Remembering and preserving the legacy of 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, DJ Kool Herc and the night of 11 August 1973 are ways to keep these positive values alive. “The Bronx won the rights to DJ history through constant repetition of the first time DJ Kool Herc connected his sound system and mixed records,” says Morgan, arguing that hip-hop’s pioneers transformed “the land of the ghetto into the land of myth and the future.”
Jeff Chang agrees. For him, looking back to hip-hop’s early days is also a way of looking forward.
“I’m not a purist or a nostalgist,” he says. “But I believe in the values that have sustained hip-hop from the beginning: inclusion, recognition, creativity, and transformation. In the end, hip-hop is about teenagers, it’s about youth. And as long as they are taking those values forward, hip-hop won’t die.”
A version of this article was originally published in 2013.
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