Graffiti art, breakdancing, and fashion, not just rapping and djing. His class is about an hour. Prof. Naison this lecture is entitled why hiphop began in the bronx. What i am about to describe to you is one of the most improbable and Inspiring Stories youll ever hear. It is about how young people in a section of new york, widely regarded as the site of unspeakable violence and tragedy, created an art form that would sweep the world. It is a story filled with ironies, unexplored connections, and lessons for today. And i am proud to share it not only with my wonderful rock and roll to hiphop class, but with cspans global audience in its lectures on American History series. The information in this lecture has come from two major sources. First of all, the oral histories of the bronx africanAmerican History project, which has taken place over the last 14 years. We have done over 300 interviews with people who grew up in the bronx from the 1930s up to the present. And, in the process, documented several generations of bronx music history. And that research informs what im about to tell you. But this also reflects my experience lecturing in europe about hiphop and creating something called the bronxberlin youth exchange, which is an interchange between social workers and youth workers in berlin and new york city who use hiphop to motivate and reach disfranchised youth. I have been to berlin six times. I have been to barcelona twice. And in the course of this. And so, i have had a chance to experience firsthand how hiphop culture has spread into sections of europe, where it was enthusiastically adopted. And it has also spread to many other portions of the world. So before going into the substance of my lecture, which explores some features of bronx history, which many people might not be familiar with, i want to explain one definition of hiphop that i will be using in this talk. Some people think of hiphop as exclusively rap music, an art form taken to its highest level tupac, missye elliott, jayz, kendrick lamar, wu tang clan, and other masters of that verbal and musical art. But i am describing hiphop as a multilayered art movement, of which rapping is only one component. What you evolved in the bronx in the early and mid1970s, and whispered to communities around the world in the 1980s, and is still spreading to this day, consisted of four connected components. First of all, djing and beat making, which was the original artform that spawned the hiphop revolution. Because when people talk about the start of hiphop, they talk about the three djs that helped spread it through the bronx, first, grandmaster flash, and africa bum botta. The second form was bboying, or breakdancing, a form of acrobatic dance that had more than a few commonalities with martial arts, but also drew upon traditions of dance in latin music and rhythm and blues and funk, epitomized by people like james brown. The third is graffiti art, a form of illegal public art and selfexpression which found its way into flyers announcing hiphop events as well as on buildings and Transportation Systems in new york, especially buses and subways. And finally, last but not least, emceeing and rapping. Rhyming over beats in a style that could vary from the boastful to the reflective to the assertively political. All of these art forms, which emerged in the bronx in the middle and late 1970s, spread around the world together, disseminated by film and music video. And can be found today in almost every city of the world, in one form or another. Let me give an example. When i was first brought to berlin to lecture on bronx hiphop culture in 2005, my host took me to an abandoned school in the kreutzburg section of the city, which had been turned into a Community Center. I was stunned by the visual image projected. Almost every surface inside and outside the building was covered by the elaborate, multicolored graffiti murals in the style that covered subway trains in new york in the 1970s and 1980s. Clearly, in this section of berlin, what was seen as vandalism by many new yorkers, was prized as an Expressive Art form to be encouraged among young people in the poor immigrant neighborhoods. Secondly, i was taken to a breakdance class where young women, some of them wearing hijabs, were learning dance moves perfected 40 years before in the bronx. Finally, i was shown a stateoftheart music studio, where the beat makers and rappers were producing original music in which the language of choice varied between german, turkish, and english. And turkish because immigrants from turkey were the largest Minority Group in berlin and in germany generally. And this was not the only place where i saw the art forms of hiphop. I saw the four art forms of hiphop honored this way. I saw the same glorification of the four elements of hiphop in three other Community Centers in berlin, most of them serving immigrants from turkey, the middle east, and eastern europe, as well as culpable comparable Community Centers in barcelona, spain. In all these places, as well as their counterparts in paris, havana, rio de janeiro, rome, tokyo, and even hanoi, the art forms