EDWARD'S LECTURE NOTES:
More notes at http://tanguay.info/learntracker
C O U R S E
History of Rock, 1970-Present
John Covach, University of Rochester
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C O U R S E L E C T U R E The Beginning of Rap Notes taken on November 16, 2016 by Edward Tanguay |
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hip hop culture in the 80s
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1970s arises in New York's African American and Latino communities
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remained a regional culture
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you would have had to go to e.g. the Bronx to see it
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it was the same thing with punk at CBGB or Max's Kansas City
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several components to hip hop
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rap music
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graffiti
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got the most attention outside of New York
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break dancing
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dress
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early rap
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arises from neighborhood parties
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Reggae music
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started in Jamaica with the sound system men
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DJ Kool Herc
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was 12 when he moved from Jamaica to the Bronx
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he had been to parties where people who are setting up the sound system and would get on the microphone and talk
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the course of doing this, he developed:
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the MC
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brought in Coke La Rock
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encouraged people to do break dancing
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called them break boys and break girls
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prolonged the breaks in records
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it would break down to a good sounding a beat
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took a cool section of a song and repeats it
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gets to turn tables and two copies of the same record
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keeps going back between the two and starts talking
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two people influenced by DJ Kool Herc
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Grandmaster Flash
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born in Barbados
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moved to the Bronx
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took up the practice of two turn tables from DJ Kool Herc
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developed punch-phrasing
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most DJs today are working on a computer or laptop
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but back then it was analog sampling
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sampling by using actual turn tables and records
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there was a lot of room for error
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it took a lot of skill to pull this off
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one of the first to use scratching
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moving the need backward
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although most rap historians would say that the person who created this technique was actually Grand Wizzard Theodore
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perfected it and made it a signature part of his style
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showed a virtuosity of being a DJ, a specialty of transforming these received sounds and turn them into more effective sounds in a dance context than they would have otherwise been
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none of this at the beginning was recorded
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you had to go to one of these performances to hear it
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there were not rap records until the late 1970s
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Afrika Bambaataa
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a former gang leader
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his idea was to use hip hop music and rap music to bring youth together to get them out of gang related activity and violence
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must like midnight basketball, etc.
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spend that energy in a positive way
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established a group called Universal Zulu Nation
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accredited with inventing the term Hip Hop
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the term had been in the vernacular
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but Bambaataa put his trade mark on the idea of Hip Hop of his idea of this culture
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late 1970s began to be recording
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nobody before this thought that there would be a rap record
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Sylvia Robinson attended a party in Haarlem
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heard some kids chanting over a song by Chic "Good Times"
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she thought it was catchy
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she had experience in the music business
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she had experience as Mickey & Sylvia
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1958 they had the hit "Love Is Strange"
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1973 "Pillow Talk"
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created a novelty record
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called the group the Sugar Hill Gang
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1979 Rapper's Delight
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Kurtis Blow
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1980 The Breaks Part 1
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Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
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1982 The Message
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dealt with the negative sides of urban life
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up until 1982, rap was still a small, regional niche market, but some bands had shown that you could create albums with rap