Image provided by nyctourism.com.
Image provided by nyctourism.com.
The date was August 11, 1973. The place was 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, a 102-unit apartment complex in the West Bronx, New York City. The event was a back-to-school fundraising party hosted by Cindy Campbell, a teenager who wanted to buy some new clothes for the upcoming school year. Her brother, Clive Campbell, also known as DJ Kool Herc, was the DJ for the night. He had a powerful sound system that he had brought from his native Jamaica, where he had learned to mix records and talk over them in the style of Jamaican “selectors”. He also had a collection of soul and funk records that he loved to play at parties.
But DJ Kool Herc did something different that night. He noticed that the crowd would go wild when he played the drum breaks of certain songs - the moments when the vocals and other instruments would stop and only the rhythm section would play. He decided to use two turntables to switch back and forth between two copies of the same record, extending the drum break and creating a continuous loop of beats. He called this technique the “Merry-Go-Round” or the “break beat”. He also used a microphone to hype up the crowd, shout out his friends, and introduce his crew of dancers, who he called the “break-boys” or “b-boys” for short. These b-boys would perform acrobatic moves on the floor, spinning, popping, locking, and rocking to the beat. They were the pioneers of what would later be known as breakdancing.
The party was a huge success. The recreation room was packed with hundreds of people who danced until dawn. The music was so loud that it spilled out into the nearby park, where more people gathered to join the fun. The party was also recorded by one of Herc’s friends, who made copies of the tape and distributed them around the neighborhood. The tape became a sensation and spread the word about Herc’s new style of DJing. Soon, more people wanted to hear Herc spin his records and see his b-boys dance. He started throwing more parties at different locations in the Bronx, attracting larger and larger crowds. He also inspired other DJs to emulate his technique and create their own sound systems and crews. Thus, hip-hop was born.