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CULTURE CAN'T BE COPYRIGHTED
Sam Smith
DON IMUS used the word 'ho' once and got suspended. 50 Cent used the
word 13 times in one number and seems to be doing okay. In the same
number he used the word 'nigga' 14 times.
At the heart of the Imus controversy is an interesting misunderstanding
about how language and cultures work. In the Washington Post, Eugene
Robinson, for example, slaps Imus around a bit and then offers this
carefully sanitized linguistic analysis:
"The word is an abbreviation of 'whore' that was introduced to the
popular lexicon by hip-hop music and that appears to have become firmly
established. We know what the word used to mean, but it's not so clear
just what it means now. Rappers use it as basically a synonym for
"woman," but their lyrics are so focused on sex that the word retains
the connotation of loose morals. The word is often used these days in
contexts where that sexual connotation is ignored. It's still there,
though."
An actual excerpt from 50 Cent may be more informative, however:
A-yo the bitch useta bring you dough
Useta be your bottom hoe
Now your paper comin' slow
She feel like she had ta go. . .
How you gunna catch some dates lookin like that hoe?
Bitch get off the sidewalk and into the street
Bitch the sidewalk is for pimpin bitch!
50 Cent is a former drug dealer and Don Imus is a former drug addict,
miner, gas station attendant and railway brakeman.
At present, however, they live just 59 miles away from each other: Imus
in Westport, CT; and 50 Cent in Mike Tyson's former mansion in
Farmington, CT. According to Mapquest, it would take only an hour and 17
minutes for one to pay a visit on the other. They are part of
contemporary upscale Connecticut culture. In a sense, Imus was just
copying something a neighbor had said.
50 Cent has sold 21 million albums using language such as the foregoing.
Don Imus got suspended.
At the heart of this contrast lies some truths we either ignore, don't
understand or pretend don't exist.
The first is that nobody has a copyright on culture.
As Jim Cullen wrote in the Art of Democracy, Mick Jagger
"self-consciously emulated the gruff singing style of black Chicago
bluesman Howlin' Wolfe, who himself reputedly got his name trying to
imitate the white country singer Jimmy Rodgers. Rodgers, for his part,
drew on nineteenth century black traditions -- and on the English
culture that later produced a twentieth-century middle-class white youth
like Jagger who wanted to sing like a poor black American."
This is a classic story of music, but cultural cross-fertilization
affects everything else we do as well. You can't live in America today
without being multi-cultural. The implicit presumption of Al Sharpton
and others that blacks can control the effect on language of words used
on 21 million albums worldwide makes no sense. If RIAA can't even
control who downloads the records how is the NAACP going to control what
effect these albums have on people? Or the phrases they pick up from
them?
Imus shouldn't have used the word 'ho' but neither should have 50 Cent,
because sooner or later someone like Imus is going to use it whether 50
Cent, Al Sharpton and Eugene Robinson like it or not. That's just the
way life works.
You can write about it, excoriate it, and suspend the offender of the
day. But when it's all over, words travel without a passport and are
impervious to any type of security screening.
Fourteen years ago, for example, Michael Marriott wrote a New York Times
piece on the revival in black culture of the word 'nigger.' One rapper
Kris Parker argued that its use would de-racialize it: "In another 5 to
10 years, you're going to see youth in elementary school spelling it out
in their vocabulary tests. It's going to be that accepted by the
society."
This, of course, is not what happened. But the debate happily goes on
with everyone having one thing in common: futile sanctimony.
Perhaps the best wisdom is that widely accepted by parents. If you don't
want your children saying bad things, don't say them yourself. The same
principle would work with rappers and talk show hosts.
MICHAEL MARRIOTT, NY TIMES, 1993 - One of America's oldest and most
searing epithets -- "nigger" -- is flooding into the nation's popular
culture, giving rise to a bitter debate among blacks about its
historically ugly power and its increasingly open use in an integrated
society.
Whether thoughtlessly or by design, large numbers of a post-civil rights
generation of blacks have turned to a conspicuous use of "nigger" just
as they have gained considerable cultural influence through rap music
and related genres.
Some blacks, mostly young people, argue that their open use of the word
will eventually demystify it, strip it of its racist meaning. They liken
it to the way some homosexuals have started referring to themselves as
"queers" in a defiant slap at an old slur.
But other blacks -- most of them older -- say that "nigger," no matter
who uses it, is such a hideous pejorative that it should be stricken
from the national vocabulary. At a time when they perceive a deepening
racial estrangement, they say its popular use can only make bigotry more
socially acceptable. . .
