Hip Hop Hooray!

It's always good to know about history; where we're from, what our influences are, and use that to help inform where we are going so that we can avoid the pitfalls and missteps of those who came before us.

This past week, on August 11, we saw the anniversary of the birth of hip hop, and the fundamental change that kicked off the evolution of the DJ from a person who just programmed and played music (still a key and very important part of the events we do today), to the type of DJ that mixes during sets.

In 1973 at a Bronx apartment in NYC, Clive Cambell (aka. DJ Kool Herc) was playing at his sister's birthday party when he debuted something new that he had been working on for the past year. After a few years of spinning records during the breaks in between his father's band's sets, DJ Kool Herc noticed something that he observed in the crowd reactions to the music that he was playing.  

"I was noticing people used to wait for particular parts of the record to dance, maybe [to] do their specialty move." He noticed that those moments were often during the breaks in the song as opposed to the verses. Kool Herc decided to try using his two turntables to switch quickly back and forth between two copies of the same record to extend the break that people wanted to dance to, instead of just using it for a smooth transition between songs that people were used to. Thus, the Merry-go-Round (what we now know as the break beat" was born, Hip Hop was born, and DJing was forever changed. For more of the story, check out this article and interview with DJ Kool Herc.

Moral of the story is: Don't be afraid to be creative and innovative. You never know what you might discover - you might just change the world!