Kapt Kaos

Posts Tagged ‘rap’

I have been know to say that rap/hip-hop isn’t music. That is a taste thing and not a technical analysis on my part. However, Pandora’s blog has a great post on just this very question.

This idea that rap somehow “isn’t music,” is pretty prevalent, so let’s check it out. Setting aside the minefields of class and culture and race and just keeping it to the music.

Pop songs, folk songs, art songs, and even instrumental music are almost always built around a melody. In most rap, that focal role of the melody is replaced by the voice of the rapper, and by the words. Now it turns out that the vocal cadences of rapping do in fact have a whole music of their own (as do our own speaking voices), and it’s a music that is quite subtle and absolutely bursting with the kinds of deep human information that animate the strongest art.

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Technorati Tags: Pandora, rap, music