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The Vinyl Frontier

Back in the day, DJ Kool Herc put the needle on the record—and the rest is history
 
By Paul Rogers
 
At the second of his concerts at New York’s Yankee Sta

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Back in the day, DJ Kool Herc put the needle on the record—and the rest is history

 

By Paul Rogers

 

At the second of his concerts at New York’s Yankee Stadium last month, Jay-Z paused to announce that the “concert would not be happening if it wasn’t for the pioneers like Kool Herc!” Though Herc received a warm ovation, in truth many in attendance may have been unaware who the gray-bearded chap in the white beret really was and just what Jigga was raving about. Read on.

Hip-hop is now as ubiquitous as rock ‘n’ roll: on the radio, in movies, in commercials, on video games and as ringtones, its bold beats and rhythmic rhymes are a feature of the global soundscape. Yet many credit the birth of what is not just a genre, but also a major subculture, to the oft-overlooked DJ Kool Herc.

Herc (an abbreviation of his high school nickname “Hercules”, inspired by his impressive stature) was born Clive Campbell in Jamaica in 1955 and grew up around the sound systems and distinctive “toasting” DJ patter of the island’s neighborhood parties. By his teens he was living in the Bronx, New York and hosting back-to-school parties in the rec room of his building. With local clubs crawling with gangsters, these soon attracted crowds. It was in these humble surroundings that Herc developed breakbeat DJing, the blueprint for hip-hop—and later electronic, dance and pop music.

While spinning hard funk like James Brown and The Jimmy Castor Bunch, Herc noticed that dancers responded most enthusiastically to the instrumental, heavily percussive parts of these records. He isolated these “breaks” and, by using two copies of the same record, would extend them up to five minutes by cueing one copy back to the beginning of the section as the other reached its end. Soon he was also switching between breaks from different songs. Herc’s exhortations (“You don’t stop!”; “To the beat, y’all!”) during these breaks were the roots of rap’s syncopated rhymes and gave rise to the concept of the DJ as an active force (literally) behind the music. His sound system got bigger and so did his Bronx rep.

Yet while the likes of Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa ran with this DJing technique and took it to the mainstream in the late ’70s, Herc has remained a cult figure who’s never recorded an album. Today he works odd jobs between DJing gigs and, with some justification, feels that his contribution to a multi-billion dollar industry goes largely unnoticed. “The only album you can expect is Kool Herc presents up-and-coming acts,” he told the San Jose Mercury News in 2005. “I’m on the coach side of it . . . I’ll rock until my heart stops.”

And you don’t stop.

www.myspace.com/thefatherofhiphop.


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