The Meanng of Yo! YO?

"Yo" is a word that first came into my life as a child, and was 1/2 the title of one of my favorite toys, the metaphysical and joyous cousin of the 'Hula Hoop' - the indomitable "Yo-Yo". When MTV started to pick up Rap Artists in the late 80's , early 90's...
I heard it again "!Yo! MTV Raps!"

In connection with Hip Hop and that culture, as a certifiable white-boy , my only reference for the meaning of the vernaculars of that scene was via extrapolation (not exploitation! Yo!) -
I listened very closely to Run D.M.C. , Public Enemy, Ice T, Tribe Called Quest, Ice Cube, House of Pain, the Beastie Boys and KRS One and felt I obtained a pretty good handle on the lingo inherent in the music - "Yo" was like, "Hey, listen up!" and somehow much more as well...
Hip Hop and Rap came and went in the larger culture, as do many sub and pop cultures -
with an almost predictable ebb and flow. Clearly the music and the culture have carried on in pockets and there have been many youth movements and cultures that have amazingly tended the fires of this potent musical form (which is now gaining in popularity again).

For my own involvement, I became very interested in the self-empowerment aspects of Hip Hop when my first band "Exit"collapsed under the weight of youthful innocence and lack of certain skills (that's a whole story of its own, Yo!). In my early 20's I transited from Goth, Alternative Rock and New Wave / Punk into Rap and Hip Hop. I moved from there to Underground Dance Music and stuff like 'the Disposable Heroes of Hip Hoprisy' aided in that organic transform of tastes and experience.

From time to time, over the years , I have come across great music - the Stereo MCs - for example , who have carried on and cross-bred Dance Music and MCing along with the core of Hip Hop styles and their predecessors. Last year I was in Australia doing a Solo Busking Tour of the East Coast all the way from Sydney in the South on up to Darwin and the Gove Peninsula, Nhulunbuy and Arnhem Land in the North and I had a very odd experience with "Yo!" there.

I was statying in Aboriginal Country, where one either needs a permit or a clear invite from the Indigenous caretakers of that place in order to be able to stay, visit or roam. I was introduced to the Gurruwiwi Clan by a fellow named Randin Graves via my Didjeridu teacher Alan Tower. My introduction was fairly rushed for various reasons, and basically I was dropped in the laps of a community of people I knew very little about and who seemed to speak their own tongue much better and more often than English - and appropriately so. However, I knew nothing of their language.

One of the first things I noticed was that they were saying "Yo!" alot. In trying to make sense of this experience, my first thought was that "Yo" had somehow made it's way into Aboriginal culture from Hip Hop. After all, these people are "black" and "marginalized" and couldn't they have picked up that part of global culture and incorporated it into their own?! Maybe "Yo!" had a sort of magical power that manifested in the genetic memory of related groups of people around the world and perhaps it sort of grew out of some deep language meme in the DNA? As time passed and my ability and impetus to ask questions grew (I found myself responding to certain comments with "Yo!" as it just seemed to work) ... eventually, I asked my hostess - a beautiful Aboriginal woman whose name I couldn't pronounce, and the wife of the Jimi Hendrix of Didjeridu, Djalu Gurruwiwi , what "Yo!" meant in their language. The answer was and is that it means "Yes".

Right now there seems to be a renaissance of Hip Hop culture and some of my friends and collaborators, esp from the CypherTown crew can be heard and seen to be saying and writing "Yo!" a lot. It is my pleasure to point out from time to time that, not only is the didjeridu considered to be one of the oldest musical instruments (40,000 years in the keeping) , but "Yo!" is perhaps the oldest version of "Yes!" on the planet that we know of and is a word that would appear to hail from some of the coolest, oldest and deepest people on Planet Earth... "Yo!"