You know a news item has tickled the public’s fancy when it ends up on Fark.com. The item in question comes from the U.K., where the Telegraph is reporting a University of New Mexico professor’s assertion that rap music has its origins in…Scotland.
Yeah, you read that right. According to American and Scottish culture expert Ferenc Szasz, rap battles are a distant spawn of the ancient Caledonian art of “flyting,” which is described as “intense verbal jousting, often laced with vulgarity.” How did flyting end up taking form in the Bronx all those years later? Szasz claims Scottish slave owners brought the tradition with them when they immigrated to the United States, and that said tradition was adopted by slaves, eventually taking the form of rap.
The prof sure did his homework. In his research he cites a poem published in New York Vanity Fair circa 1861 as "the first recorded example of the battles being used." Funnier still is the thought that Vanity Fair may have been an unwitting promoter of early rap. Take that, MTV!
I'm assuming that the black-american game of "playing the dozens" has it's origins in Scotland too. Rap "battles" didn't even exist until the early 80s. Hip-hop culture/rap music was already the youth culture of black & brown (and some white) NYC by that time. So is he completely disregarding the Jamaican influence of block parties that Kool Herc brought up from the islands?
Or is he getting at the notion that s--t-talking is universal? If that's the case...he's right. But in terms of hip-hop's ORIGIN coming from Scotland...negative.