Before Hip Hop was ever given a name,
there was the Deejay. A person or persons playing prerecorded sounds on two
turntables, while using a mixer and headphones; pre-cueing either side of the
turntable to seamlessly transition into the next record. It was through the art
of mixing records that Hip Hop was created and presently remains one of the
most popular genres within the Black community. However, the art of DJ’ing, has
most notably, ignited a theme of resistance in various forms–break-beats and
turntablism– in Hip Hop culture.
It remains uncontested that the
emergence of Hip Hop can be attributed to a Jamaican deejay by the name of Kool
Herc, who on one given summer decided to throw his first party in the Bronx.
But it was Kool Herc’s stylistic performance on the turntables that led way to
a new style of playing records and that can be known as the break-beat
or the b-beat. Herc achieved this through “the instrumental break of
records, since that was the part of the record that dancers seemed to like the
most” (Williams, 2011). Using a technique called the “Merry-go-round”, Herc
would play “continuous flow of break-beats, one after the other. He was then
able to use the same breakbeat on two copies of the same records, alternating
the two to create a continuous instrumental flow”(Williams, 2011). This new
style of deejaying caught on fast and demonstrated the resistance set forth in
the way deejays spun records, because, according to Ford (1978) there was a lot
of dissatisfaction with a lot of the disco music at the time. Herc’s style of deejaying
would later give way to a new style of dance known as break dancing.
Furthermore, in the late 1980’s another
form of resistance developed within the deejay sphere and it would come to be
known as turntablism. Turntablism
can be described, in my own words, as a deejays ability to manipulate the
turntable as a musical instrument in conjunction with the volume fader and
cross fader of a mixer. It represents a form of a resistance in the sphere of
music culture, because according to Miyakawa (2007), turntablism consisted of virtuosic
hip hop deejays known as turntablist, whom began implementing creative styles
while playing out records at parties and clubs. For example, turntablist
utilized “scratching”, which is “the act of rapidly moving the record under the
stylus to produce rhythmic and/or melodic sounds” ( Miyakawa, 2007, p.
82). As a result of turntablism, Hip hop deejays were no longer adhering to the
traditional style and performance of deejaying, but were challenging the depths
of deejaying. Turntablism continued to become prevalent in many Hip Hop sets in
which deejays embellished the sound of prerecorded records with “vast
repertoires of scratches with names such as twiddles,
chirps, orbits, transforms, crabs, stabs, tears and flares” (Miyakawa,
2007).
The deejays ingenuous style with break-beats
and turntablism exhibits the resistant theme that deejays have executed through the usage of
turntables and banal disco music into creative style and techniques that have set
the precedent for future generations. It is without a doubt, if it is was not for the deejay there would be no Hip Hop.
Works Cited
Ford, Jr., R.
(1978). B-Beats Bombarding Bronx: Mobile DJ Starts Something With Older R&B
Disks. In M. Forman & M.A. Neal (Eds.), That’s
The Joint! : The Hip-Hop Studies Reader (p. 41). New York, New York:
Routledge.
Miyakawa, F. M.. (2007). Turntablature: Notation,
Legitimization, and the Art of the Hip-hop DJ. American Music, 25(1),
81–105. http://doi.org/10.2307/40071644
Williams, J.. (2011). Historicizing the Breakbeat:
Hip-Hop's Origins and Authenticity. Lied Und Populäre Kultur / Song and
Popular Culture, 56, 133–167. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23339034
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