eight pages due by 48 hurs

hip-hop disruptions and boombox culture

hip-hop disruptions and boombox culture

L.L. Cool J. “I Can’t Live Without My Radio” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdkamS5axHQ

race records: 78-rpm phonograph records marketed to black audiences from the 1920s to the 1940s featuring gospel, blues, jazz, and comedy recordings from black artists.

publicly funded European radio stations were not bound by the restrictions of advertisers, and welcomed the diversity of black produced music throughout the 1930s and 1940s.

Fred Parris and the Satins

Fred Parris and the Satins- “In the Still of the Night” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBT3oDMCWpI

Fred Parris and the Satins

Ahmet Ertegun (1923-2006)

-founder of Atlantic Records.

-known for exploiting black artist by paying them a flat-

fee for their songs and never paying them future royalties

resulting from how their music was marketed, used in

advertisements, or covered.

there was a meeting between a Columbia Records executive

and Ahmet Ertegun: this executive wanted to make

a deal whereby Columbia would distribute for Atlantic Records because Columbia

specialized in “race records.” so he said, “what would you offer us?” Ahmet Ertegun

responded, “three percent.”’ “three percent!’ the executive said, “we’re paying our artists more than that!’ and Ertegun

said, “you’re paying those people royalties? you must be

out of your mind!” of course Ertegun didn’t call them ‘people,’ he called them

something else.”

Fred Parris and the Satins

-sold between 10 to 15 million copies of “In the Still of the Night.”

-instead of earning $100,000 in royalties, they were payed a flat-fee of $783 by their record company.

-performers also had no ownership of their master recordings.

-only subsequent lawsuits decades later have brought restitution to some of these performers.

Huey (Piano) Smith was told by his lawyer- manager that ''Sea Cruise'' and ''Rockin' Pneumonia'' were no longer making money, but that he had found someone who would buy the rights for a flat fee; the “charitable” buyer turned out to be the lawyer's wife under her maiden name.

Huey (Piano) Smith was told by his lawyer- manager that ''Sea Cruise'' and ''Rockin' Pneumonia'' were no longer making money, but that he had found someone who would buy the rights for a flat fee; the “charitable” buyer turned out to be the lawyer's wife under her maiden name.

The Vandellas, like some other groups that recorded for Motown Records in the 1960's, signed contracts in which a company controlled by Motown's executives was their manager, receiving a percentage of their earnings as a commission. these three assigned “managers” turned out to be three different “widows!”

Little Richard

Little Richard- “Tutti Frutti” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kM1khne_sg

Pat Boone

Pat Boone- “Tutti Frutti” https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=15&v=DAwBa8Pqi6Y

Phillips’ radio cassette recorder, invented in the Netherlands in 1969

Japanese teenagers dancing around a radio cassette recorder. Shibuya, Tokyo, 1978.

80's Japanese BoomBox TV Commercial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwpp5pNyKFo

DJ Kool Herc setting up the world-famous block party at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, The Bronx, August 1973.

DJ Kool Herc setting up the world-famous block party at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, The Bronx, August 1973.

Mogul, “That Beat, that Beat Right There.” podcast clip: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DUyvOItEf3E6F8eYrSegiIQq_nPki3hG/view?usp=sharing

NPR

Ed Burns: “one generation’s weapon of choice.”

the boombox was a “sonic campfire” with people gathering around to generate dialogue, debate, heat.

Kool Meo Dee: “the boombox would be the only way you would actually hear hip-hop. so, for anyone that loved hip-hop—especially in the mid- to late ‘70s—that was your conduit.”

Adisa Banjoko: “back then, the black man wasn’t being heard in American society. his ideas, his thoughts, his passions, his dears, his hate, his love were just swept under the rug. and so when he’s got his boombox in his hand, he forced you to hear him; when he’s sitting in that car with twenty speakers blaring out of his backseat, playing “Fuck the Police,” playing “Rebel Without a Pause,” playing “Teachers,” playing “Too Short,” only when can he make sure that you hear him unobstructed.”

Chuck D: “the sociopolitical meaning of Public Enemy came after we decided the group would be called that, because the meaning and the connection of what we were about fit right in. the black man and woman was considered three-fifths of [a] human being in the Constitution of the United States. since the government and the general public follow the Constitution, then we must be the enemy.”

Public Enemy- “911 is a Joke” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPNK0VspQ0M

Spike Lee: “growing up in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Cobble Hill in the mid-sixties i was first introduced to the power of portable music. there was this guy everyone called Joe Radio. he got that moniker because he stood on the corner of Henry and Warren Streets with a small transistor radio on his shoulder. he would listen to the WMCA Good Guys or WABC with Cousin Brucie night and day, day and night. Joe Radio was the only one i ever knew who did that. the image of him constantly listening to his radio was burned into my mind at a young age of eight. many, many years later, that boyhood experience reemerged as the character Radio Raheem in the 1989 film Do The Right Thing.”

Radio Raheem’s boombox of choice was a Promax J-1 Super Jumbo

“it was some serious work lugging that shit around, and you had to have a strong will to impose your musical taste on the world. there was no sense in having a boombox if you did not play it at eardrum-shattering levels. you also had to be ready to fight i somebody dared ask you to ‘turn that shit down.’ Radio Raheem would die for his boombox, for his music, blasting Public Enemy’s Anthem ‘Fight the Power’ all throughout the film.”

Grand Master Flash & The Furious Five- “The Message” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PobrSpMwKk4

Too $hort- “The Ghetto” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw0uz88E2gI

Do the Right Thing: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17nUE4e4Hiu61mBldpny1IvfOfS9nhqjb/view?usp=sharing