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S01E05 REAL GONE – “Universal Zulu Nation” (The South Bronx 1970-76, Gil Scott-Heron, The Nuyorican Poets Café and Archie Shepp’s ‘Attica Blues’)
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Completed in 1972, the construction of the Cross-Bronx Expressway resulted in the displacement of over 60,000 people from primarily Black and Latino neighbourhoods in the South Bronx, New York City. A combination of severe austerity measures including the closure of fire stations combined with ‘Disinvestment’ by local landlords and widespread arson further contributed to the decimation of 80% of available housing stock, with large swathes of The Bronx left in ruins.
In this same period, following the Hoe Avenue Gang Truce of 1971, the street parties hosted by Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash (all children of Caribbean immigrants) would trigger the emergence of Hip-Hop which would impose an irreversible influence on global music culture in the decades that followed.
The music of NYC resident Gil-Scott Heron in the early 70s would transform and elevate American soul and jazz music, informing Hip-Hop as it progressed into THE dominant form of musical expression for socially conscious Black artists from the 1980s onwards. Venues like The Nuyorican Poets Cafe opening in 1973 would facilitate the growth of a more lyrical street poetry throughout the City.
And Archie Shepp’s seismic 1972 album “Attica Blues” would represent an attempt to transcend the brutal events of the 1971 Attica State Prison Uprising where 43 men were killed when State authorities regained control of the prison from inmates protesting living conditions after a five-day siege.
A vital period in Black American music culture.
Books
‘Black Noise” Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America’ – Dr. Tricia Rose
‘Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of The Hip-Hop Generation’ – Jeff Chang
‘The Come Up: An Oral History of the Rise of Hip-Hop’ – Jonathan Abrams
‘The Last Holiday’ – Gil Scott-Heron
Songs
‘Death Rap’ – Margo’s Kool Out Crew
‘Apache’ – Incredible Bongo Band
‘Zulu Nation Throwdown’ – Afrika Bambaataa & The Soul Sonic Force
‘Fantastic Freaks at The Dixie’ – Fantastic Freaks (Wild Style OST)
‘The Bottle’ / ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’ - Gil Scott-Heron
‘Give It Up or Turnit A Loose’ – James Brown
‘Accents’ – Denice Frohman (Live at The Nuyorican Café)
‘Attica Blues’ / ‘Quiet Dawn’ – Archie Shepp
EMCK
Recommended
Transcript
The Birthplace of Hip-Hop: The South Bronx
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Episode 5 of Real Gone. In previous episodes, we've discussed how the post-industrial environment of downtown Manhattan was repurposed by the experimental law of jazz musicians, pioneering electronic experimentalists, and the painters and sculptors that colonized Soho. In this episode, we're going to focus on the Bronx, located to the north of Manhattan, specifically the South Bronx, where the seeds of hip-hop were sown in the first years of the 1970s.
Gil Scott Heron and the Roots of Socially Conscious Music
00:00:26
Speaker
As an extension of that discussion, we'll look into how the lyrical street poetry of Gil Scott Herron revolutionized socially conscious music for Black America, and how free jazz veteran Archie Shep created the transcendental Attica Blues as a response to the events at Attica Prison in 1971, a significant historical moment that served as a reminder of the authoritarian nature of the American government. The 60s were over, but New York was a powder keg ready to explode,
00:01:22
Speaker
I'm the one MC with the great class.
Economic Hardships Fuel a Cultural Revolution
00:01:27
Speaker
Some of the sonic innovations in DJI culture and record mixing in downtown Manhattan through the 1970s that would ultimately drive disco were mirrored by creative breakthroughs during the same period in the Bronx, albeit with different social, racial and economic dimensions. It's important to consider how the emergence of hip-hop culture was, to a large extent, a reaction against and a way of adapting to the harsh economic conditions of New York City at that time.
00:01:54
Speaker
Throughout the 1970s, American cities were losing federal funding for social services.
00:01:59
Speaker
Information service corporations were beginning to replace industrial factories and commercial property developers were buying up derelict real estate to create luxury housing. Many working class residents of the city faced limited affordable housing, a contracting job market and diminishing social services including in housing, education, policing and the emergency services. The poorest neighbourhoods and the least powerful social groups were the least protected and therefore worst affected.
00:02:27
Speaker
New York and other metropolitan areas went into employment and population decline.
NYC's Economic Decline and Its Impact on the South Bronx
00:02:32
Speaker
Federal funds that would have helped offset the worst effects of this decline had diminished as the 70s progressed, reaching a critical point in 1975 where President Gerald Ford vetoed a request for a federal bailout to prevent New York filing for bankruptcy.
00:02:47
Speaker
The famous headline on the New York Daily News read, Ford the city dropped dead. New York was held up as a national symbol of urban decline. City and state administrators were ultimately able to negotiate a federal loan, but this was conditional on widespread cuts in funding to public services and severe repayment terms. 60,000 city employees were made redundant and social services suffered drastic cuts.
00:03:12
Speaker
The city only avoided default and loan repayments after the teacher's union consented to its pension fund being used as collateral security for the federal loan facility.
Urban Renewal and the Displacement Crisis
00:03:22
Speaker
Austerity measures in relation to social services ran parallel to a housing crisis that continued well into the 1980s.
00:03:30
Speaker
Between 1978 and 1986, people in the bottom 20% of the income scale experienced a massive decline in income with Black and Hispanic Americans, groupings severely affected by post-industrial economic shifts disproportionately represented in this bottom fifth.
00:03:46
Speaker
In the South Bronx, the negative effects of post-industrial decline were exacerbated by city policies of urban renewal. In the early 1970s, urban renewal projects saw the relocation of large numbers of economically fragile people of colour from different areas of New York into the South Bronx at a time when public services were beginning to be stripped back.
00:04:09
Speaker
In 1959, New York City, state and federal authorities commenced the implementation of the Cross Bronx Expressway at the direction of influential city planner Robert Moses, who was responsible for numerous large-scale public infrastructure projects in the city from the 1930s onwards. We had discussed Robert Moses in Episode 4 in the context of his field attempts to construct the Lower Manhattan Expressway through downtown Soho, a failure that was thankfully ensured by the collective efforts of artists living in the area.
