A key fact about hip-hop chronology is its origin. George locates it in the 1970s in the South Bronx, where music was just one aspect of cultural expression that, like graffiti, combined performance art, flamboyance costume, and performer-induced audience participation. The centrality of the performer, however, was key, "a way of announcing one's existence to the world" (1998, p. 14). Jamaican urban culture and music forms were also injected into the mix, with Jamaican rock/reggae rhythms being folded into the DJ-block-party format appearing on the street.
Kool DJ Herc, from Jamaica, was instrumental in creating the hip hop musical form by way of action rather than as a programmatically discursive enterprise. By means of hundreds of dance parties held at a Sedgwick Avenue recreation center in the early 1970s, he constructed the protocols that were to define hip hop and rap. Among his innovations, which came to dominate mainstream disco protocols as well as hip hop, were his use of two turntables simultaneously for playing extended breaks from recordings that were in some manner "rough" and not overproduced. This had crowd appeal.
Linked to flamboyant presentation was the fact that through the 1970s, it was almost exclusively a "happening" type event in the street of the South Bronx, with structure being added by way of break dancing--a combination of "shuffling, sliding steps of James Brown; the dynamic, platformed dancers on . . . Soul Train . . . Michael Jackson's robotic moves" (Nelson, 1998, p. 15). While it was almost a neighborhood phenomenon, choreographed break dancing caught on outside the black community, and that enlarged the scope of the presentation even more. However, in the early years, hip-hop practices were virtually their own justification.
Rap was the next big thing for hip-hop. George cites the appearance of "Rapper's Delight" in 1979, released by Sugar Hill. This is described as a "tidal wave" because its ...