For thousands of years, singers and musicians needed compensation for their performances so that they could continue to make music and still put food on the table. Things haven't changed much that way. Through the centuries, there were traveling minstrels, gypsies, troubadours, vaudeville acts, chamber ensembles, etc. Touring isn't a new idea. For example, popular Italian showman and violinist extraordinaire Nicolo Paganini started doing European concert tours in the 1790's.

In 1828 he began a six and half year tour that started in Vienna and ended in Paris in 1834, which made him a wealthy man as he played to sold out theatres and standing ovations everywhere. He was a wild man on stage; some said he was possessed by the devil.

Touring still goes on today but music is consumed in dramatically different ways. The music industry has changed most radically because of digital technology. The main thing to realize about the anything digital is that many people can get to it at once; it's easy to reproduce. People around the globe have instant access to a song with the click of a mouse. Music has never been so portable. Mankind couldn't even record music until just over 100 years ago! We have no idea what the human voice sounded like all those millions of years before then; we can only guess what the voices of our ancient ancestors sounded like as evolved over the eons.

Art, music and singing has always reflected social conditions of the day, and people go to great lengths to spread these messages because they matter, and they have an audience. Village songs that mourn the death of a community member, chanting in a temple, mothers singing lullabies to babies and antiphonal call-and-response bellowing born in the fields of slavery are all examples of the ceremonious way that music serves us to hail the communal emotion. It mirrors what's near and dear to our hearts or what makes us see red with anger. Art and music are about more than pleasure: it always has a message.

It has been said that rapping was started by a Jamaican emigrant named Clive Campbell who was born in 1955 in Kingston, Jamaica. He is called The Father of Hip Hop. He was a tall weight-lifter nicknamed Kool Herc. His first DJ gig was spinning records at his sister's birthday party. Then it was Bronx street parties in the 1970's and it grew. But some say that the Blues were being rapped as early as the 1920's in Mississippi.

The history of rap is fascinating, and if you dig for information you will learn that it is indeed ancient.

Rap is so unique because its true roots lie in improvisation. While someone is free styling rap to a beat, the parameters are specific. It is not easy to do at first. Her are 10 things I think a good rap performance demands:

1. The story has to make (some kind of) sense, with a message.
2. The words have to fit within a musical bar / phrase / metre.
3. Rapping is very physical, sometimes moving as much as a professional dancer as they perform.
4. The rapper needs a fantastic sense of rhythm and where the beat is.
5. The content has to be continually interesting enough to keep the listener engaged.
6. Today, words usually have unique pop culture references or brand names.
7. Words have to be understandable; there is no melody so it's all about the words.
8. The rapper needs the ability to talk fast and have total control over words.
9. The rapper must bring attitude and personality to the performance.
10. In addition to all of that, the words need to have a quality of rhyming.

Phew! There are many more things involved in rapping. Those of you who haven't become familiar with it might gain respect for rap if you try to do it yourself. The first rap I learned was the spoken section of “Pump Up The Jam” because I sang that song in a band I worked with. I loved doing it more each time! Girls, try to transcribe the rap by L'il Kim in Moulin Rouge's cover of the old Patti LaBelle hit Lady Marmalade.

Check out a CD called “The Dude” which Quincy Jones produced. His liner notes praise rapping with eloquence and reflection. There are magical performances on that project.

Rapping is now entering the school system in many ways of helping children learn and memorize, and they also gain confidence. It's a very whole-brained activity.

In the early 1980's when rap music started to emerge with videos, rap songs were usually about neighborhoods, local groups, someone's posse or crew… and themes about friends who hang out together in the inner city at their hang out locations. Rap recognizes, brings awareness to, and even sometimes celebrates ghetto conditions in large urban centers.

Rap often has a cutting political edge, and there are far more male rappers than female which hints of leaning to patriarchy. That, and the fact that more males are willing to explore rap because it's just talking at first and doesn't carry the same stigma of singing.

The first time I heard rap was on Stevie Wonder's Musiquarium LP in 1982. The song is called Do I Do and the full version runs 10:27. On the cut, Stevie features legendary jazz trumpeter, the late Dizzy Gillespie on a long solo over his R&B pocket. Stevie seemed to just make everything up as he said it on the floor; his rhymes were simple and impromptu. The standout for me was the fun he was having. His words were playful and you could hear him smiling. It trailed off with his laughter in the studio before he counted down 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1. (end track) In 2001, Ja Rule sampled Do I Do for his success Livin' It Up.

Is That Ella FitzgeraldRapping?

But decades before that, there was a famous live version of Ella Fitzgerald singing a song written by Kurt Weil, E.B. Brecht and M. Blitzstein in 1928, called Mack the Knife . This popular song from the Threepenny Opera (or Moritat), made most famous by smooth jazz crooner, the late Bobby Darin, is about a murderer.

This song has a LOT of verses and a few modulations.

( There is a version of this at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhoAwJLZOvQ )

During this 1962 Berlin concert, Ella forgets the words in the 4th verse. What I find extraordinary about this is that she makes up rhymes on the spot, and they make sense. Being a natural (and unprecedented) scatter, she's quite at home with it all and even starts to have fun:

Oh, the shark has pearly teeth, dear, And he shows them, pearly white, Just a jack knife has Macheath, dear, And he keeps it out of sight. Oh, the shark bites with his teeth, dear, Scarlet billows start to spread, Fancy gloves though, wears macheath dear So there's not, not a trace of red On a Sunday, Sunday morning Lies a body, oozin' life, Someone's sneaking round the corner Tell me could it be, could it be, could it be- Mack the Knife?

Photo by Herman Leonard

And here Ella starts forgetting the words (haven't we all) The audience loves it:

Oh, whats the next chorus?
To this song, now
This is the one, now, I don't know
But it was a swinging tune
And its a hit tune
So we tried to do Mack the Knife

Ah, Louis Miller
Oh, something about cash,
Yeah, Miller, he was spending that trash,
And Macheath dear, he spends like a sailor
Tell me, tell me, tell me
Could that boy do something rash?

Oh Bobby Darin, and Louis Armstrong,
They made a record,
Oh but they did.
And now Ella, Ella, and her fellas
Were making a wreck, what a wreck
Of Mack the Knife

{Ella does Louis Armstrong imitation}
Oh Suky Tawdry, bah bah bah nop do bo de do
Bah bah bah nop do bo de n'do
Just a jack knife has Macheath, dear
And do bo bo bah bah bah nop do bo de do

So, you've heard it -
Yes, weve swung it -
And we tried to -
Yes, we sung it -
You won't recognize it,
It's a surprise hit,
This tune, called Mack the Knife

And so we leave you, in Berlin town,
Yes, weve swung old Mack,
We've swung oldMack in town,
For the Darin fans,
And for the Louis Armstrong fans too,
We told you look out, look out, look out
Old Macheath's back in town.