In the Beginning… The Origin of Hip Hop
Hip Hop is such a common word nowadays. Everyone at least heard of hip hop and most have heard at least one hip hop song. Yet there was a time when no one knew of hip hop, and that time was not that long ago. A little over forty years ago, hip hop didn’t exist. Thanks to several revolutionary artists, hip hop has gone from the realm of obscurity to the forefront of music.
It all started with one man who really liked to throw parties. Clive Campbell or as he is more commonly known, DJ Kool Herc, began throwing the craziest of all crazy parties in the Bronx. He had developed a new type of technique to make the greatest beats around. Robbie Ettelson has broken down exactly what Kool Herc would do to keep the crowd dancing.
Herc kept the dancefloor jumping by isolating parts of the records with the “breakdown” — typically in the form of a percussion solo. Since these sections would always generate the most excitement from the dancers, why not continue the energy using two copies of the record? -Robbie Ettelson
These breakbeats were revolutionary to music and were the beginning of hip hop. Many other artists began adding netechniques and perfecting the art of breakbeats. A couple of the more famous of these artists were Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash. These two were instrumental in further advancing hip hop and making it into what it is today.
Afrika Bambaataa was the leader of a gang of mostly teenage people that began to form a new culture. He began stopping the violence that was prevalent in the inner city with his music and culture that he brought with him. Jeff Chang explains what Afrika Bambaataa was able to do best in his blog post, How Hip-Hop Got Its Name.
…a prophet of reconciliation and peace, someone able to practically stop bullets with a record. When they asked him if there was a name for all the things that they were seeing his acolytes do, Bambaataa told them, “Hip-hop.” He began talking about the movement’s “four elements” — DJing, rapping, breaking, and graffiti writing. (He later added a fifth, knowledge.) -Jeff Chang
Bambaataa brought about a huge culture change to the area where he was involved, but even he wasn’t able to perfect the breakbeat as well as Grandmaster Flash. Flash perfected the art of breakbeating and to make rappers more popular. For his shows, Flash would ask two of his rapper friends (one of which was Melle Mel) to come up on stage and perform with him to keep the crowd even more involved. This was the beginning of rapping as we know it today.
These three men were arguably the most instrumental in the development of hip hop as we know it today. Hip hop has grown from the parties that Herc would throw way back in the early 70s to the worldwide sensation that it is known as today, and who knows where it will be in forty more years. It might change over time, but its roots will never change.
