Hip hops Master of Records Still Looking For The Perfect Beat David A.M.

Goldberg Before mash-ups and Miley Cyrus, Eminem, Biggie and Tupac, there was Afrika Bambaataa. Our half-hour phone conversation was Hip hop itself, part performance, part lecture, part archive. Bambaataa is completely grounded, speaking with a richly grained baritone that still carries the rapid street cadence of the Bronx. He communicates with all the style and confidence of an Old School MC, and his ideas have the weight, density and consistency of basalt. He beat me to the first question, inquiring if I, in the aftermath of the Fukushima Nuclear plant disaster, was using kelp to protect myself from radiation poisoning. The implication was that despite the powers that be not necessarily telling us everything, there were still things we could do. Before getting into music, art or culture Bambaataa was asking after my health and that of the people of these islands! That isnt an atypical priority for one of the founders of Hip hop itself, who forty years ago started the Universal Zulu Nation: the now-global organization that directed the energies of young DJs, breakdancers, rappers, and graffiti artists toward positive social engagement, anti-racism, gender equality and a generalized spirituality that strove to recognize the commonalities of all religions. Afrika Bambaataa, along with Kool DJ Herc and Grandmaster Flash, laid what you might call the Hip hops indigenous foundations. Today Hip hop is both selforganizing and programmed by corporate agendas, and it has transformed the youth culture of the entire planet. But it started with a radical approach to playing records that borrowed styles from radio, disco and Jamaican outdoor parties, and adapted them to the tastes of poor and working class youth on the streets of 1970s New York. Kool DJ Herc pioneered the technique of manually repeating the most exciting parts of popular dance records. Grandmaster Flash set the earliest standards of technical precision and virtuosity for scratching and mixing. But Afrika Bambaataaknown as the Master of Recordscollected and mixed the widest possible range of music, could make even the most prejudiced listener dance to music they claimed to hate, and effectively invented the dance music genre now called electro. If you listen so some of Bambaataas earliest synth and drum machine records like Planet Rock, Renegades of Funk, and Looking For The Perfect Beat you can hear his contributions to the roots of Miami and LA Bass, Latin Freestyle, and Detroit Techno. The lyrical content of these songs freely sampled and remixed bits and pieces of philosophy, spirituality, politics, and futurism. Delivered via electronic voice box and harmonized rap vocals, the themes referenced Yoruba gods, continuities and transformations of Black music, psychoacoustics, and world crises

that could only be addressed by people from all backgrounds coming together starting on the dancefloor, your dancefloor. I asked Bambaataa if this was still how he approached doing parties and he gave some insight into his strategies. I try to feel the vibrations of the place that people might be in, he said, and take them on a journey through music. Speaking to his ability to overcome musical prejudices he reminds us that [DJs] think that their audience is only liking a certain style of music. Thats like people saying I only like rock music but then [you find out] theyre lying if you go in their mp3 categories and see all types of other stuff in there. In the early 70s, the Hip hop DJ was the iPod, and Bambaataas techniques might use a grunt from James Brown, or an organ you might have heard in a Eurythmics song or you might hear Aretha [Franklin] singing a little something here, or a guitar playing from Peter Frampton, or a George Clinton P-Funk groove. The key to success was the type of drum pattern he played under these handcrafted samples, and the careful attention he paid to dancers who effectively voted tracks up or down based on their physical reactions. Its what you put on top of it [the break] that can bring people back to remember or even certain words, or cutting certain songs or lyrics into a certain beat. As someone with DJ experience I can certainly vouch for the practical validity of Bambaataas approaches. When he came to Hawaii in 2006 the Iraq war was spiraling out of control, and he opened his set with an instrumental remix of Princes Controversy. Like all scientists he has a generalized theory (developed through extensive experimentation) that he can rely on: We always hear certain music that we dont know or like but we remember something as children We dont like classical music [for example] but remember seeing Bugs Bunny and hearing certain classical songs while theyre doing the chase or a violent scene or something. Now I understand what he did to us on that dancefloor that night. Afrika Bambaataa was there for Hip hops birth in an age of park jams powered by stolen electricity, and now he travels with a laptop and hard drive instead of a record crates. Much of the world he (and John Lydon) warned us of on 1984s World Destruction and 1996s Witches, Warlocks, Computer Chips, Microchips and You has come into being. He has never followed the mainstream, and even after his direct influence on it wane, he never stopped making music for the entire planet to rock to. His message has remained the same: Respect yourself, respect mother earth, and love the world and the Universe, dont miss the chance to hear and feel it live.