For the last several years, rap artists have increasingly used "nigger"
in their lyrics, repackaging it and selling it not just to their own
inner-city neighborhoods but to the largely white suburbs. In his song
"Straight Up Nigga," Ice-T raps, "I'm a nigga in America, and that much
I flaunt," and indeed, a large portion of his record sales are in white
America.
In movies and on television, too, "nigger" is heard with unprecedented
regularity these days. In "Trespass," a newly released major-studio film
about an inner-city treasure hunt, black rappers portraying gang members
call one another "nigger" almost as often as they call one another by
their names.
And every Friday at midnight, Home Box Office televises "Russell
Simmons' Def Comedy Jam," a half-hour featuring many black, cutting-edge
comedians who frequently use "nigger" in their acts. . .
Paul Mooney, a veteran black stand-up comic and writer, recently
released a comedy tape titled "Race." On the tape, which includes
routines called "Nigger Vampire," "1-900-Blame-a-Nigger," "Niggerstein,"
"Nigger Raisins" and "Nigger History," Mr. Mooney explains why he uses
the word so often.
"I say nigger all the time," he said. "I say nigger 100 times every
morning. It makes my teeth white.
Niggger-nigger-nigger-nigger-nigger-nigger-nigger-nigger-nigger. I say
it. You think, 'What a small white world.' "
Blacks who say they should use the word more openly maintain that its
casual use, especially in the company of whites, will shift the word's
context and strip "nigger" of its ability to hurt. . .
http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=
F00610F9345C0C778EDDA80894DB494D81
JOHN FENN & ALEX PERULLO, LANGUAGE CHOICE AND HIP HOP IN TANZANIA AND
MALAWI, POPULAR MUSIC AND SOCIETY, 2000 - Hip hop music and culture,
once considered an American phenomenon, exists throughout the world
today. In each cultural area, hip hop artists filter American and other
foreign hip hop styles through their own local musical, social, and
linguistic practices, creating unique musical forms. Tanzania and
Malawi, two African countries, are no exception to this creative
process. Both countries have vibrant hip hop communities that draw
heavily on their knowledge of international, as well as local and
national, hip hop music and culture. In mediating between various hip
hop communities, rap artists and enthusiasts in both countries have
established distinctive rap cultures, particularly in regards to
language use in their music and everyday conversations. . .
The choices of language in Tanzanian rap music, whether English,
Swahili, or a combination of the two, reflect particular ideologies held
by hip hop musicians. English rap tends to borrow heavily from American
hip hop discourses and American culture. Songs are often about parties,
friends, or self praise for the group and the individual rappers in the
group. Rap in Swahili moves away from the more celebratory rap and
focuses on topics pertinent to Tanzanians, such as AIDS, drug use,
government corruption, lack of jobs, and the impossibility of attaining
a visa to leave the country. While groups who use English also rap about
important social issues and Swahili lyrics contain self-praise and other
features associated with rap discourses, generally the two languages
offer different avenues for rapping and reach different audiences within
the Tanzania hip hop scene.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2822/is_3_24/ai_82803971
MARIE-AGNES BEAU, SOUNDSCAPES - In England, the rap wave has rapidly
been absorbed by the strong club scene and has become pop or trip-hop.
There was no urgent need to use it as a strong means of political or
social expression, as immigrant communities were already well structured
and represented and public and artistic forms of opposition or
oppression were already strongly expressed by local personalities or
events for instance with the "dub poetry" of Caribbean artists such as
Linton Kwesi Johnson. On the other hand teenagers had other ways of
expression and opposition with punk and then grunge movements.
In France, the urban youth is not living in the same radical conditions
as in the US and they are not politically organized as in the UK. Their
suburbs are not real ghetto's and kids are not racially separated -
Blacks, Arabs and Whites living together in a social systems where they
were all going to school and also to university with more equal chances
- and therefore more integrated into society. They did not need to be so
violent but still had a lot to say and desperately needed to find their
own identity. Rap in French flowed spontaneously, sounded good and was
much more explicit than in English. . .
Now, and like everywhere else, the emerging face of rap in Europe is the
American mixture of this specific phrasing and beat to crossover styles,
easy samples from huge international hits.
http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/MIE/Part2_chapter08.shtml
MORE FLOTSAM & JETSAM
http://prorev.com/sam.htm
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CULTURE CAN'T BE COPYRIGHTED
Sam Smith
DON IMUS used the word 'ho' once and got suspended. 50 Cent used the
word 13 times in one number and seems to be doing okay. In the same
number he used the word 'nigga' 14 times.
