Diss Songs

"I was told a long time ago, ghosts and spirits don't like the fumes from ether, and I just wanted to affect him with my weapon and get to his soul." - Rapper Nas on his diss track "Ether" about Jay-Z

The oldest song on Wikipedia’s ‘List of diss tracks’ is “Yankee Doodle”. Originally written by a surgeon in the British army in the 1750’s, it was likely intended as good-humored mockery of the inexperience and impromptu attire of the American colonial militia during the French and Indian war. With the movement towards American Independence and the Revolutionary war, some of the lyrics were changed and the song took on a new meaning:

James Thacher in his “Military Journal” speaks of British troops marching out in 1775 to take part in the battle of Lexington, their band playing by way of contempt, Yankee Doodle. The adoption of the tune as a patriotic air gave it quite another aspect, however, a charge expressed by a British officer. Thomas Aubrey says in 1777, alluding to Burgoyne's surrender: “The soldiers at Boston used it as a term of reproach but after the battle of Bunker Hill, the Americans gloried in it. Yankee Doodle is now their poem, a favorite of favorites, played in their army, esteemed as warlike as the Grenadier's March. . . After our rapid successes we held the Yankees in great contempt, and it was not a little mortifying to hear them play this tune, when their army marched down to our surrender.”

While “Yankee Doodle” may represent one of the oldest diss songs still in use today—albeit with quite a modified meaning—we know the practice of composing and singing insulting songs has a long history.

Independent hunter-gatherer societies from all over the world have used diss songs in the midst of their conflicts. The Ju/’hoansi of the Kalahari “say that a song composed specifically about someone's behaviour and sung to express disapproval, perhaps from the deepest shadow of the werf at night, is a very effective means of bringing people who deviate back into the pattern of approved behaviour.”

Among the Tiwi of North Australia, “In many cases, a song and its interpretation were a reference by its composer to some wrong done to him and a statement of the type of sanction which he would impose to punish his injurer.” In this society, many marriages were arranged through men promising to exchange their sisters or their daughters, and there was a special type of song (tjimaruwentakaruwala) which was sung specifically to threaten a man who did not fulfill the terms of a marriage exchange.

In contexts of sexual antagonism, solidarity with one’s sex and denigration of the other may be expressed in song. Mbuti pygmy men of Central Africa sing songs mocking women during their secret molimo ceremonies. Among Mbendjele pygmies, “Women’s Ngoku [ritual association] songs often mock men. ‘Mojambi na yobe mapeni, ba mu ena’ (they cut the water liana with a sharp knife) mocks the men’s need for circumcision, and emphasises the perfection of women’s reproductive organs.”

Diss songs may also be used to enforce social norms, humiliating and punishing their violators to deter future breaches, “A song from Ibamba shames an adulterous couple: ‘Mindongo na Mate’ (their names were Mindongo and Mate). They were caught having sex in the forest. A song was made up about this, to their great shame and suffering. They are both dead now.”

Competitive feasting and warfare among societies along the Pacific Northwest Coast provided a context for diss songs. During the potlatch feasts of the Kwakiutl of British Columbia, the host is likely to sing a scornful song mocking a rival chief, and praising the feats of himself, his clan, and his ancestors. When hostile canoes would meet among the Haida of British Columbia, men would sing taunting songs in the enemies’ language.

Diss songs were said to be one of the most common methods for settling disputes among the Eyak of Alaska, where men would go up their rival’s house and insult them in song, to which the rival himself would respond in turn. Diss songs in this society were also used to respond to insufficient debt payment after a murder.

Some historical societies have been very disdainful of this method of conflict management, however. According to Cicero’s description of the Twelve Tables, composing a diss song could warrant a death sentence in ancient Rome. Cicero himself was apparently a big fan of this law. Historian P. R. Coleman-Norton writes,

vmII. i b: “xII tabulae cum perpaucas res capite sanxissent, in his hanc quoque sanciendam putaverunt: si quis occentavisset sive carmen condidisset, quod infamiam faceret flagitiumve alteri.” “The Twelve Tables, though these have made very few matters a capital offence, among these have considered this following [action] ought to be forbidden under pain of punishment: if any
one shall have sung or shall have composed a song, which could cause dishonor or disgrace to another.”

This regulation is assigned to Rep., iv. Io. 12, and comes from Augustinus, who quotes it from the De Re Publica in Civ. Dei, ii. 9 ad med. There Cicero calls it an excellent rule (praeclare), adding that we ought to have [our] life exposed to view before the judgements of magistrates [and] the disputes allowed by law, not before the cleverness of poets, nor [ought we] to hear an insult [about ourselves], unless on this condition, that it may be permitted [us] to reply and to defend [ourselves] in a law-court (iudicium), and concluding that the rule shows that for any living person either to be praised or to be reproached on the stage was displeasing to the ancient Romans. Cicero introduces the statute by a short statement on the license of comic playwrights, who, though they aim their arrows at bad politicians occasionally, yet sometimes shoot their shafts at good statesmen.

Note how Cicero’s objections here focus on his preferred method of resolving disputes within a court of law, and he appeals to the higher authority of the “judgements of magistrates”. Of course, for much of human history—and even for many kinds of interpersonal disputes today—intervention from the courts was not an option, and people had to navigate and manage such conflicts themselves.

We can see broadly that diss songs are often used to harm an opponent’s reputation, intimidate them, or demand restitution for some wrong they may have done to oneself. They can be an alternative to physical violence, or a prelude to it. Protecting your reputation, demanding better treatment, hurting a rival to boost one’s status, these all seem to be important components of diss songs.