00:04:40
Speaker
The Cross Bronx Expressway was intended to link New Jersey and Long Island and to facilitate suburban commuters with access to and from Manhattan. When finalising the route of the expressway, Moses failed to take adequate steps to minimise its destructive effects. The expressway, completed in 1972, cut through the centre of the most densely populated working class areas of the South Bronx, which Moses had jubiously identified as slums. Hundreds of residential and commercial buildings were destroyed in the process.
00:05:10
Speaker
Throughout the 1960s and 70s, some 60,000 homes were destroyed, resulting in the displacement of around 170,000 people. Jewish, German, Irish and Italian neighbourhoods were eradicated, but Black and Hispanic communities were the most heavily affected.
00:05:26
Speaker
Vacancy rates in the South Bronx where demolition was most prevalent accelerated throughout the 1960s and 70s. Anxious landlords sold residential property, often to unscrupulous slumlords. Shopkeepers sold their stores in order to establish businesses elsewhere. And by the early 1970s, local landlords were engaging in concerted campaigns of disinvestment.
00:05:47
Speaker
Rather than accept controlled rents being imposed on them by the city for low-income tenants, many landlords willfully neglected their responsibilities and ceased providing utilities like water and electricity. Eventually, those same landlords refused to pay taxes and engaged in the arson of their own intentionally derelict properties, reaping the proceeds of insurance claims.
00:06:10
Speaker
The most severely affected areas were Mott Haven, Morrisania and Hunts Point in the South Bronx, which for years leading up to the 1971 Ho Avenue gang truce had been a battleground for gang warfare. Each of the many gangs had staked out their territory, filling the void created by the absolute neglect of the local authorities who were incapable of or unwilling to police these areas effectively.
00:06:33
Speaker
If Downtown Manhattan had its problems with violent crime and dereliction around this time, the Bronx was literally on fire. 12,000 fires in 1974 and more in the previous years had decimated the majority of usable housing stock, compounding the disruption caused by the construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway, which was rarely identified by media outlets as a causal factor in the widespread dereliction of the area.
Caribbean Influences and the Birth of Hip-Hop
00:06:57
Speaker
News reports cinema and television depicted the Bronx as the lawless zone of crime and chaos and made little effort to represent the vibrant culture of its people who had been living in the area under extremely difficult conditions. However, it was the new ethnic groups who made the South Bronx their home in the 1970s that would develop new outlets for cultural identity and creative expression through music.
00:07:19
Speaker
It was in the community centers and public parks of the South Bronx that a group of Caribbean-American DJs would repurpose the rhythms of 60s funk and soul to create the environment in which hip-hop culture would emerge, arguably America's most sizable contribution to the 20th century popular culture.
00:07:35
Speaker
Born in Harlem and raised in the Bronx, Dr. Tricia Rose wrote the electrifying 1994 book Black Noise, Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. She writes of how hip-hop culture emerged as a source for youth of alternative identity formation and social status in a community whose older local support institutions had all been but demolished, along with large sectors of its built environment.
00:07:59
Speaker
Hip-hop crews composed of graffiti artists, DJs, break-dancers and rappers formed the basis of new social movements in the landscape of the post-industrial city. For the definitive history of hip-hop's emergence and evolution, Jeff Chang's incredible book, Can't Stop, Won't Stop, the history of the hip-hop generation is essential reading.
00:08:18
Speaker
In the years after Jamaica gained independence from Britain in 1962, Keith Campbell worked as a head foreman at the Kingston Wharf Garage in Jamaica. This was a working-class job with status that positioned him as a community leader. When competition between the Conservative Jamaican Labour Party, led by Edward Sega, and the more socialist People's National Party, led by Michael Manley, escalated, Keith had declined to choose sides in what was to become an increasingly violent battle for political control of central Kingston and wider Jamaica.
00:08:48
Speaker
During the early 1960s, Keith's wife Nettie had departed from Manhattan to work as a dental technician and to study for a nursing degree. She sent money home to her family and returned home with a nursing qualification, intent on moving her family to New York where her children could study at its free public schools. Her son Clive moved first with Nettie in November 1967 and the rest of the family followed with Keith in the following months, all eventually becoming American citizens while living in the Bronx.
Kool Herc: Pioneer of the Hip-Hop Movement
00:09:19
Speaker
In the summer months of 1970, TAKI 183 graffiti tags began appearing across the city. Clive, his friends, and many others from the Bronx soon picked up spray cans to create tags of their own. Clive became Clyde Is Cool, a play on people's mispronunciation of his first name. When an accidental fire started by Clive's brother forced the Campbells out of their Trimon department, the family moved to the Concourse Plaza Hotel on Grand Concourse at 161st Street.
00:09:47
Speaker
where many burnt out families had temporarily been relocated. After the Campbells had moved to a new home at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the West Bronx, under the shadow of the Cross Bronx Expressway overpass, Clive would continue to visit the Grand Concourse to attend the Plaza Tunnel Disco where his friends spun records.
00:10:07
Speaker
Gay and black clubs in Manhattan were pushing the four to the floor disco beat, but the plaza tunnel focused on raw 60s funk and soul tracks, James Brown's machine gun funk being a regular feature. The dancing style on show, known as burning, was of a frenetic, intense nature. The Bronx had embraced James Brown's music and dance moves at a time when he was being broadly rejected by black radio stations and record labels.
00:10:30
Speaker
Something of Brown's outlaw appeal remained attractive to the Bronx youth as if they were unwilling to accept that the relevance of his music had concluded.
00:10:39
Speaker
Keith Campbell was a devoted record collector, buying jazz, gospel, soul, reggae and this devotion was passed on to his son Clive. Nettie would bring Clive to house parties in the Bronx, reminding him of his visits to local sound system clashes back in Kingston. Keith became a sponsor and sound man for a local R&B band, investing in new, sure PA equipment for the group. Keith was recruited to play records during the breaks in their sets and soon set up his own party business.
00:11:07
Speaker
Violence at discos and house parties due to constant tensions between rival gangs in the South Bronx meant that Sedgwick Avenue was a ripe location for a new party scene. On 11th August 1973, Clive Campbell staged his first DJ set in the recreational room of his apartment building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue.
