My trip to London last week was kind of a last minute decision. And as you need to book your train tickets three months in advance in this country to get an affordable fare, I was forced to take the bus.. Which sucks because by train London is just 2 hours away, by bus it takes over 3 hours. But then again I kept £45 in my pocket (which I could spend in London on 2nd hand records, books (bought at a gem of a bookstore, Bookmongers in Brixton), the most delicious sourdough pizza at Franco Manca, several pints of ale, and on seeing Mats Gustafsson. Plus I was able to put a good dent in the 600-page book I'm currently reading: Last Night a DJ Saved My Life - The History of the Disc Jockey. It's very entertaining, very informative and I can highly recommend the book to anyone who is interested in dance music, whether it's soul, disco, hip hop or techno.
I'm half way through the book and so, as the bus made its way onto the M4 on Thursday morning, I continued reading the chapter Hip Hop Roots. I read about the pioneering work of DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa in the Bronx in the '70s. I read about the relationship between disco and hip hop and the links between punk and hip hop, in which Malcolm McLaren played a big role. I chuckled over this part where McLaren goes to some block party in the South Bronx in the early days of hip hop:
"In August 1981 McLaren had been introduced to Afrika Bambaataa by Michael Holman, a black video artist who had taken him up to the Bronx to witness this amazing new music scene. The Sex Pistol's ex-manager was then steering the fortunes of pop band Bow Wow Wow, and formulating an ambitious album project based on smelting together the world's folk-dance music (this would become this Duck Rock LP). Despite a harrowing night during which he was, by most accounts, completely petrified, McLaren was mesmerised. 'It was like Heart of Darkness,' laughs Holman. 'I go to the hotel and I'm about to take them up to the Bronx on a summer evening - McLaren and Rory Johnston from RCA - and they're dressed like fucking pirates, in all that Vivienne Westwood gear. I thought we were gonna get stuck up or shot at any second. We finally get there and we go from a place that's completely deserted to masses and masses of kids, nothing but teenagers running from one corner to another, watching fights break out in the crowd. It's insane. Bottles flying everywhere. Malcom's dressed like a pirate - and nobody noticed us.'"
Watch and listen to McLaren's own account of this event in the 1984 BBC documentary Beat This! A Hip Hop History. Hehe I love it...
Watch and listen to McLaren's own account of this event in the 1984 BBC documentary Beat This! A Hip Hop History. Hehe I love it...
Back at my hotel I learned Malcom McLaren had died that morning.
He might have been a bit of a tosser, but credit where credit's due, his influence on pop culture is undeniable. So here's some ancient hip hop for you, including McLaren's go at rapping (from 1983) and Afrika Bambaataa biggest hit Planet Rock (from 1982). I'm also putting up Takin’ All that Jazz by Stetsasonic from 1988 because it nicely reflects on the state of hip hop at the time and the criticism it received (that it wasn’t creative because of the sampling and that it was a fad(!)). And look where we are today. In part thanks to that fucking pirate.
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