At the heart of the Imus controversy is an interesting misunderstanding
about how language and cultures work. In the Washington Post, Eugene
Robinson, for example, slaps Imus around a bit and then offers this
carefully sanitized linguistic analysis:
"The word is an abbreviation of 'whore' that was introduced to the
popular lexicon by hip-hop music and that appears to have become firmly
established. We know what the word used to mean, but it's not so clear
just what it means now. Rappers use it as basically a synonym for
"woman," but their lyrics are so focused on sex that the word retains
the connotation of loose morals. The word is often used these days in
contexts where that sexual connotation is ignored. It's still there,
though."
An actual excerpt from 50 Cent may be more informative, however:
A-yo the bitch useta bring you dough
Useta be your bottom hoe
Now your paper comin' slow
She feel like she had ta go. . .
How you gunna catch some dates lookin like that hoe?
Bitch get off the sidewalk and into the street
Bitch the sidewalk is for pimpin bitch!
50 Cent is a former drug dealer and Don Imus is a former drug addict,
miner, gas station attendant and railway brakeman.
At present, however, they live just 59 miles away from each other: Imus
in Westport, CT; and 50 Cent in Mike Tyson's former mansion in
Farmington, CT. According to Mapquest, it would take only an hour and 17
minutes for one to pay a visit on the other. They are part of
contemporary upscale Connecticut culture. In a sense, Imus was just
copying something a neighbor had said.
50 Cent has sold 21 million albums using language such as the foregoing.
Don Imus got suspended.
At the heart of this contrast lies some truths we either ignore, don't
understand or pretend don't exist.
The first is that nobody has a copyright on culture.
As Jim Cullen wrote in the Art of Democracy, Mick Jagger
"self-consciously emulated the gruff singing style of black Chicago
bluesman Howlin' Wolfe, who himself reputedly got his name trying to
imitate the white country singer Jimmy Rodgers. Rodgers, for his part,
drew on nineteenth century black traditions -- and on the English
culture that later produced a twentieth-century middle-class white youth
like Jagger who wanted to sing like a poor black American."
This is a classic story of music, but cultural cross-fertilization
affects everything else we do as well. You can't live in America today
without being multi-cultural. The implicit presumption of Al Sharpton
and others that blacks can control the effect on language of words used
on 21 million albums worldwide makes no sense. If RIAA can't even
control who downloads the records how is the NAACP going to control what
effect these albums have on people? Or the phrases they pick up from
them?
Imus shouldn't have used the word 'ho' but neither should have 50 Cent,
because sooner or later someone like Imus is going to use it whether 50
Cent, Al Sharpton and Eugene Robinson like it or not. That's just the
way life works.
You can write about it, excoriate it, and suspend the offender of the
day. But when it's all over, words travel without a passport and are
impervious to any type of security screening.
Fourteen years ago, for example, Michael Marriott wrote a New York Times
piece on the revival in black culture of the word 'nigger.' One rapper
Kris Parker argued that its use would de-racialize it: "In another 5 to
10 years, you're going to see youth in elementary school spelling it out
in their vocabulary tests. It's going to be that accepted by the
society."
This, of course, is not what happened. But the debate happily goes on
with everyone having one thing in common: futile sanctimony.
Perhaps the best wisdom is that widely accepted by parents. If you don't
want your children saying bad things, don't say them yourself. The same
principle would work with rappers and talk show hosts.
MICHAEL MARRIOTT, NY TIMES, 1993 - One of America's oldest and most
searing epithets -- "nigger" -- is flooding into the nation's popular
culture, giving rise to a bitter debate among blacks about its
historically ugly power and its increasingly open use in an integrated
society.
Whether thoughtlessly or by design, large numbers of a post-civil rights
generation of blacks have turned to a conspicuous use of "nigger" just
as they have gained considerable cultural influence through rap music
and related genres.
Some blacks, mostly young people, argue that their open use of the word
will eventually demystify it, strip it of its racist meaning. They liken
it to the way some homosexuals have started referring to themselves as
"queers" in a defiant slap at an old slur.
But other blacks -- most of them older -- say that "nigger," no matter
who uses it, is such a hideous pejorative that it should be stricken
from the national vocabulary. At a time when they perceive a deepening
racial estrangement, they say its popular use can only make bigotry more
socially acceptable. . .
