andave's place

It's been rather a while since I posted, hasn't it? Life is busy and exciting and God is eternally good. .

I'm at the library again, listening to Celtic Woman singing their Christmas songs. I LOVE Celtic Woman! Last week they had a bigger than usual booksale here. The last hour they had a brown bag sale -- three bucks for a whole paper bag full of books! I got TWELVE lovely old books (only three of which were paperback.) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 5 Harvard Classics, History of Middle-earth part one, Tuck Everlasting, Matilda, Babbit, Portrait of a Lady, Modern British Poetry...This is on top of the 20 or so other books I've picked up at library sales. Thing is, I'm not going to be able to get to them for at least a year. I've got to finish Yeats. After that I'm embarking on a course of Russian literature in preparation for my SAT test -- best prep, I've heard, is to read good authors like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. So I'm going to up my reading level and hit them next. They'll probably take me a year, at this rate. Well, I'm not complaining! .

Rap. My, my, my. I had an interesting experience week before last. I was due to start my library skills course at the local college, so I went in to the first class. The first inkling of trouble was the jarringly loud rap music playing in the small room. Oddly, the only clear words are not to be repeated in polite company . The people coming in the door are big people, African-Americans. I'm definitely the youngest there and feeling very small and white, not to mention wondering why the rap. I asked the teacher. Evidently this was library skills...through researching themes in rap and hip-hop. Does this strike you as funny at all? It did me. You know what I listen to: Celtic Woman and Lord of the Rings and Fred Astaire. All gentle, thoroughly understandable music. Rap music is so ANGRY. I debated between leaving before the class (what in the name of all that's wonderful would I do at a rap/library skills class?) but I decided to stay and see what gives. She showed us a documentary by filmaker Byron Hurt, who listens to and enjoys rap and hiphop. He was watching rap movies when he realized they show all the same thing - barely dressed women dancing for men who threw money at the camera. Violence, sex, drugs, and language was rampant. So he went around for more than a year asking hip hop and rap artists, scholars, ministers, producers why those themes were so big in their music.

Guess why?

To show masculinity. Insecurity. Not to mention, the big moneymakers in rap (Kanye West, Fifty Cent, Busta Rhymes) used them. Granted, aspiring rappers don't seem to be in any rush to hit big topics but there are some like Spearhead and Wise-a-licious who are trying to. One guy that Hurt interviewed at a rap fling said that people aren't interested when rappers try to "talk righteous." People are paying to hear them sing dirt, so they don't bother.

That really struck my sense of injustice. People shouldn't HAVE to sing dirt in order to be heard! Especially if their voices are good!

But big rappers aren't exactly trying to push images of cleanliness anywhere. One of the rappers they interviewed (I don't remember what his name was but it started with J. Jermaine, or something) was either drunk or high on drugs -- he slurred his words something awful, and I'm blessed if I understood anything other than the curse words peppering his words. Why is it that they take trouble to enunciate their bad language and not anything else?

Big kudos to this Byron Hurt. Some honorable efforts are being made to pull rap out of its rut but he's going to need a lot of help and some big names to get anywhere. More alarming is what the Bible says - that those who work evil will perish. No matter how much I dislike rap I don't wish that on anyone.

I ended up dropping the class. It definitely wasn't appropriate for me to stay though I was interested. The class was for people who had an idea of what goes on in rap. I don't. Nor do I want to, but I might write about my library skills rap class for my next column.

It really bugs me that music, something so fine and above people's pettiness, should be subjected to that kind of treatment.

I wish I could say why I love music so much. There's something in it that knits my heart to it entirely. I really want to write a poem about music but I haven't gotten a proper idea of what I want to say. If I ever write it, though, it'll be the best thing I've written. I'll work on it till it is.