That's when it happened. The remake of the 1998 Godzilla movie had just been released and there were Jimmy Page and The London Symphony Orchestra playing the hip-hop, movie-theme version of the Led Zeppelin classic Come With Me - starring Puff Daddy, no less. My familiarity with Zeppelin and the LSO served as an invitation, so I lowered my resistance to hip-hop music and its rap antecedents and gave it a shot.
Sure, some hip-hop music is simply awful and much rap music is even worse. However, one can love rock, blues, jazz or classical forms and naturally understand that some groups, pieces or periods in those genres are terrible, too. To label all hip-hop with the gangsterish misogyny of its worst rap forms might suggest a closing mind. It might also beg the question, what else are those of us in our 40s, 50s and beyond or those distrustful of any format but their own closing down?
Just as the 1960s horn sections in Blood, Sweat & Tears, Chicago and, later in my education, many of the Stax Records pieces served as my bridge to big-band music and then to jazz, the familiar in Jimmy Page and the LSO found me liking a Puff Daddy (as he was known then) song in 1998. And just imagine the purists who became nauseous at the mere mention of Jimmy Page and the LSO in the same breath. Jazz and the big-band sounds were not necessarily favorites among my childhood friends, but I felt some connection at the time among Glenn Miller, Louis Armstrong, Otis Redding and Al Kooper's vision for the BS&T horn section.
So what is it about human nature that has our interest end with the music of a our youth or limited solely to our culture? Just look at the rage some Paul Anka fans expressed when he did his excellent album of 1980s and 1990s covers last year? Isaac Hayes tells a wonderful story about getting dissed by his friends in the late 1960s for daring to like the whitebread Glen Campbell song, By The Time I Get To Phoenix. He delivered a powerful spoken-word version of the song one night at a club in Memphis, silencing the conversation and ultimately reducing his friends and colleagues in the audience to tears until they heard the line, "By the time I get to Phoenix." (From 1994 NPR Fresh Air interview.)
Why wouldn't our curiosity pursue musical time forward and backward, understanding that one former avenue is now moving through a hip-hop moment and soon onto something else? Want to give it a try while still playing it safe? Check out Kirk Franklin's wonderful cover of the Earth, Wind & Fire classic September. It really works.
Verge Records is also a great place to start. The label has just released The Wonderful Sounds of Rio de Janeiro, which captures some of the terrific contemporary music emerging from Rio's favellas. It's a fusion of traditional Brazilian music with the hip hop and urban sounds of today. It is very serious music and provides an even more meaningful - and usefully optimistic - bridge to understanding what works today in hip hop and even rap.
It's a joy to use what we know to discover what we do not yet know. In his latest book, Five Minds Of The Future, Howard Gardener speaks to the power of the synthesizing mind that relishes such connections and interconnectedness. However,in their recent book, Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), the social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson show why human nature seems to work overtime to confirm what we like and discredit everything else. "Most people will put a lot of energy into preserving their prejudice rather than having to change it, often by waving away disconfirming evidence." (p.61) More on these books later.
Please don't wave it off. Instead, go for it. Start with Verge Records at www.vergerecords.org and enjoy.
Sure, some hip-hop music is simply awful and much rap music is even worse. However, one can love rock, blues, jazz or classical forms and naturally understand that some groups, pieces or periods in those genres are terrible, too. To label all hip-hop with the gangsterish misogyny of its worst rap forms might suggest a closing mind. It might also beg the question, what else are those of us in our 40s, 50s and beyond or those distrustful of any format but their own closing down?
Just as the 1960s horn sections in Blood, Sweat & Tears, Chicago and, later in my education, many of the Stax Records pieces served as my bridge to big-band music and then to jazz, the familiar in Jimmy Page and the LSO found me liking a Puff Daddy (as he was known then) song in 1998. And just imagine the purists who became nauseous at the mere mention of Jimmy Page and the LSO in the same breath. Jazz and the big-band sounds were not necessarily favorites among my childhood friends, but I felt some connection at the time among Glenn Miller, Louis Armstrong, Otis Redding and Al Kooper's vision for the BS&T horn section.
So what is it about human nature that has our interest end with the music of a our youth or limited solely to our culture? Just look at the rage some Paul Anka fans expressed when he did his excellent album of 1980s and 1990s covers last year? Isaac Hayes tells a wonderful story about getting dissed by his friends in the late 1960s for daring to like the whitebread Glen Campbell song, By The Time I Get To Phoenix. He delivered a powerful spoken-word version of the song one night at a club in Memphis, silencing the conversation and ultimately reducing his friends and colleagues in the audience to tears until they heard the line, "By the time I get to Phoenix." (From 1994 NPR Fresh Air interview.)
Why wouldn't our curiosity pursue musical time forward and backward, understanding that one former avenue is now moving through a hip-hop moment and soon onto something else? Want to give it a try while still playing it safe? Check out Kirk Franklin's wonderful cover of the Earth, Wind & Fire classic September. It really works.
Verge Records is also a great place to start. The label has just released The Wonderful Sounds of Rio de Janeiro, which captures some of the terrific contemporary music emerging from Rio's favellas. It's a fusion of traditional Brazilian music with the hip hop and urban sounds of today. It is very serious music and provides an even more meaningful - and usefully optimistic - bridge to understanding what works today in hip hop and even rap.
It's a joy to use what we know to discover what we do not yet know. In his latest book, Five Minds Of The Future, Howard Gardener speaks to the power of the synthesizing mind that relishes such connections and interconnectedness. However,in their recent book, Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), the social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson show why human nature seems to work overtime to confirm what we like and discredit everything else. "Most people will put a lot of energy into preserving their prejudice rather than having to change it, often by waving away disconfirming evidence." (p.61) More on these books later.
Please don't wave it off. Instead, go for it. Start with Verge Records at www.vergerecords.org and enjoy.