For the last several years, rap artists have increasingly used "nigger"
in their lyrics, repackaging it and selling it not just to their own
inner-city neighborhoods but to the largely white suburbs. In his song
"Straight Up Nigga," Ice-T raps, "I'm a nigga in America, and that much
I flaunt," and indeed, a large portion of his record sales are in white
America.
In movies and on television, too, "nigger" is heard with unprecedented
regularity these days. In "Trespass," a newly released major-studio film
about an inner-city treasure hunt, black rappers portraying gang members
call one another "nigger" almost as often as they call one another by
their names.
And every Friday at midnight, Home Box Office televises "Russell
Simmons' Def Comedy Jam," a half-hour featuring many black, cutting-edge
comedians who frequently use "nigger" in their acts. . .
Paul Mooney, a veteran black stand-up comic and writer, recently
released a comedy tape titled "Race." On the tape, which includes
routines called "Nigger Vampire," "1-900-Blame-a-Nigger," "Niggerstein,"
"Nigger Raisins" and "Nigger History," Mr. Mooney explains why he uses
the word so often.
"I say nigger all the time," he said. "I say nigger 100 times every
morning. It makes my teeth white.
Niggger-nigger-nigger-nigger-nigger-nigger-nigger-nigger-nigger. I say
it. You think, 'What a small white world.' "
Blacks who say they should use the word more openly maintain that its
casual use, especially in the company of whites, will shift the word's
context and strip "nigger" of its ability to hurt. . .
http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=
F00610F9345C0C778EDDA80894DB494D81
JOHN FENN & ALEX PERULLO, LANGUAGE CHOICE AND HIP HOP IN TANZANIA AND
MALAWI, POPULAR MUSIC AND SOCIETY, 2000 - Hip hop music and culture,
once considered an American phenomenon, exists throughout the world
today. In each cultural area, hip hop artists filter American and other
foreign hip hop styles through their own local musical, social, and
linguistic practices, creating unique musical forms. Tanzania and
Malawi, two African countries, are no exception to this creative
process. Both countries have vibrant hip hop communities that draw
heavily on their knowledge of international, as well as local and
national, hip hop music and culture. In mediating between various hip
hop communities, rap artists and enthusiasts in both countries have
established distinctive rap cultures, particularly in regards to
language use in their music and everyday conversations. . .
The choices of language in Tanzanian rap music, whether English,
Swahili, or a combination of the two, reflect particular ideologies held
by hip hop musicians. English rap tends to borrow heavily from American
hip hop discourses and American culture. Songs are often about parties,
friends, or self praise for the group and the individual rappers in the
group. Rap in Swahili moves away from the more celebratory rap and
focuses on topics pertinent to Tanzanians, such as AIDS, drug use,
government corruption, lack of jobs, and the impossibility of attaining
a visa to leave the country. While groups who use English also rap about
important social issues and Swahili lyrics contain self-praise and other
features associated with rap discourses, generally the two languages
offer different avenues for rapping and reach different audiences within
the Tanzania hip hop scene.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2822/is_3_24/ai_82803971
MARIE-AGNES BEAU, SOUNDSCAPES - In England, the rap wave has rapidly
been absorbed by the strong club scene and has become pop or trip-hop.
There was no urgent need to use it as a strong means of political or
social expression, as immigrant communities were already well structured
and represented and public and artistic forms of opposition or
oppression were already strongly expressed by local personalities or
events for instance with the "dub poetry" of Caribbean artists such as
Linton Kwesi Johnson. On the other hand teenagers had other ways of
expression and opposition with punk and then grunge movements.
In France, the urban youth is not living in the same radical conditions
as in the US and they are not politically organized as in the UK. Their
suburbs are not real ghetto's and kids are not racially separated -
Blacks, Arabs and Whites living together in a social systems where they
were all going to school and also to university with more equal chances
- and therefore more integrated into society. They did not need to be so
violent but still had a lot to say and desperately needed to find their
own identity. Rap in French flowed spontaneously, sounded good and was
much more explicit than in English. . .
Now, and like everywhere else, the emerging face of rap in Europe is the
American mixture of this specific phrasing and beat to crossover styles,
easy samples from huge international hits.
http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/MIE/Part2_chapter08.shtml
MORE FLOTSAM & JETSAM
http://prorev.com/sam.htm
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