Music
When was hip hop born in the Bronx?
1973 AD
DJ Kool Herc played the party now treated as hip hop’s beginning on 11 August 1973 AD.
1 BC · 1 AD
Context
What happened?
His sister Cindy Campbell organised the event in the recreation room at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue to raise money for back-to-school clothes. Herc used two turntables and two copies of the same record to extend the percussive break that dancers waited for, a trick he called the Merry-Go-Round.
Significance
Why it matters
Naming one party as the origin of an entire culture flattens a longer history, but that night is the moment DJs, dancers and later MCs point back to. The break-focused technique Herc worked out there is still the foundation of the form.
Further reading
Sources
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