"He would just focus in on the percussive breakdowns, where the crowds went wild," Chang says. ("I play a little bit of everything, you know what I'm saying?")īut it wasn't just the music that he played - it was also how he played it. As a DJ, he prided himself on his variety and programming, including rare and unreleased records he acquired. ("I was into sound," he told us.) He'd also absorbed much of the record collection of his father, an avid music collector. Herc, who emigrated from Jamaica when he was 12, had seen and internalized the often competitive culture of traveling Jamaican sound systems. "They talk about the intensity, the pure sound of the sound system - but they also talk about the music that Herc played." "Everybody that talks about Herc's parties back then talks about two things," says Jeff Chang, author of the definitive hip-hop history Can't Stop Won't Stop. Jerry Leader, a resident of 1520 Sedgwick Avenue during his youth, stands for a portrait at a basketball court outside of 1600 Sedgwick Avenue - a park where DJ Kool Herc would often lead early hip-hop parties. That event is now commonly celebrated as the birth of hip-hop. 11, 1973 in a small community room on the first floor he was 18 at the time. That DJ rocked a modest party for fellow teenagers on Aug. It was also home to an innovative young DJ who Jerry Leader often saw in performance. It was beautiful," says Leader, who is now 56. "I wouldn't pick another place in the world to have a childhood life. It's a tall, unremarkable high-rise overlooking an expressway.īut he says the building, and his unit, were always filled with music. Leader grew up in an 18-story apartment building in the Bronx, New York City, during the 1970s and 1980s, with his parents and eight siblings. He would sing to himself, "mixing" the tracks. For the records, he cut circles out of cardboard. Two empty cereal boxes were the turntables. When Jerry Leader was growing up, he made himself a toy set of DJ equipment. was renamed Hip Hop Boulevard in 2016, in recognition of the apartment building where the music is said to have been born. A section of Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx, N.Y.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |