50 Years of Hip-Hop: How a generation fostered creativity from urban despair and racial barriers
Hip-hop, a subculture and an art movement, was born when urban youth in crime and poverty-ridden neighbourhoods in South Bronx in New York City sought street corners to hang out and found ways to express their despairing selves. In the late 1970s, South Bronx was rocked by a manufacturing decline and an expressway that ended the local businesses. The emerging hip-hop movement gave the youths a recreative space to voice their despair and hardship, which grew to become a global phenomenon. Here's a look at the pioneers
Curated By: Madhu Kapparath
A file photo of the pioneering DJ Kool J Herc (right) and Kurtis Blow, whose iconic hip-hop dance track 'The Breaks', introduced audiences to underground hip-hop sound, Circa 1980. The sound was birthed in the Bronx by Kool Herc, who introduced the breakbeat technique—playing two copies of the same record on turntables and then switching between them to extend the percussive section known as the break. It was the most anticipated part of a song. Break-dancers would save their best dance moves for the break. Herc would also say short rhyming phrases over the beats, which is now a rich musical culture with all its diction and complexity.