00:11:26
Speaker
Clive had been nicknamed Hercules at his local high school due to his size and power on the basketball court. Shortening his nickname and merging his graffiti tag, he adopted the stage name Cool Herc for a set of deep cut reggae tracks. He played, did not make much impact with the local Bronx high school kids in the audience, but the harder 60s funk tracks taking in James Brown, the Ilee brothers and Apache by the incredible Bongo band.
00:11:50
Speaker
The Rosetta Stone of hip-hop hit harder. These were artists that were passing out of fashion by 1974 with the sweeter sounds of Harold Melvin in the blue notes, Philadelphia International Records and Barry White taking over the charts. However, Herc's innovation was to focus on isolating the rhythmic breaks of 60s Funkin' Soul music to create the foundation for a new postmodern dance music for the streets.
00:12:13
Speaker
Herc's father Keith was a regular attendee at these early parties, organized by Herc with his sister Cindy, were mainly high schoolers attended. Keith was such a respected figure in the community that security guards were deemed not to be required. Violence was not an issue. Herc's massive stereo system speakers quickly gained legendary status with their powerful bass frequencies and clear treble tones.
00:12:35
Speaker
Word about Herc's rec room parties had spread, and soon their popularity demanded an alternative venue. Herc started throwing outdoor parties at Cedar Park at 179th Street between Sedgwick and Cedar Avenue, where dancers older than high school age started to attend. These parties took place in the pitch black, except for one spot near the single, functional streetlight which Herc tapped into for a pirate electricity supply.
00:12:58
Speaker
The most exciting part of Hurk's set was the merry-go-round, where Hurk, often beginning with Apache, playing two copies of the same track in separate turntables, would isolate the break point in the song, where the rhythmic patterns established by the bass, drums and guitar are isolated from the harmonic and melodic elements and extended. Hurk would then switch back and forth between records to extend the break as long as needed by his dancers.
Hip-Hop as a New Identity for Bronx Youth
00:13:21
Speaker
This technique gave birth to break beats and would inform hip-hop and dance music significantly over the next few decades.
00:13:50
Speaker
In Black Noise, Trisha Rose describes how this college of breakbeats stood in sharp contrast to Eurodisco's unbroken dance beat that dominated the dance scene in the mid-to-late 70s. Although Francis Crosso would build his reputation as a disco DJ, by beat mixing at the sanctuary in the early 1970s, Nicky Siano would expand on this with even more theatrical use of breaks at the gallery. The breakbeats of early hip-hop represented notable stylistic differences to disco.
00:14:18
Speaker
The extended percussion break and Herc's use of echo chamber were at the heart of dub reggae from Herc's home in Jamaica, which would percolate into disco, electro and rock music as the 70s progressed. You can draw a parallel between the sincerity of Herc's attempt to recreate his childhood experience of sound system clashes in Kingston
00:14:35
Speaker
with David Mancuso's earnest efforts to replicate the wonder of early musical experiences in the Ithaca Orphanage where he grew up and his parties at the loft. Even Herc's rhymes delivered over the top of the music, which drew on the style of local black radio personalities like DJ Hollywood, who played records at venues like the Apollo and Harlem World, emceeing over the top of the records he played, could be seen as an Americanised version of the style of toasting, common in live ska, reggae and dancehall music,
00:15:04
Speaker
Many of the Bronx gangs were dissolving by the mid-70s, being replaced by area crews, where competition was centered around breakdancing, graffiti, emceeing and DJing. The Break Boys, or the B-Boy Breakdancers, were the stars of Herc's merry-go-round sequences with their freestyle dancing. By 1975-76, Herc was playing all ages sets at venues like Webster Avenue P.I.L. and clubs like the Twilight Zone on Jerome Avenue near Tremont. By 1977,
00:15:33
Speaker
Herc's numbers were declining, his original fans getting older with partygoers having more options following the arrival of stronger competitors. Also, after widespread looting during the 1977 electricity blackout, emergent rival crews had access to brand new sound system equipment to lure away Herc's crowd.
00:15:53
Speaker
In the winter months of 1977, Herc was playing at the Sparkle, formerly the Playhouse, at 1590 Jerome Avenue. Three men became agitated after being refused entry. When Herc attempted to mediate, he was stabbed three times in the side of his abdomen and once more in his palm while blocking his face from an attacker. The incident led to Herc withdrawing from public performance, but in this short period of time, the culture that had arisen around him had captured the imagination of a new generation of youth in the Bronx.
00:17:05
Speaker
Lance Taylor, whose parents were immigrants from Jamaica and Barbados, had been a warlord in the South Bronx gang known as the Black Spades. He was responsible for recruitment and growing the ranks of the gang to move into and dominate neighboring areas. Taylor lived with his family at the center of the Bronx River Houses Project, a complex of 12 15-story residential tower buildings in the Soundview region of the East Bronx.
00:17:29
Speaker
He had been drawn into gang life as early as 1968, his first membership being with POWER, standing for People's Organisation for War and Energetic Revolutionaries.
Afrika Bambaataa and the Zulu Nation: Promoting Peace Through Music
00:17:40
Speaker
Power recited Black Panther rhetoric to grow their membership, with a view to protecting the Bronx River Houses from being overtaken by Bronx Steel's Black Spades.
00:17:49
Speaker
Eventually, Powers' leadership went underground due to a combination of police repression and escalating violence with white gangs to the north, allowing for Taylor to impose his authority and flip the Bronx River houses over to Black Spade's control.
00:18:05
Speaker
His reputation grew on the strength of his forging relationships with other gangs, gaining the backing of these groups as he moved across territories. The spades soon moved into the projects of Harlem, Brooklyn and Queens, becoming the city's biggest gang.
00:18:21
Speaker
In 1971, Taylor was among the first black students bussed to Stevenson High School at the Eastern White Edge of Soundview as part of a court-ordered desegregation project. Within weeks of black students appearing, some former black spades among them, organization of white gangs had intensified. A race war broke out across the borough's borderlands, with the halls of its local high schools becoming the frontline stomping grounds.
00:18:46
Speaker
When violence escalated, Taylor led the Black Spades in confrontations with white gangs across Soundview and West Farms. However, as expressed in his class assignments written at the time, he was conflicted and depressed about this escalation into regular public violence.
00:19:03
Speaker
Taylor was raised by his mother who came from a family immersed in the history of black cultural and liberation movements. Many in his family were devoted black muslims and he was well familiar with the ideological debates around the struggle for black freedom.