are being cultivated with love and respect and transmitted to new generations of youth, all with the understanding that they started in the bronx. I am going to pass around to you of french hiphop. Which is an Art Exhibition in paris which explains, visually, how hiphop, which started in the bronx, spread to paris and its suburbs. And then became an integral part of the movement known as the arab spring, where the arts of hiphop were part of that social movement in many different countries. So what started in the bronx has gone global. So the big question here is, why the bronx . Why did this multidimensional artform start in the bronx, and why did it spread . In answering this question, i am going to look at three different variables. One, the unique Cultural Capital of the bronx and its people, which derived from immigration and the mixing of cultures. Two, the tragedies which befell the bronx in the 1960s and 1970s, once regarded as unique, which would hit other cities and communities in subsequent years, not only in the u. S. But in many other places. And third, the easy accessibility of the bronx via Public Transportation. Harlem, midtown manhattan, the village in the lower east side, where culture makers and entrepreneurs, when they saw what was going on in the bronx, were in a position to market what they saw nationally and globally. So, before going into these three underlying factors, the Cultural Capital the bronx, the tragedies which struck the bronx, and the proximity of the bronx to culture making centers in new york, i want to give you a brief hiphop timeline. Most scholars think that the big bang which launched hiphop took place at the parties held by Cindy Campbell and her brother, cambell, aka, dj kool at the Community Center of a housing complex at 1520 sedgwick avenue in 1973. There, he discovered that the dancers of the party would go crazy if they used two turntables and percussion sections of popular records, which they called break beats, into 10 minutes of pure percussion. After several hugely successful parties at the Community Center, he decided to take his sound system to a public park 10 blocks north of his house, cedar park, using electricity from the bottom of a lamp post. Thousands of young people came to his outdoor jams, which were not broken up by police, even though they were done without a permit. And other talented djs in the bronx decided to follow the example. Among these were a former gang leader from the bronx, one of them who called himself africa bom botta, and a young man from mauritania, who trained in electronics at a Vocational High School who called himself grandmaster flash. By 1976, parties where the djs competed with one another to create the most danceable beats using breakbeats from records were taking place all over the bronx in parks and Community Centers, in school yards and abandoned buildings. At these parties, dance competitions between crews, using innovative steps taken from martial arts movies, latin dancing, and james brown moves, became common occurrences, almost to the point where they were as much a part of the event as the djs. Soon, the djs, who were competitive with one another, started to try to distinguish themselves by commandeering street poets to rhyme over their beats. And by the late 1970s, the artistry of the rappers was starting to gain as much attention as the djs and the dancers. By now, the parties were starting to spread into private clubs and dance halls, as well as parks and Community Centers, places like disco fever and the stardust ballroom, and people from other parts of the city and region were starting to take notice. Then, in 1979, a record entrepreneur from englewood, new jersey named sylvia robertson, who had once been a singer and club owner in the bronx, decided to try to record the music. She put out a record called rappers delight, which almost went platinum and set businesspeople to decide there were new Business Opportunities to be found in this bronxbased art form. Within five years, scores of rap records were being produced. Some which have their own music videos. And massmarket films were produced which highlighted the bronx setting for hiphop, as well as the djing, the rapping, the breakdancing, and the graffiti, which were all integral parts of the scene. As a result, hiphop in all its forms spread around the city, the nation, and the world, almost always in places where there were large numbers of people who felt disenfranchised and marginalized. So essentially, the marketing of hiphop, which spread it outside of the bronx, around the country, and the world, really began in the late 1970s. And for the first six years, there was little outside attention given to what was later hailed as a musical revolution. So that is the broad story. Why the bronx . Lets look first at the population of the bronx and the sonic universe they lived in prior to hiphop. The concept of a sonic universe is, to me, very important, because a lot of you know when we were talking about rock n roll that the sonic universe of many workingclass communities was receptive to harmonic music. In the 1970s, those