(UPDATE: Bambaatta visited NZ in January 2004, performing at the Big Day Out. Read this profile from the Listener.)
Rap music is one of the biggest selling music genres in the world today, but back in 1979, rap had absolutely no visible presence outside of a small part of New York. It did not exist, according to the music industry anyway, because no one had recorded and released it, yet. They were too busy looking for the next disco hit.
That year Rappers Delight by The Sugarhill Gang was released, opening the flood gates for records like The Message by Grandmaster Flash and Planet Rock by Afrika Bambaatta. Before then, the only way rap was heard was from dj's making up mix tapes, which were heard blasting from ghetto blasters (huge portable cassette players), and from parties held in school yards and parks on weekends by DJs like Grandmaster Flash, Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaatta. These parties would usually involve the dj and his crew turning up in the afternoon, wiring their system into the power from a nearby lamp post, or a paying a friendly neighbour for the electricity, and playing records till the police broke it up. These three dj's are generally credited as the pioneers of rap. Kool Herc started dj'ing around 1974 with his crew the Herculords, playing reggae in a similar style to what he'd heard from sound system dj's, whilst growing up in Jamaica. He also used an MC to hype up the crowd, which led other dj's to follow suit, like Flash hooking up with the Furious Five. Herc's MC Coke La Rock is credited with coming up with hip hop staples like 'To the beat y'all', and 'Ya rock and ya don't stop'.
The slower reggae grooves didn't really click with the New York crowd, so he started playing latin-influenced funk tunes, rather than disco, which was the mainstream for dj's at the time. He noticed that audiences responded to the break in a song, where the other instruments would drop out and let the percussion run. Herc started playing just the break, a technique that Flash picked up on, using two copies of the same record, and using skills he'd picked up while studying electronics at college, he built a cueing system for his dj mixer so he could hear the record before he started it playing, If Herc was the originator (who also had the loudest sound system), and Flash was the fastest at scratching (a technique he picked up from DJ Grand Wizard Theodore, who came up with scratching when his Mum interrupted him in his room one day, and he had his hand on the record, holding it cued up, and started shifting it back and forth), Bambaatta was generally acknowledged as the Master of Records. He had a seemingly endless supply of off-the- wall tunes that put other dj's to shame.
Bambaatta started dj'ing while he was still at school. He was also running with a local gang called the Black Spades, but eventually left that scene when a close friend of his was killed. He started the Zulu Nation, a team of dj's, breakers, graffiti artists and homeboys. When he graduated, his mother gave him a dj system as a graduation present, and he started dj'ing parties straight away.
Bambaatta tapped into the record pools that downtown dj's were part of (supplied by the record companies, as a way of promoting new tunes to the public via dj's), giving him access to unusual tunes that bypassed other dj's in the Bronx. Bam came across Kraftwerk and Yellow Magic Orchestra through the record pools, leading him to create one of the defining recorded moments of hip hop, Planet Rock, which lifts Kraftwerk's Trans Europe Express and Numbers and places their dry Germanic melodies bang in the middle of the funky New York rap scene, aided by rappers The Soul Sonic Force. It's a mind bending clash, but it worked brilliantly, and it changed the face of rap, creating the style known as electro.
The record was produced by Arthur Baker, who remembers Bambaatta playing Trans Europe Express with Malcolm X speeches running over the top. "I used to hear Trans Europe all over the place, Baker recalls. "In play grounds, clubs everywhere. When I had lunch, I'd sit in the park and there'd be guys with a big beatbox, breakdancing to it." Bambaatta had little studio experience, but he knew what he was after. "I wanted to be the first black electronic group. Some funky crazy mechanical shit with no band, just electronic instruments. When I made it, I was trying to grab the black market, and the punk market."
Bambaatta was the first dj to venture into the downtown art/punk scene in New York, helped no doubt by his outrageous dress sense, which took a page out of the P Funk book of fashion. He delighted in confounding his audiences, back in the day. He'd play the B52's, Aerosmith, Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Squire, anything with a good beat. His crowd was as open minded as he was, and if anyone got a bit snobbish, he'd play tricks on them. "I used to catch the people who'd say 'I don't like rock' or whatever," says Bambattaa. "I'd throw on Mick Jagger (Honky Tonk Woman) you'd see the blacks and the Spanish just throwing down, getting crazy. And I'd say 'I thought you didn't like rock'. They'd say 'get out of here'. And I'd say 'Well you just danced to the Rolling Stones', and they'd` say 'You're kidding'".
His tastes ran from Sly and the Family Stone to Steppenwolf, from Yellow Magic Orchestra to Yellowman, from Talking Heads to Troublefunk. Bambaatta has collaborated with the likes of former Sex Pistol John Lydon, UB40, Boy George, Nona Hendryx, and most recently with Leftfield, on the track Afrika Shoxx. He has constantly strived to work outside the confines of the rap genre, experimenting across a variety of styles, with often varying results. He has sometimes been criticised for the quality of his tunes; "There are some people who say that I'm making them dodgy house and techno records, that I've turned my back on hip hop," says Bambaatta. "Who the hell are you to question what I make? I'll do what I want to do. That's why I've made house, techno, rock, funk, reggae, and soca. I'm the Renegade of Funk".