Graffiti art, breakdancing, and fashion, not just rapping and djing. His class is about an hour. Prof. Naison this lecture is entitled why hiphop began in the bronx. What i am about to describe to you is one of the most improbable and Inspiring Stories youll ever hear. It is about how young people in a section of new york, widely regarded as the site of unspeakable violence and tragedy, created an art form that would sweep the world. It is a story filled with ironies, unexplored connections, and lessons for today. And i am proud to share it not only with my wonderful rock and roll to hiphop class, but with cspans global audience in its lectures on American History series. The information in this lecture has come from two major sources. First of all, the oral histories of the bronx africanAmerican History project, which has taken place over the last 14 years. We have done over 300 interviews with people who grew up in the bronx from the 1930s up to the present. And, in the process, documented several generations of bronx music history. And that research informs what im about to tell you. But this also reflects my experience lecturing in europe about hiphop and creating something called the bronxberlin youth exchange, which is an interchange between social workers and youth workers in berlin and new york city who use hiphop to motivate and reach disfranchised youth. I have been to berlin six times. I have been to barcelona twice. And in the course of this. And so, i have had a chance to experience firsthand how hiphop culture has spread into sections of europe, where it was enthusiastically adopted. And it has also spread to many other portions of the world. So before going into the substance of my lecture, which explores some features of bronx history, which many people might not be familiar with, i want to explain one definition of hiphop that i will be using in this talk. Some people think of hiphop as exclusively rap music, an art form taken to its highest level tupac, missye elliott, jayz, kendrick lamar, wu tang clan, and other masters of that verbal and musical art. But i am describing hiphop as a multilayered art movement, of which rapping is only one component. What you evolved in the bronx in the early and mid1970s, and whispered to communities around the world in the 1980s, and is still spreading to this day, consisted of four connected components. First of all, djing and beat making, which was the original artform that spawned the hiphop revolution. Because when people talk about the start of hiphop, they talk about the three djs that helped spread it through the bronx, first, grandmaster flash, and africa bum botta. The second form was bboying, or breakdancing, a form of acrobatic dance that had more than a few commonalities with martial arts, but also drew upon traditions of dance in latin music and rhythm and blues and funk, epitomized by people like james brown. The third is graffiti art, a form of illegal public art and selfexpression which found its way into flyers announcing hiphop events as well as on buildings and Transportation Systems in new york, especially buses and subways. And finally, last but not least, emceeing and rapping. Rhyming over beats in a style that could vary from the boastful to the reflective to the assertively political. All of these art forms, which emerged in the bronx in the middle and late 1970s, spread around the world together, disseminated by film and music video. And can be found today in almost every city of the world, in one form or another. Let me give an example. When i was first brought to berlin to lecture on bronx hiphop culture in 2005, my host took me to an abandoned school in the kreutzburg section of the city, which had been turned into a Community Center. I was stunned by the visual image projected. Almost every surface inside and outside the building was covered by the elaborate, multicolored graffiti murals in the style that covered subway trains in new york in the 1970s and 1980s. Clearly, in this section of berlin, what was seen as vandalism by many new yorkers, was prized as an Expressive Art form to be encouraged among young people in the poor immigrant neighborhoods. Secondly, i was taken to a breakdance class where young women, some of them wearing hijabs, were learning dance moves perfected 40 years before in the bronx. Finally, i was shown a stateoftheart music studio, where the beat makers and rappers were producing original music in which the language of choice varied between german, turkish, and english. And turkish because immigrants from turkey were the largest Minority Group in berlin and in germany generally. And this was not the only place where i saw the art forms of hiphop. I saw the four art forms of hiphop honored this way. I saw the same glorification of the four elements of hiphop in three other Community Centers in berlin, most of them serving immigrants from turkey, the middle east, and eastern europe, as well as culpable comparable Community Centers in barcelona, spain. In all these places, as well as their counterparts in paris, havana, rio de janeiro, rome, tokyo, and even hanoi, the art forms are being cultivated with love and respect and transmitted to new generations of youth, all with the understanding that they started in the bronx. I am going to pass around to you of french hiphop. Which is an Art Exhibition in paris which explains, visually, how hiphop, which started in the bronx, spread to paris and its suburbs. And then became an integral part of the movement known as the arab spring, where the arts of hiphop were part of that social movement in many different countries. So what started in the bronx has gone global. So the big question here is, why the bronx . Why did this multidimensional artform start in the bronx, and why did it spread . In answering this question, i am going to look at three different variables. One, the unique Cultural Capital of the bronx and its people, which derived from immigration