Hip hop history and origin
The history of hip hop started in the late 60's and has continued to develop to this day. The movement that began more than 40 years ago, resulted in the development of the hip hop culture.
Today, hip hop music and other elements have a great influence on the world culture. Hip hop consists not only of music, so let's look at all its aspects and origins.
Hip hop history and culture
Hip hop history started in New York among the Afro and Latin ghettos. This culture has been recognized since the 70's. The main components of music are: rap (MC'ing), breakdance, graffiti and street sports. The true homeland of hip-hop is Southern Bronx, New York - the black ghetto, one of the poorest areas of the city.
The word hip hop was invented several years later by the legendary DJ Africa Bambaataa, one of the hip hop founders.
Clive Campbell, who received the nickname Kool Herc came from Jamaica in the South Bronx in 1967. Kool Herc became the first DJ of hip hop music. He brought with him some Jamaican style. He himself arranged parties and said rhymed speeches into microphone. People started to call him MC "master of ceremony".
He picked up and announced different records. When the DJ began to say rhythmic lyrics with music, it became known as "rap" music. Kool Herc didn't play pop hits, he preferred a hard funk like James Brown, soul and rhythm and blues (R'n'B).
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The popularity of Kool Herc with such parties was spreading around and soon together with Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Caz and Grandmaster Flash they began to play at parties all over Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan. Kool Herc began to repeat instrumental breaks and beats for the convenience of the dancers, it was so-called breaks, during which the dancers stepped out and showed their dancing skills.
Kool Herc noted the enthusiasm of the dancers for such breaks and coined the word "B-Boy" (Break boys) for those dancers who move in the manner of the break, and the dance itself was called breakdance."MC" became synonymous with rap when rappers were not only DJs.
In the late 60's, the break existed as two separate dance styles: acrobatic style of New York, which we call the low break, and pantomime Los Angeles style (upper break). New York style of breaking has become famous in 1969 after James Brown performed elements of this dance with his funk song "The Good Foot".
This style marked the beginning of dance competitions. In the late 70's there was an expansion of the influence and geography of hip hop. This phenomenon spread to Harlem, Bronx, Queens, DJs and breaker groups began to perform there. There began "battles" between DJs, and competitions of dancers.
Various street teams of dancers became known as braking crews, they practiced, performed and developed their skills together.
All this led to positive consequences - the aggressiveness of the squabbles between street groups decreased, negative energy was realized into another peaceful way. Dance battles kept the children and young people of New York from illegal substances, alcohol and street violence because the practicing of the break-dance required a healthy lifestyle.
Bambaataa even claimed that when they created a hip hop culture, they created it, in the hope that this new idea would stand next to the concepts of peace, love, brotherhood, friendship, unity, so that people could get away from the negativity on the streets.
And despite the fact that negative things still happened, hip hop played a big role in conflict resolutions on the streets of New York.
Bambaataa formed his own breakers team called Zulu Nation, that grew into a big movement and included rappers, graffiti artists, DJs, and dancers. Zulu Nation highly contributed to the promotion of break dance.
Bambaataa identified 5 elements of hip hop: MC'ing, DJing, Graffiti, Dancing (Breaking) and knowledge. The last point is to eliminate the lack of knowledge about hip-hop as a culture.
In 1978, hip-hop style dance continued to evolve together with such styles as "popping" and "the robot". The most progressive dance team of the 80's was "Rock Steady Crew". Break dance and rap music became the main branches of hip-hop, which also includes graffiti, as one of the factors which promoted the popularization of hip-hop.
The graffiti writers were called by the slang word "tag". Initially, street artists painted the walls of buildings and metro cars with spray-paints. Gradually the most interesting paintings moved to the art galleries.
Becoming fashionable, hip hop went outside the USA. In the 80's there was a bright flash of interest in the break dance and rap music in many countries.
What is hip hop music?
In the mid-80s rap went out beyond hip hop culture to the main stages of the American music industry; the culture continues to develop at a rapid pace.
In 1986 rap music reached the top of the Billboard chart with the song "You Gotta" by Beastie Boys. And the track by Run-DMC in collaboration with Aerosmith called "Walk This Way". Run-DMC was known for connecting rock music with their rap, became one of the first rappers regularly shown on MTV.
In the 90's there was a second wave of interest for hip hop, especially for rap music. In the 90's rap became more and more eclectic, demonstrating the boundless ability to take samples from any musical form. Some rap artists borrowed samples from jazz, and other styles, also used live music.
As rap became an important part of the American mainstream music in the 90s, the gangster rap presented by Geto Boys, Tupac Shakur, and Snoop Doggy Dogg became more popular.
Since the mid-1980s, rap music has strongly influenced the culture of North America. Many of hip-hop slang words have become the usual part of the dictionary of a significant portion of young people.
The supporters of gangster rap argue that it does not matter who listens to this music, rappers are justified by the fact that they accurately reflect life in poor areas of America.
The late 90's and early 2000's brought many new names in the field of hip hop music. One of the main figure of those times was Dr. Dre. His protege, 50 Cent with his album "Get Rich or Die Tryin", gained the status of multi-platinum.
Eminem became not just a worldwide megastar, but also received an Oscar for the best song for his semi-autobiographical film "8 Miles". Kanye West has become one of the most exciting and ambiguous hip-hop characters of recent times.
After more than 40 years of hip-hop development, there are no signs of a decline in this culture. And looking ahead, you can say with certainty that the future of this culture is bright since many pages of the hip-hop history have not been written yet.
For all of its existence on the world stage, hip-hop has had and continues to have a tremendous impact on the development of music and culture in all corners of the earth. This is amazing story of development of the hip hop origins from the poorest places of New York to the top of music charts and worldwide stars of the genre.
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Source: Legit.ng
