Accounting for Taste: Why I Hate Rhyming

Accounting for Taste: or Why I Hate Rhyming

                Today’s improvisation picks up where I left off yesterday with the fact that the music one loved in one’s youth has a staying power that influences our evaluations of subsequent musical developments to the point of prejudice.  Aesthetics was almost a dirty word when I was studying theory in grad school. It smacked of value judgments and vague notions of truth and beauty that were ahistorical and based on all sorts of prejudices.  Whenever the subject came up, my question was this, “Even when people think they can explain why they appreciate an artwork or particular genre of art form , isn’t it possible that they actually like it for some other, mostly unconscious reason?”   If so, then the same thing must also hold true for artists and genres that people “hate.”  I have been trying to figure out why I don’t care for rap.

     The reasons people give for responding positively to art and even entertainment must always include familiarity and exposure as factors. Some people reject the music of their parents or the art of the previous generation out of rebellion; others embrace familiarity and tradition out of a need for comfort and meaning. Some people like art to be challenging; others want it to be instantly relatable, but even that perception is on a continuum and not always the case on either side.  

      Sometimes younger people will assume that I know nothing about hip-hop or rap because of my age. If they know that I am a jazz person they sometimes ask me why I don’t know more about it, as it is also black music.  I have two answers to that question.  I still somewhat resent the postmodern collage technique of taking the fills and grooves of unpaid drummers and calling the result original. They usually understand that one and have reasonable arguments as to why I shouldn’t think that way. The other answer usually really surprises people, and I get the feeling that they don’t even believe me. The other reason is that I HATE RHYMING!

I am glad that rap exists and that it has given people a voice when they did not have one in this culture. I don’t know if Spike Lee’s “origin of rap” story is true, but it is revealing. Spike talks about how the music programs in NYC and other  black urban areas were cut drastically in the late 70s and that as a result people began to learn to play records instead of musical instruments. They made music however they could. Of course, without school programs, music lessons and instruments cost money, but then, so does the equipment required to be a DJ. I never connected the dots on that.  Anyone?

     As for the “poetry” of rap and hip-hop, I will admit to being prejudiced against it because of the way it sounds. Not because it sounds black and urban ( so does my favorite music!!!!) but because of the INCESSANT RHYMING! I can appreciate the rhythmic interest and complexity of some of the rapping, and I like when they use alliteration and internal rhyme. But end-rhymes do not sound hip to me. They sound corny. You don’t hear that word as much as you used to. “Corn” is the opposite of “Hip.” Corn is over-done and obvious. Corn is worn.

I like songs that avoid rhyming, and a melody sometimes makes a rhyme less obvious and predictable.  The only poems with end rhymes that I can tolerate are ones that are not written in rhymed couplets. I prefer  a rhyme scheme that is more complex and in which the rhymes come farther apart. I like unusual rhymes (e.g. Bob Dylan rhymes “capitol” and “skull”) but not when  they feel strained or come as end-rhymes.  To me, poetry that rhymes sounds old-fashioned  and childish.  The only rhyming poetry I have memorized is from Dr. Seuss. Check out the complexity of sound associations in this bit of “On Beyond Zebra”:

    And Floob is for “Floob-Boober-Bab-Boober-Bubs”

Who bounce in the water like blubbery tubs.

They’re no good to eat, you can’t cook ‘em like steaks,

But they’re handy in crossing small oceans and lakes.

     Seuss’s accomplishment is all the more impressive due to his using a limited vocabulary. His made-up words always had clear meanings or referred to something that he had also drawn a picture of. There is also very little repetition in a Dr. Seuss book.

