Stuck on Rap

One cannot underestimate the contributions of African American culture to the musical life of the United States. How many musical forms- amazingly popular ones, at that– were created by African American musicians? Well here’s a short list: Spirituals, Gospel, Ragtime, Blues, Swing, Doo Wop, Rock and Roll, Soul, Funk, and. . . Rap.

I think it is safe to say, that economically speaking, that list includes the dominant popular musical forms of the entire world. Almost all have been successfully exported, and, with the exception of country music (which is really just blues sung by white people), few if any off-shore musical forms have successfully imported themselves, nor can they compete in terms of financial success.

But having said that, here is my question. Why are we stuck on rap?

When rap first came on the scene in the late 70’s, I heard it and thought, "well, this will be a quick fad." It never occurred to me that it would last for THIRTY YEARS. True, we now have gangsta rap, but musically speaking, it’s the same thing– basic drum machine repetition while someone talks in rhyme over it.

African American culture has never gone this long without coming up with something new.

I fear it is a sign of the creative rut that we have fallen into as a nation and a culture. As is so often the case, "We have something that works and sells, so why try anything new?"

This is a dangerous attitude. Just one historical example: in the 1400’s, the Italians were so busy exploiting their connections with middle eastern markets that they had no interest in anything new. A young local boy named Chris Columbus came to them for funding for a wacky idea. He wanted to explore totally new territory, in the totally opposite direction of where everyone else was going. The Italians in Florence and Venice had plenty of dough, but refused to risk it on something so adventuresome. Why bother? They were so rich they didn’t see the need. Spain, a third-rate power at the time, took Chris up on this venture, and while they managed it poorly and it’s all gone now, for a while that one little country rose to major dominance, leaving Italy, a once great economic power, in the backwater dust.

I like to think of musical culture as an excellent barometer of our society as a whole. Creatively speaking, pop music, orchestras, and music in general say much about a culture. And at the moment, in the pop realm we are stuck on an art form that, sadly, consists of a black man expressing anger and frustration. I’m not knocking it, I’m just analyzing it. (Country music has not changed significantly for an even longer period). Compare this to the 50’s and 60’s, when we had all sorts of new music coming at us from all directions. Good stuff, too, that is still on the air. In comparison, how many people listen to rap music that’s maybe only 3 years old?  (In the arts, shelf life is a prime indication of quality.)   

I admit, there is something to be said for a musical form that, at last, white people can’t successfully "cover."  (Read: steal)  I doubt we will be hearing Pat Boone (who successfully "borrowed" "Tutti Frutti") performing "The Wrong N**** To F*** Wit" anytime soon.   

As a professionally creative person, I confess, I do get somewhat frustrated by the resistance I consistently encounter to new ideas and new ways of doing things (cue the rap music please! 😉 I doubt that I am alone in this. It’s not an individual issue, but an institutional one. Larger organizations tend to endlessly want to minimize risk, and individuals within those organizations also want to minimize the risk of doing anything that might possibly fail. They rarely fail, but they never really move forward or succeed big either. We tend to fall in love with the safety offered by large organizations, forgetting what it costs to join. 

Just one example, my "family concert" pieces are done by orchestras all over the world, with tremendous success, and yet, with the exception of the Minnesota Orchestra, not one major American orchestra has ever programmed one of my pieces. It’s the little orchestras that jump on the bandwagon and take advantage of them (Thus far this season: Syracuse, Jacksonville, and possibly Helena, MT). Yes, these shows are somewhat different and unfamiliar but what can I say, I’ve been selling them as long as rap has been around, and even so, I’m still too new for some. They have a set way of doing things and there is so much money on hand there is no reason to risk failure in doing anything new.

I am not complaining, I’m off to the Bahamas shortly for another performance of "Peter VS the Wolf." I have my niche.

But somewhere, somebody is hiring the next Christopher Columbus, and I fear it is not going to be us.