The incredible variety of socioeconomic parts in the city of New York strikes especially those who have not grown up here, as have I. Before I moved here, before living on the Upper East Side being warned by everyone to never take the train uptown from my 97th street dorm, I always wondered why my brain made the intuitive association between Hip Hop, street gangs and The Bronx. As I then did a little research it suddenly all seemed very clear to me. Even though the single elements of the Hip Hop culture like Rap which originated from earlier Jamaican music or B-boying (commonly known as break dancing) is a dance form combining many different other dance types, and has therefore in some way already existed before that, it was the South Bronx, what became known as the official birth place of the elaborate Hip Hop culture. Now one must know that its metaphorical mother certainly did not have the five-year-plan with two Kids, backyard and cozy family Thanksgiving dinners in mind when getting pregnant. The Hip Hop movement wasn’t planned, people simply reacted to their miserable situations, but in a way that over time appeared more and more attractive to a broader and broader audience, to the point where rappers don’t only yell funny rhymes in the microphones at their friends’s house parties anymore, but rather perform in the Yankee stadium or tell the story of America’s founding fathers in current Broadway Musicals like “Hamilton”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOyaJG1iVFU
To understand Hip Hop and its artistic value, one must know the historical and resulting economic background of its foundation spot. As we know, there is usually more than one factor responsible for the evolution of something new, but there are also always concrete crucial points that initiate or highly influence the story of it. Keeping this in mind, even though the circumstances definitely did not just include this single event, it all started in 1959 when parks commissioner Robert Moses started building an express way through the heart of the Bronx. One major result was that the middle class moved away and disappeared and therefore businesses and factories relocated out of that borough,and were then replaced by poor black and Hispanic families. With the neighborhood decline ( including neighborhood services ) came poverty with all its attendant ills. Furthermore, Robert Moses also built a co op apartment in 1968 that made the middle class leave even faster and made reputable landlords sell out to professional slumlords. Buildings were vacant and deteriorating. And with the co op apartment, the Co Op city arose. Teenager boys terrorized the Southeast Bronx, Grafiti and gangs started shortly after. But those were only mile stones in what would build up to be the aweful circumstances Hip Hop was created of and into.
Between 1970 and 1975 it was estimated that there were 68,456 fires in the South Bronx… more than 33 each and every night.
The urban renewal and the benign neglect of the Nixon administration created a permanent and constant pressing setting. The building of the New York’s cross-bronx expressway had destroyed homes and had many people relocate in wasteland like the South Bronx which obviously did not contribute to any excitement or happiness those new residents had towards moving into the south Bronx, but rather amplified and deepened hatred and frustration. So as stated Hip Hop wasn’t a movement; kids who started it simply tried to pass the time, tried to have fun but grew up under politics of abandonment and so eventually started a powerful and contagious movement.
“Hip Hop has a deep history that reflects its time period and location of origin”, sais a music historian in the context of trying to explain the value of Hip Hop and relating to the following quote. “ I haven’t seen anything like that since London after the Blitz”as quoted by Ronald Reagan, commenting on a picture of a deteriorated building while referring to the very cruel and devastating blitzkriege in World War 2 which left Europe in ruins. The image of Hip Hop, the images of clearly visible inhumane living conditions and standards corresponded to the sad reality of many. Because of a law that obligated the state to pay individuals when living conditions were too low, unscrupulous landlords would burn down their houses intentionally instead of paying for fixes. As more and more people were using this method to save money, the government was not able to pay for all burnt down houses any more and let many of them unfixed for over a decade. Meanwhile poverty was worsening. As poverty increased so did gang and violence rates. Drugs and graffiti were everywhere. It was a time of oppression, neglect and poverty, a time in a place that brought up intense feelings about the own situation.