and the mixing of cultures. Two, the tragedies which befell the bronx in the 1960s and 1970s, once regarded as unique, which would hit other cities and communities in subsequent years, not only in the u. S. But in many other places. And third, the easy accessibility of the bronx via Public Transportation. Harlem, midtown manhattan, the village in the lower east side, where culture makers and entrepreneurs, when they saw what was going on in the bronx, were in a position to market what they saw nationally and globally. So, before going into these three underlying factors, the Cultural Capital the bronx, the tragedies which struck the bronx, and the proximity of the bronx to culture making centers in new york, i want to give you a brief hiphop timeline. Most scholars think that the big bang which launched hiphop took place at the parties held by Cindy Campbell and her brother, cambell, aka, dj kool at the Community Center of a housing complex at 1520 sedgwick avenue in 1973. There, he discovered that the dancers of the party would go crazy if they used two turntables and percussion sections of popular records, which they called break beats, into 10 minutes of pure percussion. After several hugely successful parties at the Community Center, he decided to take his sound system to a public park 10 blocks north of his house, cedar park, using electricity from the bottom of a lamp post. Thousands of young people came to his outdoor jams, which were not broken up by police, even though they were done without a permit. And other talented djs in the bronx decided to follow the example. Among these were a former gang leader from the bronx, one of them who called himself africa bom botta, and a young man from mauritania, who trained in electronics at a Vocational High School who called himself grandmaster flash. By 1976, parties where the djs competed with one another to create the most danceable beats using breakbeats from records were taking place all over the bronx in parks and Community Centers, in school yards and abandoned buildings. At these parties, dance competitions between crews, using innovative steps taken from martial arts movies, latin dancing, and james brown moves, became common occurrences, almost to the point where they were as much a part of the event as the djs. Soon, the djs, who were competitive with one another, started to try to distinguish themselves by commandeering street poets to rhyme over their beats. And by the late 1970s, the artistry of the rappers was starting to gain as much attention as the djs and the dancers. By now, the parties were starting to spread into private clubs and dance halls, as well as parks and Community Centers, places like disco fever and the stardust ballroom, and people from other parts of the city and region were starting to take notice. Then, in 1979, a record entrepreneur from englewood, new jersey named sylvia robertson, who had once been a singer and club owner in the bronx, decided to try to record the music. She put out a record called rappers delight, which almost went platinum and set businesspeople to decide there were new Business Opportunities to be found in this bronxbased art form. Within five years, scores of rap records were being produced. Some which have their own music videos. And massmarket films were produced which highlighted the bronx setting for hiphop, as well as the djing, the rapping, the breakdancing, and the graffiti, which were all integral parts of the scene. As a result, hiphop in all its forms spread around the city, the nation, and the world, almost always in places where there were large numbers of people who felt disenfranchised and marginalized. So essentially, the marketing of hiphop, which spread it outside of the bronx, around the country, and the world, really began in the late 1970s. And for the first six years, there was little outside attention given to what was later hailed as a musical revolution. So that is the broad story. Why the bronx . Lets look first at the population of the bronx and the sonic universe they lived in prior to hiphop. The concept of a sonic universe is, to me, very important, because a lot of you know when we were talking about rock n roll that the sonic universe of many workingclass communities was receptive to harmonic music. In the 1970s, those same communities are becoming responsive to a much more percussive and inyourface kind of music. So what are some of the features of the bronx, culturally, that led the bronx to have more receptivity to the percussive elements of popular music than many other places . And here, you have to understand something about the unique history of the bronx. Well before the emergence of hiphop, several neighborhoods in the south bronx had a mixture of cultures and traditions that made them unique in new york city. And the nation fostered musical creativity. In the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, two large workingclass neighborhoods in the south bronx, were peacefully integrated by three different population streams coming from harlem and east harlem. Africanamericans originally from the u. S. South, west phone rom and the anglophone caribbean countries like jamaica, antigua, and barbados, and spanishspeaking people coming from puerto rico, cuba, and panama. Each of these peoples brought their own musical traditions to the neighborhood schools and housing projects that they lived in, and over time, these traditions fused them more in the most remarkable ways. By the 1950s, the clubs, theaters, and churches and schools in these neighborhoods were places where you could hear afrocuban music, mambo, doowop and rhythm and blues, beebop and dixieland jazz, and calypso. By the 1960s, these musical forms began to evolve as the americanborn youth began to transform them, giving rise to salsa, funk, and latin soul. After a while, the white population of those neighborhoods largely moved out, leaving only a few people left behind. But what you