What is Hip-Hop? Hip-hop is a cultural movement best known for its impact on music in the form of the musical genre of the same name. It has its origins in the Bronx, in New York City, during the 1970s, mostly among African Americans but with some influence from the Latin American population of the area as well. The culture has gone from being a relatively underground style to being a major style throughout the world, and it has been commercialized and popularized, especially in the United States. The four traditional pillars of hip-hop are DJing, rapping, breakdancing, and graffiti art.
The roots of Hip-Hop can be traced back to the early 1970’s in New York. It was a movement that developed and quickly spread throughout the African American community of the South Bronx. Hip-Hop was way more than just a style of music, it became an entire subculture consisting of four elements. 2 The graffiti artists, who would provide visual arts in various forums, the break dancers or B-Boys, who would perform complex dance moves to a rhythm, the DJ, who would and blend the background music, and finally the MC, or rapper. The MC began as an individual who would announce the DJ and hype the crowd, but over time developed into the rapper who would grow to play a much larger role in the production.
The purpose of this reference between hip hop and the musicians are to explain with evidence that they’re all related to New York. It’s believable because in the second paragraph, it gives us many examples such as, “...the place where the seed took hold? Where the rhymes first flowed and a culture took form?
Clive Campbell, known as DJ Kool Herc, is the credited as being the pioneer of hip hop in the United States. “Kool Herc was inspired by the Jamaican tradition of impromptu poetry during toast, and thus decided to accompany it with rhythmic beats generated by sampling. “ (Chan) Hip hop offered the youth a way to express themselves and bought forth new ideas. Hip hop was a way youths in black inner city neighborhoods to express what they were feeling, seeing, and living and to many it became a form of entertainment. Back in the days as some people may call it hip hop was a way that a certain person felt and the things that they would say was things that happens in real life everyday situations.
The name “beat” was originally brought up by Jack Kerouac in 1948 to differentiate the underground and rebellious youth group in New York. “Beat” was used in terms of tired or beaten up but over the time Kerouac inflated and changed it to a higher level like “upbeat” or “beatific” and in terms of music “on the beat” (Hemmer, 2007, P.240). These writers all met in New York and they are also known as New York Beats even though only Corso was from New York. Although there were some less creative members to this group but those are the ones that brought up the writer’s subjects and supported their intellect. There was Huncke who was a drug-addict and a thief who introduced Burroughs to the junky world and the word “beat” (Gair,
HISTORY OF HIP HOP Hip-Hop emerged in the 1970’s upon the arrival of a one Kool DJ Herc. Kool DJ Herc migrated to the United States from Kingston, Jamaica and settled in the West Bronx of New York. Kool DJ Herc was a disc jockey that attempted to incorporate his Jamaica style of disc jockeying, which involved reciting improvised rhymes over reggae records. Unfortunately for Kool DJ Herc New York seemed uninterested in reggae at that time. This forced Kool DJ Herc to find another appealing sound in order to please his audiences, which he did.
As I researched on what Hip Hop is, I found out that it isn’t just a music genre, but a massive culture that originated within the Bronx during the 1970s. Hip Hop was established to stop gang violence on the foundations of expression, peace, love, unity, and having fun with the addition of having four elements: Graffiti art, DJ-ing, breakdancing, and rapping. These four elements, together, acted as positive pastimes to keep kids from becoming involved with gangs by organizing artistic “battles” on who’s the better person. These Hip Hop battles take place in organized events, promoting a positive and peaceful way to resolve conflict, while also providing a safe, friendly community for urban youth. This surprises me because I never would’ve thought that Hip Hop is a culture, especially the fact that it started out as a peaceful youth community.
In 2001, this and other strains of dark garage music began to be showcased and promoted at London's night club Plastic People, at the "Forward" night (sometimes stylised as FWD>>), which went on to be considerably influential to the development of dubstep. The term "dubstep" in reference to a genre of music began to be used by around 2002 by labels such as Big Apple, Ammunition, and Tempa, by which time stylistic trends used in creating these remixes started to become more noticeable and distinct from 2-step and grime. [2] A very early supporter of the sound was BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, who started playing it from 2003 onwards. In 2004, the last year of his show, his listeners voted Distance, Digital Mystikz, and Plastician (formerly Plasticman) in their top 50 for the year. [3] Dubstep started to spread beyond small local scenes in late 2005 and early 2006; many websites devoted to the genre appeared on the internet and aided the growth of the scene, such as dubstepforum, the download site Barefiles and blogs such as gutterbreakz.
Reggae music originated from Jamaica in the early 1960's. In the streets and ghettos of Kingston, shortly after independence from Britain in 1962, reggae started to evolve from Mento, which was a local form of Jamaican music in the 30's to what it has become today. Originated in Jamaica, reggae music is recognized by rhythmic accents on the offbeat, usually played by piano, guitar, or sometimes both. Changing American popular music, the genre began to be played in the 1960s producing a new and different sound. Reggae's origins are in traditional African and Caribbean music, American rhythm and blues, and in Jamaican ska and rock steady (Scaruffi, Piero).
Music, religion and the government each have unique elements to them. Music is a big part of Jamaica’s culture. There were three main types of well-known music. In 1951 the first recording studio opened and recorded a mix of African and European folk music, also known as mento (Scaruffi, 2002). In 1959 a man by the name of Theoptilus Beckford recorded the first ska record.