Document-Based Lesson

Hip-Hop History

Central Historical Question

Why did Hip Hop emerge as a popular genre of music?
Students will read a series of documents detailing the origins of hip
hop music in the Bronx, NY in the 1970s.
Documents include firsthand accounts of hip hops birth, artist
interviews, and scholarly works.
Students evaluate these documents and rank which factors played the
largest role in the birth of hip hop.
Responses to the CHQ will vary by students, but all students should
reach the conclusion that many factors led to the emergence of the
genre.

Hip Hop: The Early Years 1979-1986

-Expose students to early hip hop
music.
-Ask for students reactions?
-Expect students to point out
differences and similarities to
modern hip hop music.

Pre-Document Analysis

Pose the CHQ to the class

Ask for student input
List student hypotheses on the board
hand out document packet

Document A: What is Hip Hop?

Hip Hop is an art form that includes deejaying [cuttin' & scartchin'] emceeing/rapping, and break
dancing. These art forms as we know them today originated in the South Bronx section of New York
City around the mid 1970s. Hip Hop and rap has thrived within the subculture of Black and Puerto
Rican communities in New York and is now just recently beginning to enjoy widespread exposure.
Break dancing, a colorful and acrobatic style of dance, which includes head-spins and backspins,
traces its roots back to the African martial arts form known as Capoeta. Capoeta is a form of fighting
that was employed by revolting slaves who were brought to Brazil.
Rapping, as we know it today, saying rhymes to the beat of music was originally called emceeing. It
draws its roots from the Jamaican art form known as toasting. It was made popular by African
American soul artists and activists. Rapping reflects the African American experience and draws on
jailhouse and street slang.
Source: This document was written and published in an unknown location by Davey D in 1984.
Davy D is a notable hip-hop historian, journalist and professor who has been involved with
hip-hop since it first emerged as a genre in the 1970s in the Bronx, NY.

Guiding Questions
Document A: What is Hip Hop
1. Sourcing Who was this document written by? Do you consider this author an authority on this
topic? Why or Why not?

2. Close Reading What types of artistic expression does the author include under the umbrella of
hip hop, and where did hip hop originate?

Document B: Roots of Hip Hop

In the beginning there was Africa, and it is from Africa that all todays black American music, be it Jazz, R'n'B, Soul or Electro, is either directly or
indirectly descended. The ancient African tribal rhythms and musical traditions survived the shock of the transportation of millions of Africans as
slaves to the Americas, and after 300 years of slavery in the so called Land of the Free the sounds of Old Africa became the new sounds of
black America. Rapping, the rhythmic use of spoken or semi-sung lyrics grew from its roots in the tribal chants and the plantation work songs to
become, an integral part of black resistance to an oppressive white society.
Some popular African American genres of music included Funk in the 60s and then disco exploded in the 1970s. The new commercial element
of disco drove the hard funk sounds underground and in New York especially the young black kids disillusioned by the lack of excitement in the
new glitzy musical regime ruling the clubs began delving back into the past catalogue of early Seventies funk classics. Nowhere was this
rejection of disco more extreme than in the rough, tough Bronx district of New York City.
In parks and community centers in the Bronx, up and coming DJs were playing to packed crowds of youngsters eager to hear the old funk
tunes. Pretty soon (by 1976/77) DJs and dancers were all the rage. The kids who were into the breaks started calling themselves B-Boys and
the wild, acrobatic style of dancing which accompanied the playing of the breaks became known as breaking.
By the end of 1978 the Bronx was weIl and truly on the boil. Everything had come together: the scratching techniques of the DJs, the bodymoves of the break-dancers and the vocal style of the rappers. While in the background a youthful obsession with video games that was to
influence so many early electro tunes, the growth of graffiti art and a new vocabulary of "homeboys" and "fresh tunes" meant that the new hiphop culture was primed and ready to explode.
Source: This is an excerpt from a 1986 article on the origins of Hip Hop Music. The article was published in RM Hip Hop Magazine in 1986,
approximately 10-years after the birth of Hip Hop in the Bronx, New York.

Guiding Questions
Document B: Roots of Hip Hop
1. Close Reading What genres of music made by African Americans came before Hip Hop?
2. Corroboration What similarities exist between Documents A and B?
3. Evaluation On a scale of 1-10 how much did changing musical tastes contribute to birth of hip
hop?

