DJ_Zarathustra
January 13th, 2005, 10:31 PM
Those of you who are not into electronic music may never have heard of a black DJ/producer who calls himself Afrika Bambaataa. He's an innovator, you see--a shining example of African-American originality and genius. Here's a short bio from oldschoolhiphop.com:
"Afrika Bambaataa is undoubtedly one of hip hop's godfathers.
As a teenager in the mid-1970's, he fell into the Black Spades gang, but had a different interest than causing trouble.
Bam started deejaying in 1970.
He had a passion for buying records (he would later be known as the "Master of Records") and his tastes were very diversified from rock to r&b to African sounds to Latin, calypso, and classical. Although Kool Herc was the top DJ at the time, Bam knew he owned most of the same records as Herc so he decided to start playing on his own.
His ideological influences ran the gamut of the black political leaders of the time. He saw the film Zulu which depicted the battle between British troops and the Zulu tribe in 1879. The British seem victorious before they are overwhelmed by the numbers of Zulus who spare their lives. He took his name "Afrika Bambaataa" which meant "affectionate leader" from the movie. In 1974 Bam decided to form his own Zulu Nation to help assemble what he referred to as "the elements" of the culture into organization. He original crew was called The Organization, but after two years he changed it into the Zulu Nation. It was a break dance crew at first but then grew to include rappers, deejays, and graffiti artists.
He is often credited with naming the culture 'hip hop' ".
Kraftwerk percussionist Wolfgang Flur has a different take on Mr. Bambaataa.
From his autobiography Kraftwerk: I Was a Robot:
"However, some other unusual things I like less. One such episode occurred in 1982 with a certain Afrika Bambaataa (whom I prefer to call "Bambus"), who released an album called Planet Rock with a gentleman by the name of Arthur Baker. The pair put together a hip-hop rap album on which they mixed parts of [Kraftwerk compositions] 'Numbers' and 'Trans Europe Express' for a single release, turning out an American-style piece of music. They didn't even ask in the first place whether Kraftwerk was in agreement with this, let alone pay for the use of the [music] samples. This is the nastiest kind of theft!...In fact, the company that had released the single, Tommy Boy Records, had to fork out a lot of money after the event [Kraftwerk's lawsuit], but they just increased the price of the single (which was then selling by the cartload) by $1, and through this they quickly recouped their fine."
Jigs be plagiarizin' an' shit. But no stern condemnations will be issued forth from the jew-owned music press. That type of moralizing is reserved for white artists such as Elvis Presley and Led Zeppelin, who stole from the innocent negro songwriters and laughed all the way to the bank. Or so it would seem.
"Afrika Bambaataa is undoubtedly one of hip hop's godfathers.
As a teenager in the mid-1970's, he fell into the Black Spades gang, but had a different interest than causing trouble.
Bam started deejaying in 1970.
He had a passion for buying records (he would later be known as the "Master of Records") and his tastes were very diversified from rock to r&b to African sounds to Latin, calypso, and classical. Although Kool Herc was the top DJ at the time, Bam knew he owned most of the same records as Herc so he decided to start playing on his own.
His ideological influences ran the gamut of the black political leaders of the time. He saw the film Zulu which depicted the battle between British troops and the Zulu tribe in 1879. The British seem victorious before they are overwhelmed by the numbers of Zulus who spare their lives. He took his name "Afrika Bambaataa" which meant "affectionate leader" from the movie. In 1974 Bam decided to form his own Zulu Nation to help assemble what he referred to as "the elements" of the culture into organization. He original crew was called The Organization, but after two years he changed it into the Zulu Nation. It was a break dance crew at first but then grew to include rappers, deejays, and graffiti artists.
He is often credited with naming the culture 'hip hop' ".
Kraftwerk percussionist Wolfgang Flur has a different take on Mr. Bambaataa.
From his autobiography Kraftwerk: I Was a Robot:
"However, some other unusual things I like less. One such episode occurred in 1982 with a certain Afrika Bambaataa (whom I prefer to call "Bambus"), who released an album called Planet Rock with a gentleman by the name of Arthur Baker. The pair put together a hip-hop rap album on which they mixed parts of [Kraftwerk compositions] 'Numbers' and 'Trans Europe Express' for a single release, turning out an American-style piece of music. They didn't even ask in the first place whether Kraftwerk was in agreement with this, let alone pay for the use of the [music] samples. This is the nastiest kind of theft!...In fact, the company that had released the single, Tommy Boy Records, had to fork out a lot of money after the event [Kraftwerk's lawsuit], but they just increased the price of the single (which was then selling by the cartload) by $1, and through this they quickly recouped their fine."
Jigs be plagiarizin' an' shit. But no stern condemnations will be issued forth from the jew-owned music press. That type of moralizing is reserved for white artists such as Elvis Presley and Led Zeppelin, who stole from the innocent negro songwriters and laughed all the way to the bank. Or so it would seem.