After hearing that Macklemore picked up awards for best rap performance, best rap song and best rap album at this week's Grammys, I smiled softly to myself and thought, finally, FINALLY, white rappers are getting the recognition they so deeply deserve - for isn't it white people who created rap music in the first place?

Yes, I think they did, just like they created blues, jazz, rock'n'roll, doo-wop, hip-hop, bee-bop, break dancing, beatboxing and African American slave-spirituals. Maybe it's time to set the record straight, time to start acknowledging the great forgotten musical pioneers, the unheralded white heroes of popular music, from Al Jolson to Elvis Presley, Bananarama to the Uncanny X-Men.

Singer Justin Bieber. Credit:Getty Images

When white Americans first created ''the blues'' in the 1920s, it was a cry from within, a soulful expression of the hardships of white life - the agony of a bumpy hayride at the local fair, the stress of reverse-parking a Model T Ford. But in no time, black musicians noticed the commercial possibilities of the ''white-man's blues'' and ripped it off, popularised it, corrupted it with their rich, multi-textured voices, innovative instrumental techniques, and depressing lyrics about prison life and civil rights - tearing the raw easy-listening whiteness right out of the music.