EMP|SFM Oral History Videos

Category: Hip-Hop

Video Title: Beginnings

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Who: Kool DJ Herc, Grandmaster Flash, Grandmaster Caz and Sha-Rock
What: Old School Hip-Hop DJs and MCs
Interviewed: October 1-2, 1999, and August 25, 2001 (Sha-Rock)
Where: New York, NY, and Seattle, WA (Sha-Rock)

The Players:
Kool DJ Herc is the Jamaican-born DJ known as the "Father of Hip-Hop." He's credited for coining the term "b-boy" and being the first DJ to extend the break-beat on a record. Most of the superstars coming out of the hip-hop scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s first experienced hip-hop culture at a Kool Herc jam
Grandmaster Flash is one of the founding fathers of hip-hop and a DJ innovator. He was the first DJ to master cutting the break-beat on a record back and forth, as well as cueing through headphones. With the Furious 5, he became one of the most important acts in hip-hop
Grandmaster Caz is a multitalented performer who started out as a b-boy in the early 1970s and soon added DJ-ing and MC-ing to the mix. He's best known as the lead MC of the Cold Crush Brothers
Sha-Rock is the most celebrated old school female MC and "+1" with the Funky 4 + 1. She inspired a whole generation of female MCs and later formed Us Girls with Debbie Dee and Cosmic Force member Lisa Lee.

Learn more:EMP's exhibit, Yes Yes Y'All, is based on the book of the same name by Jim Fricke and Charlie Ahearn. The exhibit features rare photographs and artifacts of hip-hop's founders and stars, old school and new, including Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash, DJ Kool Herc, Melle Mel, Grand Wizard Theodore, Grandmaster Caz, Rahiem, Fab 5 Freddy, Tony Tone, and DMC.

Read the transcript:

Kool DJ Herc:
I came to the States in 1967 from Jamaica; I was 12 years old. My mother was studying for nursing in New York, and she used to bring back records from Motown, Smokey Robinson. And James Brown came to the island one time. "I Feel Good" at the time was a hit record, and I fell in love with that record. Also Jamaican music was a big influence on me, because there was a lot of big sound system they used to hook up and play the weekends. I was a child, ya know, lookin', see all these things going on and sneakin' out my house and see the big systems rattling the zincs on the housetops and stuff.

When I first came here in '67, I was listening to a lot of white stations...DJs like Cousin Brucie. So I was singing a lot of white music. 'Til I got turned onto WWRL (New York's top Black music station), surfing the stations, picking up the Temptations and different groups.

As it went along I started to go to parties and stuff, and checkin' out the vibes of the scene. And I started to dance. I'd go over to a place called The Puzzle. The DJ there then, John Brown, used to go to the same high school I used to go to. I would go there basically for breakdancin'. I used to run with a graffiti crew called the "Ex-Vandals." It was Phase 2, Super Kool, Lionel 163, Stay High 149, El Marko and Sweet Duke, a lot of graffiti artists. We used to meet up there – it was like a meeting ground. We'd all talk about where we tagged, where we bombed, and all that and we used to dance. A lot of those graffiti artists also was breakdancers, you know, just free stylin'. The word, "breakdancing" didn't come up 'til I started to play.

(In the early '70s) the gangs came up and start to terrorize the clubs in the Bronx. Start smack up girls, start feeling them up, disrespecting them, robbing people coats and stuff, so it shut the discos down. At the time, graffiti vandalism was getting out of hand and I had a strict father so I couldn't run with that too long, before MTA start bangin' on my door, arresting me. And after I've been arrested, my father gonna put an ass-whippin' on top of that. So I took a chance and put Kool Herc on an index card (to post in the recreation center, announcing a party where Herc would DJ), chargin' 25 cents to get in for the ladies, 50 cents for the fellas. (Going to other parties around that time) I'd hear a lot of gripe on the dance floor. "Why this guy's not playin' this music? Why's he ...you know, F-in up?" And I was agreeing with them. So I took that attitude behind the turntable, giving the people on the floor what they're supposed to be hearing. You know? So it was like "Whoah! There's somebody who know what they doin'!" So I was the guy who kind of resurrected the music again, on the West side, a place called 1520 Sedgwick Avenue. 1973.

It was like a speakeasy: "Hey, cross town on the West side there's a guy named Herc, Kool Herc, giving parties, man. And it's nice, ya know? Girls is there, ya know. You could do your thing. All he asks is — don't start no problem in here, ya know. He's a big guy, man." 'Cause I have friends, ya know? I'd tell 'em, "Look, you got a problem, take it down the block." Ya know? I don't care, "You want to smoke your weed? Take it down the block. Don't hang in front of the building."

DJ Disco Wiz:
You had a sense that something was going to happen, because everybody was going with this disco trend, but we wasn't feeling it. It wasn't for us. We weren't socially accepted at disco joints; we were pretty much segregated. I was looking for an outlet to express myself. I was young, thuggish, and just looking for something to do besides getting in trouble, so we used to throw house parties: one turntable, three-room apartment full of people ...just tore down, and that was basically it.

