When You’re In Trouble, Go Into Your Dance

By Less Lee Moore

Shortly before last Christmas, fellow pop culture enthusiast and Popshifter writer Chelsea Spear sent me a link to a YouTube video and referred to it as ” HOLY CRAP THIS IS THE MOST FACE-MELTINGLY AWESOME THING EVAR.” (This is a direct quote.)

Without even questioning her expert judgment, I clicked and found the oddly-named but utterly mesmerizing “Prisencolinensinainciusol.”

According to Chelsea, who found it via MetaFilter (or MeFi), “the point of the song is to recapitulate what English sounds like to non-English speakers.” The video and the song are both amazing, inexplicably giving me the feeling of the film Breakfast on Pluto. And there is dancing. And mirrors!

One of the comments on YouTube caught my eye: “This guy might have invented rap!” The apparent ignorance of this statement bothered me and continued to do so for the next few days (even though you’d think by now I’d have learned to let ignorant Internet comments wash over me). “Come on,” I thought, “Does this fool seriously think rap was created in Italy? By a white guy?”

Imagine my amusement to read an article on this very (ridiculous) claim from The L Magazine just a few days later, which was itself a response to their previous article on the video, “Italian Pop Star Invents Rap in 1973, Anticipates Paul’s Boutique.”

Surprisingly, the offending YouTube comment was not mentioned, though certainly writer Jonny Diamond must been referring to it in a subtly snarky way.

K. Matthew Dames apparently didn’t see the humor and thus began yet another in the storied history of Internet arguments that we’ve all grown to know and love.

Mr. Diamond replied to Mr. Dames, saying he felt his time, “would be better spent on more serious issues.”

Mr. Dames was not to be silenced:

As a regular follower of several hundred publications weekly (both in print and online), a former print journalist for several years, a managing editor of two online publications, and a author published both in print and electronic media, my presumption as I read any publication — regardless of source or progeny — is to read its work as an attributed, professional presentation of fact or opinion.

This all sounded strangely familiar. Like many of us, I have not always been immune to the thrills of starting and continuing Internet arguments.

Back in the day (about 1998), I remember one particular argument centering around which fans of a certain band were considered the “true” fans. (And after all, don’t all the best Internet arguments stem from this polemic issue?) My two cents on the topic were met with someone’s claim that they had won “competitions” regarding said band (whatever that means) and I think I made some sarcastic retort about The Olympics. My greater point was lost in the shuffle.

This all proves my point: that most Internet arguments fail to resolve anything because of that same thing: the greater point gets lost in the shuffle. To assume that a white guy invented rap in 1973 is at best, short-sighted. The L Magazine missed an opportunity to examine how and why such assumptions are problematic in order to be sarcastic. To Mr. Dames’s credit, while he makes the assertion that rap music originated in Africa and Jamaica (using somewhat off-putting, flowery language), at no time does he allow the argument to devolve into name-calling.

I think it’s fairly obvious that presumptions like the one made on YouTube smack of white privilege (and glancing at the YouTube user’s profile provides disturbing conclusions). And that is one point that I don’t want to be lost in all this verbal tap dancing.