     When I first heard rap I thought it was an interesting  novelty, like when Lou Rawls talked on records. Then it began to sound all the same to me.  It all sounded like “ My name is Meany, I have a big Weenie” chanted over a stolen drumbeat that I often recognized from an old funk, disco or soul jazz record. One of my favorite song lyrics is Lennon and McCartney’s “Strawberry Fields.” The closest thing to an end rhyme in that song is “real” and “fields.” There are other sound correspondences in the song, but very little rhyme of any kind. Yet, it is not blatantly obvious when you listen to it that it is unrhymed. When end rhymes are obvious and expected, I don’t hear the words for the banging and the clanging. So, to me, most rap sounds like

Blaba blaba baba  BANG

Blaba blaba baba  DANG

Blaba blaba baba  TANG

Blaba blaba baba  PANG

     Why do I have this prejudice against rhyme? To be honest, I think I used to like rhyme when I was a kid and read Dr. Seuss , Pope and Coleridge.  But when I first started to write and publish poetry (around 16) I knew that anything that rhymed was going to be rejected immediately by any serious,  adult poetry publication. I spent years avoiding rhymes in my work, or hiding them.  I think that pretty much explains why  poetry that rhymes is annoying to me. I will try to listen for something besides the rhymes, but they are still all I hear once the banging follows the clanging.

Changes in the Relationship Between Music and People (since the 1960s and 70s).

Changes in the Relationship Between Music and People (since the 1960s and 70s).

     If you are at least as old as me you will remember when middle class people could afford real pianos. People would come over and play and sing for each other, too, although the practice had been slowly dying out since records and radio took over what had once been the market for sheet music. I remember going over to a friend’s house and finding a treasure trove of old sheet music singles in their piano stool. I have never been a good sight reader, but I learned “As Time Goes By” from a once-glossy folio with Bogart and Bergman on the front. The first “gospel licks” I learned were from the folio for John Lennon’s “ Plastic Ono Band,” which had a reasonably good transcription of what Billy Preston played on “God” ( is a concept by which we measure our pain, yeah, pain, yeah, pain.)
     There were also pianos everywhere at school. There was one on the stage in the cafeteria/assembly room of the public high school I went to that was a focal point at lunchtime. There were musical factions then too of course, like the kid who only played Bacharach and had a coterie of swooning girls surrounding him. I could play things other people couldn’t because I either made them up or there was no accurate sheet music for them. My feeble by-ear attempt at “Linus and Lucy” or the piano groove to Joe Cocker’s “Feelin’ Alright” were frequent requests from my audience, which consisted only of another self-taught piano player. He was a rather tough guy, and we weren’t friends outside of meeting occasionally at the keyboard, but I won his respect because I could play some rock and roll. He taught me a boogie-woogie he knew and we played four-hand blues together. This was before I really started hitting it at the piano and was just messing around, but it was how many of us learned the basic blues.
     It was all so different from today’s nation of I-Pod earphone wearers. When I was a kid if someone asked “What are you listening to?” it was usually a parent trying to figure out what we heard in Frank Zappa that made us smile. The fragmentation of the “markets” for music has made us more consumers of product and less involved in the way music reflects the culture. And the music doesn’t reflect the culture in the same way either, but in shards and fragments. Outside of these smaller audiences, we are aware of some popular artists only through the applause heard coming from an unseen adjacent theatre.
     We listened to records in groups, too. We sat in cars in school parking lots for the purposes of listening to and playing new music for our friends. You had your choice of vehicles and cliques to hang around whenever a new Zeppelin album came out. The top 40 radio then included a mix unheard of today: Aretha, Streisand, the Beatles, the Jackson 5, Jimi Hendrix, Credence Clearwater, Marvin Gaye and Tom Jones. It was possible to hear the Doors and Frank Sinatra on the same station, or Ray Charles and Roger Miller. 

     Our culture’s relationship with music hasn’t changed in at least one respect though: whatever pop music was new and hip when you were young will always seem to be better than what these kids nowadays are listening to.

Recent History Lessons about War, Politics and Art

In today’s culture, History Lessons are more often shouted down than Ideological  Rants. Here is a little of both for you to dismiss or engage with:

The witch hunting during the Thirty-Years War in the 1600s seems parallel to the persecution of Communists between the World Wars and during the Cold War. The obvious similarity is that in both cases, the ruling class was distracting the people with an enemy besides starvation, religion and rulers. But that is not the most interesting parallel. When a prevailing system has failed most of its people, they will turn to other ways and worldviews. Thus there were many Americans of conscience who “became Communist” or had socialist sympathies during the Depression, and there were probably Christians who turned back toward paganism and its wise women when the male leaders of the Protestant and Catholic factions were obviously screwing things up pretty badly for the vast majority. The Church repressed the theatre in the 17^th century and the Republicans in the 1930s shut down the leftist leaning Federal Theatre project for similar reasons: The theatre and music have power and speaks to the people directly. Art makes people feel and think, and it can either be used to pacify or agitate. Thus, whoever censors or controls access to the Arts has a powerful tool of persuasion or distraction.

