Kool Herc’s Hip-Hop Innovation
One single ground breaking innovation laid the groundwork for hip-hop as a change agent culture of competitive experimentation.
On August 11, 1973 a 16 year old DJ named Kool Herc performed at a rec room back to school party hosted by his sister at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx. At this party Herc would launch his novel technique of mixing and fading between records on two turntables to extend the rhythmic instrumental segments, or what would be termed as break beats. This break beat experiment that marked the event would become recognized by music historians, journalists, DJ practitioners and fans as the launch of hip-hop.
Observability
One of the things that is exceptional about the August 13, 1973 party is the number of first person documented accounts. There was so much recorded testimony of the event from community members as well as the DJs who would adapt and popularize variations of Herc’s method. The stories can be found in multiple sources from journalism to documentaries and have been translated into historically based narrative fiction.
TV shows like HBO’s “Vinyl”, have used creative license to reimagine Herc’s epiphany and early experiments. Netflix’s series “The Get Down”, is another television drama that remixed history with fictional narrative in showing how Herc’s innovation was diffused and reach larger audiences the later part of 1970s by Grandmaster Flash.
The Distinction of the Breakbeat Innovation
Although there is a rich history of sound collage experiments that dates back to the 1900s and includes artists like Moholy-Nagy and Christian Marclay and composers such as John Kale, prior conceptual experiments in music cross sampling or mixing did not have the same mass level of diffusion in popular audience reach. No other sound innovation has been considered at the founding of a cultural genre like hip-hop that has permutations in fashion, visual art, poetry or filmmaking.
Lastly, Herc’s framework for the mix of sounds was essentially an open blueprint for turntable beat mix experimentation. It satisfied having strong triability, “the degree to which an innovation may be experimented with on a limited basis”.[1] It had enough complexity to be original and challenging but was not so complex that it barred attempts at recreation or adaption.
Prior avant-garde sound collage artists also did not have the focus on approach that was specifically linked to diverse percussive cultures. The fact that Herc sampled from a mix of Afro-Caribbean, Jamaican, Latin and Black American Soul was a distinction as much as the technique of reactive, analog, live performance based sound mixing. In addition, the role of change agents and the culture in this innovation are strongly evidenced and observable in both the accounts and the music as artifact.
The Process of Innovation
Kool Herc’s break beat innovation in 1973 focused on combining multiple drum-solo sequence sections of records. This was inspired from his observation that dance crowds would become the most excited and engaged when he played the parts of songs where there were longer drum solos.
“What singled out Herc as a DJ was his keen eye for crowd reaction. He noticed that the energy on the dance floor hit a peak during the instrumental breaks in the records….From this observation he came up with an idea that would become the basis of hip hop.” [2]
You could almost say his process was similar in principle to the practice tech startups and UX designers use for rapid prototyping of products such as mobile apps or website design. DJ Kool Herc’s innovation was based on deep user engagement and rapid, live adaptation.
By Herc’s account the three tracks that he sampled from to create his break through included a sequence that alternated between:
“Give It Up or Turn It Loose” by James Brown, “Bongo Rock” by The Incredible Bongo Band, and “The Mexican” by Babe Ruth
In many ways James Brown’s approach to overlapping elements was a precursor to the DJ’s innovation.
At 4:11 in “Give It Up or Turnit A Loose” the bongo elements cut into the song’s momentum in such a fresh way that layering in a complimentary crescendo sequence with an unexpected latin flair from the album Bongo Rock or the heavy sped up R&B baseline of “The Mexican” makes the crowd reaction fun to imagine. “The Mexican” song composition mixes with an orchestration of “Per qualche dollaro in più” by Ennio Morricone. This makes for a lush orchestrated composition. Envisioning Herc’s mix as both calculated yet spontaneous series of live choices is a thrilling and interactive audio exercise.
DJ Afrika Bambaata credits Herc as well as the other change agent Hip Hop DJs on the scene:
“The breakbeat is that part that you look for in a record that lets your god-self just get wild. Then as soon as that breakbeat leaves, you say like, oh it’s only a minute? It’s only 30 seconds? You know you want to hear some more.So that’s where the Hip Hop DJs came in and started making that beat, that breakbeat, that stripped- down funk that spans longer and longer for you so you can just get crazier and crazier and crazier on the dance floor.”[2]
– Afrika Bambaata
Factors for Success
DJ Kool Herc’s theory of creating longer percussion focused mixes was successful because he used his observation of the crowds response to shape his choices.
He tested using familiar sounds his audience might have been used to hearing at home with James Brown tracks that were released a few years before. He layered this with complimentary Afro-Caribbean and Latin styles that were newly released that year, with Bongo Rock’s debut album. Babe Ruth’s track “The Mexican” also had just came out that same year was a completely different, wild mix of lush Spanish Guitar with drum kit and synth-electronic keyboard orchestrations. This progression of hybrid sounds with an underlying related syncopated percussion focus inspired ecstatic storytelling about the energy of the event at the rec room. The foundation of a legendary tale with multiple accounts was laid down and set the inspiration for imitation and innovation.
In a way this was an open source moment where a formula was publicly shared and an invitation was set to compete with the innovation.
Early Adopters, Change Agents and Diffusion
Herc’s DJs disciples in the Bronx community who experimented with his innovation raised the bar on the format by bringing in new techniques into mixes. Grand Wizard Theodore introduced scratching to the mix sound. Other early adopters and change agent DJs included Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bombaata, and DJ Jazzy Jay.