same communities are becoming responsive to a much more percussive and inyourface kind of music. So what are some of the features of the bronx, culturally, that led the bronx to have more receptivity to the percussive elements of popular music than many other places . And here, you have to understand something about the unique history of the bronx. Well before the emergence of hiphop, several neighborhoods in the south bronx had a mixture of cultures and traditions that made them unique in new york city. And the nation fostered musical creativity. In the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, two large workingclass neighborhoods in the south bronx, were peacefully integrated by three different population streams coming from harlem and east harlem. Africanamericans originally from the u. S. South, west phone rom and the anglophone caribbean countries like jamaica, antigua, and barbados, and spanishspeaking people coming from puerto rico, cuba, and panama. Each of these peoples brought their own musical traditions to the neighborhood schools and housing projects that they lived in, and over time, these traditions fused them more in the most remarkable ways. By the 1950s, the clubs, theaters, and churches and schools in these neighborhoods were places where you could hear afrocuban music, mambo, doowop and rhythm and blues, beebop and dixieland jazz, and calypso. By the 1960s, these musical forms began to evolve as the americanborn youth began to transform them, giving rise to salsa, funk, and latin soul. After a while, the white population of those neighborhoods largely moved out, leaving only a few people left behind. But what you had in the bronx was a mixture of more people from different parts of the African Diaspora than existed anywhere in new york city. And having people from these different traditions living in the same Apartment Buildings and housing projects produced the unique, sonic universe where melodies and songs in different languages took place through a backdrop of powerful percussion. And i want to give you a few quotes which describe what it was like. Nowhere else in new york city did people who came from the American South or from the anglophone caribbean, live in proximity with spanishspeaking people from the caribbean. And as a result, everyone in the bronx danced to latin music and had an experience of hearing latin percussion. So let me read you a couple of quotes which bring this to life, because it helps prepare the way for hiphop. This comes from a book by alan jones. Called the rap that got away. The Patterson Houses, which opened in the 1950s, at night were alive with activity and sound. Music is everywhere, coming out of peoples apartments and on project benches. On one side of the street, you would have people bring out turntables with speakers. On the other side of the street, you could hear brothers singing a Frankie Lyman song, why do fools fall in love . But the one constant, every night, without fail, was the sound of Puerto Ricans playing their bongos in local parks and playgrounds. The steady beat of those drums boom, boom, bam, boom, bam was background music to my living reality. Now, here is a quote from african bumbado, who also grew up in the bronx river houses. I will say this wherever we were, the Puerto Ricans was there. I dont like to get into it when we call them Puerto Ricans they are africans, just like us. We have got to remember that are puerto rican brothers are the ones that kept africa alive. They are the africans that kept the drums, they kept the gods of santeria alive. In the 1960s, blacks and Puerto Ricans were always playing the conga. Always had the rhythms. And this is from the next quote, this is from ray mantia, who became a prominent musician in the latin music genre, but also played jazz. After i got to play the conga drums, i had a bunch of friends that were all interested in playing the congas. The puerto rican kids in my area, we started to jam on the roof. It was like every saturday and every sunday, everybody would go to the roof with their conga drums, and we will be playing all kinds of rhythms. It was like a big party with the drums. Meanwhile, down in the bottom, down on the street, we had these black people, and the whites and , they were into doo wop. Tookaribbean, they never their drums away. The black folk here, they took their drums away, so they had to invent something, and they invented doo wop. They were doowoping, and we were rhythm. African rhythm. We were playing and thank god they never took our drum away. This is one of the things that is unique the constant sound of drumming in these multicultural communities and housing projects. That was the percussive sound herc recreated. Folks in the bronx, whether they had families that come from the caribbean, from the south, from puerto rico, honduras, those drum sounds where part of their sonic universe. Because that is what the bronx was like. But the people didnt only hear those sounds. They danced. The bronx was a dancing community. People danced in their homes, in their clubs, in schools, and in the streets. And people shared their dance