OzMoot 2025 – Day 3 – Morning

Corey Olsen Keynote Address

  • The Music of Words: Tolkien and Hip-Hop
  • I am not the “Hip-Hop Professor”
  • Poetry as an active literary for died in the 20th century – except here
  • Traditional Poetry: A framework vs the words you are saying. Rhythm and Rhyme
  • Example Dr Seuss – Starts with a perfect rhyme but there he varies it at the end and then later last line is a big twist
  • Origin DJ + MC in Harlem 70s street parties
    • Rhythm+Rhyme in a musical context
    • Has an actual beat and music
  • Run DMC – It’s like That
    • Preamble
      • The line breaks in printed lyrics match the meter
      • This is rarely true with normal printed lyrics
      • They are often also inaccurate
    • Review
      • The shape and packing is not unlike a normal song
      • But the music of the piece is entirely spoken words
    • Rhyme Scheme
      • Beats – beat 3 is where all rhymes are
      • “Thats the way it is” never rhymes with anything. Because the point of a song is that things are wrong
  • Redman: “Time 4 Sumaksion”
    • Beat 1 and 3 are the primary beats
    • Diagram – Blue is primary
  • Rakim: Guess Who’s back?
    • One of the few hiphop artists who does multi-syllabic rhyme
    • Much less rigid, less stuff on the 3rd beat
    • Signals change to rhyme ahead of time
    • Parody the “Simplicity of what Djs do”
    • The hip-hop version on enjambment
  • Tech N9in: Devil Boy
    • Empty first beat ( until the last time )
    • “god i ly” three syllable word
    • Lots of alliteration
    • Then transitions to new pattern for second half of the verse
  • Eminem: “Lose Yourself”
    • One of the most perfect and extraordinary passages of poetry in the English Language
    • “sweater and sweaty” don’t rhyme 100% but that isn’t important
    • Rhyme matches the narrative ( where is gets stuck in front of the crowd )
    • Main bit: 3 syllable rhyme at end of most lines ( gravity, rabbit he ) and separate 3 syllable rhyme at the start of each line.
    • ..and he keeps the narrative which varying the flow
    • In the chorus everybody dances . Transitions in simpler 1-2 syllable rhymes
  • Eminem: Without Me
  • Eminem: Lock it up
  • Eminem: Untitled
    • Raps in 6/8 measure (unlike 99% of RAP is in 4/4)
  • Eminem: Venom
  • Eminem: Godzilla
    • Extremely fast bit
    • Speed up? But has been performed live at similar space
  • Joyner Lucas: From ‘Lucky You’
  • “This is going to be quick, we’re just going to talk about two Tolkien Poems”
  • Tolkien: Gimli’s Song
    • Very Regular. Should be boring
    • But it isn’t boring, why?
    • The 3rd dimension of this poem is alliteration
    • Tolkien sees d/t and y/w as cousins in rhyming (see Tengwar )
    • Does a melody in the alliteration on top of the rhyme
    • Varies things at the end to indicate a closing (and pump up the final line)
  • Does he do this elsewhere, pick another poem
  • Tolkien: Boromir’s Lament
    • This poem is a more complicated meter and is more complex overall
    • Alliteration: W’s form the dominate theme
    • n’s and m’s also
  • Q: What Literature influenced early rappers?
    • Possibly just emerged and influenced each other
  • Q: Public Enemy?
    • Listened to a lot of that. And commentary on them

Presentation: Sam Lewis – The Elves and the Celts: Elvish Poetry in ‘The Hobbit’

  • Big disclaimer at start.
  • Tolkien’s Faerie
    • Mythology for England / Britain
    • But the Celts were already there
  • Creating a Celtic Britain
    • 1760 onwards , sometimes manufactured
    • Anglo-Saxon = Modern . Celt = mythical, stone-age, edge of world
    • Tolkien’s view
      • ‘The wild incalculable poetic Celt”
      • co-inhabitants of the same island
  • Teutonic and Celtic in ‘The Hobbit”
    • Three poems
  • The Withered Health
    • Dwarf poem from Queer Lodgings in The Hobbit
    • wind is usually interpreted as representing the swarves and/or providence/fate
  • O! What are you doing?
  • The Dragon has Withered
  • Talk a bit fast for me too keep up with notes

Presentation: Lauren Brand – The Music of Nimrodel

  • As the company enter Lothlorien they come across the stream the Nimrodel
  • How much music in Middle earth relates to fresh water bodies?
  • Mapped up occurances of references to bodies of water and looked for songs/music and other descriptive words
    • 1216 occurrences
    • 621 no description
    • 123 a sound
    • 231 visual description
    • 53 touch
    • 20 taste
    • 22 smell
  • Sound comes and goes in various stages. Some waters like the Brandywine is described
  • Mordor has little water but Sam and Frodo are obsessed with it’s lack so lot of descriptions
  • Where is is the music of waters?
    • “a dream of music that turns into running water”
    • “a voice singing mingled with the sound of water”
  • Other noisy places
    • Gate stream “trickling” , “a swish followed by a plop”
    • “A mighty roaring mingled with a deep throbing boom”
    • “Voice of Morgalduin … seemed cold and cruel”
  • Spirit of the River is common
    • Like to drag people underwater and drown them
    • Jenny Greenteeth
  • Goldberry
  • Nimrodel
  • Others
    • Raros
    • Mirrormere
    • Galadriel’s Mirror
  • In conclusion, listen to the sounds around you especially the sounds of waters
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