00:19:18
Speaker
However, through his mother's record collection, featuring Miriam McCabe, Hugh Masekela, Sly Stone and again James Brown, and a fascination with an accelerating American pop culture, Taylor began to develop a worldview that tended towards cultural transcendence as opposed to militancy as the most effective means of achieving his personal freedom.
00:19:38
Speaker
As racial tensions escalated in the Bronx, the 1971 gang truce brought together Black and Latino gangs in the South Bronx. The peace treaty had a profound impact on Taylor. Influenced by the parties organized by Kool Herc in the West Bronx and Disco King Mario at Bronx Steel, and with the intention of transcending the gang warfare that had plagued his own community,
00:20:00
Speaker
Taylor adopted the name Africa Bambara Asim. Bambara converted the Black Spades into the Bronx River organization with the intention of moving the membership away from the stigma of gang affiliation towards an endeavour more focused on community and cultural celebration.
00:20:17
Speaker
Winning an essay writing competition earned him a trip to the Ivory Coast in Nigeria in 1971, where he was inspired by the solidarity of the local communities. The vibrancy of the societies he witnessed in Nigeria, where black people filled every tier of society, was an inspiration to Taylor and ran contrary to the denigration of black people in the United States. Bambata was fascinated with the 1964 Michael Caine classic Zulu.
00:20:43
Speaker
About the 1879 siege at the colonial outpost of Rorke's Drift in Natal, South Africa, where British soldiers survived an onslaught from Zulu warriors during the Anglo-Zulu War, Bambata was inspired by the courage and solidarity of the Zulus.
00:20:58
Speaker
Consistent with a broader cultural drive during the early 1970s for African Americans to celebrate their African heritage, partly as a means of subverting the heavy burden that ancestral slavery had placed on the collective consciousness, the Bronx River organization was rebranded as the Universal Zulu Nation.
00:21:17
Speaker
With echoes of Son Ra's conscious creation of a self-produced mythology to elevate his status above street level to something more transcendent and timeless, Bambara set about creating an identity for the Zulu Nation, which in the process cannibalized and repurposed black cultural totems.
00:21:34
Speaker
Zulu members were given pendants to wear with blackface, white eyes and lips. This emblem was taken from the Zulu crew, one of New Orleans African American Mardi Gras social groups. The casual use of blackface by Zulu crew was controversial even in the early 1970s and heavily criticized by civil rights groups.
00:21:53
Speaker
But Bambada's appropriation was indicative of his willingness to extract what he saw as the useful components of the surrounding culture and to discard the rest like useless baggage. It was definitely the cartoonish touch of Quentin Tarantino in the way Bambada utilized and repurposed the folklore of modern pop culture.
00:22:13
Speaker
With Sulu chapters opening throughout the Tri-State area, Bambata made some efforts towards codifying the ethos of the Sulu Nation by way of the Seven Infinity Lessons that supposedly set out the organization's beliefs. The influence of organizations such as the Nation of Islam and the Nation of Gods and Earths is evident in the wording, as is the Black Panther's emphasis on self-defense and self-empowerment.
00:22:35
Speaker
However, it would be fair to say the Infinity Lessons were not the most cohesive political code ever created. By his own admission, the absence of a more militant hierarchical gang structure in the Zulu Nation meant that maintaining order was more haphazard. The Infinity Lessons were something of a gesture towards restoring order, but Bombata's primary concern was elevating the consciousness of young people in the Bronx, giving them some form of cultural direction that had been lacking.
00:23:02
Speaker
The Bronx River Organization operated as a party-promoting community group, recruiting black and Latino kids under the banner of Peace, Unity, Love and Having Fun. Bombata started hosting events in the South Bronx, playing the likes of James Brown, Funkadelic, Slan the Family Stone, Grand Funk Railroad and the Fania All-Stars music, in doing so, celebrating the racial diversity of the Bronx.
00:23:25
Speaker
Bombata threw his first proper party at the Bronx River Community Center, just steps away from his own home, in the Bronx River projects at 1619 East 174th Street on the 12th of November 1976. Like Cool Herc, Bombata was focused on break-centered as opposed to song-centered tracks.
00:23:44
Speaker
The programming of his set lists was intended to parallel the inclusiveness of his peacemaking philosophy. Salsa, rock, funk, soul, disco and pop music were all part of the mix. The breakdancing b-boys, the Sulu Kings and Shaka Queens were at the heart of the Bronx River parties. MCs Queen Lisa Lee and Sha Rock were some of the first female MCs. The tough street gang outfits turned into satin jackets with dancers reveling in a new party and get-down atmosphere.
00:24:23
Speaker
We are your main thing Listen to the song that she is gonna say, say We'll party all night to the people of the light Cause everybody knows that we rock our sights, say We are the best in the tree And should we go by the name of the models? We'll let you with the models, you'll lose red water
00:24:50
Speaker
Bambata's extensive affiliations with ex-gang members from neighbouring territories guaranteed huge attendance at the Bronx River organisation parties. Those from other neighbourhoods were initially reluctant to come to the Bronx River, certain they would be jumped by rival gangs. But Zulu Nation quickly gained a reputation for keeping the peace and creating a safe space for incredible parties.
00:25:12
Speaker
The Bronx River had functioned as a border between African American and Puerto Rican youths, including members of the Savage Skulls and Savage Nomads to the west. The area between East Tremont and the West Bank of the Bronx River was effectively a demilitarized zone. Party invitations by Zulu Nation to Latinos in the west, urging members to leave their gang colours at home, helped reduce tensions. Despite reduced gang tensions, many DJs across the Bronx still backed themselves with area crews.
00:25:40
Speaker
It was only at Zulianation parties that there could be some certainty rival crews would keep the peace. The tension instead transmuted into positive visceral energy. Bambara was integrating a new generation in the Bronx, elevating Herc's party to a new cultural level.
00:25:56
Speaker
Joseph Sadler, aka Grandmaster Flash, was raised in the Bronx after emigrating from Barbados with his family. Named after his graffiti tag sign, Flash 163, Sadler developed Herc's merry-go-round technique with his own quick mix theory, playing two copies of the same record simultaneously, placing his hand on one record to manipulate its speed so as to match the beat of the other record. Flash traced the length of the breakbeats with a greased pencil while the records spun, enabling him to jump cut between the breaks to precise and riveting effect.