traditions. If you grew up in the south bronx, whether you are black, latino, or white, you danced latin. And if you were latino, you probably slow danced to the drifters and fast danced to james brown. Vicki archibald, a social worker who grew up in the Patterson Houses in the 1950s and 1960s, described how latin music became a powerful force in the life of her black friends and neighbors. Frankie lyman was one of my favorites, but i loved all kinds of music, including latin music. It was in the sixth grade when i first was introduced to latin music. Before then, i heard it, because there were a lot of latinos in the building, but i do not really dance to it. As i got older, i noticed more and more black people dancing to latin music, and they were good. They used to dance some of professionally in the palladium and places like that. And we used to watch these folks who also lived in patterson, who are maybe high school age, and we just fell in love with the music. And as my doctoral student lisa reminds us, many of the people from the spanish caribbean were also black. Were also of african descent. So you had this diverse, Multicultural Community that were tuned in to this percussive music and to dancing. And this was there were places like that in other parts of the city, but nowhere were the percussive traditions as strong and as public as in the bronx. In the south bronx, music and dancing were everywhere. And nothing was more prized than music that forced you to dance because of the powerful beats. For the 30 years before the hiphop jam, the bronx was swaying to the multiple rhythms of the African Diaspora indoors and outdoors, in parks and schoolyards, in clubs and Community Centers, and in streets where people took record , players out in the summer for block parties and outdoor jams. Well before bronx djs started hooking up sound systems to the panels at the bottom of light poles, small puerto rican bands called tiki rikis, in imitation of the sound of roosters, where doing the same thing with their amplifiers when they played in parks in hunts point. Something that was recalled for us in an interview by a great south bronx percussionist named angel rodriguez. But not only Puerto Ricans brought amplified music to the streets. From the early 1960s on, it was extremely common for africanamerican, as well as latino, bronx residents to bring their portable record players outside and dance on sidewalks and stoops on hot summer nights. Teresa roberts, a bronx schoolteacher whose father was africanamerican and whose mother was puerto rican, recalls about how people entertained themselves outside of her Apartment Building during the summer months. We are talking largely in the 1960s. This was before hercs parties. In my building, it was the norm for people to bring their equipment outside. Whoever would have the best equipment for a good stereo, they would bring their radio right from the living room and bring it outside and play it. Sometimes, people would put their speakers in the window with a dj working the system and was standing outside in front of the building, and we would dance. This was all before hiphop. The percussion, the dancing, the mingling of cultures. When kool herc had his big bang and created 10 minutes of pure percussion at the 1520 sedgwick Community Center, the young people of the bronx were not only predisposed to respond to it joyously, they were prepared to dance to it, just like their parents and grandparents had it done, although in different traditions. Which brings it to another element of the Cultural Capital of the bronx, which helped it to spawn hiphop a new wave of caribbean immigration from the anglophone caribbean that followed the drastic relaxation of immigration quotas in 1965. Some of you may know that, 1965, immigration laws were passed which drastically cut off the quotas that were set up for immigration from the caribbean, from eastern europe, and Southern Europe in 1924. Clive and Cindy Campbell were among the more than 10,000 jamaican immigrants who came to the bronx between 1965 and 1970. By bringing with them, among other things, the sound system culture of that country which helped spawn ska and reggae. Young people like Clive Campbell came from a society where people made extra cash by sponsoring parties with huge, loud amplifiers and speakers, often in the outdoor spaces, playing the most popular records, all the while toasting over the sounds. It is that tradition that campbell and his sister brought 21520 sedgwick, with the loudest sound system that anybody had ever heard. The sound system alone could not excite the crowd. Campbell combined the power of his amplifiers with something they had never heard before, something that had made them dance with a power and frenzy they had never done before. A sound which both reflected the percussion traditions they had grown up with and the harsh sonic universe of the community where buildings were burning fire engines and Police Sirens , were moaning, and the windows of cars and buildings were being shattered. Later, that experience would be captured by an amazing song, the message, by