When the Beat Was Born: DJ Kool Herc and the Creation of Hip Hop

Front Cover
Roaring Brook Press, Aug 27, 2013 - Juvenile Nonfiction - 32 pages

Before there was hip hop, there was DJ Kool Herc.
On a hot day at the end of summer in 1973 Cindy Campbell threw a back-to-school party at a park in the South Bronx. Her brother, Clive Campbell, spun the records. He had a new way of playing the music to make the breaks—the musical interludes between verses—longer for dancing. He called himself DJ Kool Herc and this is When the Beat Was Born. From his childhood in Jamaica to his youth in the Bronx, Laban Carrick Hill's book tells how Kool Herc came to be a DJ, how kids in gangs stopped fighting in order to breakdance, and how the music he invented went on to define a culture and transform the world.

 

Selected pages

Contents

Section 1
Section 2
Section 3
Section 4
Copyright

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When the Beat Was Born: DJ Kool Herc and the Creation of Hip Hop
Laban Carrick Hill
Limited preview - 2013

Common terms and phrases

Afrika Bambaataa album amazing B-boy dance basketball battle Beastie Boys Beat become block bodega boom break break-dancers bumped called Clive loved Club Clyde coins Coke Cold corner crazy culture dancers Def Jam Delight Disco DJ Kool Herc feet go flip foot forms friends Furious Gang’s Rapper’s Gangs graffiti Grand Master Flash Grandmaster Flash Harlem HEAT Herc’s Herculoids HILL hip hip hop hippity hop hot dance parties house parties imagined invited Jamaica Jimmy jump kids King George knew Kurtis Blow late listened Little Clive live Mike Movies neighborhood Night perform play playground plugged President radio rapper record releases Rock Steady Crew scratching Sedgwick Avenue Somerset Lane song Soul sound system South Bronx speakers story street parties Style subway summer switch television There’s Theregoes my mellow things threw the biggest thumped toasting turntables violence walk wanted Winter York City Zulu Nation

About the author (2013)

Laban Carrick Hill is the author of America Dreaming: How Youth Changed America in the 60s, Harlem Stomp!: A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance, which was a National Book Award finalist, and Dave the Potter, a Caldecott Honor book, illustrated by Bryan Collier. He lives in Burlington, Vermont.

Theodore Taylor III is an artist, designer, and photographer living in Washington, D.C. When the Beat Was Born is his first picture book.

Bibliographic information

TitleWhen the Beat Was Born: DJ Kool Herc and the Creation of Hip Hop
AuthorLaban Carrick Hill
Illustrated byTheodore Taylor, III
PublisherRoaring Brook Press, 2013
ISBN1466844795, 9781466844797
Length32 pages
Subjects ›  › 

Juvenile Nonfiction / Biography & Autobiography / Music
Juvenile Nonfiction / Music / Rap & Hip Hop
  
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