In the 1960s however, as a reaction to it, the FBI suppressed radical black groups and gang wars so that in the beginning of 1970s their aggressive expression came through djing, mcing, break dancing and graffiti. Hip Hoppers made value out of what seemed to offer nothing but destruction. DJs spontaneously grabbed the microphone and pleasured the crowd. Break dancers were waiting for the beats to dance to. Hip Hop is often associated with “gangsta” rap and street gangs but is actually a conscious alternative to the worship of violence. Afrika Bambaata, one of the reknowned founding fathers of Hip Hop changed gangs into crews that battled with words rather than with guns. He created the Universal Zulu Nation.
Hip Hop’s actual foundation therefore was in the early 1970s by djs in the South Bronx. It was a step by step process (although steps that shall be briefly and respectively investigated) often in burnt out or deteriorating buildings. These pioneers invented sampling ( isolating one sound and reusing in other songs) and other key elements of Hip Hop mostly by trying out. When presenting those, people loved the aggression and its sound. It helped nurture the aggressive dance style that was present in the blocks of this neighborhood. Also graffiti evolved with it. Urban decay, Hip Hop epitomized abandonment in urban life, missing buildings in blocks, and feelings of utter discontent. Its Sound connected with the audience. Hip Hop was the streets. It speaks with an urgency to you. It speaks to your livelihood and is not compromised, its blunt and raw.
And it was for free. Before rap many styles were popular but all had feeling and rhythm in common. Especially white upper and middle class liked funk, which dominated New York’s nightlife, but was too expensive for many. So in poorer neighborhoods, like the one we are looking at, people would instead buy records and play them at block parties. This is how and where the myth about the birth of Hip Hop evolved.
Every culture needs a creation myth. In this case it was the party of the siblings Cindy and -now reknown as father of Hip Hop- DJ Kool Herc. They hosted the party in 1973 when Herc invented break beats for the first time. Following this first night of invention and innovation, Africa Bambaata, sampled as the first person, using global sounds from west indian music salsa music and beats from rock records. Grand Wizard Theordore invented scratching, moving record back and forth while playing. Then Joseph Sadler invented cutting, playing same thing on two turntables and so repeating back and forth as well as back spinning. All of these seem like small steps to us, but were big steps for the evolution Hip Hop culture.
“It is about values we want to transmit.” Joy states, an interviewd contemporary rapper herself. The power of creativity against the force of destruction, it is the “started from the bottom”- ethic that reached the people and especially the youth. Other values are kept in Hip Hop today that people felt and feel engaged in, as was inclusion, recognition, creativity and transformation. When we interview a person who has lived in the Bronx at that time period, he sais the Bronx was much more violent in the 70s and 80s but the music, Djs put out there back then was much less violent than it is now, even though the South Bronx themselves are calmer these days. Bustling energy came out of gang culture in 70s. Today this energy comes out of the music.
The Bronx may not be the place of musical innovation anymore, but the tradition is kept alive through work shops, open mics and and art works. 1520 Sedgwick Ave ( where Dj Kool Herc performed his revolutionary djing for the first time) was one of the big landmarks still standing in the Bronx. Also important to visit as a full blooded fan is the Webster Center Police Athlete League ( 2255 Webster ave), which had more indoor Hip Hop events than any where in the Bronx, and the Bronx River Houses (1605 East, 174 street) where legend Afrika Bambaataa created the Universal Zulu Nation . Although mainstream Hip Hoper might have grown into the glamorous world of celebrity performance spaces, and what not, original practitioners still gather in neighborhood spots. When you are more interested, you should definitely also visit the Bronx Music Heritage Center Lab. They organize the annual Crotona Park Jams, which recreate original dances and djs as were performed back in the days.
But clearly, it is not only an ancient musical evolvement only worth restoratively keeping alive. Throughout the last decades, it has grown much in terms of recognition and mainstream audience and is still. Only a few years after the legendary night of Kool Herc’s act, in 1979 the first Hip Hop song was released, by 1980 it sold a lot and was brought to a broader audience, 1980 Rappers delight had its first time performance on television and in 1982 the first political rap appeared. In 1988 then “Yo MTV Raps” brought the Hip Hop rhymes ultimately to a wider mainstream audience and from there spread it all over the world and its increasingly globalized media.