Ether Minded People - Kumbaya

Topic: Rap
Rap began as an African-American genre with roots that penetrated through popular culture into the dozens, an improvisational rhyming game played by adolescents. DJ Hollywood, mentioned in the post for 22 March 2018, remembered their more public manifestations:

"I cannot take nothing away from people like Oscar Brown Jr., Pigmeat Markham, the Last Poets, Gil Scott Heron, the Watts Prophets, Rudy Ray Moore, I used to listen to all of them." [1]

The dozens provided a shared fame of reference for early fans, before the rap became self-perpetuating. Young men could draw on what they’d done or heard to experiment with the new music form in the late 1970s, and their audiences already had an aesthetic that allowed them to judge skill and appreciate innovation.

More than forty years have passed since Hollywood made his first experiments in rapping. Several generations of young men have come of age since then knowing nothing but rap from their earliest years. Tim Moore, So Nice of Ether Minded People, said he first got interested in rap because his father was a poet who used music to get himself through Vietnam. [2]

Raheem Jaleel, who was a member of the same group in 2016, said when he was five or six his seventeen-year-old uncle was a DJ into hip-hop, break dancing, and spray painting. The house was filled with musicians until his uncle joined the navy when Jaleel was ten or eleven. [3]

Rap became a prism through which all other experiences were seen. "Kumbaya" became just a word with rhythmic properties: any syllable could be stressed without altering its utility.

Ether Minded People’s 2017 version use the verse-chorus format mentioned in the post for 22 March 2018 with three rapped verses that drew on the braggadocio of the dozens ("I don’t never brag or boast/Man I just leave ’em") or used extended rhyme patterns. In one, a word slowly transformed into another as it was pronounced: "say the gifts/I found a glitch inside their prese-dents." In another, one rhyme stream led, by association, into another:

"Out of the smoke, out of the dope
There’s hope for the hood and good
The whole waters the neighborhood"

The chorus repeated "coming in like a kumbaya/with a do my G, my God whatcha talkin’ about?" and ended with "coming in like a kumbaya, kumbaya, kumbaya."

"Whatcha talkin’ about" was an example of the way rap artists digested popular songs and regurgitated them in new forms. It recalled the opening scene in the Broadway musical The Music Man in which a group of salesmen were talking on a train. The changing pace of their speech mirrored the train’s motions as it started and slowed at stations. One salesman periodically introduced the sound of steel wheels on iron rails when he asked: "Whatayatalk, whatayatalk, whatayataalk." [4]

Performers
Vocal Soloist: at least two men, one with a deeper voice
Vocal Group: none
Instrumental Accompaniment: synthesizer
Rhythm Accompaniment: drum beats

Credits
© 2017 Meant 2 B Made

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: KOOM bah yah

Vocabulary
Pronoun: I, we
Term for Deity: God
Special Terms: street language

Basic Form: verse-chorus
Verse Repetition Pattern: three repetitions of chorus
Ending: none

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: own
Tempo: moderate

Basic Structure: binary (verse-chorus)

Singing Style: chanted

Instrumental Style: the synthesizer played the down beats, and the drum machine the up beats.

Notes on Performers
Jaleel and Moore formed the group in 2012 in Oceanside, California, with Eric Plascencia. The two African Americans previously had worked together in another group. [5] Jaleel apparently left, and Moore often worked with others, but no third name was permanently associated with Moore and Plascencia in the videos uploaded to YouTube. [6]

Plascencia, who used the name, Ether P, said he first became aware of hip hop when he was about ten years old. [7] He graduated from Oceanside High School in 2009, where he played football. [8] He remembered around 2012, "rhymes just started popping in my head, and I started writing them down." [9] Judging from the YouTube video credits he was the one with knowledge about recording with mechanical music. [10]

Availability
MP3: Gone Ether. 27 July 2017.

End Notes
1. DJ Hollywood [Anthony Holloway]. Quoted by Mark Skillz. "DJ Hollywood: The Original King of New York in 1970s." Cuepoint website. 19 November 2014.

2. So Nice [Tim Moore]. On Chi Bully [Donte Tucker]. "Ether Minded People" segment, My DJ’s Radio Spotlight. Uploaded to Youtube by MYDJs Radio TV on 28 March 2016.

3. Raheem Jaleel. On Chi Bully.

4. Meredith Wilson. "Rock Island." The Music Man. New York: Majestic Theater, 19 December 1957.

5. Jaleel.

6. "The [People]" was performed by So Nice, Ether P, and Ether Child in a video uploaded by Ether Minded People on 4 June 2016. In a video uploaded on 16 October 2016 by Either Minded People, So Nice, Ether P, and Swampstick June performed an untitled rap together.

7. Ether P [Eric Plascencia.] On Chi Bully.
8. "Eric Plascencia." Max Preps website.
9. Ether P.

10. The two videos mentioned in #6 were "Mixed & Recorded by: Eric ‘Ether P.’ Plascencia."