00:26:29
Speaker
When the break finished on one turntable, he used his mixer to switch quickly to the other turntable where the same beat was cued up and ready to play. Using the backspin technique, which he also referred to as beat juggling, the same short phrase of music could be looped indefinitely, perfectly in sync.
00:26:45
Speaker
Flash utilised his father's extensive record collection and mined the city's record stores like Uncle Nick downstairs Records on 6th Avenue and 42nd Street, where he purchased records such as A Funky Kind of Thing by Billy Cobham of Spectrum and the Mahavishna Orchestra, reworking its nine minute drum solo into his DJ sets. Flash started staging parties in the Bronx, and in 1975 debuted his quick mix beat juggling style at 23 Park on East 166th Street.
00:27:13
Speaker
amazing a crowd of hundreds with his well-honed technique. Reportedly, the crowd at this show were so stunned by Flash's technical ability, they did not even clap or cheer, prompting the young Flash to go home and cry into his bedsheets, mistakenly under the impression that his endless hours of practice were not enough to impress the crowd at the show.
Commercialization of Hip-Hop and Its Expansion
00:27:32
Speaker
Flash was quick to realize that his mastery on the turntables would not automatically translate into an excited crowd. He understood that vocal accompaniment would be required.
00:27:41
Speaker
He enlisted Robert, Keith, Cowboy, Wiggins, a former Bronx River Black Spade who had moved to the South Bronx, and two more regulars at his parties, the Glover brothers, being Melvin, Mel-Mel, and Nathaniel Kid Creel. By 1976, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five had moved to the Back Door Club, with the Casanova crew's backup security, and the end of the Dixie, a venue showcased famously by way of the brilliant musical sequences in the 1976 movie Wild Style.
00:28:12
Speaker
Flash had occasionally warmed up the crowd for the older disco DJ Pete Jones at the venue Disco Fever, but the smoother music and more sophisticated fashion of the disco world jarred with the aesthetic of the younger kids who were attending block parties in the South Bronx.
00:29:02
Speaker
As the DJ scene exploded and playlists became more standardized, showmanship and style became more relevant, the traits Flash had in abundance. The stylized licks that Flash was originally mocked for, including ruining records with his scratching, became essential tricks for DJs, many of whom who were not already rapping themselves, linking up with MC Crews like VL Brothers, Cole Crush and Funky 4 Plus 1 to take their parties to the next level.
00:29:28
Speaker
These rappers were installed with the purpose of redirecting the crowd's attention to the dance floor instead of having them focus on the DJ's turntable skills. The starter pistol for commercial hip-hop would not be heard until the game-changing rapper's delight by the Sugarhill gang was released in 1979.
00:29:46
Speaker
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, who had signed his Sugarhill records by that point, would release the message in 1982, and the single planet rock by Africa Bambata and the Soul Sonic Force would be released in the same year. In the meantime, the block parties organised by Herc, Zulu Nation and Flash, together with their MC allies, had raised the aspiration of Black and Latino youth in the Bronx, and things would never be the same.
00:30:12
Speaker
Notwithstanding the positive message of hip-hop's origin story, it would be remiss not to mention that Africa Bombata has since 2016 relinquished his role as head of the Zulu Nation organization, following allegations by multiple men of sexual abuse.
Graffiti, DJ Technology, and the Spread of Hip-Hop
00:30:29
Speaker
The stirrings of early hip-hop culture reflected the changing economic and technological environment of New York at that time. The post-industrial city environment shaped the cultural terrain. Graffiti artists utilized new spray-can design technology and used the subway trains of the urban transit system as their canvas. Rappers and DJs circulated their work by recording mixes on the tape-dubbing equipment, with cassettes played on mobile Ghetto Blaster speakers.
00:30:55
Speaker
At a time when budget cuts to school music programs drastically reduced access to traditional forms of instrumentation and composition, inner city youths increasingly relied on recorded sound technology.
00:31:08
Speaker
Early Puerto Rican, Afro-Caribbean and Black American hip-hop artists turned their obsolete vocational occupations into the springboard for their artistic skill set. Many were trained for jobs that were being replaced by mechanized industry. The graffiti artist Futura graduated from a trade school specializing in the printing industry. However, as most of the jobs he'd been trained for were already being computerized, he found himself working at McDonald's after graduation.
00:31:34
Speaker
DJ Red Alert, another DJ with a Caribbean family background, reviewed blueprints for a drafting company until computer automation rendered his job obsolete. Cool Herc attended Alfred E. Smith Auto Mechanic Trade School, and Grandmaster Flash was trained to repair electronic equipment at Samuel Gompers Vocational High School. Sultan Peppa, both of family roots in the West Indies, worked in the telemarketing department at Sears.
00:31:59
Speaker
Tricia Rose writes about how each of these artists used the tools of obsolete industrial technology to traverse the contemporary crossroads of lack and desire in urban Afro diasporic communities. Stylistic continuities were sustained by internal cross-fertilisation between rappers, DJs, breakdancers and graffiti artists.
00:32:19
Speaker
DJs and breakdancers wore graffiti painted jackets and graffiti writers designed stages, platforms, flyers and posters for hip-hop events. Hip-hop artists renaming themselves was a form of reinvention and self-definition for these communities. DJ names fused technology with mastery and style. Think of DJ Cut Creator, Grandmaster Flash, Terminator X assault technician. Rappers took names that suggested street smarts, coolness, power and supremacy. Like LL Cool J, Queen Latifah and Cool Mo Dee.
00:32:49
Speaker
Taking on new names and identities and new fashion styles offered prestige from below in the face of limited access to legitimate forms of status attainment. Their vision of a culturally unified community and the transition of the Bronx youth away from gang affiliation throughout the 1970s led the way for hip-hop to proliferate every aspect of American and global culture for the next 50 years.
Gil Scott Heron's Enduring Influence on Hip-Hop
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We'll come back to how hip-hop exploded across New York and the United States in later episodes.
00:33:18
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If the innovation of breakbeats in the early 70s by DJs like Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash and the centre staging of MCs at Bronx parties were to create the sonic template for hip-hop, it was the lyrical and poetic approach of artists like Gelscott Herron that would inform and elevate its artistic and social importance in the future.
