Boogie down Bronx

BY RAFER GUZMÁN | STAFF WRITER

October 10, 2004

, Taken on Oct.2, 1993. Caption: From Left to Right, Grandmaster Flash, Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa. The three of the pioneers of hip hop and rap hail from the Bronx. (Newsday file photo by Richard Haro / October 2, 1993)

HIP-HOP 'HOOD A look at the neighborhoods that have influenced hip-hop

It was 1974 in the South Bronx when a teenage Grandmaster Caz, inspired by the rhythms booming at local block parties and backyard jams, decided to become a DJ.

"I had an old Gerard turntable with the plastic-ceramic cartridges. It's attached to the receiver and the eight-track," recalls Caz. "I had one, my friend had one, and I would bring mine over to his house. He'd put his record on, and I'd put my record on, and he'd have to turn his down while I turned mine up. That's how we'd have the music go continuously. That's how we'd DJ."

The hip-hop explosion of the 1970s and early 1980s had its beginnings in the impoverished South Bronx, where low-budget parties in rec rooms and parks helped foster an art form. Kool DJ Herc, the Jamaica-born DJ credited with inventing hip-hop, played his first gig at his sister's birthday party in a West Bronx project. Afrika Bambaataa, the DJ and onetime gang member who infused hip-hop with a sense of social responsibility, put on his first parties at high schools and Police Athletic League youth centers. Those pioneers served as the inspiration for Caz (the uncredited writer of the 1979 hit "Rapper's Delight") and countless other budding hip-hoppers throughout the borough, which was dubbed "The Boogie Down Bronx."

In the late 1970s, New York City was recovering from a $4.5 billion financial crisis and suffering from high crime and gang activity -- and the Bronx was one of the hardest hit areas. Caz's photos of his old neighborhood show entire streets lined with vacant lots and wrecked buildings. Looting and arson erupted during a blackout the summer of 1977. During that year's World Series, ABC cameras cut from Yankee Stadium to a blazing building nearby. "Ladies and gentlemen," Howard Cosell announced, "the Bronx is burning."

"It was a different world back then," says Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion Jr. "There was insurance fraud on the part of property owners looking to cash out, redlining by banks who wouldn't lend you a dime."

Bronx residents rallied around any chance for a little entertainment, but the hot spots weren't fancy clubs -- they were the local parks. "Different DJs lived in different areas, so they had different parks," Caz recalls. Herc played often at a park on the west side with "no lights, no nothing. Once it's dark, it's dark in there."

Hip-hop also spilled over into the schools, says rapper Joe Cartagena, aka Fat Joe, who grew up in the Forest Projects at 165th and Trinity streets during the mid-1980s. "Cats started rapping in the lunchrooms, and the rap battles came in," he says. Charlie Ahearn's 1983 documentary, "Wild Style," offered the rest of the country a glimpse of the Bronx, with footage of grafitti artists, break-dancers and rappers. "We could tell that what we were doing here in the Bronx had leaked out," says Caz, who appears in the film playing basketball at Elizabeth Barrett Browning School on East 184th Street.

As hip-hop's popularity boomed during the '80s, nightclubs such as the Castle, The Rhythm Factory and The Zodiac (all now defunct) held shows in which visiting rappers showed up to battle the local champs.

It's taken a while for the Bronx to honor its rap history, but in June the borough inducted Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five into the Bronx Walk of Fame, a line of plaques along the Grand Concourse south of East 161st Street. "Hip-hop emerged as an angry voice of frustration, and in many ways it still is," says Carrion. "In some cases it expressed the worst and most obscene things in our culture -- but it's always been unafraid to do that."