High Society
#EvolutionofHip-Hop #BlackMusic #SubculturalSociety
#Be-BoptoDoo-WoptoHip-Hop #BeingHip
Everybody who’s anybody knows about the Hip-Hop tune, Planet Rock, et hoc; But many of you don’t know Afrika Bambaataa useta’ be from a New York gang called, The Savage Skulls. The Godfather of Hip-Hop was once gang affiliated. The great underground group,100X's member, Lamar Supreme's father, was from Tenth and Oxford. Now who would have thought that The Furious Five, Grandmaster Flash or the Treacherous Three, Funky Four plus One—or even Gang-Starr—got their name from gang affiliated influences? Anyone who lived around gangs. . . Gang members are guys are among the street-wise kats who roam the street. As a matter of fact, hip, street and gang affiliation go hand in hand. Despite the inauspicious beginnings, these are still men who live in our community—and don’t you forget it!
Stop putting labels on it, and speaking about the right and wrong of things for a second, and you’d recognize the origin of the rebellion: It’s called, “Don’t put me in a box that you create.” “Oh, you just trying to be White; No, I’m just trying to escape the pain of being Black in a White-affiliated society.” We're all striving to make the best out of a bad situation—some better, some worst. Yeah, it’s a multi-cultural society—but with a dominant culture theme; i.e., With one culture to rule them all—like Sauron from the Lord of the Rings with his, One ring to rule them all: But we've learn to fight back in very beautiful ways. . .
I remember when I was young, hearing 30th & Norris Street gang doing Christmas carols and singing, I Only Have Eyes For You by the Flamingoes—which is a classic Doo-Wop record. The Manhattans—the group who did, Let’s Just Kiss and Say Goodbye—had their start in Doo-Wop as well. The Black Funk Super-group, Parliament/Funkadelic started out as a Doo-Wop group with a hit song called, (I Wanna) Testify. Gladys Knight & The Pips had a Doo-Wop Song called, With Every Beat of My Heart; as did the Temptations and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. Fact is, almost all Rhythm and Blues groups who extend back to the late fifties-early sixties, started out as Doo-Wop groups. The audition and practice was done on street corners, in street corner harmony. . .
There is no coincidence that the word, Hip-Hop, rhymes with Doo-Wop, or that both musics rhyme with its earlier predecessor, Be-Bop; with its style of vocalizing Jazz instrumentals called Vocalese. The fact is, all of these forms hold “Hipness” in common. It’s "creators" are hip to the ways of the people who created the lifestyles being spoken about. The artist reflects the values of the element in which the style came from, and this (the song) has a certain type of “mass appeal” to the people who live that type of life. The stories that are told, are directly effective in delivering messages to those people who live that sort of way, and are relatable—even witty—to those who hear it. Barring those pieces which have universal appeal, these things are relatable because they hold things in common with the people they come from; Their past-times, their interests, their values. Man is a social creature—true—but not all groups of men and women think alike; Not all groups of people embrace the same sentiments: You will find that certain values and assessments change from religion to religion, ideology to ideology, people to people, and race to race; which makes this multi-cultural society with a dominant culture theme, hard to take—because each of the other cultures are always subject to what that dominant culture thinks about them. In a way, it is somewhat oppressive, because as a minority, you are always subject to what the dominant culture believes or the majority’s opinions and judgments. . .
Hip-Hop, Doo-Wop, and Be-Bop are a cultural form of expression that originated—for the most part—from Black folks and indigenous people or “True Brown folks.” These musical art forms reflect Black and Brown people’s (and any other people who could accept our creation) values, sentiments, outlooks, and way of life for the most part; which are also among America’s most oppressed peoples. This oppression is often reflected within the music; Like NWA’s, “F*#k the Police,” for example [as a cry against subjugation], or Kool G Rap’s, “On the Run”—or Curtis Mayfield’s, “Fred is Dead,” or “The Makings of You.”
