HIP-HOP TURNS FIFTY
Meet 18-year-old Clive Campbell, who, at age 12, immigrated from Jamaica to the Bronx of New York City with his family. A lover of music and dancing, Campbell called himself DJ Kool Herc and earned money as a disc jockey-for-hire at neighborhood parties.
THE BIRTH OF A NEW GENRE OF MUSIC
It was late summer in the Bronx and Cindy Campbell wanted to earn some cash for back-to-school clothes. She arranged an event in the apartment building where she liv brother, Clive — an ar everyone knew as DJ would play the type o dance music for whic was becoming known
Herc had learned ear record-playing caree crowds would often the drum break in th of a song before they out onto the floor.
Like most DJs, his se included two turntab These were normally to make a smooth tra tion from the end of song to the start of another.
Herc called his idea t “Merry-Go-Round.” He put the same record on each of the turntables and then bounce between the two, playing that drum break part over and over. He found that the dance crowd — especially the athletic young men who where there to impress the ladies — loved these sessions to perform all sorts of spins and jumps. Because all this happened during extended drum breaks, they began calling themselves “b-boys” and “b-girls.” Herc called them his “break dance
xpanded o used by DJ e in Jamaic ey’d talk ov he records e playing. s back in a called it ng.” In the they referr “rapping.”
ummer of rc had bee “toasting” an erry-Go-Rou ques for nea ut his sister’s party g. 11, 1973, drew the t crowd for which he er played and he used the most powerful sound system on which he had ever worked.
The party was a big hit. Other DJs began emulating what DJ Kool Herc was doing. Over time, break dancing grew as an art form. At some point, musicians began recording music that consisted of nearly nothing but a backbeat so they could rap over it, improvising rhyming monologues
One such event — 50 years ago, on Aug. 11, 1973, at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx — is recognized today as the birth of hip-hop music.
whatnot.
hop — or “rap,” as many d it — continued to evolve in Bronx and began to spread across the rest of the ntry. DJs Grandmaster Flash Jazzy Jay were early eers of the new genre.
Hop would pop onto the tional radar six years after DJ ool Herc’s neighborhood arty when a group called the arhill Gang released a song called “Rapper’s Delight” would break into the top 40 he Billboard Hot 100 and ld reach No. 4 on the Hot Singles chart.
017, hip-hop surpassed rock and pop to become the nation’s biggest music genre in terms of consumption, reported the Nielsen media data service. Eight of that year’s 10 most listened-to artists were hip-hop artists.
It was estimated that the hip-hop industry contributed $10 billion to the U.S. economy in 2019, based on sales of music, merchandise and concert tickets.
In May of this year, DJ Kool Herc was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the “Musical Influence” award category.