Folk Rap?

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: gnu
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 03:41 PM

McEldoo

And, I can't find Gino Lupari of Four Men and a Dog doing Wrap It Up.

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: Mavis Enderby
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 03:30 PM

Steve - Carolina Chocolate Drops - outstanding - thanks

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: mikesamwild
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 03:27 PM

The blind Irish poet Raftery also traded insults with other poets and I think Carolan could be quite waspish.

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: RTim
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 03:26 PM

Does anyone have the words of the Rapped piece from Jim's Lucy Wan?
I am sorry, I don't understand them on the recording and I want to know if they are relevant?

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: mikesamwild
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 03:20 PM

Give us a few details it sounds great. What was 'flyting'

My son's a rap producer and he'd have a go at it.

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: Steve Hunt
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 03:17 PM

Carolina Chocolate Drops

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 03:17 PM

Do we have any challenge and response like this in the Western tradition?

They didn't do it to a beat, but the renaissance Scottish "flytings" (like "The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie") were right in that spirit, and would still earn a Parental Advisory if someone recorded them today. (This is where the first known literary usage of "fuck" comes from, back in 1508). In fact they're absolutely crying out to be rapped over a backbeat - Dunbar and Kennedy would have *loved* the idea and the rhythms they used would fit perfectly.

The text doesn't seem to be on the web - I have an unedited transcript of the Bannatyne Manuscript version.

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: Steve Hunt
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 03:16 PM

"Off on a slight tangent - I've sometimes thought that Beatboxing could work really well on some folk songs/tunes. Anyone know any examples?"

OK, this is one of the (very few) contemporary covers that they perform (rather than an old- time song) but here is the utterly wonderful Carolina Chocolate Drops, complete with beatboxing...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKTXJUYiAT4

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: Mark Ross
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 02:54 PM

Any Talking Blues would work as rap.


Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: Mavis Enderby
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 02:49 PM

It must be a variation of Godwins Law that as any discussion of rap music on a non-rap forum grows longer the probability that someone makes the "silent C" joke approaches one.

Off on a slight tangent - I've sometimes thought that Beatboxing could work really well on some folk songs/tunes. Anyone know any examples? Can anyone do a bodhran?

Pete.

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: mikesamwild
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 02:35 PM

I just remembered , I once tried out a ranting poet thing in the 70s at the folk club , the first bit was

I'm in wedlock
banged up in padlocks
Holy Deadlock
wi me dreadlocks
in Chorlton on Medlock

but strangely noone took up the challenege for a next verse!

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: mikesamwild
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 02:00 PM

I worked in the 1960s with a woman in Sierra Leone W Africa who was doing a PhD on native 'raps' where young men would challenge and throw down a verse to see if the other could 'cut' them. they useually insulted your mother etc just like they do with 'mofo' and 'your momma' today.. They got fast and intricate and often went on along time til the loser fell out. A dance equivalent would be a step dance challenge ( like they lifted for Riverdance between Blacks and the Irish )

She said this was continued in West Indies, Britain and the States and it has the elements and spirit of rap to me.

Do we have any challenge and response like this in the Western tradition?

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: Les from Hull
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 01:52 PM

Dave, many of the old ballads would work as a rap:

How d'ya like ma fedder bed, 'n' how d'ya like ma sheets?
'N' how d'ya like ma bitch (huh) dat lies in yo' arms asleep?

I've never had the nerve to stand up and perform it like this. I did suggest it to Muppit though...

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 01:51 PM

The C is silent

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 12:20 PM

Looked it up in wiki and this is what I got -

Rapping (also known as emceeing[1], MCing[1], spitting (bars)[2], or just rhyming[3]) refers to "spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics with a strong rhythmic accompaniment"[4]. The art form can be broken down into different components, as in the book How to Rap where it is separated into "content", "flow" (rhythm and rhyme), and "delivery"[5]. Rapping is distinct from spoken word poetry in that is it performed in time to the beat of the music[6][7].

Rapping is a primary ingredient in hip hop music, but the phenomenon predates hip hop culture by centuries. Rapping can be delivered over a beat or without accompaniment. Stylistically, rap occupies a gray area among speech, prose, poetry, and song. The use of the word to describe quick speech or repartee long predates the musical form,[8] meaning originally "to hit".[9] The word had been used in British English since the 16th century, and specifically meaning "to say" since the 18th. It was part of the African American dialect of English in the 1960s meaning "to converse", and very soon after that in its present usage as a term denoting the musical style.[10] Today, the terms "rap" and "rapping" are so closely associated with hip hop music that many use the terms interchangeably.

Need to think about to see what fits in. Interesting that the term has been in use since the 16th century! I am imagining the court of Henry VIII with a boom-box... :-)

DeG

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: matt milton
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 12:20 PM

"There isn't a genuine community addressed by folksong today - there's only "people who like folk music", which isn't the same thing"

well yes I probably shouldn't have typed that – as it means this thread is almost certainly going to immediately go off on a tangent!

I'm not entirely sure what I mean, but I can at least be very specific. The rap tracks I'm talking about achieve something folkish, in a devolved, almost a pre-industralisation way.

They will have a very localised, self-referencing rap, which might be an answer to somebody else's rap, perhaps referring to some falling-out among previously matey rappers. It might refer, postcode specifically, to the local pirate radio show, where said falling-out took place.

Pop songs don't do that - they're about love or whatever. Whereas certain old folk song traditions commerated a battle, a feud, a disaster. Or an agricultural tool: things specific to mining or farming. Rap, wherever it's from, before it gets big, seems to have that micro-topicality to it. Like broadsheets did.