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over there running scared
00:34:21
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Gill moved to the Bronx with his mother Bobby Scott in 1962. Although born in Chicago, Gill had been raised by his grandmother in Jackson, Tennessee, following his parents' separation. His father, Giles Herron, had left his native home of Jamaica to serve in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II, eventually settling in the United States. An athletic footballer, Giles Herron played for Detroit Corinthians, Chicago Maroons, and eventually signed a play for Glasgow Celtic in 1951.
00:34:51
Speaker
Nicknamed the Black Arrow, he became Seldic's first ever black player and one of the first to play professionally in Scotland. On leaving for Glasgow, Giles separated from his wife, Bobby, a talented opera singer and their young son, Gil.
00:35:06
Speaker
Gill's artistic and academic talent was evident at an early age, particularly in relation to creative writing. Attending DeWitt Clinton High School, he gained a scholarship to the Ivy League New York Prep School, Feelston. He eventually attended Lincoln University, located outside Oxford, Pennsylvania.
00:35:24
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where Langston Hughes, famed jazz poet of the Harlem Renaissance and Gil's most important literary influence, had been an alumnus. Importantly, this was where he met keyboardist Brian Jackson, his musical collaborator for years to come.
00:35:39
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Lincoln was a university where black writers had come to prominence. Jazz performer Cab Calloway had attended, as had Thurgood Marshall, the first black judge in the Supreme Court of the United States. Lincoln was founded as the Ashman Theological Institute in 1854 at the insistence of the Quakers, who were an influential political force in the state of Pennsylvania.
Influence of Historically Black Institutions on Black Culture
00:36:01
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This was at a time when it was still illegal to teach black people to read and write in America. Lincoln was the first institution of higher education for black people, at that point almost entirely men, in the US. The university was used as a safe house across the Maryland state line, a rest stop and hiding place on the underground railroad for slaves fleeing from the southern states. It was only by the time Gill had arrived in 1967
00:36:26
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Lincoln had gone co-ed, with female students permitted to attend for the first time in its 112 year history, much to the consternation of its more conservative professors and many of its students, including many servicemen returning from Vietnam, more attuned to all male company. After seeing the last poets perform at Lincoln in 1969, Gil moved back to New York, settling in the Chelsea district, intent in starting a musical group that explored the same socio-political issues.
00:36:56
Speaker
Founded in East Harlem on 19th May 1968, Malcolm X's birthday, the last poets politically charged raps and fast flowing storytelling were hugely influential on Gill, who began his recording career with the album Small Talk at 125th and Lennox in 1972. This album, recorded live in Harlem, consisting of spoken word with conga drum backing, contained an early stripped down version of his most famous composition,
00:37:21
Speaker
The revolution will not be televised. Peaceful of Gil's trademark sardonic wit. The revolution will not be televised. The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox in four parts without commercial interruptions. The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John Mitchell, General Abrams and Mindell Rivers to eat hogmas confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary. The revolution will not be televised.
00:37:48
Speaker
The revolution will not be brought to you by the Shafer Award Theater and will not star Natalie Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia. The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal. The revolution will not get rid of the nubs. The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner. The revolution will not be televised, brother.
00:38:07
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Gill had engaged legendary producer Bob Teal to record the album on his new label Flying Dutchman. Teal was famous for his work with jazz legends John Coltrane and Archie Shep, but also known for recording beat poet Jack Kerouac during his time at Impulse Records.
00:38:23
Speaker
Subsequent classic albums like Pieces of a Man, recorded in RCS Studio's New York in 1971, and the artistic High Point Winter in America, recorded in 1974, addressed the American experience for black people and directly confronted issues such as racism, urban deprivation, black masculinity, the hollowness of mass consumerism, and the afflictions of drug addiction and alcoholism. His 1970 question was, who will survive in America?
00:38:51
Speaker
This was jazz influenced soul and funk that brought new depth and political consciousness to the 70s alongside more commercially successful acts like Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. Despite the brilliance of the music, there's an elegiac tone to winter in America and gills music generally.
00:39:09
Speaker
This signifies a more resigned worldview than those more successful artists, which was in keeping with the increasing pessimism of the early 1970s. Despite the musicality of the songs, there's a real sense of loss and resignation in the music, a feeling that the singer in the wider culture may actually never recover from their own personal and communal trauma, something which was to be borne out in Gil's own later life.
00:39:33
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Gillum Bryan Jackson would sign to Arista Records in 1975 and release albums with Clive Davis' label until 1982. As we mentioned in earlier episodes, Arista had been important in signing a number of the avant-garde jazz musicians, including Anthony Braxton, who were playing ground-breaking jazz in New York during the early 1970s. It was perhaps the weight of the subject matter and often the directness of the tone that would prevent wider commercial success. This was often discomforting music.
00:40:02
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Gill's life beyond the 1970s was filled with pain and tragedy, but his influence on American music, especially hip-hop, as evidenced by the powerful, socially-conscious music of Public Enemy, The Roots, Most Deaf, Talib Kweli, Dead Prez and Saul Williams, is on par with Bob Dylan's influence on rock and roll.
00:40:23
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Gill would avoid aligning too closely with specific political organisations, a deliberate choice based on his own view of how the civil rights movement of the 1960s had been divided by what he called media-created splinters. In his words, I've always looked at myself as a piano player from Tennessee.
00:40:41
Speaker
The fact that I've had some political influence is all well and good, but I never considered myself a politician. I never joined any of the political organizations because once you joined one, it made you enemies in another. Various groups argued back and forth and wasted energy that could have been used to try and do something for the community, which is why I stayed out of most organizations. I wanted to be available to all of them. I pled for anybody who was trying to do something positive for black people.
00:41:08
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Gill was actively involved in political and social movements throughout his life. Along with other musicians protesting the proliferation of nuclear weapons, he played at the No Nukes concert at Madison Square Garden in 1979. A short set consisting of his songs, South Carolina, We Almost Lost Detroit, and The Bottle before Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band took the stage.
00:41:31
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Gill was involved with the Artists United Against Apartheid movement, he references South Africa in his 1975 single Johannesburg, and his memoir The Last Holiday is full of entertaining tales of his early life, bookended by accounts of his involvement in the successful 1981 campaign led by Stevie Wonder to make Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday.
