Where was hip-hop created?

[IllmaticDelta]

The rhyming and swagger of Ali

ali was one of the first to show afram wordplay/oral/verbal banter on TV for sure




but louis jordan was doing it before him in the 40s






cab calloway was doing it in the 30's





and louis armstrong in the 20's

 

[96Blue]

i always thought hip hop started in new york, but i dont know now. kool herc, bambatta and grandmaster flash are all caribbean.

 

[3rdWorld]

Jamaica

They were toasting and chanting with a sound system waaaaay back!

 

[UberEatsDriver]

Honest question.


I was of the impression it started in the boogie down.

@MoroccanBoy claims it was Jamaica..Which is it.m

Hip Hop was created in the Bronx but the alleged creator is Jamaican or Bajan.

The genre has no background in the island of Jamaica since it was created in NYC

 

[DaKidFromNoWhere]

NYC blackout of 1977.
That moment is never discussed when it comes to Hip Hop.

 

[UberEatsDriver]

i always thought hip hop started in new york, but i dont know now. kool herc, bambatta and grandmaster flash are all caribbean.

Your comment gave me a head ache.

Kool Herc, Bambattab and Grand master flash are New Yorkers and hip hop was invented on NYC grounds. Not the Islands.

Now if these guys had created this genre on their islands then you would be making a solid point.

 

[UberEatsDriver]

End Thread. Was just about to post that before the New york vs Jamaica fight starts.

Its an answer we can all take pride in. No one can take all the credit. It started in Africa(like everything else in the world) and then found itself and became self aware in New York only after taking a detour in the Caribbean. So NYC is where it became what it is and announced itself to the world but the journey started a long time ago with some african dude beating on a drum while speaking.

New York is filled with Jamaicans so it cant be NY vs Jamaicans. Those Jamaicans contributed to hip hop on nyc ground not the caribbean

if anything this looks like a typical African American vs West Indian battle

 

[Ol’Otis]

South Centra LA

 

[UberEatsDriver]

South Centra LA

you wish

 

[im_sleep]

ali was one of the first to show afram wordplay/oral/verbal banter on TV for sure




but louis jordan was doing it before him in the 40s






cab calloway was doing it in the 30's





and louis armstrong in the 20's

Yes sir.

Hip Hop’s just one branch off the tree.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Jamaica

They were toasting and chanting with a sound system waaaaay back!

you do realize where jamaicans got it from? Straight from afram's




Hip To The Jive And Stay Alive: An interview with Count Matchuki

MG: The jive talk that you did – did it just come out of you?


CM: No. To be honest, what gave me that idea, I was walking late one night about a quarter to three somewhere in Denham
Town. And I hear this guy on the radio, some American guy advertising Royal Crown hairdressing. (affecting an American accent) “You see, you’re drying up with this one Johnny , try Royal Crown. When you’re downtown you’re the smartest guy in town when you use Royal Crown and Royal Crown makes you the smartest guy in town.” That deliverance! This guy sound like a machine! A tongue twister! I heard that in 1949 on one of them States stations that was really strong. I hear this guy sing out pon the radio and I just like the sound and I say to myself I think I can do better. I would like to play some recordings and just jive talk like this guy

Hip To The Jive And Stay Alive: An interview with Count Matchuki

Jive Talking and Toasting

“The Jives of Dr. Hepcat” by KVET-AM DJ Albert Lavada Durst, published in 1953.

I was reading Beth Lesser’s amazing Rub-a-Dub Style: The Roots of Modern Dancehall, which is available for free download here, and I found a quotation from Clive Chin that set me off on a wild goose chase through the roots of toasting. I have long had a fascination with the connection between toasting and hip hop and have written about that in this blog before, and presented on it at conference after I had the pleasure of interviewing DJ Kool Herc last year, but I hadn’t thoroughly ventured back to jive–until Beth Lesser.

