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Transcription: [00:12:22]
{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
Now, a little bit of an explanation of what we've got there. Rapping as an art form, as it is currently popular, is something which only developed within the last decade.
[00:12:35]
However, rap has its roots way back.
[00:12:42]
The art of rhyming within the Black community has been with us easily since the early 1800s.
[00:12:50]
The street rhyme, the impromptu verse, has always been a very very important part of the verbal culture of Black America.
[00:12:59]
From references made in newspapers and books in the 1800s through the - in the early 1800s - through the late 1800s when you start having in the Black minstrel shows, in the Black carnival shows, people who specialize in saying whatever they had to say in rhyme.
[00:13:15]
Rhyming was important, rhyming was the skill which was in many ways a symbol of one's proficiency.
[00:13:24]
If you were a good rapper in terms of being able to rhyme in the community, then you built your status.
[00:13:30]
Now, around the turn of the century there developed two forms in the Black community of rhyming; two different traditional forms where the rhymes appeared in a rather set manner.
[00:13:41]
The first of these was called the Toast. Now, when we talk about Toasts, we're not talking about one- or two-line verses that you say when you take a drink.
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How many of you know what a Toast in the Black community is?
{SILENCE}
Not too many--
[00:13:58]
Now, for those who did know, tell me if we could do a Toast on stage here.
{SILENCE}
[00:14:07]
If we were to do a Toast, most Toasts, on the stage at the Smithsonian, we would be run out of here so fast--
[00:14:14]
{SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"}
So fast.
{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
back to Philadelphia.
[00:14:15]
The Toast is a narrative poem that often extends 150, 200, 250, up to 500 lines.
[00:14:27]
Now, the thing about a Toast is that it is never written down.
[00:14:32]
Toasts are built around traditional stories told in the community at social gatherings, at parties, on the street corner.
[00:14:39]
They are invariably profane; every fourth or fifth word is something that we couldn't do up here without getting in real trouble.
[00:14:48]
The Toasts are traditional in that the storylines, the rhyme, and the meter are passed down in the community. They're largely male, though not entirely, but primarily male performance forms.
[00:15:01]
There's a correlate, there's a parallel to the Toast in the Black community, at least in the African-American South, that was simply called the Poem.
[00:15:10]
Now, the Poem is not a traditional story.
[00:15:12]
The Poem, again, is an orally recited piece, can be just as long as a Toast, you can say it for 15 minutes, it's never written down, it is not profane, nor is it traditional in terms of the actual content.
[00:15:27]
Rather, a Poem, as it's called in the Black community, is a long rhyming recitation that is based in experience. What is traditional thus is not the content, because the content thus is one's own personal experiences.
[00:15:44]
The rhyme, the meter, those are traditional. And the act, of course, of rhyming in a party and social situations.
[00:15:53]
Poems and Toasts were very popular in the South and the urban North and are still rather popular in the urban North though both forms are receding in popularity and have been replaced over the generations with a variety of other forms of rhyming.
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Perhaps the most obvious to most of us here is the rhyming art of the DJ.
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Now, when I say the DJ, I'm not speaking about the DJ who works the double turntables to a rap group or a breakdance team,
[00:16:23]
but rather the DJ who worked the radio stations, the rhythm and blues DJs of the 1950s who would come up with long rhyming patter to introduce or conclude the records that they put on.
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The raps of the DJ, those long rhyming pieces, were what gave birth immediately to the art of rapping as we now know it,
[00:16:46]
just like the rap you heard a short while ago with our rappers here from the Punk Funk Nation.
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I think the question now that we should ask is, "What makes up a rap? How do you put together a rap and why do you do it?"
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And I'll address that to both of the members of the Punk Funk Nation here.
[00:17:03]
M.C. Caesar, why don't you start?
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{SPEAKER name="M.C. Caesar"}
Well, I take all kinds of rhyming words, and I put 'em together. Whether back-to-back or in a sentence form and I create a message.
[00:17:17]