Not so long ago, the only kind of Rap you could find in Bali was of the sarong variety. That’s all changed over the last couple of years or so, as the island gets more and more switched on to styles of music other than bruising progressive such as funk, soul, hip hop, R&B.... specifically black music, whatever that means. Actually, what does that mean?

Technically, all popular music is rooted in African American culture. At the beginning of the 20th century, Negro spirituals and worksongs were busily evolving into Blues. Traditional folk music with its roots in Africa blended with light classical pieces to produce the first rudimentary jazz & blues compositions, usually played by marching bands or solo on a banjo or piano. Ragtime was probably the earliest form of jazz – but it was to be joined by more than 20 other distinctive styles including trad, be bop, hard bop, gypsy, swing, fusion and a host of others. Meanwhile, the blues with its purest musical aesthetic built on 12 bar bent-note melodies was taken by innovators like BB King and T Bone Walker and given a new aesthetic that came to be known as R&B. And then, in the immortal words of Muddy Waters ... “the blues had a baby and they named it rock n roll.” The first rock n roll artists were black and as they began to get airplay on the burgeoning radio stations of the day, the need for a more acceptable white face to lead the rock n roll charge became necessary.
While Elvis was taking up that mantle, Jazz and Blues continued to develop and inspire new musicians who would take a current sound and bend it out of shape, or fuse it with another. In the sixties and seventies, there was an orgy of innovation as artists took the music to new extremes. Legends like Sam Cooke and Ray Charles invented soul in the early sixties by blending gospel with jazz, while in the late sixties, James Brown stripped down R&B and came up with a beat & bass line driven sound called funk. In the seventies artists like Chick Corea and Stanley Clarke were pioneering fusion styles and jazz rock, jazz luminaries like Miles Davis Herbie Hancock, Roy Ayers, Gil Scott Heron and Donald Byrd were developing something called jazz-funk. Latin Jazz enjoyed a longer history, though it was in the sixties that artists like Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd introduced US audiences to Brazilian musicians like Jao Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim while Cuban derived styles like Son, Salsa and Mambo had long been a part of the jazz scene. Offshore on a little island not that far from Cuba, an entirely original and hugely influential musical genre was taking shape, namely Jamaican reggae, which brough together Afro-Caribbean styles and the popular R&B & Soul coming in from the States. And let’s not forget George Clinton and his paliafunkadelicment thang, throwing rock, funk, psychedelia, folk and not a little acid into his unique musical punch.Many of these style were highly politicized, always providing a cultural reflection of political and social struggle. One form, reggae, in addition to being highly political, was also the soundtrack to a religion, Rastafarianism.And then there was Disco. And Hip Hop. And Electro. The seventies and early eighties saw artists using recorded music to make new material. Pioneering DJs like Larry Levan were taking disco and jazz funk tracks and ‘remixing’ them, extending instrumental jams for club audiences. Hip Hop pioneers like Grandmaster Flash Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaata were using vinyl exclusively to make tunes, borrowing from the cutting and mixing culture of the reggae soundsytems. Kool Herc was the first to use double copies so he could extend a break in the middle of a record indefinetly by switching between records. Herc and Afrika Bambaata used to battle each other, pitting soundsystem against soundsystem, and doing Jamacain style ‘toasting’ or rapping while they played. Sugarhill Gang’s ‘Rappers Delight’ was the first real rap smash and was enormously influential, influencing white new wave bands like Blondie following quickly in its wake. Afrika Bambaata’s Planet Rock took a sample from Kraut synth pioneers Kraftwerk and suddenly electro was born, while Bambaata’s partner Melle Mel was the first to introduce extended narratives into rap.

Today, Hip Hop and its soul derived cousin R&B are without a doubt the most popular of popular music styles, while reggae and dub continue to throw up new talents as well as infusing a whole range of other musical styles. In the UK now, a new style of Rap has emerged, championed by kids from the Estates, the Brit equivalent of the Projects. Known as ‘Grime’ it’s characterised by a blisteringly paced rhyming style, techno beats influenced by Jamaican dancehall and UK Garage. Artists like Dizzee Rascal and recently M.I.A are bringing the UK Urban sound to international audiences and carrying on a long legacy of musical invention.

And in Bali? While tastes in Hip Hop remain fairly commercial, there are a few B-Boy masterminds on the island three of whom we’ll be profiling next issue. 66 stage a monthly drum and bass night complete with an MC direct from the UK underground which is gaining quite a following and Kudeta’s DJs regularly incorporate classic soul, jazz and funk into their sets. JD