Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Moshing in the chamber
Talking about reconnecting with popular culture the Labour Assembly Member for Alyn and Deeside, Carl Sargeant, tried to do just that in Plenary yesterday:
Carl Sargeant: At the weekend, a community safety officer and a Neighbourhood Watch community safety partnership, which includes Flintshire County Council and Connah’s Quay Town Council, helped to organise a music festival day in one of the old hangers at the RAF Sealand camp, which was attended by over 1,000 youngsters who engaged in moshing, rapping and mixing—it was also new to me. Engaging young people is the future. Will you join me in congratulating this partnership, and will you give an assurance that funding for these groups will be given priority in the future?
The First Minister: Yes. We are almost back to the point that David Melding and Lorraine Barrett were making earlier about diverting young people away from crime and breaking down the sharp social distinction between some of the lads, as it were, and the police, and their belief that the police are not people who they want to mix with and the police also regarding them with suspicion. It is good if you can break down that barrier by rapping—I am not sure what the other words that you used were, Carl, but they were certainly not around when I was a teenager. It is important that, by breaking down that barrier and ensuring constructive co-ordination between young people and the police, which is vital, young people are being diverted away from crime.
Clearly, both Carl and the First Minister have a long way to go before they are even speaking the same language as the young people they are referring to, but there is no doubt that their heart is in the right place.
As a public service I have listed below the dictionary definitions of the words that Carl confessed to encountering for the first time. I suspect that the First Minister might benefit more from this assistance.
mosh: verb [I] INFORMAL to dance energetically and violently at a rock concert
rap (MUSIC): noun [U] a type of popular music with a strong rhythm in which the words are spoken, not sung: a rap artist/star
mix (RECORD MUSIC): verb [T] SPECIALIZED to control the amounts of various sounds which are combined on a recording. (Note: in the context of the music festival, the mixing would have been live, using a record deck to mix the sound of two or more musical tracks).
Carl Sargeant: At the weekend, a community safety officer and a Neighbourhood Watch community safety partnership, which includes Flintshire County Council and Connah’s Quay Town Council, helped to organise a music festival day in one of the old hangers at the RAF Sealand camp, which was attended by over 1,000 youngsters who engaged in moshing, rapping and mixing—it was also new to me. Engaging young people is the future. Will you join me in congratulating this partnership, and will you give an assurance that funding for these groups will be given priority in the future?
The First Minister: Yes. We are almost back to the point that David Melding and Lorraine Barrett were making earlier about diverting young people away from crime and breaking down the sharp social distinction between some of the lads, as it were, and the police, and their belief that the police are not people who they want to mix with and the police also regarding them with suspicion. It is good if you can break down that barrier by rapping—I am not sure what the other words that you used were, Carl, but they were certainly not around when I was a teenager. It is important that, by breaking down that barrier and ensuring constructive co-ordination between young people and the police, which is vital, young people are being diverted away from crime.
Clearly, both Carl and the First Minister have a long way to go before they are even speaking the same language as the young people they are referring to, but there is no doubt that their heart is in the right place.
As a public service I have listed below the dictionary definitions of the words that Carl confessed to encountering for the first time. I suspect that the First Minister might benefit more from this assistance.
mosh: verb [I] INFORMAL to dance energetically and violently at a rock concert
rap (MUSIC): noun [U] a type of popular music with a strong rhythm in which the words are spoken, not sung: a rap artist/star
mix (RECORD MUSIC): verb [T] SPECIALIZED to control the amounts of various sounds which are combined on a recording. (Note: in the context of the music festival, the mixing would have been live, using a record deck to mix the sound of two or more musical tracks).
