Thoughts on Kafka

Franz Kafka is remembered as the author of several surreal novels where strange irrational things affect characters who are treated with bigotry in response. The most famous such book is Metamorphosis. The focus on difference and bigotry was likely the result of the eternal question of Jews, “why do they hates us, is it because we are different?”.

Kafka aside, life in the supposedly tolerant modern society we know as the West is getting stranger and stranger with added portions of bigotry. Ironically, the worst perpetrators of irrational bigotry are those who focus upon being good or who are regarded as good by society.

I mentioned my strong dislike of Rap “music” to a person and what person apparently assumed that my reference to the cultural elements of it (Gangsta culture) as an object of disdain was proof of my racism. Where I thought that I was talking about music, the other person assumed that race and music were the same.

There certainly is an overlap between ethnic groups and music. We talk of Celtic music being a genre and refer to Chinese music being atonal whatever more modern composers have produced. There is a close relationship between music and a culture. It is hard to imagine the English-speaking Atlantic fishing and whaling industry without its shanties and songs.

The same might then be said of Rap music and Blacks? The applicability here is hampered by the question of race. When Americans use the term Black or African American, they assume they are the same thing. They are not. Suppose that a Boer emigrated from South Africa to the US. He would be an African-American (being from Africa) but not Black. The conflicts between Black immigrants from the Carribean and Blacks more entrenched in American culture also indicates that perhaps the relevant term is not of race but a racial term used when the meaning is ethnicity.

The meaning is the specific American sub-culture produced in relationship to African Blacks brought from Africa centuries ago and holding a continuity with that history as a cultural and ethnic identity. The term used to denote this is “Black” or “African-American” when the actual meanings of those terms is very different. Nigerian Ibos are not included in some cases despite clearly having high melanin content as they do not always identify with “Black culture”.

Even still, there are multiple cultures within this already fractious term. There is more than just the Black Gangsta or Hip-Hop culture. Only the KKK and Black activists try to equate Gangsta culture as the whole of Black society and culture. A statement regarding Rap and the sub-culture associated with it should not be considered as regarding general Black society as if Rap were all that popular among the Yoruba or Masai and people would drop suites for the garb of American Black hoodlums.

Rap extends beyond just America and has impacted Western and finally Eastern Europe. The themes are sometimes different. The operative word is sometimes. Most often the themes of greed, power, violence, and sex and a purely animal act abound in other countries’ Rap cultures.

Here is some French Rap and it is just as disturbing as American Rap.



A more acceptable evolution of Rap music's interaction is this but the aggressiveness remains.



Despite whatever different messages are presented, the medium (if not all) is at least a major part of the message. The aggressive beat of Rap and the melody convey ideas and attitudes beyond whatever the words are. Music invokes emotions and, in doing so, evokes them. The emotional effect of a dirge with violins and cellos is undoubtedly different from a song of spring with a flute even if the words were reversed.

Let us compare this mild video with visible themes of money and opposition to the law. The references are not the heart of the core message of the video but essential peripheral concepts. The questions posed to the woman he refers to indicate a severe lack of discipline in referring to an affair as "mistakes we make". It is almost touching but still the beat must draw back to a certain hardness that the rest fails to temper.



A much worse one is this video about sex. No respect is paid to women or sex. Little more need be said.



On criticism brought of in defense of Rap is Christian Rap. That is not a sufficient argument. The lyrics may say one thing but the overwhelming aspect is the beat and melody. Christian Rap is best understood as an ideologicaly driven imitative parasite on the body of Rap. Rap is itself a parasite on society at large. It harms not just organized governments or groups by urging on disrespect of authority but the beat and melody are aggressive in nature and listening to it has an effect.

Society is built upon individuals coming together and suppressing their aggressiveness for a common purpose that may yield them benefits. Mindless aggression is not likely to keep society together unless it can be controlled. Often this is done with force or the threat of it.

Do the defenders of Rap really want to equate it with Black Culture? Do they really want to make its themes those of Black society?