The second is the tragedies which befell The Bronx in the 1960s and 1970s, once regarded as unique, which were to hit many other cities and communities in subsequent years. The first is the unique cultural capital of The Bronx and its people which is derived from immigration and the mixing of cultures. In answering this question, I am going to look at three different variables. So today for everyone here, and for everyone around the world who loves Hip Hop, I address the questions WHY? Why did Hip Hop as a multidimensional art form start in The Bronx and why did it spread. In all of these places, as well as their counterparts in Paris, Havana, Rio De Janeiro, Rome, Tokyo and even Hanoi, the art forms of hip hop 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 saw the same glorification of the “four elements of hip hop” in three other community centers in Berlin, most of them serving immigrants from Turkey, the Middle East and Eastern Europe as well as comparable community centers in Barcelona, Spain. Secondly, I was taken to a “break dance” class where young women, some of them wearing hijabs, were learning dance moves perfected among B-Boys and b-girls in The Bronx 40 years before.įinally, I was shown a state of the art music studio where beat makers and rappers were producing original music in which the language of choice varied between German, Turkish and English.Īnd this was not the only place where I saw the four arts forms of hip hop honored this way. Almost every surface inside and outside the building was covered by elaborate, multicolored, murals in the style of the graffiti art that covered subway trains in New York in the 70’s and 80s’.Ĭlearly, in this section of Berlin what was still seen as “vandalism” among many New Yorkers was prized as an expressive art form to be encouraged among young people in poor and immigrant neighborhoods. I was stunned by the visual image it projected. When I was first brought to Berlin to lecture about Bronx Hip Hop Culture in 2005, my hosts took me to an abandoned school in the Kreuzberg section of that city which had been turned into a community center. What evolved in The Bronx in the early and mid 70s, and which spread to disenfranchised communities around the world in the 80s, consisted of four connected components: DJing and beat making, the original art form which set the Hip Hop Revolution in motion B-Boying or Break Dancing, a form of acrobatic group dancing that bore more than a few commonalities with martial arts Graffiti art, a form of illegal public art and self-expression which found its way into flyers announcing hip hop events as well as on buildings and transportation systems, and finally, Mc’ing or rapping, rhyming over beats in a style that could vary from the boastful, to the reflective to the assertively political.ĪLL of these art forms, which emerged in The Bronx in the middle and late 70’s, spread around the world TOGETHER, disseminated by film and music video, and can be found today in almost every city in the world in one form or another. Some people think of Hip Hop exclusively as “rap music,” an art form taken to its highest form by people like Tupac Shakur, Missy Elliot, JZ, Nas, Kendrick Lamar, Wu Tang Clan and other masters of that verbal and musical art, but I am thinking of it as a multilayered arts movement of which rapping is only one component. And I am proud to share it not only with my wonderful Rock and Roll to Hip Hop class but with C-Span’s global audience through its lectures in American history series.īefore 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 what definition of Hip Hop that I will be using in this talk. It is a story filled with ironies, unexplored connections and lessons for today. It is about how young people in a section of New York widely regarded as a site of unspeakable violence and tragedy created an art form that would sweep the world. What I am about to describe to you is one of the most improbable and inspiring stories you will ever hear.