When Kool Herc finally hit the scene we started getting the buzz that something was different. The funk that he threw on turntables, and the soul that came across with the African beats, it was something that I related to. I could feel it. When I heard the beats and the bass thumpin', it was something that really blew me away, more so than any other music I'd ever heard in my life.

Kool DJ Herc:
At the time, my friends, we wasn't running with no gang. The gang members asked us to join the gang – some of the division gang members wanted us to be division leaders – but we wasn't going for that because we respected each other and we just said, "Look, we don't need that." They respected us; we respected them. We didn't need no colors to be on our back to be recognized or put fear in people's heart, stuff like that. When they come to the party, they know if they mess with us, we gonna have our business. If you step to me, you're gonna have problems.

So even the gang members loved us because they didn't want to mess with what was happening. You know? They come in, keep to themself. Not only that, a lot of Five-Percenters (a splinter group of the Nation of Islam) used to come to my party...you might call them "peace guards," and they used to hold me down: "Yo Herc, don't worry about it." So we just havin' a good time.

Everything was fine. The girls was there. I had just bought a Reverb echo box, so we was experimentin' with that, throwin' it out, ya know? "Herc...Herc...Herc...Herc...Herc...Herc," you know, "what...what...what...what...what...what..." "the joint...joint...joint...joint...joint...joint..." We just playin' around having fun with it, calling out our friend's name. At the same time people was jealous of that – "Well, why he callin' your name out?" "Well, he don't know you. Ya know? When the party's over, you're going to go back to your neighborhood and we still see him. So he call our name out. Until you get to know him, then he call your name out."

DJ Baron:
I was going to Herc parties in '74, '75 when he was still doin' the Community Center in his building (1520 Sedgwick Ave). I used to live on Undercliff Ave and Herc lived on Sedgwick Ave. I had an older brother named Dimitri who used to hang out with Kool Herc. I was too young so I was like a tag-a-long. To get into the parties free I used to help move Herc's equipment.

Herc started with PA columns and guitar amps. All DJ's in the Bronx started like that. There was no mixer, no power amps – it was a guitar amp and speakers. He used to switch from turntable to turntable on a guitar amp, from channel one to channel two. That's how mixing started out. As he did parties and accumulated his money, his set got better.

Kool DJ Herc:
I was giving parties to make money, to better my sound system. I was never a DJ for hire. I was the guy who rent the place. I was the guy who got flyers made. I was the guy who went out there in the streets and promote it. You know? I'm just like a person who bring people together, like an instrument, an agent who bring people together and let 'em have fun. But I was never for hire. I was seeing money that the average DJ never see. They was for hire, I had my own sound system. I was just the guy who played straight-up music that the radio don't play, that they should be playin', and people was havin' fun. Those records, people walk from miles around to get 'em 'cause they couldn't get 'em, they wasn't out there no more. "Just Begun," Rare Earth, James Brown, The Isley Brothers, they'd just love it. Ya know?

Sometime people would make a mistake and give a party on my date. And they would stop their party at two o'clock and tell the whole party, "I'm goin' to see Kool Herc. We're goin' to finish the party at Kool Herc's party." I look out the window and see like 20-30 people headin' towards the little recreation room. So I gave a block party, and that showed me that this thing got bigger than what we thought it was going to turn out to be.

Grandmaster Flash:
There was this guy Clive Campbell, who went by the name of Kool Herc, that used to play music. And the word went around – just word of mouth – that this guy was coming out in the park, that you had to go see this guy. This guy would bring this setup outside to what was called a block party. And he'd have these huge speakers, this huge, huge setup. And he'd be playing this particular type of music that they weren't playing on the radio.

At the time, the radio was playing songs like Donna Summer, the Trammps, the Bee Gees — disco stuff, you know? I call it kind of sterile music. Herc was playing this particular type of music that I found to be pretty warm; it had soul to it. You wouldn't hear these songs on the radio. You wouldn't hear, like "Give It Up Or Turn It Loose," by James Brown on the radio. You wouldn't hear "Rock Steady" by Aretha Franklin. You wouldn't hear these songs, and these are the songs that he would play. And I said to myself, "Wow, this is pretty interesting, what he's doing here."

Grandmaster Caz:
The turning point which – which made me go from pedestrian to driver I like to call it – was in 1974. I went to a party, a indoor party, at a club called the Hevalo, and I saw this DJ named Kool Herc. He was the DJ, I mean he was it. Everything that I heard and saw all came together that night when I saw him DJ-ing. I saw how it's really done and what it's really about. How he had all the b-boys dancin'...I said, "Now that's what I wanna do. I mean, I did the dancin', now I wanna be the one who makes people dance." That night in 1974 when I went in that club and I saw Herc, I knew from that day on that's what I want to do for real, you know? Not as a hobby. I wanna be a DJ.