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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: LindyBill who wrote (104310)7/8/2003 10:24:06 PM
From: Ilaine  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 281500
 
>>We have become increasingly vulgar.<<

Have we? I don't listen to rap, given my druthers, but I remember very seamy black entertainers from my youth. Moms Mabley, for one, was mighty raunchy. "Dirty blues" is another genre, "squeeze my lemon 'til the juice runs down my leg."

Coincidentally, Lenny Bruce's rap that starts "'to' is a preposition, 'come' is a verb" popped into my mind in the last day or two.

Over the last few hundred years, you could read all the porno you wanted as long as you read it in Greek or Latin. Plain English raunch was more censored because of the elitist point of view that it was not for the lower classes.

Between you and me, I think the lower classes indulged in all the raunch they wanted, take a look at the etchings by Hogarth.

My husband suggests you listen to "The Art of the Bawdy Song," Henry Purcell, et al., for example, "My man John had a thing that was long, My maid Mary had a thing that was hairy."
amazon.com

More musical (to my ears) than rap, but still it's about sex and drugs (alcohol and tobacco).



To: LindyBill who wrote (104310)7/9/2003 3:07:23 AM
From: frankw1900  Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 281500
 
We have become increasingly vulgar

Don't think so. Except in the exact sense of the word. What has happened is that the "common folk" have taken over the media in a way they never could before because now they are a market and what they like sells advertising.

The taste shown on popular TV or in rap music has always existed among a huge number of people and the US did OK, even so.

frank@mrsgrundylostherbroom.com