grandmaster flash. Broken glass everywhere, people pissing on the stairs i cannot take the noise i got no choice rats in the front room roaches in the back donkeys in the alley with a baseball bat i tried to get away but i couldnt get far a man who possessed my car im trying not to lose my head that is 1982. But already all these things are happening in the 1970s. So campbell, whos not having anything more than a couple of yall, like yes, yes, to the beat, yall is nevertheless capturing music and the universe of this Multicultural Community with the lived experience of people going through what, at the time, was seen as one of the great urban tragedies of modern history. So, let us now turn to the second feature of why hiphop started in the bronx, which is the case of people who created musical innovation amidst extraordinary hardship, which, of course, is an old story, because it happened during slavery, it happened with the blues in the midst of jim crow, but here, it happens in the bronx. So here is the tragedy. During the very years that hiphop merged in the bronx, large portions of the borough e hit by arson and end and abandonment cycles that left Thriving Communities and produced the loss of Housing Stock and population rivaling those areas hit by bombardment. Mauritania and hunts point, the two bronx communities responsible for most of the boroughs musical creativity lost 50 and 60 of their population respectively between 1970 and 1980. And fully 40 of the Housing Stock of the south bronx was destroyed. But the fires in abandoned buildings were only one component of the tragedy. Because of the new york city fiscal crisis, not only were the fire and Police Services drastically cut in the bronx, but the great music programs and afterschool programs in bronx schools were shut down as a result of budget cuts. Depriving young people of the borough opportunity to learn how to play the Musical Instruments and showcase their musical skills the way that their parents and grandparents had done. Yet, while they suffered terribly as a result of these multiple tragedies, as the bronx would no longer leave the nation in the performance of jazz, rhythm and blues, and funk, at least not until some of the music programs were restored at the beginning of the 20th century, he did not suppress the impulse of musical pitifully. Rather, budget cuts directed that into panels no one had anticipated, using turntables and sound systems and vocal poetry to create something the older generation neither welcomed nor predicted but would end up sweeping the world. How did hiphop thrive in tragedy . First of all, lets look at how it was disseminated. After hercs first parties, hiphop largely spread through the bronx as a result of outdoor parties held in school yards and parks with ella just the drawn drawn fromctricity lampposts, all done illegally. Why were these parties allowed . Because this is the question. If you tried to do this right now, a few tried to set up a sound system plugged into a light post, we would have three minutes before we are broken up by police. Why could one go on all night in the 1970s . This has to do in part with budget cuts, because the police were so decimated by budget cuts and reduction in personnel in the 1970s, and given all the other forms of violence taking place in the bronx, police made a decision to allow hiphop parties to take place, even making huge amounts of noise and lasting well into the night, as long as no one was being shot or stabbed at the events. Did people complain . Hell yes. The noise drove nearby apartment dwellers crazy. But Police Ignored the complaints so long as the gatherings remained peaceful. Basically, scores of illegal outdoor parties attracting thousands of people were allowed to take place in the 1970s, because the bronx was viewed as such a war zone by Law Enforcement that such gatherings were tolerated. 10 years earlier or 20 years later, that could not have happened. The same thing was true of the graffiti arts that accompanied the rise of hiphop, one of the four elements of hiphop. Why were trains covered with these graffiti burners and works of art in the 1970s and 1980s . It is partly because budget cuts in police and transit made it impossible for those doing graffiti to whitewash their masterpieces when they went up. Just like hiphop parties thrived outside the law, so did graffiti art, and the two paralleled one another. Amidst what many new yorkers regarded as lawlessness and chaos, new music and visual art forms arose, spread, and ultimately took such a compelling form as to inspire imitators around the nation and around the world. Even rioting helped the spread of hiphop. When new york city was hit by a blackout in 1977, every Major Business district in the bronx was looted, especially the hub, fremont avenue, and fordham road. Perhaps the most popular target of looting were electronics stores, leading to the dissemination of hundreds of sound systems the bronx used and the creation of even more aspiring hiphop djs. In the past, such young people would have learned to play trumpet, saxophone, and trombone in public schools. Leading