I don’t think there’s anything worse than having no one to jam with. Sure, couch jamming has its advantages; it’s just you, your instrument, and your musical thoughts. It makes for good practice too, especially since not everyone is interested in listening to you play scales or that “killer lick” you came up with - for 5 hours straight. While many couch jammers enjoy these perks, everyone knows that eventually you’re going to get sick of your own company and will want to work with other musicians.

For some people, this is a piece of cake. They have many friends or close relatives who share their musical interests, and they get together and jam, write, or noodle whenever they please. But for many, including yours truly, finding other people to play with is incredibly difficult. And even if you do find someone else to play with, there’s a 50-50 chance you’ll be at each other’s throats after 5 minutes because your playing partner for the day thinks he’s God’s gift to his instrument, and to hell with you if you actually want to take a solo or play something other than a 12 bar blues.

I’m convinced that this situation – which I’ve been involved in countless times – is a part of being a musician. However, to this day, I wish I had met more like-minded musicians – musicians who wanted to play, explore, and create – particularly when I was younger. That is why I almost flipped when I ran into Jon Selig (a chance encounter at a local Krispy Kreme…where you stand in line for an hour) and his Playin’ in the Band School of Rock, located in Toronto.

Picture this: get a bunch of young (12 to 18 years old), eager musicians together. Put them together in groups according to age, playing ability, and general musical interests. Give them a fully equipped studio which includes drums, keyboards, amps, microphones, and a PA system. Then, once a week, for ten straight weeks, provide them with instruction and guidance that instill techniques and values that will enable these young virtuosos to play with whomever they choose in the future.

“We’re seeking to assist younger musicians who don’t have other people to play with.” says Playin’ in the Band founder Jon Selig. “Those who don’t have a place to play, and those who aren’t satisfied with the type of musical education they have received to this point. Whether your goals are to play covers of your favorite songs, or create new and original pieces, Playin’ in the Band School of Rock is a fantastic place to start.”

Selig and lead instructor Ben Segev have developed a philosophy, particularly aimed at younger students, that teaches “teamwork, communication, respect, and cooperation.” The ultimate goal is for the students to enhance their playing, meet and develop friendships and camaraderie with other musicians, and hopefully, create some wonderful music in the process.

The school goes beyond ordinary theory, and instead zeroes in on helping musicians explore their creative side. Students learn how songs are designed and how that translates to live performance. Improvisational techniques, rhythms, instrumentation and many other concepts and skills are taught in an effort to help young musicians avoid stylistic and idiomatic trappings that occur so often in musicians, particularly when they play only by themselves or with people that are only interested in a single genre.

Best of all, these young musicians get to meet many other musicians who may become future band members, or playing partners for life. Moreover, the presence of instructors and instruction helps keep egos in check. All in all, it’s an environment that encourages musical development, without sapping one’s creativity.

Man, I wish something like this existed when I was 16, and the only other musicians I knew didn’t even know how to tune their guitars!

In between 8 Mile and the murder of Jam Master Jay, these days hip-hop seems to be on everyone’s mind. Most prominent in this current flurry is hip-hop’s most successful artist, Eminem, who is featured in a six page article in the New York Times. Almost inevitably, the article turns to the fact that Eminem is a white emcee in America.

With Eminem as one of many factors, my position on race and hip-hop is changing. But the change begins at an unlikely source, a single line in Mos Def’s Rock n’ Roll that seems to have nothing to do with hip-hop: “Elvis Presley ain’t got no soul / Little Richard is Rock n’ Roll”. In the same song, he also suggests that “You may dig on the Rolling Stones / But they ain’t the first place that the credit belongs.” Now, I don’t know how you feel about Elvis or the Stones, but this is pretty ballsy stuff. Mos Def isn’t simply talking about rewriting history to credit artists for originality or creativity, but is arguing that Rock n’ Roll belons to black people. In essence, he is giving one answer to the incredibly tricky question: what is the link between music and race?

When I first heard it, I was in awe. In simple terms, I define myself as ‘non-white’ and I couldn’t help but feel a little smug at the thought of blacks reclaiming what is ‘rightfully’ theirs (“Stick it to the man!”). But the interesting thing about the point is that, stated or not, he implicitly suggests as a black man, Mos Def also ‘owns’ hip-hop. And this is where the trouble begins, since this raises all kinds of uneasy questions.

