Edith Sitwell ... Poet Extraordinaire. Her groundbreaking music style is now copied everywhere, every day.

Good taste is the worst vice
ever invented.

This quote by Edith Sitwell (7 September 1887 – 9 December 1964) pretty much sums up her attitude to those for whom pretentious "good taste" was a self-inflicted prison.

Standing just on six feet tall, she was born into an aristocratic family in Britain.
Always a free-thinker, daring always to flout convention, positioned firmly at the centre of controversy, sensitive always to the pain of others, she walked her own unique path through life to the rhythm of a drumbeat that she alone seemed able to hear... or understand.

So different was the rhythm incessantly thrumming in her mind that in the immediate post-Edwardian era in Britain she began a new style of song, using the spoken word and music in counterpoint and bizarre harmony.

Intermittent staccato phrasing; sometimes with the music; sometimes the words and phrasing was the music; jarring, yet essentially, strangely, harmonic; earthy; always in touch with what was happening around her, anticipating, leading, cajoling, her style was stunningly different to anything heard before, decades ahead of its time.

We instantly recognise her groundbreaking music style today in what we call ....

RAP!

DAME EDITH SITWELL WAS The world's

FIRST RAPPER