The Last Poets refered in their release of an album & introduced a sound the group called "jazzpoetry", leaving behind the spare percussion of the previous albums in favor of a blending of jazz and funk instrumentation with poetry. (see my link above for more on the Last Poets). What they did way back when is pretty much & basicially the same art form that lives on today.

I was impresed with this "Rap" when it came out in the late 60's & early 70' being of a radical political persuasion myself, fitted well along side the hen counterculture's civil rights stance & the then opporsition to the Viet Nam War, but I never took it to be music then or now, I did write alot of poetry in those days & I wasn't a white middle class kid from the 'burbs'. I grew up in the inner city section of Boston called Roxbury, in an area know as Mission Hill. The only folkie area at the time was 'Fort Hill' (the next hill over). It was a racially mixed area, white, black & the 1st area for immargrant Latinos, what was in common was poverty. Though 'Rap" is the voice of poverty. It's a medium that those with a dislike & a distaste for how the system & life circumstances has treated the poor from the inner city it's not the same medium nor music that was used by those who were raised in the poverty of the rural areas, it's not even a musical form & when those who were some of the originators of this medium called it "jazzpoetry" they named it well.

Barry