On Wed, 22 Jan 2003, Irene McC wrote:
quoted 8 lines So... my daughter started High School today. To celebrate I> So... my daughter started High School today. To celebrate I
> foolhardily downed 3 tots of Absinthe (make the heart grow fonder)
> and after dinner subjected the entire family to sit through Alice's
> Restaurant (sparked by some random comment).
>
> Which led us to conjecture: does this 1967 release on Reprise make
> Arlo Guthrie the world's first rapper?
>
Not really -- no more than Bob Dylan's talking blues make him the first
rapper, or Rambling Jack Eliot etc. As others have pointed out, the origins
of rap are African, or more directly, Jamaican. But the idea of telling
a story and accompanying it with music goes back to before written language.
Homer recited his epic poems to music.
Arlo Guthrie was, however, the first guy to get moderately rich off of
hippy humor, which should count for something.
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