Nerds rise up!

HIGH NOTES

As it turns out, a development called Nerdcore seems to have slipped under our musically-aware noses rather unassumingly. Or, is it just my nose? Anyway, it has been around for a while now and has reached a stage where you can't ignore it anymore.

It's definitely worth paying attention to, especially if you are one of the kind of people who have switched operating system preferences to Linux "" just for the heck of it.

If you didn't know and haven't guessed so far, Nerdcore has everything to do with nerds. In fact, it is something of a nerd uprising, using hip-hop music as its predominant weapon of expression and is basically a sub-genre of hip-hop that also goes by the name Geeksta (play on the term Gangsta, you see).

While the terms themselves are curious, it really is the subject matter that sets Nerdcore apart from more traditional forms of hip-hop. Where hip-hop will rap about the perils of life or things within the realm of booty and bling, Nerdcore draws inspiration from the absolutely contrary life of the geek.

And when we say that, we are talking about rapping about things like Firefox, .rar files, internet porn addiction, algorithms, gaming and many other things that a lot of us wouldn't understand.

But that's what Nerdcore is and M C Frontalot is publicly acknowledged as its grandfather, having coined the term in his song "Nerdcore Hip Hop" in the year 2000 "" which also gives you an idea of how long this boat has actually been sailing.

So like hip-hop music, Nerdcore finds artistes like M C Frontalot and Optimus Rhyme rapping about the life of geeks which is quite similar, in principal, to 50 Cent rapping about the life of gangsters. That's one way of looking at it. The other is quite simply that it gives nerds the world over something to love and identify with.

A documentary by comedian Negin Farsad called Nerdcore Rising follows Frontalot on his first national American tour and talks to other artistes involved in the genre, like Penny Arcade, who solemnly says, "As long as there are nerds there will be Nerdcore", and M C Chris, who talks philosophically about the music as a genre.

The most interesting comments, though, come from fans who mostly swear by the genre saying things akin to "Nerdcore saved my life", and others who say things like "I think Nerdcore is a little bit racist" implying that there probably are Nerdcore wannabes, which translates into wannabe nerds "" something which has not existed before.

As it turns out, a lot of Nerdcore music is available free online, which may have something to do with a preference for open source technology on the artistes' part. Also, the revolution has been taking place largely on the Internet, which isn't very surprising considering that we are talking about nerds.

But Nerdcore is not to be taken lightly. There's another film called Nerdcore For Life that is set for release this year as the artistes slowly make their way into the consciousness of audiences globally. And if you think you have it in you to rap poetical about all things geeky, check out "5 Steps to Nerdcore Stardom" online.

(craig_fernandes@hotmail.com)