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The Journal of New York Folklore was published 1975-1999. Back issues are still available.  The New York Folklore Quarterly was published 1946-1974. Back issues are still available. New York Folklore Society P.O. Box 764 Schenectady, NY 12301 518/346-7008 Fax 518/346-6617 nyfs@nyfolklore.org |
NEW YORK FOLKLORE PUBLICATIONS | VOICES | BACK ISSUES | FOLKLORE IN ARCHIVES | FOLK ARTISTS SELF-MGT | ORDER PUBLICATIONS | SEARCH “ROCK THE HOUSE:” THE AESTHETIC DIMENSIONS OF RAP MUSIC IN NEW YORK CITY People don’t understand our [rap] music because...we’re not worried about what they’re saying. We’re worried about the beat, worried about how it gets our spirits moving...That’s just it. We’re one on one with the rappers; and we think we are them when we’re dancing (Fuller 1984).Although rap music currently receives a great deal of attention on the radio and has had significant success on pop charts, it may be considered folk music for at least two reasons. First, and perhaps most obviously, rap draws on older African and African-American stylistic and aesthetic sensibilities. In rap music and its accompanying dance forms we find the call and response of southern black preachers and their congregations, the rhythmic syncopation of early jazz and jubilee vocal quartets, the complex improvisations of jazz scat singers, the boastful rhymes of street “toasts” and “playing the dozens,” and the competitive spirit of ring play and challenge dancing. Secondly, as this inquiry will explore, rap music developed and continues to flourish within a community-based Afro- American youth culture. Rap music is, first and foremost, black urban dance-party music. The very name, “rap” music, suggests an emphasis on verbalization, but it is much more than its words. As it developed in the context of parties where dancing to records was the primary social concern, black adolescents pushed the activity of playing records beyond previously imagined boundaries. Rap music is a rhythmic pastiche composed by a master DJ (musician) and a virtuoso rhyming MC (rapper or rap group). DJs combine and juxtapose bits and pieces of records creating a beat to which MCs set their spoken rhymes. The performers’ primary concern is to establish a lively relationship with the audience — to “keep their hands clappin’, fingers snappin’, feet tappin’.” In doing so, they demonstrate the structural pattern of call-and-response which is integral to successful rap performances. Yet, as R.F. Thompson asserts in his performance approach to African art, these elements constitute more than matters of structure, they “are in actuality levels of perfected social interaction” (Thompson 1974: 28). For example, the highest aesthetic achievement in rap music is to “rock the house,” meaning the performers engage the active support of those on the dance floor through their participation, thereby extending the boundary of performance to include both the leader and followers in concert. The central context referred to in rap lyrics is the ubiquitous “party.” MCs comment on it, and in turn, talk about their obligation to it. Rhymes often boast of an MC’s ability to control the party, thereby validating his or her own claim to fame....
 BACK TO NEW YORK FOLKLORE, Vol. 14, No. 3-4 — Table of Contents.NOTE: The New York Folklore Society Newsletter and New York Folklore Journal were replaced by Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore which debuted in December, 2000. Membership in NYFS includes a subscription to Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore. HOME | ABOUT NYFS | PROGRAMS & SERVICES | MUSIC | PUBLICATIONS | RESOURCES | CALENDAR | WHAT’S FOLKLORE? | MEMBERSHIP | GALLERY | SHOP | SEARCH | CONTACT US © 2012, 2011, 2010 New York Folklore Society |
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