SLSL Intro: "rock 'n' roll will never die" meets "the meta-Elvis"

[William Zantzinger]

--- pynchonoid <pynchonoid at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/24/opinion/24DOWD.html
> 
> [...] 'the meta-Elvis.' [...] Rock 'n' roll and
> hip-hop used to be about protest; now they're the
> soundtrack of commodity capitalism, pushing cars,
> clothes, computers, vodka and running shoes. [...]

"It used to take longer for rebellion to go
commercial."

Did it? 

Why shouldn't  Hip-hop extend to televison, film,
advertising, fashion, the print media, and language
itself? It has. Rap bloomed in the dephs of the
ghetto, a place charaterized by overarching poverty,
violence, and crime. Now, it reflects a diversity of
lifestyles, opinions, feelings. And why not? Are not
the trials and tribulations of white boys and
wannabees worthy of rap? 
Why shouldn't woman in their forties blast N.W.A in
there mini-vans after they drop the kids off at soccer
practice? Why not? Are the roots of rap really tied to
something at the bottom of life, something gritty and
real on the hard crack vile littered broken down
busted up rusted up burnt out reality of Mean Street?
The voices of rap, the rhymes and rhythm of hip-hop
are as American as corn bread and Burger King. The
voices are varied, topics endless. Hip-hop
communicates, it instructs, it expresses, it is words
and sound. Honest depictions of sex and violence, the
liberal use of harsh, often sexist and racist
language, a celebration of rebellion and lawlessness
are elements of some rap and  hip-hop songs. Mostly,
these elements are emphasized by those that don't
understand the music and have labeled it crude,
obscene, bereft of beauty, lacking artistic merit. It
is not new, it is old, rooted not to Mean Street but
to America's past, to Jazz, to Rock and roll, to
gospel, to R&B, to blues, to soul, to funk, to
raggamuffin, to boogie, to the islnads, to
TV...books...disco...to the Bronx. 

And the Bronx, like Rap, like Hip-Hop, has this
reputation in the minds of those that have never lived
there, of being America's wort slum. The Bronx is a
fecund place where flowers bloom and rap and hip-hop
are but two plants twisting round the razor wire and
down the fire escape and up GunHill, into Van
Courtland Park, then down to the City, up Wall, down
Broadway, and into the heart and soul of America. 

"Is America Falling Apart?" By Anthony Burgess (1971) 

American individualism, on the face of it, an
admirable philosophy, wishes to manifest itself in
independence of the community. You don't share things
in common; you have your own things…Herein lies the
paradox. For the desire for possessions must
eventually mean dependence on possessions. Freedom is
slavery. 

Americans are at last realizing that the acquisition
of goods is not the whole of life. Consumption, on one
level is turning insipid, especially as the quality of
artifacts themselves seem to be deteriorating. Planned
obsolescence is not conducive to pride and
workmanship. On another level, consumption is turning
sour. There is a growing guilt about the masses of
discarded junk-rusting automobiles and refrigerators
and washing machines and 
Dehumidifiers--that it is uneconomical to
recycle…America, the world's biggest consumer is the
world's biggest polluter. Awareness of this is a kind
of redemptive grace, but it doesn't appreciably lead
to repentance and a revolution in consumer habits….
There is no worse neurosis than that which derives
from a consciousness of guilt and an inability to
reform. 
	America is anachronistic in so many ways, and the
list in its clinging to the belief-now known to be
unlivable-in the capacity of the individual citizen to
do everything for himself. Americans are admirable in
their distrust of the corporate state-they have fought
both Fascism and Communism-but they forget that there
is a use for everything, even the loathsome
bureaucratic machine. America needs a measure of
socialization, as Britain needed it. Things-especially
those we need most-don't always pay their way, and it
is here that the state must enter, dismissing the
profit element. Part of the present American neurosis,
again, springs from awareness of this but inability to
do anything about practical implementation. Perhaps
only a country full of bombed out cities feels capable
of this kind of social revolution. 
	Of course America was built on a rejection of the
past. Even the basic Christianity which it brought to
the continent in 1620 was of a novel and bizarre kind
that would have nothing to do with the great rank
river of belief that produced Dante and Michelangelo.
America as a nation ahs never been able to settle to a
common belief more sophisticated than the dangerous
naiveté of the Declaration of Independence. "Life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness," indeed. And now
America, filling in the vacuum of a liquefied British
Empire, has the task of telling the rest of the world
that there is something better than Communism. The
something better can only be making-money and
consumption for its own sake. In the name of this
ghastly creed the jungles must be defoliated. 

	No wonder the guilt of the thoughtful Americans I met
at Princeton University and New York and, indeed, all
over the Union tended to express itself as an
extravagant masochism, a desire for flagellation.
Americans want to take on all the blame they can find,
gluttons for punishment. "What do Europeans really
think of us?" 
"They think you're a load of decadent, gross-lipped,
potbellied, callous, overbearing neo-imperialists."
But the fact is that such an answer, however mush
desired, would not be an honest one. Europeans think
more highly of Americans now than they ever did. 

TBC
  

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