While "rappers from Hackney" is, obviously, not exactly a community the way "northumbrian pit workers" or "railwaymen from Derby" were, the songs (raps) they make often feel like it.

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: matt milton
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 12:17 PM

well yes I probably shouldn't have typed that, as it means this thread is almost certainly going to immediately go off on a tangent!

I'm not entirely sure what I mean, but I can at least be very specific. The rap tracks I'm talking about achieve something folkish, in a devolved, almost a pre-industralisation way. They will have a very localised, self-referencing rap, which might be an answer to somebody else's rap, perhaps referring to some falling-out among previously matey rappers. It might refer, postcode specifically, to the local pirate radio show, where said falling-out took place.

Pop songs don't do that - they're about love or whatever. Whereas certain old folk song traditions commerated a battle, a feud, a disaster. Or an agricultural tool: things specific to mining or farming. Rap, wherever it's from, before it gets big, seems to have that micro-topicality to it. Like broadsheets did.

While "rappers from Hackney" is, obviously, not exactly a community the way "northumbrian pit workers" or "railwaymen from Derby" were, the songs (raps) they make often feel like it.

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 12:12 PM

Is that rap though, Matt(k)? I would define it as spoken word, or does the lyric lift and flow with the music like rap? Not disputing - genuine question here. Just by adding a musical background does spoken word automaticaly become rap?

DeG

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: mattkeen
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 12:06 PM

I think spoken word in a folk context has great possibilities

We have recently recorded a couple of John Clare poems spoken over tunes that Clare knew/collected.

Have also done spoken word version of Mother Mother Make My Bed... and used the original tune for backing in that case mind.

I did a few gigs improvising guitar using trad English tunes as a starting point with a modern poet.


Its very liberating for musicians but keeps everything still focused on the narrative/words

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 12:06 PM

There isn't a genuine community addressed by folksong today - there's only "people who like folk music", which isn't the same thing.

Interesting point, Matt. Is the folk club not the community that the music is addressing? Or should be at least? Maybe we had best not go there though...

Out of interest I was told by someone i have no reason to disbelieve that they heard a group of young Polish people working picking apples who were singing shanties! Maybe there are some genuine communities that are addressed!

Cheers

DeG

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: Banjiman
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 12:04 PM

"I would substitute the middle two letters... "

Fold Bap ???????

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: matt milton
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 11:43 AM

The Deadly Gentlemen: bluegrass rap
www.myspace.com/deadlygentlemen

On the whole though, I can't really think of any rapping in folk beyond the aforementioned Jim Moray song.

For me though, when rap was localized, for most of the 1980s, it had a hell of a lot in common with folk music. The rappers in Harlem, the Bronx and in LA were a lot like topical broadsheets were. They referenced very localised characters and localised stories that often mean little or nothing to those outside their constituency.

Obviously, US rap got huge and lost that.

But you can still hear it in, say, the UK's Grime scene. I was listening to some CDs by Trim yesterday, who is my favourite British rapper at the moment. (He picks some genuinely unusual music to rap over - a good case in point being a sample of Mudhoney's 'Touch Me I'm Sick') His lyrics, and those of many of his peers, do for Hackney, Clapton and Tower Hamlets what 1980s US rappers like KRS 1 did for New York City.

In early American hip-hop, and in the UK's Grime scene, there is the sense of a community addressing itself through music, which is one of many things I get from old traditional folksongs (though it's by no means the only thing). There isn't a genuine community addressed by folksong today - there's only "people who like folk music", which isn't the same thing.

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 11:40 AM

Yep - Good one again. The blues certainly fits in with some definitions of folk music and talking blues fits in the rap category - Getting some good ideas here.

DeG

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: Mavis Enderby
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 11:35 AM

I was thinking of talking blues but see it's already been discussed recently here

Pete

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 11:32 AM

Yes! Well, spotted, Jack. I didn't think of that for some reason. Skipping songs in particular.

D.

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 11:31 AM

Does that apply to the examples already given, Alan or is it just your opinion of rap in general? Is a blank a letter btw? :-)

DeG

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 11:31 AM

Playground rhymes. It often doesn't make much difference to kids whether they sing or chant them, so long as the rhythm keeps the game going. The weird "sprechstimme" kids often use, where the tune is indicated rather than sung, is midway between the two.

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: alanabit
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 11:16 AM

I would substitute the middle two letters...

Subject: RE: Folk Rap?
From: GUEST, Richard Bridge on a different browser
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 11:10 AM

Oooh!
Aaar!
I'm a jolly Jack tar
Fill my tankard
Drink at the bar...

Subject: Folk Rap?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 11:07 AM

I did a search and found a few threads asking if rap was folk but I could not find anything about rapping within folk music so - here it is!

I got to thinking, with a thread diversion on another thread into Jim Morray's 'Lucy wan', how many folk songs use rap. Not just spoken word but the rhythmic intonation of spoken word that fits the beat and is sort of musical? There is the afore mentioned Lucy wan which includes a rap interlude. There is also Mr Fox's (Bob Pegg's) 'Aunt Lucy Broadwood' which is 'rapped' apart from the sung chorus.

There is the 'sing-song' calling of the American style 'barn dance' which sort of fits the loose definition of rap I gave earlier.

Aside from those does anyone have any examples of rap in folk music? Good or bad, traditional, traditional idiom or contemporary. But let's keep it to your own idea of folk (and no going into trying to define that again!)

Cheers

DeG