Ho-down!

Billy Joel once put it best: don’t call rap music “music” because it ain’t. It has no melody.

Okay, I’ll confess to hating it. It goes with being an old white guy. But when I was already in my 40s and walking the mile to my university office past student rentals, I would hear Hendrix and Clapton blaring from the windows and smile with the satisfaction that rock would never die and that I had something in common with people twenty years younger than me. That all changed when cars with booming basses, driven by geeky white kids with caps turned around, started pulling up next to me at stop lights.

But this post is not a diatribe against rap, just an observation that occurred to me recently: rap, I believe, is totally analogous to country & western.

Think about it. Each reflects a racial demographic. Performers in each genre dress the part (bling or Stetsons). Each also targets a social demographic (urban vs. rural) as reflected in the content of lyrics (songs about homeboys and ho’s vs. ones about good ol’ boys and their longsuffering women). Each is instantly recognizable through vocal affectation (shout vs. drawl) and instrumentation (scratch vs. pedal steel). Each celebrates dubious activity (street crime vs. alcohol abuse) and under-education. And neither exactly thrives on musical virtuosity (IMHO). The bottom line: each sustains a stereotype. And while I recognize that the same can be said for any number of genres, rap and c&w also have this in common: each annoys the hell out of me.

I’d like to think it safe to say that never the twain shall meet, but I once witnessed a bizarre congruence right here in Prescott (a.k.a. “Everybody’s Hometown”). There was an event on the courthouse square that included square dancing – a live caller with a karaoke machine. And I swear that for at least one number he was doing rap. The dancers didn’t seem to mind. Maybe they thought it was a “ho-down.”

After a brief deer-in-the-headlights moment, I got away from there as fast as I could. Now whenever a booming bass pulls up next to me, I’m afraid to look. Cowboy hats turned around are not a pretty sight.