their album "Things Fall Apart"),A Tribe Called Quest, and yes, even Puff Daddy. These artists do not fill the heads of america's youth with sin and gore, they merely give young people a sense of enjoyment, appreciation, and confidence when they are played on the local hip-hop station. I myself have done work at the after-school program at the Manchester Craftmen's Guild in the nefarious Manchester region of the north side of Pittsburgh (known for having the highest murder rate in all of Pennsylvania). Here, renowned bassist Dwayne Dolphin (of Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Turrentine fame) runs the music program for urban youth. I have watched as young boys and girls come in day after day, week after week to express their fears, emotions, and dreams through the art form known as rap music. Never do they freestyle about shootings or rape, nor about liquor and drugs, nor about violence and abuse. They simply recite beautiful poetry to lively beats, and the result is something to behold. To me, that is rap music. That is hip-hop.

Rob