Flash back to 1863: The Emancipation Proclamation was made, but no state assistance was given to the newly freed slaves; So most of them were in need of work to sustain their livelihoods. The Civil War was over, but the war was fought on American soil in the South; which means that many places in the South were devastated by battle destruction to the plains. There was commandeering, raiding, looting stealing. Many Southern mansions and plantations were lost in battle—but more centrally, their slave labor was lost—which meant restoration would further exacerbate the situation, since they had no “free labor” to lessen the construction/labor costs. Of course, being in slavery for 308 years, most of all of our cultural values were imitative of Western society; and when you work for someone, of course you have to do things according to their rules. . . The South was trying to devise ways to put us back into slavery, thus they brought out the Willie Lynch Letter for inspiration and created the Black Code and Jim Crow Laws. . .
Another way of looking at life after slavery is, in order to be amalgamated into American society, our people had to be accepted by the Whites who founded by the society—when it was members of that society which subjugated us—and other members of that same society formulated a low opinion of us from seeing us in a subservient position; so if you had to work for these people to maintain livelihood, the issue that would always plague your self-esteem would be: How much am I worth and to who? Blacks have been in this society for 460 years, and still does not have the civil rights that an immigrant has in this country.
As you know, according to the above statement, there are going to be those who will have employment and those who won’t: There will be those who do what it takes to conform and those who won’t; The will be those who think they are accepted by mainstream society, and those who will be humored into believing that they are; There will be those who want it so bad—they will hop to any opportunity that presents itself—and those who will have the dignity to look within themselves and forge things that represent their self-esteem, their issues, their values, the dance, their songs, their past-times, their beliefs, their outlook on God, their fun, their interests and their future. These are some of the things that make up culture and these are our Black cultural heroes.
America’s decision makers of how American society is going to be navigated, have always been predominately White males: We may take it through the filters of the democratic process, and use things like majority rule and minor issues—but when you end up looking at Big business in America, the following becomes obvious; There may be representatives of all social, economical, religious, and political groups in the mix, but when you look at who tallies up the sheets and make the final decisions, the above statement still remain true: It is the rich White males who control this theme—everyone else just plays their part to gain favor. Black males are among the ones who have to deal with variant degrees of subjugation, due to the dominant culture overseeing the multi-cultural theme: Some Blacks fit into it (to a degree), and some don’t. In all societies, males are considered it’s leaders and heads of the family. It has been this way, before and since the White man lived in caves. . . Within American society, there are Blacks (both female and male) who are in leadership positions, but it is never decided in constituent consensus; ultimately there's a White male or group of White males who decide to allow it—it just looks democratic and bi-partisan.
Most of us seem to forget, America was initially a European colony—just like we have the tendency to forget that a room full of White males wrote the Constitution—while enslaving and subjugating Black males and their people, while commandeering the land from the natives. It should come as no surprise then, that Black male leadership is always monitored and regulated, just as the Hebrew Male population was regulated in Khamit (some say Kemit), so that their presence and influence would not get out of hand (over influence Khamit politics). Throughout chronology and or history, this practice has been a quite normal political strategy.
Now you might think I’ve become digressed or went off on a tangent, but I haven’t; I merely traveled this way to give you the fullest depth and dimensions to what I have to say about the Street Corner influence in music within the American backdrop. Of those Black males not being used in mainstream corporate America, they did not cease being leaders; they just do not fit within the themes of mainstream America—but they have challenged it from time to time: The Don King “Afro,” Allen Iverson’s Hip-Hop appearance and braids. But you also recognized that the NBA (rich White Billionaire owners) lassoed that situation back in by forcing it’s players to wear three piece suits. It also shouldn’t surprise you, if this Black male elements have clashes with the law. This is not the essence of my discussion. There is a reason why Outkast is called Outkast; they are outcasted leaders from the mainstream of American society. They are the “Stone that the builder refused.” This is their story—whether we call it Be-Bop, Doo-Wop or Hip-Hop.
For this part, I strongly urge that you use these hyperlinks in my article, so that you can get a stronger feel for what I am sharing here—as well as understand where this element is coming from.
