"Hip-Hop Culture Crosses Social Barriers
By Carol Walker - Washington File Staff Writer
Washington – African-American and Latino teens with a turntable and time on their hands in the 1970s invented hip-hop -- born in the USA and now the center of a mega music and fashion industry around the world.
Hip-hop began 30 years ago in the South Bronx, a borough of New York City, a neighborhood that seemed to exemplify the bleakness of poor urban places.
Using turntables to spin old, worn records, kids in the South Bronx began to talk over music, mostly on the streets and in basements in what were called block parties, creating an entirely new music genre and dance form. This "talking over," or MCing (rapping) or DJing (audio mixing or scratching), became the essence of rap music, break dance and graffiti art, according to Marvette Perez, curator at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, which is planning a new exhibit on the history of hip-hop.
“Out of this forgotten, bleak place, an incredible tradition was born,” Perez said in a Washington File interview.
From the beginning, style has been a big element of hip-hop, Perez said. “Hip-hop tells the story of music but also of urban America and its style.”
“With the significant contributions from the hip-hop community, we will be able to place hip-hop in the continuum of American history and present a comprehensive exhibition,” Brent D. Glass, director of the museum, told the Washington File.
The museum’s multiyear project will trace hip-hop from its origins in the late 1970s, as an expression of urban black and Latino youth culture, to its status today as a $4 billion industry. Perez said the museum already has received collections from such hip-hop artists as Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, Kool Herc, Ice T, Fab 5 Freddy, Crazy Legs, and MC Lyte."