![]() ![]() Once the dancers heard that, all they wanted to hear were the breaks. "I didn’t have headphones at the time, but I could see the breaks on the record’s grooves and just went back and forth. I found the beats, the break and I played that on all of the records," Herc recalls. "I had two copies of the same record and I went for the yolk, the butter. He called his distinctive approach the merry-go-round and it would influence other pioneering Bronx hip-hop DJs including Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa. Building upon that observation, Herc utilized dual copies of the same record on two turntables, switching between them with a mixer and prolonging a song’s short percussive interval into an extended, hypnotic rhythmic loop. But it was Herc’s background as a dancer that led to his groundbreaking technique as a DJ.īehind the turntables, Herc paid close attention to the dancers at his parties and their responses to his musical selections he noticed they were most excited by the song’s instrumental breaks. The Rock Hall identifies Herc, 67, as one of the founders of hip-hop, but Herc offers a clarification: "I am the founding father of hip-hop," he asserts, "because no one else was doing this when I started."Ī former graffiti artist whose tag was CLYDE (from his friends’ mispronunciation of Clive) AS KOOL (taken from a cigarette ad), Clive Campbell earned the nickname Hercules in high school for his imposing, brawny stature and excellence in sports. "I’d say it’s about damn time, but I ain’t mad at them because Willie Nelson is being inducted this year and he’s 90!" quips Herc. 3, DJ Kool Herc will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in a ceremony held at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. "At one point, people didn’t know where hip-hop was going, it flew below the radar, but Harry did the movie because he knew something special was going on it took hip-hop to another level and the music went international," she reflects.ĭecades later, hip-hop is celebrating multiple milestones and Herc will get his flowers. ![]() He dominated the 1970s and created this thing that we call hip-hop," Cindy Campbell told in a recent phone interview, with Herc later joining the conversation.īut the term hip-hop, which encompasses the movement’s four elements - emceeing or rapping, breakdancing, graffiti and turntabling - wouldn’t come into usage until several years after the back-to-school party took place.Ĭindy says one of the most meaningful events in elevating hip-hop’s profile early on was the 1984 film Beat Street, which Harry Belafonte executive produced. "From my back-to-school party where my brother Herc played, his influence with the music, the songs, the beats that he chose, he knew he had something special there. But Cindy and Herc’s party at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, held 50 years ago, is widely recognized as laying the foundation upon which hip-hop was built. The precise origin of any musical genre is rarely traceable to a single event. While the large turnout of their peers ensured Cindy would start the school year donning the latest fashions, the siblings had done something infinitely more important, Cindy and Herc sparked a movement. Herc’s pal, Bronx native Coke La Rock, intermittently shouted out friends and quick rhymes over the records’ instrumental breaks to hype up the crowd. Cindy hand wrote invitations on index cards and charged a modest admission fee (25 cents for ladies, 50 cents for "fellas") she asked her 18-year-old brother Clive to play the music.Ĭlive, better known as DJ Kool Herc, set up his turntables, mixer, amplifiers and towering speaker boxes, which blared a mix of funk and soul records. 11, 1973, high school student Cindy Campbell threw a party in the recreation room of her family’s Bronx apartment building to earn money for new back-to-school clothes. ![]()
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