Clive Chin, writes Lesser, remembers toaster Count Matchuki carrying around a book. “There was one he said he bought out of Beverly’s [record shop] back in the ‘60s. The book was called Jives and it had sort of slangs, slurs in it and he was reading it, looking it over, and he found that it would be something that he could explore and study, so he took that book and it helped him.” Lesser writes that this book of jive may have been a boo, written in 1953, The Jives of Dr. Hepcat, which was published by Albert Lavada Durst, a DJ on KVET-AM in Austin, Texas. This version (read the entire copy here) featured definitions for words and phrases commonly used by jive talking DJs like “threads,” which are clothes; “pad,” for house or apartment; “flip your lid,” for losing one’s balance mentally; and “chill,” to hold up or stop. Durst wrote in the introduction to his book, which sold for 50 cents, “In spinning a platter of some very popular band leader, I would come on something like this: ‘Jackson, here’s that man again, cool, calm, and a solid wig, he is laying a frantic scream that will strictly pad your skull, fall in and dig the happenings.’ Which is to say, the orchestra leader is a real classy singer and has a voice that most people would like. For instance, there was a jam session of topnotch musicians and everything was jumping and you would like to explain it to a hepster. These are the terms to use. ‘Gator take a knock down to those blow tops, who are upping some real crazy riffs and dropping them on a mellow kick and chappie the way they pull their lay hips our ship that they are from the land of razz ma tazz.’


Cab Calloway’s “Hepsters Dictionary: Language of Jive,” 1944 version.

I decided to search further and found there was another popular book of jive written before Dr. Hepcat, although it is likely that Matchuki obtained Durst’s version given the era and the content. But Cab Calloway had his own publication of jive called “Cab Calloway’s Hepster Dictionary: Language of Jive” which was first published in 1939 and then revised to add more words in a 1944 printing. Calloway was the original emcee, the master of ceremonies, the hepcat, who understood jive and brought it to those who wanted to become part of this culture. As frequent band leader at the Cotton Club in front of Duke Ellington’s band during performances that were broadcast all over the continent, and as star in a number of feature films, Calloway brought the language of Harlem, jive, to audiences uneducated in the dialect of the black musicians. He established jive as a form of discourse.


Interior of Cab Calloway’s “Hepsters Dictionary”

Some of the words in these dictionaries, and certainly the word “jive” itself, appear in the toasts of Count Matchuki, Lord Comic, and King Stitt. The style is similar as well, scatting over the music, punctuating the rhythm with verbal percussion, and boasting. Next week I will blog about the jive-talking American DJs like Vernon Winslow, Tommy Smalls, and Douglas Henderson, who influenced the Jamaican toasters since these similarities are fascinating as well.
​

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Jive Talking and Toasting - Foundation SKA

Here is some additional information from Beth Lesser:

Hi Heather,

To continue the conversation from Facebook, this is what Steve Barrow wrote to me about the Hepcat book:
“Count Machuki actually told me that he bought the magazine in Beverley’s ice-cream parlour, and that it was called ‘Jive’. Dan Burley did a ‘Jive Dictionary’ too. I used the quote in the ‘Rough Guide’ and in subsequent sleeve notes for Randy’s. Maybe Clive got the info from there ! I asked Count Machuki – where did you get your lyrics from ? and he told me from imitating various styles – even ‘British cockney’ as he called it… Then he said about the magazine called ‘Jive’, from ‘Harlem’, exact words !! Dan Burley turned out to be quite a character, an early ‘nationalist’ type of ideology, played piano, invented ‘skiffle’ [word] and claims to have invented the word ‘bebop’ [perhaps] But quite a few of Chuki’s genartioon looked to ‘harlem’ as the black ‘capital. Junior Tuckers dada was another, the one who wrote the Jamaican national anthem, and of course all the soundmen who could travel to the States in late 40s early 50s – Dodd, and Edwards in particular. They dug all that slang and imagery.”

 

[NBA Youngbreh]

it started in the usa from a strand of southern afram culture

















and then mixed with afram disco culture in various areas of NYC

na, the dj'ing part is from afram disco culture










dj culture is jamaica is a direct result of them hearing afram radio dj's and the jukebox/dj's they saw in america when they came over to the usa



again,this was all inspired by their love for afram radio dj's

 

[MikeyC]

Jamaicans in the bronx invented it

dun kno

 

[419scam]

bay area/harlem

 

[im_sleep]

it started in the usa from a strand of southern afram culture

Especially @ 18:30 in the video.

What’s irritating about this myth that keeps being perpetuated is that this aspect of the culture is more than music. It’s everyday life shyt. The idea that this found its way into AA culture by way of some Jamaicans in 1970’s NYC is damn near COMICAL when you know better.