Are you a fan of rap music and hip-hop? Old school or new school? West or East coast?
If you are interested in rap music and hip-hop culture and you want to learn more about its history, this article is right on the nose.
Everything started on 11th August 1973, Bronx, New York City. Here, a DJ known as Kool Herc threw a party in his apartment where he decided not only to play funky music, instead of the popular 70s disco, but he chose also to have fun and experiment with it, becoming a milestone of hip-hop culture.
Before carrying on down this path to explore the evolution of hip-hop music, which brings us to rap, I would like to take a step back and drop by in a further past.
Actually, if we think of rap as, according to Britannica, “a musical style in which rhythmic and/or rhyming speech is chanted (“rapped”) to musical accompaniment”, we can safely state that hip-hop rap was not the first version of rapping. The most ancient proof of this form of art dates back to the aoidoses and rhapsodes of the Balkan area, who used to sing the stories of the archaic tradition long before Homer could write down the Iliad and Odyssey. They perform both in private and public shows, regarded as guardians of the collective memory, deeply in touch with their audience and the contemporary society. They were actors, singers and musicians, since they played poems while marking the rhythm of the verses with a lyre or percussion. Doesn’t it remind you of rappers and DJs? If this is not enough evidence for you, let me tell you more.
They did not have a script to read or memorize, so they had to reinvent every time their way to tell the story. While the rhapsodes used to simply repeat the tales preserved in the tradition, the aoidoses were also known for their ability to create and thus enrich the traditional heritage. However, both the rhapsodes and aoidoses had to improvise their performance. In order to do that they used the tools of their trade, such as a defined rhyme scheme, which we could compare to the modern “beat”, recurring formulas, used as a refrain, and specific narrative patterns. The aoidoses used to participate in competitions, too. Basically, we can think of it as an ancient freestyle rap battle.
The Balkans were not the only area where storytellers existed. In the Celtic culture a similar position was performed by the bards, whereas in the African culture we find the figure of the griot. African griots were not only poets, storytellers and musicians, but they worked also as counselors of African kings, since they were regarded as guardians of ancient knowledge and wisdom. They made a special use of their oratorical and narrative skills, employing them not only for didactic reasons, but also for diplomatic purposes, serving as ambassadors. The griot tradition followed African people in their migrations and, as a result, an early form of rapping called toasting arose in Jamaica and in the Afro-American communities in the US. The toasting was performed in street gatherings and, as a continuation of the griot tradition (although more rough and influenced by the new environment were African communities were growing), it consisted in the narration of African traditional tales. Jamaican toasting in particular was accompanied by percussion breaks. In the ’60 the toasting tradition gave birth to a new musical genre called dj set: words and instrumental breaks had swapped their roles though and the toasting had become the accompaniment of the music. It was no longer based on traditional stories, but it consisted in a mixture of jokes, comments, rhymes, singing, interaction with the audience.
It is interesting to notice how DJ Kool Herc, who gave to the hip-hop community its blueprints, was Jamaican, therefore direct heir of the Jamaican toasting and dj set tradition.
But what did he do? Well, DJ Kool Herc has the credit of discovering the break. The same break which names the famous break-dance! The break is actually the instrumental break in between two singing sections of a song. As a DJ, Herc knew that the breaks of the funky songs he played, characterized by the hard drum beat, were the favourite of his dancing audience. So he figured out a way to extend those breaks, that is to say, by using two copies of the same recording on a two-turntable set up. When the break finished on one plate, he would start playing the other, and then again the first one and so on, without interruption. He called his original technique the “Merry-Go-Round”. After Kool Herc breakthrough, many DJs started figuring out their own techniques to create new amazing effects on the recordings by manipulating the plates. If you want to know more about names such as Grandmaster Flash or Afrika Baambaata and have a little fun experimenting the Disk joking art, just search on Google for the “hip-hop doodle”.
But coming back to the point, how the history of Disk joking influenced the history of rapping? Simple! Since DJs performances became increasingly more tricky and absorbing, they needed another figure who could replace them in the toasting. This person was the MC, or rather, Master of Ceremonies. His or her role was to keep the audience alive and incite it to dance. The MC was fully dedicated to the toasting and the speaking part. This marked the great comeback of the words as protagonists of the performance. The MCs started writing their own songs in collaboration with DJs and producing them. The first rap song was produced by Sylvia Robinson of the Sugarhill Records, considered the “Mother of rap”, in 1979 performed by the rap group Shugarhill Gang and it is called “Rapper’s delight”.
Here I revealed you the ancient roots of rap music. Now you can listen to a couple of songs from the names I suggested you and see if the very Old school of rap is like you expected it!
SOURCES: https://www.npr.org/2007/02/22/7550286/the-birth-of-rap-a-look-back#:~:text=Rap%20as%20a%20genre%20began,generally%20interacting%20with%20the%20audience.
https://www.britannica.com/art/rap
https://timeline.carnegiehall.org/genres/rap-hip-hop
https://www.google.com/search?q=doodle+hip+hop&rlz=1C1CHBD_enGR971GR971&oq=doodle+hip&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0i512j0i22i30l4j0i10i22i30j0i22i30j0i10i22i30j0i22i30.4193j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DJ_Kool_Herc
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griot
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toasting