them to seek out rhythm and blues bands. But with those programs gone, kids with musical talent looked to djing and rapping as an outlet. And they produced music, when popularized, many young people found irresistible. Because one thing has to be said when we are trying to understand why an art form created in the bronx ended up spreading around the world. The disinvestment and building abandonment that took place in the bronx in the 1970s turned out to be anything but unique. Indeed, it would prefigure what would happen to almost every Industrial City in the u. S. And western europe when factories began to close and industries begin to move to developing countries. By the late 1980s and early 1980s, you could see abandoned neighborhoods which look like the bronx in the 1970s in places ranging from youngstown to buffalo to baltimore, manchester, england and berlin, germany, with similar cuts to programs in schools. Those circumstances, the sound that bronx hiphop deejays were raps thatand the accompanied them, along with the dance and art forms that also were part of it became the soundtrack of a generation of young people around the world caught up in the throes of deinstrialization and globalization. We have to find out how hiphop survived the bronx and was marketed as a commodity for by people who saw its commercial potential. To do that, we have to understand something by the bronxs accessibility by Public Transportation to other communities where Global Cultural production was already taking place, albeit with different musical forms. The young people of the bronx had the ability to create culture but not to market it. That responsibility would fall upon those located in other neighborhoods, who were aware of hiphops potential to be sold as music art, dance, and , fashion. Here, we have to look at the new york location of the bronx. The story of how hiphop was marketed is a fascinating one and requires us to look at people based outside the bronx. Quite frankly, the early bronx hiphop djs, rapppers, break dancers, and graffiti artists all needed help from people with more resources, and that would be forthcoming, in part because of the bronxs accessibility to other sections of new york by Public Transportation. Though the tragedies that hit the bronx took a unique cast there, people in other parts knew all about it. The bronx is only 15 minutes by subway from harlem, 30 minutes from midtown, 40 minutes from lower manhattan, 20 minutes car ride from new jersey. Adventurous individuals in the commercial new york music scene, by the late 1970s, all had hiphop on their radar screens, albeit for a different reason. As previously mentioned, sylvia robinson, a former bronxbased singer and club owner, her husband, bill robinson, owned a small record label based in new jersey, decided to Start Recording rap songs. The studio produced beats. The result was so successful, the concept took off. Following rappers delight, the furious five produced several legendary tracks, including the best known hiphop song of all time, the message. Soon, other small label started to produce catchy rap songs, among them 1980 hits by rapper by bronx rapper kurtis flow. But hiphop also got the attention of musicians in the lower east side. Not only did they see the potential to market rapping as an artform, they saw graffiti and breakdancing as marketable performance live or on film. One was a song by 1980 Punk Group Blondie which included actual rapping by the lead singer deborah harry, but also began with a tribute. One of the verses in the songs goes like this Fab Five Freddy stole everybodys heart dj spinning flash is fast flash is cool the song was a huge hit and was followed by a movie about the bronx hiphop scene and its connection to the downtown punk scene called wild style, which featured graffiti art and breakdancing as much as em ceeing and rapping. Wild style was the first hiphop movie. Its set in the bronx, and graffiti and breakdancing or as important in it as rapping and djing. This was followed a year later by a movie produced by Harry Belafonte called beat street, which featured an epic breakdance battle and had a tribute to a graffiti artist who had been killed tagging the trains. The success of wild style and beat street had as much to do with the spread of hiphop as rappers delight and the message and the breaks. Both movies treated mcing, djing, graffiti as connected art forms created by the youth in new yorks most decayed borough, the bronx, which suddenly became legendary for its artistic creativity as well as much as its unprecedented devastation. So when hiphop spread to paris and berlin in the early 1980s and it was not just as music. It was a dance and visual art as well. And this continued through the 1980s and 1990s as it spread to asia, south america, africa, and eastern europe, all with the understanding that it started in the bronx, and that the bronx has an honored place in Global Cultural history. So, what is the meaning . Hiphops origins in the bronx are replete with irony. A new form of music was created when houses were abandoned and burned, police and fire resources