Thurs., Aug. 7
We finished off the academic portion of this summer’s institute with a distance learning presentation on Hip Hop Technology given by John Goehrke of the Rock’n’ Roll Hall of Fame. We had met him briefly during our visit to the Rock Hall the week before but got a chance to get to know him a little better during this videoconference. The videoconference technology made things slow—John had to speak carefully, and the video froze up on him every couple of seconds, but I think the delayed transmission of every utterance actually made the presentation clear and easy to follow; I got everything he said which is not true of the other presentations we’ve seen. Goehrke has probably done the videoconference on hip hop a number of times and has his pacing down.
Hip Hop, as we learned in our visit to the Rock Hall, started in the Bronx in the 1970s. The building of the Bronx Cross Island Expressway was a huge part of the emergence of hip hop because its construction displaced some 200,000 Bronx residents and led to economic decline in an already impoverished area. During the ten years that the Bronx Cross Island Expressway took to be built, businesses around the construction area closed down and the Bronx became a barren urban wasteland.
Enter Afrika Bambaataa, Bronx native who after visiting Africa and seeing the tightly knit community there, decided to try to build a similar community in the Bronx. He organized block parties where he was the dj. The parties became so popular, kids started dropping out of gangs in favor of break-dancing crews.
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s song “The Message” (1982) is widely regarded as the first hip hop song. I should mention here that the term “hip hop” refers to the whole lifestyle associated with rap including break-dancing, graffiti, turntables, the language, and dress while the term “rap” refers to the music of hip hop. Several in our group did not buy this at first and thought hip hop was a subset of rap music, but no, the Rock Hallers know their stuff, and they showed us actual video footage from the late 70’s/early 80’s showing that this was the usage of these terms.
Listening to “The Message”—a simple bebop beat with casual spoken verse, “It’s like a jungle sometimes…” –I wasn’t too impressed. In fact, the simplicity of the music and the retro quality of the technology made me laugh. It was only after hearing (and reading) several of the first verses completely that I came to appreciate the strength of “the message” and the song; each of the sections were sung (spoken?) with a slightly different beat that fit the particular lyrics it was delivering. Most memorable were the lines, “Don’t push me, cause I’m close to the edge / I’m trying not to lose my head” which Grand Master Flash delivers in a broken manner before switching into the casually spoken, understated chorus, “It’s like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder / How I keep from going under.”
The music got more to my taste as it progressed. I liked Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power”, featured in Spike Lee’s movie “Do the Right Thing” (1989) which connected rap back to the civil rights movement. I liked Queen Latifah’s “Ladies First” (1989), an anthem for women in the 1980s hiphop scene, even more. And by the time we got to the sampling geniuses of Jay-Z with “Hard Knock Life” (1998), Nas with “I can” (2003), Kanye West with “Diamonds From Sierra Leone (Remix)” (2005), I was all over it.
I kind of wanted to hear “Mama said Knock You out” by L.L. Cool J. I had come across the song when I saw this little 11-year old boy rocking out to it on one of the Rock Hall headsets. I took his place at his headsets also wanting to rock out. It’s such a good song!
In class today, Bobby Paul, the finely dressed African-American male and Pittsburgh local in our class (pictured here with me), shared his story of meeting Grandmaster Flash at Nikki Beach in South Beach. Bobby Paul saw Grandmaster Flash outside this club where there was a long line of people waiting to get in. He saw him and asked, “Are you Grandmaster Flash?” Indeed, it was. Grandmaster Flash sauntered into the club no problem, and Bobby Paul followed in next to him. Everyone thought Bobby Paul was just part of the entourage, Grandmaster’s buddy.
We finished off the academic portion of this summer’s institute with a distance learning presentation on Hip Hop Technology given by John Goehrke of the Rock’n’ Roll Hall of Fame. We had met him briefly during our visit to the Rock Hall the week before but got a chance to get to know him a little better during this videoconference. The videoconference technology made things slow—John had to speak carefully, and the video froze up on him every couple of seconds, but I think the delayed transmission of every utterance actually made the presentation clear and easy to follow; I got everything he said which is not true of the other presentations we’ve seen. Goehrke has probably done the videoconference on hip hop a number of times and has his pacing down.
Hip Hop, as we learned in our visit to the Rock Hall, started in the Bronx in the 1970s. The building of the Bronx Cross Island Expressway was a huge part of the emergence of hip hop because its construction displaced some 200,000 Bronx residents and led to economic decline in an already impoverished area. During the ten years that the Bronx Cross Island Expressway took to be built, businesses around the construction area closed down and the Bronx became a barren urban wasteland.
Enter Afrika Bambaataa, Bronx native who after visiting Africa and seeing the tightly knit community there, decided to try to build a similar community in the Bronx. He organized block parties where he was the dj. The parties became so popular, kids started dropping out of gangs in favor of break-dancing crews.
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s song “The Message” (1982) is widely regarded as the first hip hop song. I should mention here that the term “hip hop” refers to the whole lifestyle associated with rap including break-dancing, graffiti, turntables, the language, and dress while the term “rap” refers to the music of hip hop. Several in our group did not buy this at first and thought hip hop was a subset of rap music, but no, the Rock Hallers know their stuff, and they showed us actual video footage from the late 70’s/early 80’s showing that this was the usage of these terms.
Listening to “The Message”—a simple bebop beat with casual spoken verse, “It’s like a jungle sometimes…” –I wasn’t too impressed. In fact, the simplicity of the music and the retro quality of the technology made me laugh. It was only after hearing (and reading) several of the first verses completely that I came to appreciate the strength of “the message” and the song; each of the sections were sung (spoken?) with a slightly different beat that fit the particular lyrics it was delivering. Most memorable were the lines, “Don’t push me, cause I’m close to the edge / I’m trying not to lose my head” which Grand Master Flash delivers in a broken manner before switching into the casually spoken, understated chorus, “It’s like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder / How I keep from going under.”
The music got more to my taste as it progressed. I liked Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power”, featured in Spike Lee’s movie “Do the Right Thing” (1989) which connected rap back to the civil rights movement. I liked Queen Latifah’s “Ladies First” (1989), an anthem for women in the 1980s hiphop scene, even more. And by the time we got to the sampling geniuses of Jay-Z with “Hard Knock Life” (1998), Nas with “I can” (2003), Kanye West with “Diamonds From Sierra Leone (Remix)” (2005), I was all over it.
I kind of wanted to hear “Mama said Knock You out” by L.L. Cool J. I had come across the song when I saw this little 11-year old boy rocking out to it on one of the Rock Hall headsets. I took his place at his headsets also wanting to rock out. It’s such a good song!
In class today, Bobby Paul, the finely dressed African-American male and Pittsburgh local in our class (pictured here with me), shared his story of meeting Grandmaster Flash at Nikki Beach in South Beach. Bobby Paul saw Grandmaster Flash outside this club where there was a long line of people waiting to get in. He saw him and asked, “Are you Grandmaster Flash?” Indeed, it was. Grandmaster Flash sauntered into the club no problem, and Bobby Paul followed in next to him. Everyone thought Bobby Paul was just part of the entourage, Grandmaster’s buddy.
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