Break Beats in the Bronx

Today, many presumptions about the origins of hip-hop prevail. The sociologist Joseph C. Ewoodzie Jr. directly challenges conventional hip-hop creation stories that tend to hail DJ Kool Herc the undisputed founding father of hip-hop, situate hip-hop's origins in the South Bronx in the early to mid-1970s, and then skip to 1979 when the Sugar Hill Gang released their mainstream hit “Rapper's Delight.” Combining what he calls “never-before-used” oral interviews (namely those amassed by hip-hop aficionado Troy L. Smith) with sociological theories and analyses (the sociologist Andrew Abbott's ideas are accentuated), Ewoodzie contends that hip-hop scholars have not adequately examined how the 1975–1979 period significantly affected the culture's evolution. For Ewoodzie, it was “during this period that the internal logic of the hip-hop scene was formed” (p. 3). His goal is to “move from a heroic account toward a people's history of hip-hop” (p. 5). While Break Beats in the Bronx is not a social history per se, it offers an engaging and revisionist counternarrative of hip-hop's early history. Ewoodzie's book is indeed one of “rediscovery

Aesthetics · Art · Hop (telecommunications · Literature · Mainstream · Period (music · Sociology · Telecommunications · Theology · Engineering · History · Music History and Culture · Philosophy · Race, History, and American Society