You know I'm sure people are sick and tired of hearing how things were better in the old days. If you're under twenty you've got to be especially sick of old farts like me, over forty, who keep telling you about "when we were young rap music meant something". Well if any of the above applies to you, you might as well stop reading now.
Nothing that I've heard to date has yet to match the power and the poetry of Afrika Bambaataa. I first started hearing about him and hearing him occasionally in the 1980s when he was leading the charge in bringing rap/hip hop music out of the ghetto into mainstream acceptance. He of course had been around a long time prior to that, starting out in the 1970s while still in high school.
It was a time when DJ's would compete to see who could create the best mix of music to entice audiences to dance. An early forerunner of what we now know as sampling, DJ's would inter cut varieties of music from their turn tables to create dance music. They would take their "coffins" (boxes with turntables set into them) to parties, parks and community events and face off against each other.
Bambaataa (which means "benevolent leader") evolved from this format into utilizing musicians and b-boys (break dancers) to create his sound. Influenced by the funk sounds of performers like James Brown he kept that hard edge to his music while integrating samples of other music.
He had a far more political focus than the "home boys" of today and his lyrics and actions were reflective of that attitude. He worked on the anti apartheid album Sun City with Steven Van Zandt, Lou Reed, and others in what was Rock's first overt political act in years.
But it was his willingness to cross musical boundaries that really set him apart from other musicians of the time, and still does today. Before RunDmc and Aerosmith recorded their version of "Walk This Way" he had been working with Rock musicians. In 1984 he developed two groups, Shango and Time Zone. One of the key members of Time Zone was one time Sex Pistol and PIL luminary, John Lydon (Johnny Rotten to his friends)
Article comments
1 - Nukapai
A stunningly well written review. Thank you for it. :)
2 - Scott Butk
No "World Destruction?" That was AB and Johnny Rotten right?
3 - gypsyman
yeah he's credited as John Lydon on the disc and in the review for "World Destruction"
gypsyman
4 - Scott Butki
Oh, Ok. I used to love that song. I'd request it at school dances to add a bit of stark reality to the events.
5 - gypsyman
Holy crap, what school did you go to that would let a DJ play music by Afrika at all. We were lucky if we could anything more threatening than the Stones. Although once by accident someone booked B.B.Gabor in for a school dance, a brilliant musicsian/punker in Toronto.
Afrika would have scared the poop out of the nice middle class folk of Toronto in the Seventies.
gypsyman
6 - Scott Butki
I grew up in Southern California and they were a little looser on rules than other states.
7 - Connie Phillips
Editor's note: This article now has another venue for success - and more eyes - at the Advance.net Web sites, a site affiliated with about 12 newspapers.
One such site is here.
8 - Scott Butki
Congrats!
9 - james
This was the best club music we had in the 80s I too am anold fart over 40 and todays rap can not clome close. It was not until later did I understand the lyrics. WOOOO X was legal then.