{"id":58599,"date":"2021-08-10T08:00:02","date_gmt":"2021-08-10T12:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=58599"},"modified":"2021-08-09T13:57:13","modified_gmt":"2021-08-09T17:57:13","slug":"hip-hop-holiday-signals-a-turning-point-in-education-for-a-music-form-that-began-at-a-back-to-school-party-in-the-bronx","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/hip-hop-holiday-signals-a-turning-point-in-education-for-a-music-form-that-began-at-a-back-to-school-party-in-the-bronx\/","title":{"rendered":"Hip-hop holiday signals a turning point in education for a music form that began at a back-to-school party in the Bronx"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Whenever I teach courses on hip-hop at the University of Virginia, I provide a brief overview of where hip-hop music began. One of the important dates I use is Aug. 11, 1973. That\u2019s when DJ Kool Herc, who was 18 at the time, threw a \u201cBack To School Jam\u201d for his sister Cindy in the South Bronx \u2013 in the rec room at 1520 Sedgwick Ave., to be specific.<\/p>\n

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Flyer for the Back To School Jam hosted by DJ Kool Herc.<\/p><\/div>\n

The landmark back-to-school party thrown by the Jamaican-American DJ, whose given name is Clive Campbell, will be officially and rightly recognized on Aug. 11, 2021, as\u00a0Hip-Hop Celebration Day<\/a>, as designated by Congress. August 2021 has also been designated as Hip-Hop Recognition Month, and November 2021 will be recognized as Hip-Hop History Month.<\/p>\n

The hip-hop holiday, if you will, represents yet another milestone for hip-hop as its stature and prominence as a literary art and musical form continue to grow.<\/p>\n

Multiple origins<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Of course, the true genealogy of hip-hop is far more varied and complex than a single back-to-school party in the Bronx.<\/p>\n

In his introduction to the \u201cYale Anthology of Rap<\/a>,\u201d historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. writes that the first person he heard \u201crap\u201d was his father, who was born in 1913, as he was \u201csignifying,\u201d or playing \u201cthe Dozens<\/a>,\u201d a pastime in which participants trade searing insults about one another\u2019s relatives, typically their mothers, as a way\u00a0to teach mental strength<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the 1968 memoir of Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, \u201cSoul On Ice<\/a>,\u201d Cleaver \u2013 in an entry dated Aug. 16, 1965 \u2013 describes a type of rap he heard in the wake of the\u00a0Watts uprising<\/a>, a six-day-long rebellion in the predominantly Black neighborhood in Los Angeles sparked by a violent exchange between police and bystanders when a young Black motorist was stopped and arrested by a member of the California Highway Patrol.<\/p>\n

He refers to young men he calls \u201clow riders\u201d assembled in a circle on the basketball court after leaving the mess hall in Folsom State Prison that previous Sunday morning. The Watts uprising had been going on for four days by then. The men \u201cwere wearing jubilant, triumphant smiles, animated by a vicarious spirit.\u201d A round of signifying hand gestures turned to speech after one asked, \u201cWhat they doing out there? Break it down for me, Baby.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cleaver writes that one of the low riders stepped into the middle of the circle and began to speak:<\/p>\n

\u201cThey walking in fours and kicking in doors \/ dropping Reds and busting heads \/ drinking wine and committing crime \/ shooting and looting \/ high-siding and low-riding \/ setting fires and slashing tires \/ turning over cars and burning down bars \/ making Parker mad and making me glad \/ putting an end to that \u2018go slow\u2019 crap and putting sweet Watts on the map \/ my black ass is in Folsom this morning but my black heart is in Watts!\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Cleaver describes the laugh shared by the men in the cipher \u2013 or small, circular gathering \u2013 as \u201ccleansing, revolutionary,\u201d as \u201ctears of joy were rolling from (the speaker\u2019s) eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

California rapper Ras Kass named his\u00a0debut album<\/a>, released in 1996, after Cleaver\u2019s book.<\/p>\n

Kool Herc, the pioneer<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Herc is described in the Yale anthology as \u201cthe man most often mentioned as the sonic originator of hip-hop.\u201d He invented \u201cthe break\u201d by using two turntables \u2013 and two copies of the same album \u2013 to extend a song\u2019s instrumental, typically highly percussive, portion. He then took the signifying that Gates and Cleaver describe and performed a version of it over the separated song breaks he blasted on his sound system. His breaks and banter bade dancers to improvise to the music he played. Tricia Rose, author of pioneering hip-hop scholarship including \u201cBlack Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America<\/a>\u201d writes that \u201cDJ Kool Herc was a graffiti writer and dancer first before he began playing records.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though modern graffiti writing is said to have originated in the 1960s when a 12-year-old Philadelphia kid named Darryl McCray began tagging his nickname, \u201cCornbread,\u201d on the Philadelphia Youth Development Center walls, and then eventually all around the city, DJ Kool Herc embodied all of the\u00a0original elements<\/a>\u00a0of hip-hop: DJing, emceeing, break dancing, and graffiti writing.<\/p>\n

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By unanimous consent, the Senate passed S.Res.331 (A resolution designating August 11, 2021, as \u2018\u2018Hip Hop Celebration Day\u2019\u2019, designating August 2021 as \u2018\u2018Hip Hop Recognition Month\u2019\u2019, and designating November 2021 as \u2018\u2018Hip Hop History Month\u2019\u2019)<\/p>\n

\u2014 Senate Periodicals (@SenatePPG) July 30, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n