were cut, violence spread, and young people lost the ability to learn how to play Musical Instruments in their schools. Yet it was precisely hiphops emergence from this tragedy as well as its multicultural origins and connection to immigration that were essential to its appeal. Because what happened in the bronx was going to spread throughout the world. Factories closing, schools being shut, people from all over the World Learning to live together, notnly as they migrated only from countryside to city but from one country and continent to another. The young people of the bronx, abandoned, despised, and marginalized, created art forms that fused into a powerful message of defiance to those who were silenced and inspired young people around the world find themselves in similar circumstances. Using their own languages and musical traditions, drawing upon their own dancing and visual images, they have kept hiphop alive and fresh for more than 50 years, never forgetting where it started, right here in the bronx. Thank you. [applause] i have some great videos to illustrate it, but now is your time for questions and comments. So . Do you think if we have a similar approach as berlin had, when you went into 2005, in the bronx will we see lower crime , rates were youth Pay Attention to their art forms compared to now . Mark naison i think that to now . Prof. Naison i think that if we restore the music programs in the schools and include hiphop as well as instrumental music and have afterschool programs that feature the arts, we will definitely engage many more young people and lower crime rates. And that would be true no matter where. It would work in yonkers, too. Obviously, although it started off as a small part, rapping became a main part of hiphop music. I once read that the song, the message was one of the main mark naison you have to look at rappers delight. Sexual posting, partying, boasting, partying, celebrating and bringing everybody in to it, the black and white and yellow. The message was the political commentary. To this day hiphops party music and is political criticism. I think both are equally important. I would not neglect wrappers delight because it became absolutely is sensual essential. It is more than just partying. How do you feel that this story of hiphop connects the story of reggae . Ggatone . The tone mark naison i dont know enough about regaton, so i will dodge the question. It comes from firsthand research. Not being fluent in spanish, i could not penetrate the lyrical elements of regaton the way i could with hiphop. I will leave that to you to write a book about it. Anybody else . Yes. On the objective history for hiphop, but could you give us a personal story of how you first encountered hiphop and your first kind of spark of interest . Mark naison it certainly wasnt when i was teaching here. The single most popular indoor venue for hiphop fans was the webster pal at 100 31st street, 1 83rd street and webster avenue, and i had no idea anything important was going on at the time. The first hiphop song to make an impression to me was the message, which i love the lyrics, but my colleagues and i in africanamerican studies had no interest in hiphop jams taking place in the community. I only began to get sensitized to it in the 1980s when my students from the bronx began saying, naison, you really need to listen to it. But my exposure came as a coach in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I was coaching traveling teams baseball and basketball in brooklyn, and i would put on my sam cooke, aretha franklin, the doors, marvin gaye they said coach, can we have our music . I said ok. Then we had wutang clan and dmx, and i remember when they put on cream, cash rules everything around me. And i said, my god, this describes what is going on with young people in the city better than anything i have ever heard. I started to listen to hiphop as a narrative of what was going on in the city. I began to use it in my courses. Its in the early 1990s when i embrace hiphop as a narrative of real life and the voice of the youth. The first 15 years i did not get it. In part because i liked sam cooke so much. Anybody else . Yeah. So between the diaspora and the budget cuts that you describes, do you think hiphop would have evolved the way it did if it were not for those events . Mark naison no. I think you have places like washington, d. C. When you had grassroots, a Grassroots Music that became very popular in that city. It was incredibly creative and inventive but never spread. I think that what made hiphop special is not the music alone , but the connection to the dance and the graffiti, which were taking place for various reasons in a place like the bronx, where this extraordinary level of decay took place. I think there were other places where there was great you sick music and dancing occurring in cities like l. A. , but the totality of the African Diaspora in the bronx was greater, and the tragedy was greater. So it was the big bang which allowed that to happen. And the new york location where the punk people could seize on it, and old rhythm and blues people