JUKEBOX - "REDNECKS"

"Last night I saw Lester Maddox on a TV show...." Following on from Wednesday's adult version of You're the Top, here's some more, um, creative transgression, this time from Randy Newman. One of the very, very few examples of a white singer getting away with using the N-word. (Don't say you weren't warned.) Great piano-playing too.

Meanwhile, Wynton Marsalis lays into hip-hop in an interview with the Guardian's John Lewis. Last time I saw the trumpeter and Lincoln Center guru being interviewed on TV he refused to be drawn on the subject. For a moment, I assumed he'd had a change of heart. Now he's steaming again:

"I call it 'ghetto minstrelsy'," he says. "Old school minstrels used to say they were 'real darkies from the real plantation'. Hip-hop substitutes the plantation for the streets. Now you have to say that you're from the streets, you shot some brothers, you went to jail. Rappers have to display the correct pathology. Rap has become a safari for people who get their thrills from watching African-American people debase themselves..."

At which point, Lewis intervenes to ask if Marsalis is using one strain of hip-hop to attack an entire genre?

"Listen, I don't have to attack hip-hop. Hip-hop attacks itself. It has no merit, rhythmically, musically, lyrically. What is there to discuss?"

Flow? Rhymes? Assonance? Scansion? Lyrical dexterity? Rhythmic complexity? The use of samples that explore African-American musical history?

"Yeah yeah," he snorts. "It's mostly sung in triplets. So what? And as for sampling, it just shows you that the drummer has been replaced by a loop. The drum - the central instrument in African-American music, the sound of freedom - has been replaced by a repetitive loop. What does that tell you about hip-hop's respect for African-American tradition?"

I agree with him, by and large. The question is, whether Marsalis's own music can fill the gaping hole in the landscape. A quarter of a century after he cut his first records, the jury is still out.

Comments

[Tim Worstall]

Gaaah! How did you know I've got that in my bookmarks for a weekend post?

Great song.

[Clive]

Sorry, Tim! Great minds and all that...