Man is a social creature—true—but not all groups of men and women think alike: There are those who go to school and achieve; make the grade and learn the rules of engagement. They make good servants. Others don’t fit for whatever reason and become resourceful. Some positive and some negative but all very much so tied into the community. Take a barber for instance. Very few Black people trust their hair-styling to anyone else other than Black people. The barbershop, the beauty salon and the Black bars are the bastions of the Black community. The most intellectual exchanges take place in these shops. They are literally the informational “watering holes.” If you want to introduce yourself to an era, you should find the favorite barbershops and bars in the community and socialize there. It is the unofficial place to sell goods. Community interests are shared here, more than any other place. In the White community, there were Barbershop Quartets, but in the Black community amongst Doo-Wop, Be-Bop and Hip-Hop, the street corner has always been the gathering spot.
This is where our young leaders meet. Within the hood, mainstream society has very little control (other than their surveillance squad aka the police). Being blocked out of the society at large, it is in the hood (particularly on the basketball court), where Black men exerted their will over neighborhood politics. And in my neighborhood, when we were young, it was the gangs which regulated both areas; directly or indirectly. Even if you were not in the gang, the neighborhood gang had a lot of influence over hood politics; Toughness, attire, politics of manhood and whether or not you had heart, were all directly or indirectly influenced by the gang. If you were street, a hustler, a thug, or a grimy—how you gain authority and power largely depended on your sense of diplomacy, i.e., how you navigated around the neighborhood gang politics.
This is what America considers a sub-culture; but Black community politics is what comprises Black culture and Black society within America. In our neighborhoods, we determine what is hip; and we determine the trends. We dictate our politics and interests here. We evolved our language and hierarchy—and create our art forms. We evolved the dances and determined what is dope; it was our men within our community who determine the way we would govern ourselves within our community—sometimes despite mainstream politics. So when songs are played over Black radio, if they don’t “speak our language” or show themselves to be witty or sophisticated to the ways of our people in our various communities—they are labeled garbage on the streets. Take the Delfonics, Gladys Knight, Stylistics, the Manhattans, the Whispers, Chaka Khan, Gap Band, Charlie Wilson or Fatback band for example: They are still viable today in R&B, because they consistently speak our collective language and reflect our universal values: They consistently say the things we like to hear. Same thing applies to Rakim, Wu Tang, Public Enemy, Biggie, Tupac, Big Pun, Naz, JayZ, Ludacris, Pharell and Snoop and others.
Each generation had the same type of politics and their own music selections within the neighborhoods. We defined these things—separate from the people who refused to let us in. We created within our own context. The only exception is the young Y generation, because they don’t do too much mobbing in the street; they play with technology and are therefore socially maladjusted to generational politics between the Traditionalists, the three levels of Baby Boomers, and the young and old X generation and the politics of American racism—but they make their mark in cyberspace. As said earlier, first there was Street Corner Doo-Wop and the birth of the Beatniks within the Black community. It's artists were hip to the ways of being “down.” Doo-Wop gave birth to the Falsettoes like Eddie Kendricks of the Temptations, The Delfonics or Prince (in the song—Adore), Little Anthony & The Imperials. Politically, the grass root blacks, like the Bluesmen before them, influenced younger Whites to the politics of oppression—developing a generation of hip people called Beatniks; Dizzy Gillespie has a lot to do with their appearance (his goatee and his tam) . Dizzy, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk gave birth to an intellectual “heady” music that ended Swing called Be-Bop. Dexterity was key here, as well as its’s lyrical counter part, Vocalese.
Stetsasonic. Compare that to Pharcyde’s Passin’ Me By. Check out the originator of vocalese, Eddie Jefferson and sample King Pleasure’s Moody’s Mood for Love, then compare Pete Rock & CL Smooth’s They Reminisce Over You—T.R.O.Y., to Curtis Mayfield’s i Love and I Lost, Gang Starr—Mass Appear or Digable Planets—Cool like Dat; birthed in origins of Street Corner Symphonies. Of course the list goes on and there are variations to this theme. I used these examples to show you the links and continuity and state this is just an evolution in Black music at its finest. Learn to appreciate your legacy.
Thank you for your consideration,
C. Be'er la Hai-roi Myers
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