00:41:54
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On the 15th of September 1974, Gil's political and cultural consciousness were to the forefront when he performed at the Nation of Islam's Saviors Day celebration on Randall's Island, New York, on a bill that also included Jamaica's Scallage and Jimmy Cliff and Cuban stars Eddie Balmeri and Celia Cruz.
Political and Cultural Influences on Hip-Hop
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Black nationalist leader and eventual Nation of Islam figurehead brother Reverend Louis Farrakhan,
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addressed a crowd of over 20,000 people calling for black unity and denouncing the United States as the wickedest nation on the face of the earth. Born in the Bronx to Caribbean immigrants, Farrakhan had been a Calypso singer prior to joining the original Nation of Islam in 1955. In 1964, he had become Minister of the Nation of Islam's Harlem Temple No. 7.
00:42:38
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A controversial figure, Farrakhan was fully aware of New York's cultural importance for black Americans on the national and global stage. Farrakhan would use this to consolidate his own position within the organization, ultimately becoming its leader and to expand the reach of the NOI throughout the United States and abroad.
00:42:56
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Despite some highly questionable politics, including blatant antisemitism, homophobia and the championing of Dianetics in the Church of Scientology, not to mention the Nation of Islam's involvement in the assassination of its most famous disciple Malcolm X in 1965, Farrakhan would by the 1990s emerge as a prominent American cultural leader, exercising a wide influence over black culture, notably in hip-hop.
00:43:22
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The Nation of Islam would be instrumental in brokering the LA gang truce of 1992, and in organizing the celebratory Million Man March in Washington DC in 1995.
00:43:33
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Preferring to call himself a bluesologist, Gil Scott Herron was ambivalent about his obvious influence on hip-hop, remarking in a 2010 interview for The Daily Swarm, I don't know if I can take the blame for it. He was critical of the posturing in much-90s hip-hop, which he saw as inarticulate and unmusical, and in stark contrast to much of his own music, sorely lacking in humor.
00:43:57
Speaker
One particular New York center point for Gil's more thoughtful mode of musical expression was the New York and Poets Cafe, a grassroots, not-for-profit organization established by Puerto Rican-born poet Miguel Algarón in 1973, who until then had been staging poetry readings by like-minded friends and colleagues at his Lower East Side apartment.
00:44:17
Speaker
The New Yorkan moved from its original home on East 6th Street on the Lower East Side to a rundown tenement building on East 3rd Street in Alphabet City. Taking in avenues A, B, D and C. Purchased for $7,800 in 1981.
00:44:32
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The relatively low price was achievable based on a restrictive covenant on the title for the building that stipulated it was to be used only for artistic, not-for-profit purposes. Again, it was the dereliction of downtown Manhattan that gave willing artists the opportunity to create a venue for a new type of cultural expression.
00:44:51
Speaker
Similar to the motivations of the experimental minimalists like Philip Glass, Pdisco DJs, proto-punks at the Mercer Arts Centre and the Jazz Loft Artists, Algorin had set out to create a performance space for playwrights, poets and musicians of colour whose work was not accepted by the mainstream academic, entertainment or publishing industries.
00:45:12
Speaker
By 1975, the performance poetry scene had started to become a vital element of urban Latino and African American culture, marked by the release of the New York and poetry anthology and Miguel Piñero's Short Eyes, which was a hit on Broadway.
00:45:27
Speaker
By 1981, the overflow of audience and artists led the New York & Cafe to expand its activities and programs, prompting it to purchase the East 3rd Street premises, where the performance space allowed for 120 spectators per night. Although the early attendees were Puerto Rican-born immigrant New Yorkers, also known as New Yorkans, the venue became an inclusive integrated space, operating as a hub of cross-cultural communication in New York.
00:45:55
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The full flowering of the venue's influence would not be seen until the early 1990s, but it was in the sketchy end runs of the 1970s Lower East Side that the seeds were sown for its success.
New Yorkan Poets Cafe and Performance Poetry
00:46:08
Speaker
The New Yorkians' poetry slams popularized competitive performance poetry, and the venue became an essential driving force of poetry theatre and hip-hop in New York, with thousands of people each year attending its weekly slam poetry events from the early 1980s up to the present day. In 1990, Paul Beatty, winner of the 2016 Booker Prize for his novel The Sellout, was crowned the first ever Grand Poetry Slam Champion at the New York, and his poetry infused with the rhythm of hip-hop.
00:46:37
Speaker
One of the prizes for winning the championship title was the publishing deal that resulted in the release of his first volume of poetry, Big Bang Take Little Bank. The New Yorkan had, by the mid-90s, become an essential focal point for lyrical hip-hop, with LP, laterally of Run the Jewels, Most Def, Talib Kweli, MF Doom, Erika Badu and Saul Williams all launching their careers from open night nights at the venue. Even world-conquering artists like Eminem performed there in the early stage of their career.
00:47:07
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This is Latino poet, Denise Froman, performing her poem, Accents, at the New York and Poets Cafe in 2013. My mom holds her accent like a shotgun.
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with two good hands. Her tongue all brass knuckled, slipping in between her lips. Her hips are all laughter and wind clap. She speaks a sancocho of Spanish and English pushing up and against one another in rapid fire. See, there was no telling my mama to be quiet.
00:47:39
Speaker
My mama don't know quiet. Her voice is one size better fit all. And you best not tell her to hush. She waited too many years for her voice to arrive to be told it needed housekeeping. See, English sits in her mouth remixed, so strawberry becomes estro ade.
00:48:02
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Tom Wolfe's labelling of the 1970s as the Me Decade in a 1976 edition of New York Magazine belies the degree of social engagement by marginalised citizens and artists in the early 1970s.
70s Music as a Catalyst for Social Change
00:48:15
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The idealism of the 60s might have diminished, with Martin Luther King's utopian ideals seeming ever more elusive, but there were still efforts to utilise musical expression as a rallying call for social transformation and progression.
00:48:28
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Two vital examples being Archie Shepp's Attica Blues and Cry of My People. Both albums were recorded in New York at ANR Studios and Allegro Sound Studios respectively and released on Impulse Records in 1972.
00:48:44
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If I would have had the time to make the decision Every man could walk this earth on equal conditions Every child could do more than just dream of a sign Of a sign that death would cease
00:49:29
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Archie Shepp was a veteran saxophonist who had played with a wide range of jazz greats including Don Cherry, Cecil Taylor and John Coltrane. Although his contributions to a love supreme were left off that timeless record, Shepp featured prominently on Coltrane's Ascension, the album that most emphatically branded the mark of free jazz on American culture and profoundly influenced generations of musicians that followed New York's jazz-loved artists among them.