Grandmaster Flash perfected this idea with what he called the “quick-mix theory”: he would mark the points on the record where the break began and ended with a crayon, so that he could easily replay the break by spinning the record and not touching the tone arm.[3]
Influence of Social Groups
The aspect of Herc’s DJ contemporaries “biting” off or aiming to copy or expand on Herc’s innovation was part of what led to the success of the diffusion of the technique. In addition parallel tracks of related arts were developing in the environment of DJ performances. Graffiti, breakdancing, and MC rhyming or rap were germinating around the same venues and in the same social scenes. What started out in rec rooms moved to larger performance halls. Elements of competition came into performances such as rap battles and break dancing crew competitions.
Positive Unintended Consequences
One music critic credited early hip-hop’s influence as a change agent on suppressing gang violence by the mid 1970s.
For over five years the Bronx had lived in constant terror of street gangs. Suddenly, in 1975, they disappeared almost as quickly as they had arrived. This happened because something better came along to replace the gangs. That something was eventually called hip-hop.[4]
Rapping over rhymed samples also evolved, sometimes as a form of journalism, reporting the stories of lives within the community. Kurtis Blow’s 1980 release “These Are the Breaks” opens off with Blow rapping:
“Clap your hands everybody, if you got what it takes. I’m Kurtis Blow and I’m here to let you know that these are the breaks”.
The song then cuts into an electric bass guitar rhythm sequence followed by steel drums. This could be interpreted as a direct link back to Kool Herc’s use of the James Brown, “Clap your Hands” lyric as his signature sample.
Recontextualization and Reinvention
The recording and mass release of Grandmaster Flash and the Sugarhill Gang’s 1981 song, “Apache” shows direct influence from Herc’s breakthrough. The opening sampled sound is taken from The Incredible Bongo Band’s bongo solo in their song “Apache”.
This release further opened up the influence of the sound and technique to a broader audience. Sugarhill Gang’s music shows the shift toward MC or rap artists overtaking the focus of the music while the DJ contribution and mix samples frame the system.
Champions and Video Broadcast
The next tier champions of turntablism, who promoted DJ art included Malcolm McLaren with his release of “Buffalo Gals” and Herbie Hancock’s with “Rockit”. Both tracks were released in 1983 with heavy rotation on the fledgling music video television network, MTV. These two specific releases reached mass viewing as video products and made the diffusion of break beat turntable mixing a visual performative spectacle.
Rockit won a Grammy Award for Best R&B Instrumental Performance in 1983. GrandMixer D.ST, whose turntable mixing was a prominent aspect of track, became the first DJ to win a Grammy. His live performance at the Grammy’s and his prominent visual presence on stage sent a dramatic message of representation of the turntable DJ as a featured and key leader in both creation and performance experience. With these releases McLaren and Hancock exhibited elements of producer, conductor and promoter of the disc scratch mix sound technique.
Subsequently aspects of what was originally created for analog live events evolved and grew as hip-hop albums were recorded using Herc’s percussion focused sample technique as their backbone with scratching as a key element.
Music Engineering in the 1980s
The proliferation in the 1980s of more affordable electronic audio recording tools and access to technology gave more creators the ability to digitally sample, remix, and distribute hip-hop music at a faster rate.
The fact that there was about a decade between the first experiments with breakbeats in the early 70s and the mass distribution in the early 80s gave the sound and culture time to germinate and develop. It also meant there was a solid period of analog live venue oriented performance at the foundation. This allowed for connoisseurship and insider nature that tied back authentically to a community rather than the marketing focused use of hip hop culture that would follow from the mid 80s .
Resurgence from Subculture of Live Event DJs
In the 1990s and 2000s a live performance based subculture of “turntablism” emerged separately in Chicago, Los Angeles and in various parts of England. Music genres that can be attributed to coming out of that period include: house music, drum and bass, techno, jungle, dub step and break step.
2020s Self Publishing, Gaming and VR
With the emergence of diverse self-publishing platforms like SoundCloud and BandCamp there are more channels and few gatekeepers. Virtual Reality and live gaming systems like Tribe XR and Twitch allow gamers to mix in remote real time. Beat mix innovation theoretically should create broader disruption to the fabric of creative music collaboration drawing from the legacy of DJ Kool Herc.
References and Citations
- Excerpt From: Everett M. Rogers. “Diffusion of Innovations, 5th Edition.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/diffusion-of-innovations-5th-edition/id381973095 p. 56
- Scratch, dir. Doug Pray (Palm Pictures, 2002).
- “Turntable Teaching. Berklee College Offers Course On Scratching”. Sun Journal. 18 February 2004.
- Hager, in Cepeda, p. 12–26. Cepeda writes that this article was the first appearance of the term hip hop in print, and credits Bambaataa with its coinage p. 3.
Research
From John Cage to Kool Herc: A Brief History of Turntablism https://thevinylfactory.com/features/a-brief-history-of-turntablism/
Kool Herc “Merry-Go-Round” technique https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qwml-F7zKQ&feature=emb_imp_woyt
The History of the Breakbeat. Written and directed by Jermaine Finn and David Crawford https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5qEy6cXdts
Diffusion of Innovations, 5th Edition —2003 by Everett M. Rogers (Author)
Break Beats in the Bronx: Rediscovering Hip-Hop’s Early Years — 2017
by Joseph C. Ewoodzie (Author)
Sample This — 2012
This documentary traces the impact of the Incredible Bongo Band’s “Apache,” which played a key role in the birth of hip-hop after Kool Herc began sampling it.
