Happy 8/11!
Hip-hop heads revere the founders S. Bronx founders of our movement for “making something out of nothing”. It’s a poetic affirmation of the great barriers that our founders overcame. But literally, nothing comes from nothing. Life comes from life. Culture springs from cultures. Ubuntu: a person becomes a person among people.
The site most celebrated as “Hiphop’s Birthplace” isn’t nothing; it’s affordable housing, with a rec room. Key resources for the midwifery of Hiphop included:
-Affordable housing, 1520 Sedgewick Ave built and maintained with public subsidies*, home to the Campbell family.
-Cultural space, a rec room, where Clive Campbell/DJ Kool Herc could DJ a party that his sister Cindy Campbell promoted.
Hiphop isn’t something out of nothing. It’s something out of a rec’ room.
Do you love Hip-Hop? A good birthday present for Hiphop this year and every year would be more affordable housing and accessible cultural spaces.
#BXology,#Hiphop
*1520 Sedgewick is a Mitchell-Lama building. It's called a “non-subsidy” program, but that's just incomplete accounting. Government policy supported resources for affordable housing are it's origin.