like sylvia and bill robinson. I dont think it could have taken place anywhere else even though there was great creativity in so many other cities. Ok, i want to show you a video which will blow your mind. This is from we are talking about how hiphop spread globally. I will show you a video from vietnam with a rapper that will blow you away. Lets get some lights out, and you are allowed to dance, by the way. You can come up and dance and become worldfamous you can come up and dance and become worldfamous. Can anybody beatbox . I will go back to the mike, here mic, here we go. When i started talking about the history of the bronx and bronx schools, people were like, who is this old white guy . So i started rapping along with the message by grandmaster flash, which they thought was hilarious, then they knew me as the notorious phd, which i will share with you. They call me notorious phd i dont wear bling i do mystery i come from the pk mcs know that i dont play you may be shocked to see my face the words on stage dont match my race but the jams are bringing the hardcore truth they will make you rock from floor to roof i may be old i may be white, but my floor is funky and my rhymes are tight [applause] mark naison are we almost done . I have one more but i will say save that for the end. [rapping in vietnamese] mark naison any questions, any thoughts . You expect to see that out of vietnam . Thats bad. And thats all four elements that started in the bronx. Its not because rapping the dance is as much a part of it, and beat boxing became a fifth element. That was a way of adding percussion and scratch. [indiscernible] so its not very surprising vietnemese have a lot of businesses in black communities with nail aesthetic shops, and they are much more connected to communities of color rather than other asian communities that come to the u. S. So its not very surprising. Vietnamese, filipinos and cambodians are in sync to communities of color. Mark naison in the u. S. . In the u. S. Any other thoughts about this . [indiscernible] mark naison i dont have the language to translate, but they have songs in english. Look her up. She has probably 15 youtube videos, some in english, some in vietnamese, some moving back and forth. You can Google Translate it. Somebody can do their paper on her. That would be interesting. I want to bring her to florida. I want this. That would be amazing to have in new york and see this this in new york and see this incredible joy of taking this art form create this is 50 years later, and is alive. The next video i am going to show you is from germany, and it was partially shot with students in my class. The world is listening. And it is women rappers. Hiphop began very much as aggressively male, now women have been, especially globally have been incorporating it as well. See if you can recognize [indiscernible] it is cologne, germany. Mark naison any comments on that . Yeah. I thought that the last section, the whole world is listening, that part is interesting because it is like the truth. You said this was from germany . Mark naison it was shot in cologne, germany. But she is from new haven originally, and she was an artist in residence. She shot portions of it here. Its interesting that the world is listening because movement started in the bronx, and you go back for the movement would this place affect other places like personally not and like ours alone and germany . Barcelona and germany . The result is the entire world in this movement. Mark naison you are absolutely right, and that is the message the whole world adopted, what was created by young people everybody abandoned and gave up on. Thats a hell of a story, isnt it . Thats what needs to be. The most marginalized, despised, they took away the music. They took away the afterschool, and they created music using turntables that would change the world. With their own dance forms, and using an art form that was hated by 95 of the leaders of new york city. They thought graffiti was reversion to savagery. And all over the world graffiti art is honored as one of the most creative art forms around the globe. Its in cuba, in brazil, in every european city, in japan, in vietnam. So youre absolutely right, the world is listening. Its a hell of a story, isnt it . Makes you proud to be in the bronx . Oh yeah. Ok, thank you everybody. Thank you, cspan. Now i am all yours reading this stuff. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] a quick sunday at 7 p. M. Eastern on oral histories, eight series of a six interviews with prominent journalists. Today, a conversation with photojournalists about photos and a career. Out,en they brought oswald he was within three feet of me fromjack ruby came out behind me and went between bob jackson and i and then it began. We were all thrown it to the floor because there must have been 100 police in the basement that sunday morning. Watch our photojournalists interviews on oral histories sundays at 7 p. M. Eastern on American History tv on cspan3. Where in New Hampshire where cspan is learning more about their history. 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