Music & Sound
Sounds Around

• The DownStreet Jukebox:  Classic Rock ...

• Sounds Around:  Rhymes & Reasons ...
       A Best of the School Year Entry.

• Links to Music & Sound On-Line:  Jazz, Plus the Local Music Scene
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.Rhymes & Reasons
   A Best of the School Year Entry ...

There's a music form, like many others before it, that's come up out of the ghettoes of this country.  Where once it was jazz or Be-Bop or Soul, now it's rap.  ... 

Of course, a lot of folks tune this stuff out.  ...  Not their thing.  ...  That's fine.  And it's understandable, too.  A lot of rap is laced with large doses of profanity, and since some of it is misogynist and worse, too much of it can seem like 'garbage'.  But that's only one corner of the world of rap.  There's another, and we think this month's Sounds Around is an indication of what at leastone of those other corners might sound like.  ...

A Sample Waveform from this month's Sounds Around feature: Rhymes & Reasons. Click on the image to listen.

The Group
This month's Sounds Around is pleased to present a homegrown rap group out of Hinesburg.  ...  That's right.  Hinesburg.  ... 

Just like those earlier ghetto music forms, this one, too, has found its way off the blocks and out of the neighborhoods where it began, into millions of schools and homes and hallways all over the country.  And if you listen carefully -- and if you listen at all, you have to listen carefully -- you'll hear a music that goes way beyond an insistent beat, to something like social consciousness ... and conscience.

The group consists of three performers -- Manus Loecher-Dunbar {a.k.a., Rangaboom} who just finished his Junior year at CVU, and Sam Cloutier {a.k.a. The Pendragon} and Sam Wisniewski {a.k.a. Tremor}, both headed for Junior year  ... though not until they've had a chance to enjoy summer vacation.  .

Of the three, Manus has been at it the longest, and he's also the only one who risks going at it freestyle.  In fact, despite his young years, all any of them could say about how long Manus has been at it is, '... a long time'.  Sam Cloutier, on the other hand, began in 8th grade, which means he's been doing it for about 3 years or so.  And the newest comer, Sam Wisniewski, has only been rhymin' since November, when he joined  Manus & Cloutier, who've been working together on and off since May.  All of them have also done poetry slams, but never all together.

The Sound
If you're familiar with rap at all, then you know there has to be that repetitive beat, a loop that's laid down to provide the background for the rhymes.  For this session, the guys chose a 10-second instrumental segment from the Cali Agents' side, "The Good Life.

On the track itself, which runs about three minutes-plus, Tremor [S.W.] is up first, followed by The Pendragon [S.C.], and ending with a freestyle from Rangaboom [M.L-D.].  ...

We could say more  ...  but that's not exactly the idea here, is it?

Listen up, then, to this month's Sounds Around feature:  Rhyme & Reason. 

Simply click on the image below or above. 
{Note:  You have to have a fairly recent version of Real Audio to listen.  If you don't have it, click here to download it.}

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If you would like to submit something for Sounds Around, or if you simply would like to suggest a performance you'd like us to cover, e-mail us at ... music@downstreetmagazine.com.

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Lou Colasanti, Editor & Laura Wisniewski, Associate Editor
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