Lion and Elephant: Origins of the Rivalry

Dr. Jurgen Streeck, of the University of Texas at Austin, writes on the origins of rap music:


"Yet another African-American speech genre that reappears in rap
are the toasts. Toasts are rhymed folk-tales about various mythical folkheroes.
The most famous ones are Staggolee, a gangster (who is
actually based on a real person), Shane who by his wit survived the
sinking of the Titanic, and—to me the most intersting one—the Signifying
Monkey (which apparently was brought to America by the slaves from
West-Africa); it may originally have been a Yoruba figure. The signifying
monkey always does one thing: he tells the lion that the elephant has
insulted him (the lion, or vice versa), which makes the lion get into a fight
with the elephant. He gets bruised and beaten and comes back to beat
up the monkey. Sometimes the monkey escapes onto the tree,
sometimes he gets beaten, but he always comes back to signify some
more: he just can’t repress his linguistic wit."


I guess this explains why that damn monkey got booted after their first project. Has anyone heard from the monkey? Hmmmmm.