Can You Understand "The Message"?
Can You Understand The Message? Dating back to the times of slavery, the black community in America has historically used music as a vehicle for self-expression and introspection. The blues was the original form of musical self-expression, and was conceived from “field hollering”, the melodious manner in which slaves working the fields and forests aired out grievances and gave their opinions on their present situation. The use of music for communal empowerment and expression of self within the black community is still seen today, but is seen in the more contemporary genre of hip-hop music which originated in the early 70s in the New York Inner City. Grandmaster Flash is credited with being one of the original pioneers of the hip-hop movement and musical genre. The idea behind the hip-hop movement was one of peace - solve problems with words not guns; and “The Message”, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s most popular song released in 1982 off their album The Message, served to embody perfectly the group’s creed. Similar to how it is possible to understand the problems and qualms the slaves had by listening to the blues, understanding the contemporary problems of the black community was made possible via the hip-hop medium. “The Message” discusses and boldly brings to the forefront issues of poverty, the cyclical nature of socio-economic stagnation, the plight of women, and lack of education,, all pressing issues that plagued the black community specifically those living in the inner city. In this paper, I will carefully examine several technical musical elements of hip-hop music as seen in “The Message”, its lyrics, instrumentation, vocalization, melody, tempo, mood, and illustrate their impact on the aforementioned thematic content of the song. Furthermore, I will affirm that hip-hop music, like its predecessor the blues, is a thriving mechanism for self-expression, a product of resistance, and if applied appropriately, a thriving facilitator of awareness
Cited: 1. Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five. The Message. The Message. Sugar Hill Records, 1982. .