Hi Frank, I did not try to seperate Rap from the Arfo-American culture, reread my statement "it was their art form from the beginning & the music only came after in started going commerical". I stopped writting poetry before the age of 20 when I also stopped rapping. Yes I could rap as well as any kid growing up in the inner city that came from a racialy mixed community. I was in that community that embraced Rap Browns speaches & they embraced his rapping style. there was no music in it. Take the musical back up away & you still have rap in it's original style (almost). The music was used to elevate it to commerical sucess & freedom. Funny how the musical side of this art was used to catapult it into the arena of capital mass productioan where a white boy could get there mouth & hands into the act, sound familar, think the blues

If you take a poem & set it to words it becomes a song or a poem set to music, take away the music & it is no longer a song unless you sing it, if you don't sing it goes back to being a poem & only a poem. So if a rapper isn't singing but he's being backed up by music you may say it's a song, I don't feel quite that strong about that but you take away the music & the rapping is rhyming & not singing then it's just a plain poem without all the glitter & attraction, it's no longer a song
I didn't say it wasn't a folk form or art. Have you people no standards at all to hold you what you'll except & expect as an art form or as a musical form. Go throw a bucket of paint on a canvas wall & come up with a good reason why it should be hung in a museum gallery.

Don, I do think that with my backgroud I qualify to comment on this thread I came out of the inner city very tough & very poor & at a time when rap was sowing it's seeds.

"I instinctively flinch at That's not music! type statements. Call it a reflex reaction. Nothing personal, Barry"

That's ok Spleen, next time try not to knee jerk.

Frank, when I 1st heard Gil Scott-Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" & the Last Poets material (without any musical backup I add) I didn't see them as a line going back to West Africa. I did see them as a new breed of protest in an art form. The blues & the prison work songs before them & the songs of slavery before that in not part of that same line. Those were songs to get through life & in no way were they even attempting a political statment that's a US bron thing not something that's a direct line to West Africa.
You may have to do a lot of footwork & fancy dancing to make those connections, at least by my standards.

Matt; "For myself< I just think your wrong"

Then we agree that we won't come to any sort of agreement soon, deal.

Richard & Ted
I'm fine with or with your 1954 guidelines though I wasn't asked my opinion back then I was really to young to contribute.
So I'll leve here with this the 1st time I was exposed to rap within it's own community there was no tradition (and no music I'll again add, it was all verbal back then, that was in the late 60's early 70's nearly 40 yrs ago.
Why don't we meet here in another 40 yrs & see where it's gone to & then we might have a better handle on how it has or hasn't entered into some sort of tradition.

G'day, G'nite
Barry