     Now to the Iraq War, which lasted longer and killed more people (including more American soldiers) than Vietnam.: http://www.viewzone.com/wardeaths.html

 Remember how artists who came out against the Iraq War were booed by the “with us or against us” faction, who saw themselves as the only patriots because they “supported the troops”? People walked out and protested Neil Young’s show in Atlanta, and booed Michael Moore when he called Bush on his bullshit at the Oscars. But it is telling that the mass media chose the anti-war protestations of the Dixie Chicks as the story, and not because they were more popular at the time, either. As long as you are going to put down the anti-war artists, why not take a shot at feminism as well?

Divisiveness between the anti-war left and the pro-empire right was of course nothing new, although it seemed new to people not old enough to have lived through the Vietnam Era. In Georgia, even in the academic oasis of Athens, my anger toward the war-mongering Bush administration was immediately shot down when I dared to express it.  I felt like a “whore in church” to use a Southern expression. More than one incident was sparked by the “Impeach Bush” sticker on my old car. A man in a brand new Lexus rolled up next to me at a stoplight after sitting behind me for a second. He rolled down his silent electric window and shouted at me, “You are not a real American!”

I replied calmly, “So half the population of the country are not real Americans?” noticing that he was not listening and did not care what I said anyway.

“He’s protecting your freedom!” shouted the redneck in the 3-piece suit and the Lexus.

“He stole the presidency, and now he’s a war criminal!”…. is what I WANTED to say, but I was afraid he would get out of the car and challenge me, so instead I repeated that I was not alone, that “ at least half of the country doesn't agree with you, either.”

He drove off hurriedly cursing me. Such was the public discourse over that War in Georgia. Atlantans who enjoyed the music of Crosby Stills Nash and Young walked out on and booed Neil’s song “Let’s Impeach the President for Lying.”  Did those people assume that because there was a down-home white country tinge to the music of CSN&Y, that old, hippie rock musicians would be sympathetic to ignorance?

Everyday Life in the Late 50s for 8/5/14.

2.  The Dentist Bites

     One of the signs of aging for me is that the dentist seems very serious and concerned about the future of my teeth these days. 

     I always choose female dentists and so far have not encountered one with large hands. Small hands help in feeling less “probed.” Lying on your back with your mouth open is beyond supplication and into the area of submission.

      The technology and presentation at the dentist have improved drastically since I was a kid with problem teeth.  But when you get old, you don’t really want to see the digital close-ups and x-rays of your worn, decaying teeth on a big screen pulled down in front of your face. The dental profession knows that on sight of these images you will exclaim in horror, “Just do it! Whatever it means, whatever it costs….fix that!”

1. Everyday Life in the late 50s with C.B. Davis, Ph.D. for 8/4/2014

 The Aisle of Incontinence

     I used to be young. It wasn’t that long ago. Today I am pushing a loudly rattling grocery cart through Target, doing some shopping for dinner. I always seem to get the loudly rattling or squeaky cart or the one with the wheel that does not  turn at all and cuts you short in the belly when you try to change direction. Maybe I should mark them with permanent color markers. Red for rattle, sapphire for squeak, blue for wheel. This is my life now.

     Suddenly I find myself in an aisle I’ve never been down or even seen before. The shelves seem towering with stacked boxes and plastic packages of….incontinency supplies. Is this a sign? Just as I am thinking about getting old I turn down an entire supermarket aisle devoted to “Depends” and its competitors. Is the sheer in-stock volume of these senior diapers due to the Baby Boomers all getting incontinent at once?

     My speed leaving the Aisle of Incontinence made the cart squeak not only faster but louder. Trying to forget about this incident, I looked around in sporting goods and realized that I really needed to find the restroom.