had in the bronx was a mixture of more people from different parts of the African Diaspora than existed anywhere in new york city. And having people from these different traditions living in the same Apartment Buildings and housing projects produced the unique, sonic universe where melodies and songs in different languages took place through a backdrop of powerful percussion. And i want to give you a few quotes which describe what it was like. Nowhere else in new york city did people who came from the American South or from the anglophone caribbean, live in proximity with spanishspeaking people from the caribbean. And as a result, everyone in the bronx danced to latin music and had an experience of hearing latin percussion. So let me read you a couple of quotes which bring this to life, because it helps prepare the way for hiphop. This comes from a book by alan jones. Called the rap that got away. The Patterson Houses, which opened in the 1950s, at night were alive with activity and sound. Music is everywhere, coming out of peoples apartments and on project benches. On one side of the street, you would have people bring out turntables with speakers. On the other side of the street, you could hear brothers singing a Frankie Lyman song, why do fools fall in love . But the one constant, every night, without fail, was the sound of Puerto Ricans playing their bongos in local parks and playgrounds. The steady beat of those drums boom, boom, bam, boom, bam was background music to my living reality. Now, here is a quote from african bumbado, who also grew up in the bronx river houses. I will say this wherever we were, the Puerto Ricans was there. I dont like to get into it when we call them Puerto Ricans they are africans, just like us. We have got to remember that are puerto rican brothers are the ones that kept africa alive. They are the africans that kept the drums, they kept the gods of santeria alive. In the 1960s, blacks and Puerto Ricans were always playing the conga. Always had the rhythms. And this is from the next quote, this is from ray mantia, who became a prominent musician in the latin music genre, but also played jazz. After i got to play the conga drums, i had a bunch of friends that were all interested in playing the congas. The puerto rican kids in my area, we started to jam on the roof. It was like every saturday and every sunday, everybody would go to the roof with their conga drums, and we will be playing all kinds of rhythms. It was like a big party with the drums. Meanwhile, down in the bottom, down on the street, we had these black people, and the whites and , they were into doo wop. Tookaribbean, they never their drums away. The black folk here, they took their drums away, so they had to invent something, and they invented doo wop. They were doowoping, and we were rhythm. African rhythm. We were playing and thank god they never took our drum away. This is one of the things that is unique the constant sound of drumming in these multicultural communities and housing projects. That was the percussive sound herc recreated. Folks in the bronx, whether they had families that come from the caribbean, from the south, from puerto rico, honduras, those drum sounds where part of their sonic universe. Because that is what the bronx was like. But the people didnt only hear those sounds. They danced. The bronx was a dancing community. People danced in their homes, in their clubs, in schools, and in the streets. And people shared their dance traditions. If you grew up in the south bronx, whether you are black, latino, or white, you danced latin. And if you were latino, you probably slow danced to the drifters and fast danced to james brown. Vicki archibald, a social worker who grew up in the Patterson Houses in the 1950s and 1960s, described how latin music became a powerful force in the life of her black friends and neighbors. Frankie lyman was one of my favorites, but i loved all kinds of music, including latin music. It was in the sixth grade when i first was introduced to latin music. Before then, i heard it, because there were a lot of latinos in the building, but i do not really dance to it. As i got older, i noticed more and more black people dancing to latin music, and they were good. They used to dance some of professionally in the palladium and places like that. And we used to watch these folks who also lived in patterson, who are maybe high school age, and we just fell in love with the music. And as my doctoral student lisa reminds us, many of the people from the spanish caribbean were also black. Were also of african descent. So you had this diverse, Multicultural Community that were tuned in to this percussive music and to dancing. And this was there were places like that in other parts of the city, but nowhere were the percussive traditions as strong and as public as in the bronx. In the south bronx, music and dancing were everywhere. And nothing was more prized than music that forced you to dance because of the powerful beats. For the 30 years before the hiphop jam, the bronx was swaying to the multiple rhythms of the African Diaspora indoors and outdoors, in parks and schoolyards, in clubs and Community Centers, and in streets where people took record , players out in the summer for block parties and outdoor jams. Well before bronx djs started hooking up sound systems to the panels at the bottom of light poles, small puerto rican bands called tiki rikis, in imitation of the sound of roosters, where doing the same thing with their amplifiers when they played in parks in hunts point. Something that was recalled for us in an interview by a great south bronx percussionist named angel rodriguez. But not only Puerto Ricans brought amplified music to the streets. From the early 1960s on, it was extremely common for africanamerican, as well as latino, bronx residents to bring their portable record players outside and dance on sidewalks and stoops on hot summer nights. Teresa roberts, a bronx sc