I think that a healthy balance is the best that can be achieved. I personally enjoy rock music - I enjoy the freedom of being able to sing in a crowd of worshipers without having to worry about how I sound - I think there is some freedom in making a joyful “noise”. But I wouldn’t want a steady diet of it, and would not desire that for my children either.

I want my kids to be able to enjoy and appreciate all kinds of music. I think that this will help them to relate to all kinds of people as well, because there is something about musical taste that can connect people.

Rap and hip-hop are associated with lower-class lifestyle, and so reflects the high time-preferences of that group, i.e. their inability to delay gratification, even for something like aural stimulation. Instead of listening to Beethoven’s 9th for an hour to get to the greatest musical climax of all time (if we except Wagner’s Ring cycle), the rap listener demands instant gratification for musical stimulation.

In our media-saturated world, the most important thing to teach children is to delay gratification, particularly in the area of information and experience. Thirty years from now, the world will be owned by the few with dopamine receptors sufficiently sensitive to the real-world that they aren’t addicted to 24/7 World of Warcraft while listening to 4-measure repetitive trance beats. To be clear, I want my children to be part of the ownership group.

Classical music and the folk music of their people (Celtic/bluegrass/traditional country) will give them both a sense of identity in their own culture and will not overstimulate them into media-dependent ADHD.

No, unfortunately, the laws of thermodynamics tell us that anything, left to itself, tends to disorder. That includes human nature, and especially the appetites of children. We must order their lives while they are young in order to protect them - first, physically, from the damaging affects of junk food, for example. But this also extends to shaping their desires and tastes, stretching their ‘comfort zones’ and teaching them to value things of meaning, and deferring instant gratification for something of better value.

Any philosophy that advocates letting children do what they want, and hoping they magically crave the better things, is fundamentally flawed. The argument and reasoning does change a bit as they become teenagers and young adults - I do think that parents in the past have rejected music solely because they didn’t like the sound of it (and therefore ascribed some evil motivation to it), so we need to be thinking adults that raise thinking kids - kids that we can disagree with, but know that we can trust to make sound decisions.

It seems to me the comments made say more about a philosophy of raising children than they do about a particular style of music.

However, those of us who still want to have a civilization are trying to overcome our baser, animalistic instincts and teach our children the values of hard work over easy money, thrift over showy displays of wealth, meekness and quietness over loud bragging. These are the traditional hallmarks of our Christian civilization and stand in stark contrast to the values promoted by this “art”.

No thanks, but I’ll let my children be deprived of its influence.

WARNING: EXPLICIT LYRICS BELOW

just a random selection from this week’s rap charts:

(Feat. Webbie & Foxx)

Hey!
Mr. wipe down ya heard me Foxx-a-million
This one be the reeemix!
Badass, Savage life, Foxx-a-million
Man you already know what it is ya heard me
We still on, we still ridin on chrome, we still pullin up

Verse 1 (Foxx)
I pull up at the club VIP gas tank on E but all drinks on me (wipe me down)
Fresh kicks fresh white tall tee fresh NFL hat fresh bauds wit the crease (wipe me down)
pussy niggas wanna hit me wit they heat, real recognize real real niggaz gon speak (wipe me down)
Jiggalatin I been rollin bout a week you can tell i got cake by the diamonds in my teeth (wipe me down)
Black shades so you know a nigga rollin they ain’t check me at the door so ain’t no tellin what im holdin (wipe me down)
bad bitches they gon bust it wide open niggas flashin they lil bread but im the nigga they approachin (wipe me down)
Small nigga tall figures yall niggas crowd niggas we gon get mac elevens and dawg niggas (wipe me down)
Yall niggas call niggas but my nigga all killas get ya issue and whoever fall wit ya

Chorus
Cuz im on (wipe me down)(8x)
Shoulders, chest, pants, shoes (4x)

Verse 2 (Lil Boosie)
B.O.O.S.I.E. B.A.D.A.Z.Z. that’s me (wipe me down)
[Wipe Me Down lyrics on http://www.metrolyrics.com

Red bones caramels all of em stop and stare all of em try and steal my underwear (wipe me down)
Like to floss like Rick Ross got a hit called set it off when i sing it everybody set it off (wipe me down)
Black mink im yea im on play wit me i bust ya dome 8 whips on chrome you can gon (wipe me down)
Fresh fade fresh j’s on the corner playin spades im an ordinary person but im paid (wipe me down)
Foxx flippin Webbie smokin and we chokin off a whole pound of purple famous like tha ninja turtles (wipe me down)
Just left New York City hooked up wit P. Diddy finna blow past 50 you gon have ta (wipe me down)
We the best im a fool im the hemi man red light green light yellow light get it man

Chorus

Verse 3 (Webbie)
Hot drop drop top top drop hoes drop it like its hot yea nigga im the shit (wipe me down)
You see this ice on my wrist how it glist soon the light hit you can’t lie the ice sick (wipe me down)
Purple got me smellin funky red monkey 500 dollars on em you ain’t seen these yet (wipe me down)
Beatin you can hear me way around the corner paint wet wit the 24’s on em that’s bet (wipe me down)
Ol lady’s baby momma’s few fiance’s niggas wife savage life who i’m gonna f**k next (wipe me down)
And i don’t use the lifestyle or the magnum or the trojan i’ll go head and use the barrel of the tech (wipe me down)
Man this chain hit me for a couple grand oh no i ain’t complainin just watch how you wipe my chest (wipe me down)
A bad bitch wanted me to stay lil longer i put that dick up on her but i had a flight to catch (wipe me down)

(Foxx)
Shoulders, chest, pants, shoes (8x)

Chorus

I am a scholar of Ethnomusicology and Social Anthropology. I have looked at many different musics around the world, both “high art” and courtly styles and folk styles. I was quite annoyed with your argument, because it seemed to advocate a very narrow way of experiencing music, and also a racist way of looking down upon the music of other groups.

Instead of denying your children hip hop, why not recognize where it becomes hyperbolic posturing and where it might say something truthful about the nature of society today?

You seem to be putting all hip hop into the same “illiterate” basket, while allowing for the fact that although some classical music is interesting some is also unpleasant and harsh to listen to, because of your own musical illiteracy and inability to comprehend it.

Hip hop started a poetry movement in the early 20th century, led by such erudite figures as the poet Langston Hughes from the destitute area of Harlem, New York. Just because people sing about thier difficult situations in life, it does not mean they have low IQs.

You site country and bluegrass as being the folk music of America, completely overlooking blues, which had influence on the forementioned genres. Blues is another music of exclusion, like some hip hop is today. Young people may be attracted to the “outsider” messages of these musics because they feel they don’t have a place in today’s society or they feel like thier opinions are not respected or listened to. If you really want to get them focusing attention on Beethoven’s 9th, Doc Watson, etc. just let them listen to what they want and play what you want around the house. They might covertly enjoy it and bring it back into thier listening environment later in life.