00:49:56
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There had been a clear political consciousness evident in Shep's music since the mid-60s and an incorporation of continental African cultural and musical traditions. As seen in his Elegy from Malcolm X on 1965's Fire Music, Shep often incorporated poetry and spoken word interludes in his music.
00:50:15
Speaker
Parallel to Gil Scott Herron's tenure as a college literary professor, Shep began a 30-year career as a music professor in 1971 at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His first course, tellingly titled Revolutionary Concepts in African American Music, his 1972 albums addressed the ongoing struggle for civil rights in the increasingly volatile social landscape of the United States.
The Attica Uprising's Influence on Music and Politics
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Attica Blues was written in response to the events at Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York on 13 September 1971.
00:50:51
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The Attica Uprising occurred within the larger context of poor prison conditions and systemic racial discrimination in the late 20th century. Prisoners protesting the inhumane living conditions and demanding political rights had presented a list of 27 demands to the Commissioner of Corrections Russell Oswald and the Governor of New York Nelson Rockefeller in July 1971. Not only were these demands ignored, but further restrictions were imposed by the warden as a punitive measure.
00:51:20
Speaker
Tensions within the prison escalated after the August 1971 killing of George Jackson, a prominent member of the Black Panther Party and figurehead for prisoners' rights at San Quentin Prison in California. Seven hundred Attica prisoners participated in a hunger strike in honor of Jackson the day after his death.
00:51:39
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An altercation between a small number of prisoners and guards on the 8th of September was the spark that resulted in 1200 of the prison's 2200 inmate population seizing control of the secured prison grounds, holding prison staff hostage over the course of four days between the 9th and 12th of September.
00:51:57
Speaker
Negotiations did take place but were not successful in achieving an end of the siege. By order of Governor Rockefeller, with the approval of President Nixon on 13 September, armed correctional officers, local police and state troopers opened fire on the prison, killing 39 people and wounding twice as many. The dead and injured consisted of both inmates and hostages. The composition of the prison population,
00:52:23
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54% black, 9% Latino and 34% white and the fact that the majority of inmates involved in the uprising were black had already framed the siege as a racial protest.
00:52:35
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The white composition of the assaulting troopers and the vicious tactics utilised in breaking the siege resulted in Attica being viewed by many as an assault on Black America. The prison had been loaded with tear gas immediately prior to the assault, meaning that when law enforcement opened fire into the smoke, they were doing so indiscriminately, seemingly unconcerned as to who they would hit. Law enforcement officials loaded shotguns with buckshot pellets to maximise collateral injury, and unjacketed bullets were used in contravention of the Geneva Convention.
00:53:06
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Foolishly, some of the emotionally charged Attica correctional staff who had been ejected by the prisoners were allowed to join in the retaking of the prison. Inmate survivors alleged that the leaders of the uprising were singled out and executed by Attica prison staff, some like Sam Melville who had drafted the prisoners' demands with their hands already in the air to surrender. Lead prisoner Elliot James L.D. Barkley was supposedly alive when the prisoners ultimately surrendered.
00:53:33
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with survivors testifying he was shot in the back by Attica guards after the prison buildings were secured. Official medical examiners confirmed that all hostages had been killed by police gunfire, notwithstanding unfounded allegations from Governor Rockefeller and Commissioner Oswald that the inmates had slit their throats. The public response to the government's tackling of the siege was justifiably furious,
00:53:56
Speaker
with Rockefeller, who had failed to even attend the prison to brief his subordinates, singled out for harsh criticism. The radical left-wing militant organization The Weather Underground launched a retaliatory attack on the New York Department of Corrections, exploding a bomb near Commissioner Oswald's office.
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the communique accompanying the attack, identifying the prison system as an example of, quote, how a society run by white racists maintains its control, end quote. In November 1971, Rockefeller established the Special Commission on Attica, which led to the New York State Department of Corrections implementing changes within its prison systems, including new procedures for the expression of grievances, greater religious freedoms, and access to higher education for inmates.
00:54:40
Speaker
Many of these changes would be reversed over the course of the 1980s, with subsequent Republican and Democrat administrations adopting more conservative, tough-on-crime correctional policies. Working to extract something soulful out of such brutal violence, Attica Blues is a beautiful album of singular vision that traverses funk, jazz, soul, spoken word poetry and orchestral music. You can hear echoes of Shep's conscientious music in Kamasi Washington's 2015 Cosmic Jazz Odyssey, The Epic,
00:55:08
Speaker
not least on Malcolm's theme and other elegy from Malcolm X. Like Gil Scott Herron, Shep navigates the emotional terrain of the African American experience and the album operates as both a protest and a kind of spiritual prayer inhabiting the realm created by his mentor John Coltrane.
00:55:25
Speaker
The ghosts of Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker are invoked at different stages on the record. Blues for Brother George Jackson plays tribute to the activist whose killing precipitated the events at Attica. Invocation, Ballad for a Child, features a recitation of a Beaver Harris poem by William Kunstler, the radical lawyer who had been appointed witness to the field negotiations at Attica, and who would later defend several of its prisoners at trial.
00:55:51
Speaker
The album ends on a note of innocence and optimism, with quiet dawn, the lyrics of which are sung by Wahida Massey, the seven-year-old daughter of Shep's collaborator, composer Kal Massey. The gentleness of her delivery in this song is a sweet juxtaposition against the title track's rawness and frenetic energy, intimidating transcendence from the stark realities of Attica into a more peaceful astral plane.
00:56:39
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Much like the 1971 all-time classic What's Going On by Marvin Gaye, Attica Blues communicates a message of peace, love and understanding for a time when it was desperately needed.
00:56:50
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Thanks for listening. Our next episode is going to be the final show of this season. We're going to discuss how the efforts of campaigners in 1950s San Francisco influenced legal challenges by gay rights organizations in the late 1960s New York and New Jersey against liquor licensing laws that were used as a means of repression by local authorities against the gay community. This agitation culminated in the Stonewall riots of 1969, the ripple effects of which fed into the birth of disco during the 1970s in New York.