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Transcription: [00:07:24]
{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
Let's have a big hand for the Scanner Boys and do not leave. Please don't leave because the next workshop is going to be real related.

[00:07:35]
We're going to do a workshop on rapping and DJ turntable spinning.

[00:07:39]
We've got the DJ for the Scanner Boys, Grand Wizard Sly, here, and the Grand Masters of Funk from Philadelphia.

[00:07:46]
The rapper's money man and Parry P and Cosmic Kev at the Wheels of Steel.

[00:07:53]
It's going to take us just a very few minutes as we pull the turntables on the stage so they won't get it wet. And then we'll go ahead and go on into the workshop.

[00:08:03]
[[audience background chatter]]

[00:08:33]
Rapping. How many out there know what rapping is?

[00:08:40]
Oh, c'mon, hold up your hands. Y'all don't know much, huh?

[00:08:43]
One, two, three, four, I can count them on two hands. Well, we're going to have to educate a lot of people.

[00:08:49]
The four with me here on the stage here at the Narrative Workshop Stage for the Black Expressive Culture from Philadelphia section of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival is over on my right, Grand Wizard Sly, DJ with the Scanner Boys.

[00:09:07]
And over on my left, the remarkable trio called the Grand Masters of Funk.

[00:09:11]
We have the rappers, Parry P and Money Man, and Cosmic Kev over on the turntables, or as they're called in the community, "The Wheels of Steel."

[00:09:20]
What we're going to do to start off the workshop is talk a little bit about rapping, and have some different examples of the different kinds of raps.

[00:09:28]
If the rain cuts out finally, if it stops, we'll be able to use the turntables and go ahead and show the different types of working the tables: blending, mixing, scratching, etc.

[00:09:40]
But, what we'll start off with is talking about rap. Now rapping is basically the art of rhyming to music.

[00:09:49]
Of coming up with either impromptu rhymes or with rhymes that you've written out in advance and you say or chant over a musical track.

[00:09:58]
The art of rhyming, the whole tradition of rhyming, is one that's had a long, long role in the black community.

[00:10:05]
Certainly, way back in the 1800s, there was a tradition, a tradition of poetry telling.

[00:10:11]
Not the sort of poetry that we associate with schools and with written word, but of, of rhyming out in the, out in the farm in the rural areas of making up stories through rhyme of telling experiences in rhyme.

[00:10:24]
There was a whole tradition which still exists very strongly in especially in Europe and North of rhymes called toasts.

[00:10:32]
Toasts are not the standard little one or two-line ditties that you say before you take a drink, rather, in the African American Community, a toast is a rhyme, is a poem, which can easily stretch from 150 to 500 lines.

[00:10:46]
It's something which you've never seen written down but you learn in the parties, you learn on the street, you memorize, and you improvise bit by bit building around the traditional storyline.

[00:10:58]
The toast had been passed down, certainly, since the late 1800s.

[00:11:02]
A correlate tradition - a tradition right along side that has been the tradition of of poetry. Street poetry, or poetry which is non-profane like the toasts are and is based more in experience.

[00:11:16]
It was really coming out of this whole tradition of rhyming that developed in the 1970s, at least in this country, in a big way, an art form called rapping.

[00:11:27]
Perry - let's see.. can we get you a mic? You've got a mic. Why don't you uh - explain what a rap is and then maybe give us a general example of a rap, before we get onto different styles?

[00:11:38]
{SPEAKER name="Parry P"}
A rap is words put together in a wrapping form, where they make - they make a rhyme like as you say - you can say, "Popcorn and horn and the beat goes on,"

[00:11:49]
It all rhymes, and when you rhyme, you have music. And then you go from there, and you keep goin' with the flow, like, you just, a constant flow of music and, uh, rhyming that comes outta your head.

[00:12:01]
{SPEAKER name="Parry P"}
Outta my head, anyway. [[laughter]]

{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
Right.

[00:12:02]
{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
Now different people make up raps in different ways. Could you talk a little bit about that?

[00:12:08]
{SPEAKER name="Parry P"}
Well, there's people that rap slow, people that rap fast, people that can't rap, people that try. [[laughter]]

[00:12:13]
I use different voices sometimes in my rap. Uh, there's - there's "street raps", about where you live. They call it um, message raps.