It is 40 years since a 'back to school jam' in New York's west Bronx kickstarted a movement and spawned a whole culture. BBC Culture's Rebecca Laurence looks back on a party that changed the world.
On a hot August night in 1973, Clive Campbell, known as DJ Kool Herc, and his sister Cindy put on a 'back to school jam' in the recreation room of their apartment block at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the west Bronx. Entrance cost 25c for 'ladies' and 50c for 'fellas'.
The party wasn't special for its size – the rec room could only hold a few hundred people. Its venue and location weren't particularly auspicious. Yet it marked a turning point – a spark which would ignite an international movement that is still with us today. As Kool Herc said in a recent statement: "This first hip-hop party would change the world."
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Break with the past
Hip hop signaled a profound shift at the beginning of the 1970s, following the FBI's suppression of late '60s radical black groups and the waning of gang wars. Rather than taking political action, a new generation expressed itself through DJing, MCing, b-boying/b-girling (breakdancing), and graffiti, the 'four elements' of hip hop. Artist Fab 5 Freddy, who coined this term, argued that the looping interactivity of the 'four elements' proved hip hop went beyond a purely musical or artistic movement – it was an entire culture.
Marcyliena Morgan is Professor of African American Studies and director of the Hip Hop Archive at Harvard University. She asserts the importance of celebrating the positive narratives generated by the hip hop generation.
"Hip hoppers literally mapped onto the consciousness of the world a place and an identity for themselves as the originators of an exciting new art form" she tells BBC Culture. "They created value out of races and places that had seemed to offer only devastation."
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