On the eve of the anniversary of 50 years of Hip Hop, we must pay homage to Jamaican-born DJ Kool Herc from the Bronx, who if not for deejaying a back-to-school party for his younger sister in the community room of an apartment building on Sedgwick Avenue, his contribution to Hip Hop would not have been known. That party happened on August 11, 1973.
He is known as the “Founder of Hip-Hop” and “Father of Hip-Hop“.
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Clive Campbell known as DJ Kool Herc had just turned 18 and introduced the “toasting” style popular to Jamaica. He developed the style that was the blueprint for hip hop music. Herc used the record to focus on a short, heavily percussive part in it: the “break”. Since this part of the record was the one the dancers liked best, Herc isolated the break and prolonged it by changing between two record players.
This innovation had its roots in what Herc called “The Merry-Go-Round”, a technique by which the deejay switched from break to break at the height of the party. The style soon spread around the New York City metro region.
Herc also contributed to developing the rhyming style of hip hop by punctuating the recorded music with slang phrases, announcing: “Rock on, my mellow!” “B-boys, b-girls, are you ready? keep on rock steady” “This is the joint! Herc beat on the point” “To the beat, y’all!” “You don’t stop!” For his contributions, Herc is called a “founding father of hip hop”, a “nascent cultural hero”, and an integral part of the beginnings of hip hop by Time.
B-boys and b-girls were created as the dancers to Herc’s breaks. Herc coined the terms which became part of the lexicon of what would be eventually called hip hop culture.
Two years later, other DJs started following Herc’s style. Afrika Bambaataa, who first heard Herc in 1973, obtained his own soundsystem in 1975 and began to DJ in Herc’s style, converting his followers to the non-violent Zulu Nation in the process. In 1976, DJ Grandmaster Flash and his MCs The Furious Five played to a packed Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan.
Kool Herc released his first vinyl record with Mr. Green in May 2019.
