Caucasian Confucius: History of Music

I rilly like kuntry music, but all the uther kinds of music are stoopid to me. Like rap and rock and stuf lyke that. I espeshully done't lyke the music that haz the skarey black peeple yelling. I done't lyke them black peeple. Wut is yore opiniun? - Chuck, Odessa, Texas

Dear Chuck:

In this day and age, music is a very complicated and detailed subject. It's a lot different from the "good ole days," as you would call the time before minorities had rights. In the good ole days, there were only two major kinds of music: "Good music" and "evil satanic Communist music," also referred to as rock n' roll.

Good music was sung in country clubs, hotel ballrooms, and your more fashionable whorehouses. It consisted mostly of a violinist, a pianist, and a token black guy on the drums, who was only there because if he ever left and went outside, ten cops would blast him with a firehose. There was also a vocalist, who would stand up front in a black tie and white coat, singing "hep" tunes like this:

Oh yea, doo-wop, please don't stop

Lovin' that good ol' doo-wop-bop

Singin' and dancin' 'till I drop

When I do, tell the drummer to bring the mop

Oh, yea, doo-wop-bop

For the longest time, "proper" music like this was the only kind of acoustic expression around. However, in the 1950s, American culture was invaded by a new brand of music. A sharper, louder, edgier, even more "hep" kind of music: Rock n' Roll. Rock n' Roll was invented by middle-class white people who listened to jazz sung by black people, then added a guitar, threw out the black people, and started jammin'. While reviled by the prissy, stuck-up listeners of "proper" music (anyone over age 25), rock n' roll took off, and those who performed it well became international stars. The black people who invented it continued to get hosed by police, but no one cared. Rock n' roll was the new "in" thing. It sounded something like this:

I got my little deuce coupe on a really fast track,

Got a surfboard in the trunk and a chick in the back,

Daddy's at home and he doesn't have a clue,

Just what me and that girl are gonna undress and do

Oooh, I'm feelin' good...

Proper music died out over the next 50 years, but rock n' roll lived on, and continued to thrive among the middle-class white sector well into the 21^st century. However, in the 1980's, an even newer type of music emerged. It had no guitars. It had no pianos. Hell, sometimes it didn't even have real singing. I am referring, of course, to rap.

Rap music was invented by poor black people who were forced to stay inside their urban tenements all day for fear of getting hosed or castrated by police dogs. One day a couple of them finally stuck their heads outside and realized that all the white people had fled to gated communities, someplace called "the suburbs." They had also taken all the musical instruments with them. Feeling the urge to express themselves, but having no guitars, trumpets, or even piccolos, the black people dreamed up rap. In the beginning, rap was very simple. One guy would sit down and bang his fist on a table, providing a soulful beat. Another guy would stand up and come up with a catchy rhyme. All the other people would bob their heads in time.

At first, the white suburbanites laughed and waved off this new art form, believing it to be a passing fad. "Look at those funny black people!" they said. "They're banging on stuff and bobbing their heads! Ha ha ha!" Then they would lock their gates and listen to their Village People LPs.

Then, in the late 1980s, a couple rebellious white men at a record company decided to give this ridiculed so-called "art" a shot at the mainstream market. They found a few black people who were especially gifted at banging, rhyming, and bobbing; gave them a couple bass drums and a cymbal; and turned them loose in front of the mic. It was supposed to be a one-time joke. "Ha ha! Let's record this stuff!" they said. "It's so stupid, it may actually sell!"

And lo and behold, it DID sell. To the shock and horror of every middle-aged white person in America, rap music began infiltrating modern pop culture. Rap, and the rappers that rapped it, were found in magazines, on television, in movies, in books, and even in the suburbs. Yes! The white children of white men and white women were listening to "black people music"! How? Nothing like this had ever happened before! (Well, actually, it had happened before, in the 1950's, with jazz and rock n' roll. But the white parents deny it.)

Unlike proper music and rock n' roll, rap was raw. It cussed. It yelled. It was performed by (gasp) black people. It was everything the white people had hidden behind electric gates to escape. And now their own kids were bringing it into their homes.

It's 2007 now, Chuck, and rap is still here. Rock n' roll is still here. And if you visit enough country clubs and hotel ballrooms, you may even catch some proper music now and then.

You'll notice that I did not discuss country music, your music of choice. This is because I know nothing about country, really, though I'll guess it goes something like this:

My wife she done left me

And she took my hound dog too

I got kicked by my cow

And my income tax is due.

In any event, music takes many shapes, many forms. And what, you asked, is my own music of choice?

Any kind that can somehow teach you to spell. I recommend the jingles in "Hooked on Phonics." Thank you.