Friday, February 6, 2009

Commenting on the Origin of Rap Music

COMMENTING ON THE ORIGIN OF RAP MUSIC IN USA as having it roots in Scottish bars and not IN AFRICA and Lady Wiiba Bin of Nso’.



In Africa Rap Music was like an open window of freedom of speech in a house where such was censured.

We will dispute this theory as slaves were not allowed to even learn the proper language (Europhone) of the slave masters (Whites), the only book they were grudgingly allowed to own was the Holy Bible. They were forced to keep their distance from their white masters and mistresses who regarded them as animals and were ever suspicious of them. There was not cordial relationship whereby they could be taught poetry, rap and other disciplines. The reasoning was that the language of the Caucasians was like a tool for liberation which if Africans mastered; they were going to use it as a platform to stand on to demand their liberty. Therefore to talk of Africans Americans having learned rap from Caucasians of the past is utterly unfounded and farfetched.

Slaves were constantly transferred from one plantation or factory to another and never allowed to have steady families that you take for granted today. Slave masters deprived them of their languages (Africaphone) they brought from Africa as a way of breaking them down so that they could not secretly plan a coup against their slave masters. They were raped of their African names and enforced Greco –Judea -Roman names that meant nothing to them.

However, one thing is clear, run-away slaves kept their African traditions or singing and rapping and would sing their songs and rapped. Those who could not run away as in the southern USA, when given the least time for breaks away from their hawkish masters who treated them as animals they improvised and reminisced entertainment as back in mother Africa and one of these was rapping. Remember that it was alleged that one white was equal to eight Africans. It tells you how low Africans were looked down upon. We are looking into history now as African activists fought hard with blood, sweat and tears and they are marching forward with the first African American President Elect, Barack Obama. The past is shelved and a bright future of all races around one table is in the horizon.

Furthermore, prior to the blossoming of raps of recent in the West, rap music was and had been in Africa since time immemorial. Those readers who have done Ethnomusicology know that African history was essentially oral tradition and one way to pass it from generation to generation was via raps and sometimes folklore narration. It was therefore passed with ease and easily recapitulated by listeners since most of the composers injected in them natural rhyming schemes.

Those of you from Nso’ Kingdom in Western Africa will recall the remarkable heroine, Lady Wiiba Bin. She was a royal composer, singer and rapper. Lady Bin never ever entered the four walls of a Western class room and was not fluent in English till she left this earth. She had never heard of American raps, yet she had been rapping in the fifties in her native Nso’ Kingdom when Americans were exporting a different kind of music to Africa. Do you sincerely believe that she learned her marvelous chants and rapping from the Scottish bars in Scotland and translated them into Lam Nso’? Romors circulate by some Whites who always want to get credit for all that sells, that rap started by Scots in their bars. Can an Nsonite really buy this? We are not denying the fact that Northerners did not compose and wrote sonnets. Remember that mankind is one and we do not see even what we call primitive communities not composing beautiful poetry and rapping. So Northerner, Caucasians also innately rapped as did Southerners, Africans and others.

You will recall that traditional African set up was not book-learned; even hitherto and one way of passing information is by word of mouth. That is why the phone business is perhaps the fastest growing industry after brewery in say West Africa. For those of you who understand Lingala spoken in central Africa, Nso’, Tiv, Hausa in North Nigeria and Niger, Yoruba, Ibo, and Shona, languages the colonialists derogatorily called dialects, griots (street singers) who sang the praises of VIPS, and criticize certain development in the communities used rap. They covered their ears as they rapped current affairs, epic stories and so on. Where the local authorities did something that was disputed, elderly women rapped in the public to demonstrate their disapproval. With rapping one had all the freedom to criticize, suggested solutions and even abuse and he or she was never prosecuted. In Africa Rap Music was like an open window of freedom of speech in a house where such was censured. This was before Europeans came to Africa with evil or good intentions, slave trade and colonialism. Rap is still very strong in the traditional Africa set ups. I challenge readers to visit central Africa, western and the horn of Africa with a tape to listing to traditional rap of those who are not educated in the Western sense of education. Their sort of rapping is unique and you are going to connect with the rap as in down town clubs in Chicago, LA, NY, Georgia, etc. and in Europe.

Instead it should be stated that the Scots learned from the Maurs (Africans) who were taken to Scotland to serve the gentries, lords, kings and queens before the dreadful episode in human history of Africa slave trade ever started (for those interested readers who want to be in terms with me, read the biography of Francis Drake, the official pirate of Queen Elizabeth I. These Maurs sometimes written Moors were already brought in to the UK, particularly by the Scottish sailors before the dreadful Queen Elizabeth I started her ban on miscegenation and stop the importation of Africans into the UK and falsely claiming that Africans who were essentially domestics and musicians were to pollute and debase the purity of the Anglo-Saxons. Was that true? That is a different story but I have brought this to put a period when Africans were respected as excellent musicians in Scotland and the Scots might have copied from these Maurs rapping techniques.

If one is linking the passing of rap by the Scots it had to be disputed for the following facts: If the Scots who immigrated to the USA and became slavers might have passed rapping to the slaves and this is disputed. We doubt this for “superior Whites” were not even allowed to teach the slaves music or any other knowledge that would make them be respectable and get out of their alleged animal forms. For those still doubting this, see the outline on the breaking down of a slave by Willie Lynch in H.J. Harris book: IS AMERICA RACIST? 2008. Also, Africans were used to epic poetry as in Francis Babe's rendering: AFRICAN MUSIC: A PEOPLE'S ART (1975).

Many persons had even been trying to dispute the fact that African Americans did not teach European Caucasians rock and roll. The fact is that if African Americans were not there, there would not have been any rock and roll that we take its proliferation now for granted. The white music was essentially country music and classic stuff that is often associated with the slaves from Africa who ended up in Persia that later on spread to Europe and gave rise to classical music. That is a different story. Many a great Caucasians musicians as Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, …do admit that they are indebted to Africans for the music they play, introduced in North America by African Americans, descendants of erstwhile African slaves. If rock-and-roll is innately African, why would you doubt that rap is not inherently African or came from Africa? Europeans did write and recite poetry and old literate as Chaucer, etc, support this fact, and then it was not a way of life as in Africa that was essentially not book-learned as in European communities.

The truth is that many a Caucasians have invented lots of things (so did many an Africans and other races) and we give them credit for these achievements. Those are facts. When it comes to rapping as rapped by African Americans it originated from Mother Africa. Let no one not try to take away this from Africans by uplifting spurious underpinnings. Watch out for those as Dr. J. Watson who last year (2008) told lies to feel good when with his neurosis and nervousness as once stated by Adolf Hitlers without a shred of evidence that the IQ of whites was higher than that of Africans and their descendants. That is a different story that was hotly debated and his allegation refuted and filed. Whatever the case, let no one of whatever color try to bamboozle Africans in this century by falsely putting them down as was in the past without scientific proofs or concrete evidence. Scientifically, all human being are the same and there is no question of one being superior to the other. If the first man created or evolved, call it what you like in Africa on whose podium would you stand to stated that the first tradition as rap came from outside Africans and not from Africans? I have admitted other inventions or tradition but when it comes to music and a plethora of musical instruments, no matter how “primitive”, they first originated in Africa.

Viban Viban Ngo, PhD

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About the Author: Viban Viban NGO, a Canadian You may contact him for further information by writing to him on Email vibanngo@yahoo.com URL http://www.flagbookscanadainternationalinc.com