Hip Hop: Origins
Many famous rappers say that hip-hop is a response to the dominance of monotonous disco music in America in the seventies. In fact, hip-hop has direct and significant origins in this dance style. For more than a decade, until the appearance of their own compositions, hip-hop DJs played disco. Hip-hop is primarily the music of DJs, as it was originally created using two turntables and a microphone. It appeared as a synthesis of disco and a number of original techniques for working with Technics vinyl players 1200 young DJs of the Bronx (New York area), who independently learned a phenomenal mastery of layers.
The most attentive DJs of those years understood that many club visitors began to move more expressively not only to certain music, but also to certain parts of it. Further, and in accordance with DJ law number one - to maintain such bursts of energy in every possible way - they repeated only these individual pieces over and over again. Thus a completely new style of “live” music was born. Despite the fact that hip-hop as a style, in the arrangement of compositions collected from excerpts from other types of music (now it is a technology for sampling individual sounds and loops), has qualitatively influenced ideas about modern music and its creativity, it has also significantly changed sound recording technologies and copyright regulations. It is known that sampling, copying and recording cover versions were born long before hip-hop, but the world of the music business has never seen the large-scale and outright impudence of hip-hop DJs who mixed everything and read recitative over their mix. The advent of digital sampling in the eighties made this process elementary. Three great figures are generally recognized as the founders of hip-hop today: Clive Campbell (aka Kool Hurk), who invented breakbeat (repetitive breaks), Grandmaster Flash, the great master of club madness, and Africa Bambaataa, a musical polyglot and sound wizard.
Hip-hop: subculture
Rap
Simplified - a recitative superimposed on a beat. In the homeland of hip-hop it is called “rapping”, in Russia it is called “reading”. It was hip-hop that made the reading energetic, attractive and widespread.
Kool Hurk, listening to dub toasting, made his MCs the “exciters” of the crowd, it was he who opened a new era for MCs. Hip-hop borrowed the already known form of recitative, but developed it anew. Thanks to the combination of catchy rhythm and expressive MC work, this form quickly gained popularity. The first famous MCs (translated as “microfon controller - microphone manager”) were Covboy (partner of Grandmaster Flash), Melle Mel, Africa Bambaataa, and later rapper LL Cool.
Brakedance
The first source of breakdancing is the simple haskle dance, borrowed from disco dancers. The second source is the manifestation of male prowess in the convulsive, robot-like movements of funk dancers and the dance-like convulsions of the funk star, James Brown.
Breakdance was also influenced by such styles as tap and lindy, as well as some sports movements from kung fu. “Break” in the name of the dance is a jazz term for a segment of a composition with a drummer’s solo play. In the early seventies of the last century, breakdance included only “up-rocking” (fast circular steps and other leg movements preceding acrobatic elements). Later, "power movements" (for example, rotation on the head or back), and a number of other specific elements of the dance appeared. Dancing break began to be called b-boys (b-boys). The letter “b” meant “break”, but it can also be understood as “Bronx”. The harsh “b-boy stand” (arms folded on the chest, head tilted down), beloved by rappers today, was not only a demonstration of readiness for aggression, but also a characteristic pose of a dancer preparing for a break.
Turntablism
“Hands fly from one record to another, managing to touch the crossfader with lightning speed, shoulders barely noticeable, without interfering with the clarity of action, rise and fall in time with the rhythm, finger movements are adjusted to the millimeter, each flick, slide or slave is measured “as in pharmacy,” and from the speakers comes a powerful beat interspersed with scribbles and scratches; the bare skeleton of a song is repeated over and over again, and suddenly explodes into the climax of a new track” - this is how they wrote about the most complex and most revered art of a DJ, creating miracles with sound and vinyl at the same time. This made a strong impression. But first there was scratching. Having mastered it, the DJ could shred records so finely that he could create compositions by manipulating sounds (individual notes, beats or noises) just like any other musician does! In the development of this form of DJing, entire ensembles appeared, playing on several turntables, where each of the DJ-musicians was responsible for his own layer of the song - a bass line, a rhythmic part or a melody. Soon, an entire system of musical notation for turntablists was even developed. Finally, a method has appeared in which the basic scratch can be layered by cunning manipulations of the mixer's crossfader. It was given the name “transforming”. The method made scratching completely flexible and more effective, allowing the DJ to precisely control the sound. Today, simple scratch is a rarity. A true turntablist will be able to explain to you the difference between techniques such as chirp, tweak, scribble, tare, stab transform, hydroplane, flare, orbit, tweedle and crab.
Battles
Verbal sparring, intricate poetic boasting about yourself and your “awesome” DJ, and, on the contrary, humiliation and slinging mud at your opponent. Battles are another component of the hip-hop subculture. They took place frequently and are still popular in our time, but they were not based on any rules, but simply on agreements about when, who and how long should perform. The battles were not held because of anything more serious than the desire of the rappers to outdo each other. The winner of the battle only increased his authority and acquired new fans of his next show
Hip hop genre today
The eighties and early nineties hip hop fully exploited its past. Numerous rappers sought to appear poorer, meaner, and even "blacker" than others, forgetting undeniable historical facts. The discoverers of the Hirk or Flash, although revered as respected ancestors, were already of little interest to them, unlike the new-fashioned MTV-ishnyh heroes. For similar reasons, the history of the musical origins of the genre, the role of disco, DJs and the musical context of the era began to correspond. So, in those years when the main theme was life in the ghetto, and rappers gossiped about crime and politics, musical culture lost its entertainment and sense of celebration, but gave birth to true heroes, but there are not many of them in hip-hop: Three 6 Mafia, Run -DMC, NWA, Public Enemy, Wu-Tang Clan and others. The commercialization of the subculture that followed in the nineties virtually destroyed the true essence of hip-hop and made it look like pop music. This was manifested in the arrangements that became electronic and intricate in sound, and in the refrains of rapping, which became more restrained and simplified, and in the disappearance of most of the essential elements of the culture of the harsh guys. The epochs of pop culture, such as Eminem, Travis Scott, as well as Post Malone, Kendrick Lamar and Jay-Z, led the era of hip hop profanation.
As an illustration, we suggest taking a look at the 24-hour video channel of the radio station “lofi hip hop radio 7/XNUMX” of the “Chillhop Music” account on YouTube
Photo in the top: https://www.ruspeach.com
