Middle-Aged Explorer in Music’s New World

The e-mail messages were flying here in the days after last week’s Grammy sweep.

“So, do you know who Lauryn Hill is? What does she sing?” messaged one befuddled friend. “Anything I’d recognize?” The mother of two toddlers, she might be forgiven for being more familiar with Tinky Winky. But even my editor--our resident hippie and music expert, whose only concession to middle age is the gray sprouting at the roots of his wild, orange hair--confessed he couldn’t name or wouldn’t recognize any of Hill’s songs.

Which left me wondering how this talented young singer-producer-composer could be so adored by the hip-hop generation and win such acclaim . . . and leave so many of the rest of us clueless.

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It’s a sine qua non of growing old: The day will come when you not only will be unfamiliar with the music of the Grammy winners, you won’t even recognize the names of the nominees.

Now, I’m no musical fuddy-duddy. I’ve got a long history of concertgoing and album-buying, and I like to think my musical tastes are evolving as I age. There are buttons on my car radio set to Power 106 and 92.3 the Beat. Under the giant poster of Bob Marley on the wall of my den, the CD collection includes Salt-N-Pepa and TLC. Heck, I even listen to Puff Daddy--and enjoy his music--when I’m riding in the car alone.

But like most of my middle-aged comrades, I’m losing touch. Names like Erykah Badu, Master P, DMX . . . they glided to the top of the charts under my radar, before I could even catch a beat.

What familiarity I have with the invading hip-hop nation I mostly owe to my 13-year-old, who cannot ride in a car without the radio playing. But she favors party rappers like Mase and Jay-Z, not the more worldly rappers like Hill.

So the hoopla over Hill sent me off to the local record store--er, music and video emporium--which, in anticipation of her Grammy wins, had loaded up on copies of her popular CD.

They were perched on a rack near the door and marked down--the $3 reduction intended, no doubt, to lure the curious-but-not-committed, like me.

The clerk--young, with a nose ring and bleached blond hair--said he’d stationed the rack at the front of the store because he was tired of directing bewildered, suburban baby boomers who’d come in post-Grammy and didn’t know whether to look for Hill under rap, folk or R&B.;

“It’s like, where have these people been?” he said in frustration as he stuffed my CD into a bag. “What, are they living in a cave?”

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It’s been said that the emergence of rap and hip-hop has created the biggest cultural divide in this country in 50 years, one that splits us by age and generation, torn by the music’s bawdy lyrics and abrasive tone.

“For the young,” one media critic explained, “hip-hop is the rebellion of choice because it freaks out so many adults.”

Well, kids, if you’re thumbing your nose at us through this genre, I hate to burst your bubble, but dig deep enough into your parents’ old record collection and you might find the Last Poets or Gil Scott-Heron--the socially conscious predecessors of the preening hip-hop of today.

I used to listen to them in high school and college, with their fiery riffs on revolution. Now, I hear inklings of them again in the musical poetry of Hill, who sings not about the familiar rapper terrain of gangstas, sex and money, but about motherhood and neighborhoods, hope and renewal, pride and self-respect.

Listen, and between the lines you’ll hear--in her message, her rhythms, her syncopation--the influence of the musical legacies of names your parents can recognize: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Bob Marley. . . . Her roots grow from their soil, as well.

Just as rock ‘n’ roll was no new invention but borrowed from music that had come before, rap represents not revolution but reinvention, by a new generation, with its own story to tell.

Hill makes it easy to listen, makes it seem to matter whether we hear. And I’m grateful for the hip-hop introduction, for the chance to feel there’s something we share.

So from a woman old enough to be your mother, right on, Lauryn. You go, girl!

Sandy Banks’ column is published on Sundays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is [email protected].