Talking and Mixing to the Hip-Hop and Reggae Beat

Talking and Mixing to the Hip-Hop and Reggae Beat - City Room Blog - NYTimes.com

Talking and Mixing to the Hip-Hop and Reggae Beat

By David Gonzalez

Ángel Franco/The New York Times Patricia Chin and her husband, Vincent, who died in 2003, started VP Records in Kingston, Jamaica, and moved it to Jamaica, Queens.

Islands figure big in the history of hip-hop — Public Enemy emerged from Long Island and the Wu-Tang Clan ruled Staten Island. But they’re newcomers compared with what some say are the genre’s original island roots: the West Indies.
“The Great Wuga Wuga,” Sir Lord Comic A very early example of the D.J. style on a recording, circa 1966.

In the 1960s, huge portable sound systems would be set up in some of Jamaica’s poorest communities, where deejays like U Roy would talk — toast — to specially recorded instrumental tracks. Small wonder that Joe Strummer of the Clash once called U Roy the “originator of rap.”

This is not a stretch. In the 1970s, Clive Campbell, the son of Jamaican immigrants, started having parties in the community room of 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx, where he would — like he no doubt saw back in Kingston — talk to the beat. Thus began D.J. Kool Herc and the global assault of rap. (Another early turntable master, Joseph Saddler — better known as Grandmaster Flash — has roots in Barbados.)

to read more, click here [nyt cityroom]