2023 marks the year that the Hip-Hop genre celebrates its 50th birthday. The Vice President’s residence is one of the many odd locations where the celebrations of the highly recognized genre have spread its essence reminding others throughout the world of the many marks it has made and its impact on many lives.
This year offers us a special chance to reflect on the past fifty years of growth and to pause and evaluate the influence of Black Caribbean musicians who helped to shape the global phenomenon known as hip-hop culture, democratized broadcast, and combined old and new genres to create new ones.
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Initially, on August 11, 1973, Clive Campbell, a Jamaican-born DJ better known as Kool Herc, led a back-to-school jam in a West Bronx apartment building. Kool Herc invented a method of extending breaks between beats using two turntables and a mic mixer “merry-go-round.” The man who oversaw the legendary rec-room party, his sister Cindy, went on to become the pioneering promoter of hip-hop. One of the biggest cultural forces of the contemporary age was essentially born out of this party, which has since become legendary.
When hip-hop first started, it had no labels. It was the result of DJs looping disco, funk, and soul music; it was a novel approach to employing percussion-heavy R&B songs for entertainment at a period of profound societal upheaval. DJ Kool Herc provided uptown neighborhoods in New York with a type of people’s choice entertainment by combining break-heavy hits from James Brown to the Incredible Bongo Band, all backed by his massive sound system and collection of funk and soul records.
Soon after, Herc became known as a trailblazer in the hip-hop scene in New York City. Hip-hop was still mostly an underground phenomenon in 1977, but this behemoth of sound finally faced combat in an epic clash at the Executive Playhouse. In 1970s New York, Herc and his West Bronx group finally became the hub for young people of color, accompanied by other adventurous DJs serving up looping breaks and party vibes. A few of the new pioneers were Herc’s fellow Caribbean-born friends, Kool DJ Red Alert, Grandmaster Flash, and Afrika Bambaataa.
Since it explains the competitive energy, do-it-yourself creativity, and public spectacle of mobile jockey culture, the Caribbean link is essential to understanding this history. Some people, the MCs, were the ones that these DJs, the stars of their local party scenes, depended on to get people excited and brag about the artist’s incredible turntable talents. The Jamaican “toasting” custom and the “sound clash” culture that accompanied it were the sources of that DJ-MC interaction.
Sound clashing was a common sight in Kingston, Jamaica’s inner cities even before hip-hop made its debut in the Bronx in 1973. By the middle of the 1950s, rival local DJ teams were starting to emerge, like “sound systems,” usually had a sound technician, MC, and record selection running a rig of turntables, amplifiers, speakers, and microphones. In the heat of the moment, neighborhood youth acted as the system operators’ foot soldiers of hyperbole and hyperbole.
A portion of these young individuals were the outcome of Jamaica’s recent land seizures and extractive industries, which accelerated the gradual uprooting of residents from rural hillsides and drove migrants toward the nation’s capital in pursuit of employment and prospects. In the West Kingston region, close to downtown markets, many, including Herc’s family and many of the first generation of reggae musicians, moved into brand-new, reasonably priced urban housing buildings. A sense of empowerment that nourished Jamaica’s clash culture’s competitive spirit emerged from these communities and their joint efforts to reconstruct lives.
DJ crews fought over control of “turf” small retail establishments, public housing developments, or “government yards” where the general public gathered during the early years of Jamaican sound battling. Clashes, or renowned party competitions, typically feature two or more sound systems. To gain the support of the audience and establish themselves as the current champion sound, everyone wanted to play the greatest record selections. Friendly rivalries might turn deadly violent, just as future hip-hop conflicts. However, conflicts were more often than not spontaneous dance celebrations and occasions for underprivileged people to seize control of public space.
Comparable to how New York’s DJs would mix several genres to entertain b-boys and b-girls, Kingston’s early sound system operators, legendary innovators like Tom the Great Sabastian and Sir Nick the Champ, combined American R&B, soul, and jazz with newly popular Jamaican music like mento and ska to sensational effect.
When Jamaica gained its independence from the United Kingdom in 1962, sound systems were gradually assimilating into the wider Jamaican diaspora, ultimately making their way to East London and New York City.
Due to the ability to get British citizenship a holdover from British colonization migrants from Jamaica were able to bypass America’s generally rigid immigration laws, leading to significant waves of immigration from Jamaica to the United States and England at this time. Jamaicans who came to the United States as permanent immigrants mostly settled in the established immigrant havens of New York City and the tristate region, whereas cane-cutting migrants were more likely to work in the seasonal labors of the American South. Kool Herc’s family was among the immigrants who carried their customs and folk cultures with them, including sound system usage.
Herc was aware from the start of how playback technology might be used to distort and drastically alter recorded music in an attempt to distinguish himself as a party performer who was influenced by the flare of Jamaican sound systems.
Although Herc felt that his methods were different from his Jamaican background he preferred harsh funk to reggae “riddims” he was influenced by the loud, confrontational systems he had experienced in his West Kingston Trenchtown area.
Just a few years after his family migrated to the United States, he made a reputation for himself in the Bronx by modeling his mobile jockey business after Kingston’s first sound system pioneers. Herc created one of the loudest sound systems in 1970s New York City by connecting a pair of six-foot speaker towers, which he named the Herculoids, to a McIntosh stereo power amplifier.
DJ Grandmaster Flash, whose real name is Joseph Richard Sadler, moved to the Bronx from Barbados with his family in the early 1960s, following a wave of other Caribbean immigrants heading into the New York metropolitan region. Being an early adopter of new technologies, he had become a pioneer in the field. In actuality, a seasoned Jamaican sound system expert living in the Bronx constructed one of Flash’s original sound systems, called the Gladiator.
The foundation for the Universal Zulu Nation, a youth organization promoting Bronx hip-hop culture with Black Power influences, was being built by up-and-coming Caribbean-American DJs like Afrika Bambaataa and Kool DJ Red Alert, among others, while Flash was developing his distinctive “quick mix” turntable approach. With their combined efforts, these musicians helped create a new rap genre by fusing the poetry of the Black Arts Movement, Caribbean music practices, funk-era “rapping,” and other Black and Latino vernacular legacies.
Turntablism and live production were introduced by a growing generation of DJs who carried on the traditions established by hip-hop’s founding ten years ago. As with the champion sound systems of Jamaica, what started as an attempt to win over the neighborhood became much more. Hip-hop DJs had evolved by the 1980s from just “rocked parties”; They laid the groundwork for rap’s development and made the MC’s ascent possible. Disc jockeys became beat producers and scratch artists in addition to innovative record spinners and presenters when they mastered the subtle art of turntable mixology.
DJ and MC competitions continue to elevate both old- and new-school hip-hop legends, demonstrating how Jamaican tradition continues despite the genre’s drastic shifts. Hip-hop has its origins in African-American music and culture, but it was born in America and has ties to the histories of immigrants and diasporic cultures as well. That may serve as a reminder of the true depth and complexity of the culture.