For example, if hip-hop is black music, can whites still listen to it with the same appreciation? Can white rappers ever truly be ‘authentic’ emcees? Who is the real rapper then, Mos Def or Eminem? (Indeed, it would be interesting to watch these two battle out such issues on stage.) And the fundamental question: to whom does hip-hop belong?

There seems to be two standard reactions to this, with people divided into two neat camps. On one, you have those like Dead Prez, who suggest that hip-hop is an exclusively black thing, solely meant for uplifting blacks and improving their social position. On the other you have the now common liberal-humanist argument that we are all the same underneath and that art and creativity belong to no-one. It does not matter who creates, but what is created.

Trouble is, both arguments make a heck of a lot of sense. The liberal-humanists make a clear point, with evidence to back it up – clever, interesting art exists in all cultures, from all segments of society and all people can appreciate this. However, the opposing point, that suggests that hip-hop as a music form is a black enterprise also has validity. One need only look at the process of naming in hip-hop (the self-aggrandizement of the emcee cast against a theoretical ‘other’) to see the links to the subjugation of blacks. When put in this light, it seems rather silly that privileged, middle class rappers might talk about how ‘dope’ they are in a song, since who are they attempting to prove this to? When cast against centuries of oppression, the same act by a black emcee seems starkly appropriate.

Now, if Mos Def and Eminem weren’t confusing enough, enter a third confounding presence: a couple of ‘white guys’ I work with, who, at a show in Toronto, blew me away with some of the tightest, most lyrically impressive hip-hop I have ever heard. White or not, they are earnest practitioners of hip-hop music, heavily immersed in the culture and sensitive to its nuance. The fact that they were white made no impact on the music, its quality and most importantly, its sincerity. In this instance, questions of race just fell away.

Great art is possible from people of all kinds; we already know this. The question is what happens to race and music when you live in a society in which there is still an imbalance in ‘racial’ power, whether that be who gets to be on TV, who is in office, or who controls the money.

It’s tricky stuff, so let us turn to an analogy. In the twenties and thirties of the last century, the streets in certain cities of America were abuzz with a sound called Jazz. Not only did the music stretch and even trample the boundaries of taste of the day, its performance by black artists ushered in a new era of racial consciousness. Some would argue that it found its peak in the fifties and sixties in (black) artists like Parker, Coltrane and Davis, figures who pushed music conceptually so far beyond what existed before them that their brilliance has never been seriously challenged.

And yet, walk into a jazz club today. Examine the make-up of the clubs’ patrons. How many non-white faces do you see? More than that, who is on stage? It is, I believe, safe to say that jazz is now considered high-art, the domain of the educated, wealthy – and white. As music created and consumed by the white upper-classes in North America, it has largely lost its connection to black America and its history of racism, slavery and modern ghettoes. ‘Shockingly’, the position of culture produced and consumed by blacks in America remains subjugated, appreciated at best, but never fully adored and revered as is classical music or Hemingway and Fitzgerald. It is not an issue of who owns the music or who has a right to it - but whether the brilliance of jazz as an art form created by blacks translates into a cultural perception of the potentiall brilliance within black culture and blacks themselves. To put it simply – if white folks do all the good stuff, they gotta’ be better right?

So, rather than try and ‘end it nice’, I will suggest that which contradicts what you heard on TV or from your teachers: race matters. To dismiss it, to say that it is something to be swept under the rug and forgotten as something from our past is to attempt to erase histories, to erase difference, in essence – and this is really what counts – to erase people. No, I’m not suggesting that hip-hop is ‘black’ music, whatever the hell that means. But simply, these short, neat ideas: culture matters; the artist matters; race matters.

What am I saying then? If hip-hop isn’t black music, but you can’t forget about race, aren’t we just running in circles? No, quite the contrary - we are hopefully moving forward. As hip-hop grows and expands, when we remember its roots to a particular cultural experience, we are counteracting a long, subtle history that suggests that brilliance can only emanate from certain segments of society and privileges the kind of cultural expression defined as ‘mainstream’ and ‘white’.

So my opinion is simply this – when one listens to hip-hop you cannot forget its past and present connections to black culture - and indeed, hispanic and white culture. It seems like a subtle, if not insignificant difference – but it is not. In remembering the people behind the music, we alter our perception of the world, of what was, of what is – and what is possible: a world in which race and culture aren’t things to be forgotten, but aspects of ourselves to be celebrated. In doing so, we speak that which has been silent, and give voice to the oppression, history and consciousness that gave birth to the music that we all love so much.