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"Welcome to the one and only hip-hop tour on the
planet … my name is Grandmaster Caz and I'm one of the cats that
started hip-hop."
We're on a bus heading north through Manhattan to Harlem and the
Bronx, on a Birthplace of Hip-hop tour. Hush Tours was founded in
2000 by New Yorker Debra Harris, who thought the city should
celebrate its history as the home of hip-hop, just as Nashville
sells itself as the home of country music. Hush's neat touch is to
employ the original hip-hop pioneers, including Kurtis Blow, Rahiem
(Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five) and even the godfather of
hip-hop himself, DJ Kool Herc, to deliver the message.
Our guides today are 50-year-old Grandmaster Caz and JDL, his
sidekick of 30 years from the Cold Crush Brothers. "It's important
that people know that this thing did not start with Run DMC and the
Beastie Boys," says Caz. "There's been hip-hop going on since 1973."
Photograph: Jamie-James Medina/NB Pictures Like most MCs, Caz is not
adverse to hyperbole or bigging himself up: he's a showman with an
infectious enthusiasm that helps a disparate group of tourists to
gel. The group includes an aspiring French rapper, a German woman, a
Dutch couple, a father and son from Philadelphia, and a few other
ageing hip-hop heads on pilgrimages. He starts by explaining for the
uninitiated the four elements of hip-hop – DJing, MCing, B-boying or
breakdancing, and graffiti writing. "Breakin' is the hardest
element," he says. "No one ever broke their neck MCing." |
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First stop is the Graffiti Hall of Fame at 106th
Street and Park Avenue in East Harlem, the "hall" being the walls
surrounding the playground of Jackie Robinson Educational Complex.
Established in 1980, it helped legitimise graffiti as an art form.
Caz talks us through some of the pieces on the walls then introduces
Mouse, a breakdancer from Brooklyn's Motion Sickness Crew.
Mouse explains: "A breaker is called a breaker because he would
dance to the break in the record." Then he relates how early
breakers such as Spy - "the man of a thousand moves" - created new
dance moves that formed the vocabulary of breakdancing. The first
breakdance crew, Rock Steady Crew, founded in the Bronx in 1977 and
still led by 44-year-old Crazy Legs today, were reticent when asked
to appear in the film Flashdance in 1983, as they didn't want other
dancers to steal their moves. Mouse gives us a quick introduction to
the basic moves - top rock, drop, floor rock and freeze, then runs
through an amazing two-minute routine that draws a small crowd of
locals.
Outside the park, Caz leads us to the corner of the block, then
reaches down to the base of a streetlight, pulls out the electric
wires, and explains how, back in the day, they would siphon
electricity from streetlights for sound systems when there was no
other power source for block parties. "Y'all don't try this at
home," he jokes.
Next stop is Harlem World, on the corner of 116th Street and Lenox
Avenue/Malcolm X Boulevard, which opened in 1978 and was one of the
most influential early hip-hop clubs. It was here in 1981 that one
of the most famous hip-hop battles happened, when the Caz, JDL and
the rest of The Cold Crush Brothers battled The Fantastic 5. The
building is now a Conway discount store. "But we don't see Conway
when we look at it," says Caz. "We see Harlem World."
The tour is not exclusively hip-hop; Caz points out the Masjid
Malcolm Shabazz temple opposite, previously Temple No 7 of the
Nation of Islam, where Malcolm X preached in the early 50s. After he
was assassinated, in 1965, it was bombed. When it was rebuilt it was
given the name he took towards the end of his life.
From here we go to the Apollo Theater (253 West 125th Street),
arguably the most important venue in African American music history.
The Apollo is where Ella Fitzgerald made her singing debut at 17,
and has played host to everyone from Billie Holiday to Aretha
Franklin, Ray Charles to The Jackson 5 and, of course, is where
James Brown recorded Live At The Apollo.
Other cultural landmarks Caz points out along the way include Graham
Court, which featured in the 1991 hip-hop classic film New Jack
City, and Hotel Theresa, previously home to Muhammad Ali, Louis
Armstrong, Ray Charles, Jimi Hendrix, and even Fidel Castro, who
stayed here when he came to New York for the opening session of the
United Nations in 1960.
Photograph: Jamie-James Medina/NB Pictures We drive into the Bronx,
past the Yankee Stadium, and down to 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, a pretty
unremarkable high rise that is probably the most mythical address in
hip-hop history. It was here on 11 August 1973 that DJ Kool Herc
hosted a "back to skool" party for his sister. If hip-hop could be
traced back to one spot, it would be the parties that Herc would
throw in the recreation room of this building.
As we pass Caz and JDL's childhood homes on our way to Grand
Concourse, Caz tells one of hip-hop's infamous early tales - how his
raps were "borrowed" by their manager Big Bank Hank when he joined
the Sugar Hill Gang, for the huge hit Rapper's Delight in 1979. Caz
never received any credit or compensation.
We stop at the Bronx Walk of Fame, whose inductees include Bobby
Darin, Luther Vandross and Colin Powell alongside hip-hop legends
Rock Steady Crew, Afrika Bambaataa, Kurtis Blow, Grandmaster Flash,
DJ Red Alert, KRS-One, Grand Wizzard Thedore and Grandmaster Caz
himself, who is happy to pose by his sign.
"You have to still be here to get one," he explains, "A lot of
people say 'Has J-Lo not got one?' No, because it's a long time
since Jenny came back to the Bronx."
After a brief stop at Jacob's in Harlem, a soul food buffet
restaurant where they charge by weight for your yams and fried
chicken, it's time to head back down through Manhattan. As the
five-hour tour ends, the 50-year-old Grandmaster Caz is still going
strong. "You can't come to midtown Manhattan and get a sense of
where hip-hop came from," he stresses. "You have to come to the
birthplace, right here to the Bronx, where I teach what I call the
gospel of hip-hop."
• Hush Tours, 292 Fifth Avenue, Suite 608, Neww York +1 212 209
3370, hushhiphoptours.com. Birthplace of Hip Hop Tour, Harlem and
The Bronx, $68
source : Luke Bainbridge | The Gaurdian UK |
