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Preface

Preface Prelate Rap is the blues of the twenty-first century, now taking shape in the closing quarter of the twentieth century, as the blues did during the last quarter of the nineteenth. The current emergence of rap is a by­ product of the emergency of black. This emergency still involves the dilemma of the racial "color-line," but it is complicated by the threat of racial genocide: the obliteration of all-black institutions, the polit­ ical separation of the black elite from the black working class, and the benign decimation of the "ghetto poor," who are perceived as nonproductive and therefore dispensable. I In such an emergency-in a volume entitled The Emergency of Black and the Emergence of Rap-the black scholar cannot afford to be separated from the black rapper, and vice versa. Neither can we allow the audiences of these two "teachers" to be divided, lest divided they fall. Odd as it may seem, black rappers actually are kindred counter­ parts to black academics: both groups regard and deify knowledge as possessing an inherent power that emancipates, that "saves." The ensuing introduction describes this common view as a secular equiv­ alent of religious gnosticism-the doctrine that emancipation from the clutch of http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Black Sacred Music Duke University Press

Preface

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Copyright
Copyright © 1991 by Duke University Press
ISSN
1043-9455
eISSN
2640-9879
DOI
10.1215/10439455-5.1.v
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Prelate Rap is the blues of the twenty-first century, now taking shape in the closing quarter of the twentieth century, as the blues did during the last quarter of the nineteenth. The current emergence of rap is a by­ product of the emergency of black. This emergency still involves the dilemma of the racial "color-line," but it is complicated by the threat of racial genocide: the obliteration of all-black institutions, the polit­ ical separation of the black elite from the black working class, and the benign decimation of the "ghetto poor," who are perceived as nonproductive and therefore dispensable. I In such an emergency-in a volume entitled The Emergency of Black and the Emergence of Rap-the black scholar cannot afford to be separated from the black rapper, and vice versa. Neither can we allow the audiences of these two "teachers" to be divided, lest divided they fall. Odd as it may seem, black rappers actually are kindred counter­ parts to black academics: both groups regard and deify knowledge as possessing an inherent power that emancipates, that "saves." The ensuing introduction describes this common view as a secular equiv­ alent of religious gnosticism-the doctrine that emancipation from the clutch of

Journal

Black Sacred Music – Duke University Press

Published: Mar 1, 1991

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