Document C: Afrika Bambaataa

Afrika Bambaataa is American DJ from the South Bronx, New York. He is famous for influencing the
development of hip-hop culture with his music in the 1980s. He is referred to by many as the Godfather of
hip-hop culture, and is credited with helping to spread hip-hop culture throughout the world.
As a youth growing up in the Bronx, I first noticed the emergence of hip hop culture in 1975.
People were motivated to move in the direction of hip-hop music because it was something new and exciting. People were tired of
disco at the time. The hip-hop at that time came on strong because at that time the music industry was trying to shove disco down
our throats. Everybody was into it for the first year or two and then they got tired of it.
Also New York itself was losing the funk. Back in the early 70s there existed a heavy funk sound, but as time passed the radio
stopped playing Funk music. You stopped hearing those hard beats of Funk music; and you stopped hearing the soul music of
James Brown. All you heard was disco, disco and disco. Hip-hop was a rebellious answer to disco.
Vocabulary:
James Brown: legendary African American soul singer and performer
Source: Afrika Bambaataa gave this interview to the KMEL Beat Report, a popular radio station in San
Francisco, in December 1991. This interview has been widely circulated after it originally aired in 1991.

Guiding Questions
Documents C: Afrika Bambaata
1. Sourcing Who Is Afrika Bambaata and why is he significant to the history of hip hop music?

2. Close Reading Why does Afrika Bambaata think hip hop emerged as a popular genre of
music? To what degree to agree or disagree?

Document D: African Roots

Hip-hop was taken to America and Europe essentially by West African peoples who had become known as AfricanAmericans by virtue of their ancestors having been slaves. Most of the descendants of Africa who introduced hip-hop
to the United States, in particular, were slaves who were in Latin America.
They traveled to the U.S. when slavery was abolished in that country believing that they would never return to Africa
again. Naturally, one of the ways they sought to settle down was to preserve those elements of their culture that had
been preserved throughout the years of slavery. And of course music and poetry/orator were the best ways to preserve
aspects of African culture.
Those descendants of slaves who traveled to North America when slavery was banned, set up bases in the Bronx in
New York City. They introduced to an unsuspecting America a form of entertainment and education never seen before
in those parts. With changing times and social contexts, this spoken word type music evolved and by the 1970s it had
incorporated various other forms to make it more appealing. Hip-hop, thus, became associated with rapping,
deejaying, emceeing and break dancing.
Source: This is an excerpt from a 2015 article, the African Roots of Hip-Hop. This article was published in
the Southern Times, a popular newspaper in South Africa.

Guiding Questions
Document D: African Roots
1. Sourcing When and where was this document published. Does this information affect the
documents reliability?

2. Close Reading How did slave culture influence early hip hop music?

3. Corroboration What factors led the spoken word poetry of slaves in Latin America to transition
to the type of hip hop music displayed in the video shown earlier?

Document E: Hip Hop America

Hip Hop didnt come out of nowhere no spontaneous generation of this deadly virus. The b-boys the
dancers, graffiti writers, the kids just hanging outwho carried the hip-hop attitude forth were reacting the
chaotic world of New York City in the 1970s. These b-boys (and girls) were mostly black and were hip-hops
first generation.
They were Americas first post-soul kids. They came in the aftermath when Black people were given
unprecedented opportunities and rights. Suddenly, black people could vote, attend integrated schools and live
in new neighborhoods. Although the new barriers were down, new subtle ones were waiting for them.
These kids grew up with the Vietnam War and fathers who returned from war addicted to drugs. As they grew
up, both the black middle class and the black lower class expanded. They saw how the crack epidemic and
AIDS ravaged their communities, and they also saw the inequality that existed throughout society. This is the
first generation of black Americans to experience nostalgia for a calmer time and it all showed up in early hiphop music.
Source: This excerpt appears in George Nelsons 1998 book Hip Hop America. George Nelson is an
accomplished African American author, journalist and TV host that focuses his work on the history of
hip-hop music.

Guiding Questions
Document E
1. Close Reading What major events occurred in the black community during the late 1970s and
1980s?
2. Analysis According to Nelson, why were African Americans nostalgic?

3. Evaluation How much weight does this document carry? Does it do a good job at answering
our CHQ?

Lesson Culmination
So why did Hip Hop emerge as a popular genre of music? Please use specific
evidence from the documents to support your answer.
Share conclusions with partners before whole-class discussion.