Afrika Bambaataa

The Civil Rights Movement came about out of legalized racial segregation, containment, and economic/social/political oppression. The Black Power Movement, welling from the sluggish results of civil rights legislation, sprang from a mixture of Black impatience, anger, optimism, and self-discovery. A response to urban neglect and political abandonment in the wake of these struggles, Hip Hop is a cultural movement endowed with the understanding that its Black and Brown congregations exist in a society that doesn't want us, has made no place for us, and hopes to keep any sign that we exist or the decrepit places in which we live invisible and forcefully contained. That is, until the ghetto residents either push back or self-destruct. Which is where the consciousness of Hip Hop began out of the raging gang culture that overtook the Bronx and much of New York City in the early to mid-'70s. While the four corners of Hip Hop graffiti, DJing, B-boying/girling, and MCing developed as separate subcultures inspired by the aggression of gang life, it was former gang member Afrika Bambaataa, wishing to counteract street violence, who injected consciousness within the these "elements," bringing them together as a revolutionary cultural movement. Inspired by the prideful teachings of groups like the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam, Bambaataa founded the Zulu Nation, the culture's first organization/cultural awareness institution, in 1973. In contrast to the brutality of the gangs, the Zulu's B-boys, graffiti writers, DJs, MCs did battle within their respective art forms. And their mantra of togetherness and having fun didn't apply only to members; it also extended outward to the community, where drugs, crime, despair, and death overwhelmingly colored much of the burned-out landscape.