Up Front: I’ve waited a long time for this; a very long time 

“But if you only have love for your own race, then you only leave space to discriminate, and to discriminate only generates hate; and when you hate you’re bound to get irate.”

Marco sang along while a hip-hop song by The Black Eyed Peas played on the radio.

“What did you just say?” I asked.

“... I think the whole world’s addicted to the drama, only attracted to the things that bring you trauma. Overseas we’re trying to stop terrorism, but we still got terrorists here, livin’ in the USA, the big CIA, the Bloods, and the Crips and the KKK,” he sang on.

“Marco? Do you know what the CIA, the Bloods, the Crips and the KKK are?” I asked cautiously — a tad worried about what his answer might be.

He nodded. “Yes, the Bloods wear red, the Crips wear blue but I’m not so sure what CIA or KKK is or what colors they wear,” he answered.

Marco’s eight.

“Do you know that the Bloods and the Crips are gangs?” I asked him, looking into his big, brown, innocent eyes.

“They are?” his brown eyes looking back at me, getting even larger.

“Yes. They are. And do you know that CIA stands for Central Intelligence Agency and KKK stands for Ku Klux Klan?”

“I don’t know what clucks, clucks, cans are mommy,” he replied, “or the center of intelligents.”

I began to worry about my 8-year-old dancing around the house singing songs about gangs and violence and terrorists and hate. I remember the good old days when it was so much easier to control their music choices — Sesame Street, Disney, Barney.

No matter how much Leonardo and I loathed Barney, the big purple dinosaur — who could argue with “I love you, you love me, we’re a happy family with a great big hug and a kiss from me to you, won’t you say you love me too?”

“Don’t you like this song?” Marco asked me while lip-syncing the words and bopping around the kitchen. “You don’t have to worry, the brothers and I don’t listen to explicit songs.” He was referring to his older brothers — Matteo, Massimo and Marcello.

“Excuse me? Explicit? Where did you learn that?” I asked.

“Mommy,” he rolled his eyes, “explicit music has that ‘parental advisory — explicit’ sticker on it. Those rappers use bad words and say bad stuff in their songs. You don’t let us listen to them.

“Bad words and bad stuff, huh? I think they call that gangsta rap, don’t they?”

“I don’t know what that is but I know we don’t listen to it,” Marco assured me. “This is hip-hop. It’s good music,” he said, pointing to the radio.

By this time, my older boys who had been eavesdropping on our conversation decided to weigh in.

“Gangsta rap? Why do you call it that?” Massimo asked.

“Because, that’s what it is. It’s rap about gang life,” I said.

“Yeah, so?”

“So, I want to make sure that all of you, including your baby brother really understand that we should not admire nor support rappers who sing about hate. There is something very wrong with the world when young people glamorize gang life and gangsta rap,” I told them.

“But mommy, it’s just music. Those rappers are just expressing their freedom of speech and their freedom of song — nothing wrong with that,” Massimo (who’s 13 going on 30) reasoned with me.

“Massi’s right, mommy — to them, that’s their music — nobody forces us to listen to it and actually we don’t; and we’re not forced to buy it. You always tell us that people should have the freedom to express themselves, right?” Matteo, the oldest of my four boys, added.

“Yes they should, but —”

“What’s the big deal? It’s just music, mommy,” Marcello interrupted.

“You should understand what we’re saying, your dad was a musician,” Massimo said. He was right.

My dad, Orlando Solis, was a musician.

He was a lead singer and a drummer in the late 50s and early 60s.

While growing up, my dad’s younger brother would regale me with colorful stories about my dad, their fans, the groupies and the road trips. Stories about how they used to open for Sammy Davis, Jr., Dean Martin, and Ol’ Blue Eyes in the über-chichi lounges of Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Palm Springs and New York City.

On the night of his final performance in L.A., my dad was killed by a drunk driver — a teen-age drunk driver. It was July 4, 1966. He was only 27, I was almost 2. After that last performance, he was expected to come home to the Philippines to celebrate my second birthday with me. He never made it.

So I never actually met my dad — the musician. But growing up, I wondered a lot how different my life might have been had he been a part of it. I think about how amazing it would have been to grow up in a house filled with musicians, music and song.

But I only knew him from faded black and white photographs, memorable stories told to me over and over again and the music he left behind.

“Mommy, you have nothing to worry about! We don’t think gangs are cool. We do like hip-hop and rap, but that doesn’t mean we ‘glamorize’ gangs and it doesn’t mean that all hip-hop and rap is bad,” Matteo assured me.

“You worry too much,” Marcello added.

“I think rappers sing about stuff they know is controversial because it’s what sells. Didn’t your dad ever sing about controversial stuff?” Massimo asked.

“Actually no, he didn’t. He sang about love and he sang about ...” I began to reply but suddenly, I stopped to listen to Marco who was still singing that song:

“Whatever happened to the values of humanity? Whatever happened to the fairness and equality, instead of spreading love, we’re spreading animosity, lack of understanding, leading us away from unity.

Ask yourself, where is the love? Where’s the truth? If you never know truth then you never know love. Where’s the love y’all? I don’t know. Where’s the truth y’all? I don’t know. You gotta’ let your soul gravitate to the love y’all.”

Love? He’s singing about love.

All that time, he was singing about love and peace and humanity. That hip-hop song was about truth and love.

So even though my boys may have outgrown the days of Elmo, Mickey and Barney — their music’s still about love.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Thank goodness.

So while we work to spread truth and love and peace — just like the song says — we also work to keep music alive in our home because I’ve discovered something very important after all of these years. My boys were given a gift — a very special gift. The gift of music. And I can’t help thinking my dad had something to do with that.

15-year-old Matteo rocks when he plays his electric guitar. When the volume’s cranked up high on the amps, the entire neighborhood can hear him jammin’. He puts on quite an entertaining show.

Massimo strums his guitar — callousing his born-to-play-an-instrument fingers — while he practices and writes his next solo. He’s pretty awesome and incredibly talented. And, he can sing.

Marcello, our very hip 10-year-old drummer boy, definitely takes after my dad. He never tires of his drums. He’s a cool kid. And when he plays those drums, he’s one very cool cat.

And Marco? Marco’s waiting for his new keyboard to arrive. Until then, he goofs around with the Hawai’ian ukelele we bought him on vacation and he’s still lip-syncing to hip-hop on the radio — and asking, “Where is the love?”

But you know something? I don’t wonder anymore what it would’ve been like to grow up in a house filled with musicians, music and song because now I know.

I’ve waited a long time for this. A very long time.

But now, I know.

Mina Fasulo is editor in chief of California Schools.