Culture: Hip hop celebrates its golden jubilee
August, 11th,1973-August,11th,2023, the cultural and social movement called hip hop will be 50 years old. The whole word will celebrate this anniversary. This latter commemorates the day when legendary DJ Kool Herc lit up a house party in the Bronx with his turntables. A cultural movement that embraced personal style and flavor among DJs, MCs and dancers was born.
“A day of august,11th 1973 in the Bronx…”
On this day in 1973, on the ground floor of a housing project at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx, a Jamaican-born DJ named Clive Campbell, also known as DJ Kool Herc, innovated by spinning the same record on two turntables, isolating the rhythm and percussion sequences and extending them through the speakers, foreshadowing the “breakbeat,” an essential component of hip-hop music.
“Birthday party”
“Celebrating 50 years is extraordinary. Because none of this was worth anything. When we started, nobody wanted to hire a DJ, an MC (Master of Ceremonies) or breakdancers”, recalls for AFP hip-hop historian Ralph McDaniels, one of the first to film the New York rap scene.
August 11, 1973 “was just a birthday party, but this party marked the beginning of it all”, says the 60-year-old, who has kept decades of archives, thousands of hours of images and sounds that he protects to pass on the memory of an era.
As a tribute to August 11, 50 years ago, DJ Kool Herc will share the bill for a mega-concert next Friday at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, the legendary home of the eponymous baseball team.
Other rap veterans scheduled to perform include Grandmaster Caz, Kurtis Blow, The Sugarhill Gang and pioneer Roxanne Shanté, as well as Lil Kim, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg and Run DMC.
To commemorate this anniversary, New York will be hosting a number of cultural initiatives throughout the summer, including graffiti and breakdance sessions, block parties and concerts.
