How did these teenagers get hip-hop from the parks to venues?
The nightclub scene. Disco Fever was a small nightclub that allowed the teenagers to come in and party. Most of the discos didn’t allow teenagers. They wanted young adults that wore shoes and dressed nicely. They didn’t want the sneaker crowd. But [future music executive] Sal Abbatiello understood that there was something happening in the streets, and he wanted to leverage what was happening in the streets and bring it into his club called Disco Fever. And he gave Grandmaster Flash [a chance], I think [on] a Tuesday night, just to see how it would go. They saw that Grandmaster Flash could bring in all of these people from all over, and now there was a line to get into the nightclub. So, they kept it going. Disco Fever gave a lot of rappers their first break – Run DMC, Kurtis Blow, The Sugar Hill Gang.
From there, the nightclub scene in New York City was more about big hotel ballrooms and restaurants that would be converted into nightclubs. A lot of the Black and Hispanic people who wanted to party couldn’t get into those clubs like Studio 54 and Xenon’s – they didn’t have that kind of access. So, (the now-closed) Superstar Cafeteria, Frank’s, The Cork & Bottle – all of those places – were restaurants that the promoters would rent and then convert into nightclubs after hours. The restaurant would close around 18:00-19:00, and then the promoters will come in around 19:00 and open up the doors at 21:00, and it would be a club.
At the museum, you’ve highlighted a few places around New York City people should visit to pay homage to rappers who have helped popularise the genre: the new Notorious BIG statue in Brooklyn, the A Tribe Called Quest mural in Queens and the Big Pun mural in the Bronx. What are some other places you’d recommend hip-hop fans visit around the city to see where this sound started?
The definitive places, I would say, are the Bronx River Community Center because that’s where the Zulu Nation held so many of their performances. 1520 Sedgewick Avenue obviously is one. Haffen Park is another one up in the north-east section of the Bronx. That’s where [filmmaker] Charlie Ahearn brought everybody together to talk about the [world’s first hip-hop] film, Wild Style, that he would later produce. That’s where they figured out who would be in the movie, and that’s where I used to be a top DJ.
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