from mambo to hip hop essay

Latinx Film and Media

Dr. Robles, Black and Latino Studies Department

From Mambo to Hip-Hop and Between Blackness and Latinidad in the Hip-Hop Zone

Entry Question

Before watching From Mambo to Hip-Hop and/or reading “Between Blackness and Latinidad in the Hip-Hop Zone,” did your conception of Hip-Hop include other cultural groups besides African Americans? Why? Why not?

A Hip-Hop Definition

Raquel Z. Rivera, Puerto Rican author of New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone , argues that “hip hop is most often historically defined in terms of music, visual arts (graffiti), and dance (breaking, popping, locking, rocking). Language, mannerisms, fashion, and other expressions of culture are considered by some to also be defining aspects of hip-hop. Hip hop, like earlier cultural expressions, has in many senses served as a bridge between Puerto Ricans, other Latina/os, West Indians, and African Americans.” (354)

Davey D Cook, an African American who grew up during this time in the South Bronx, explains: “Hip Hop was multicultural in the sense that it was Blacks and Puerto Ricans who put this whole thing down. We lived next to each other and, for the most part, shared the same urban problems. We also shared the same legacy of exploitation, oppression, and colonization.” (354)

When New York Puerto Rican youngsters began participating alongside African Americans in the early development of MCing as a lyrical/musical style, they were not exactly “defecting” from Puerto Rican tradition. Regarding social function and aesthetics, Puerto Rican oral and musical styles can be invoked as precursors of MCing as much as African American ones.

Island musical traditions like plena, bomba, and música jíbara can be invoked just as easily among rap’s forebears. Verbal duels featuring boasting, trading insults, sexual innuendoes, and improvisation are common in all three. Like rap, they are notorious for historicizing everyday events.

What would breakbeats be without the decades-old influence of Puerto Rican and Cuban musical traditions on African Americans in New York City? Those timbales and conga solos that were the heart of so many breakbeats got into soul and funk records from Africa via the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. (357)

Presentation(s)

Adams,Kianna Alexia

Griffiths,Alaynna Natasha

In her essay, “Between Blackness and Latinidad in the Hip Hop Zone,” Raquel Z. Rivera argues that the Puerto Rican input to Hip Hop has been depreciated or plainly erased because of ethnic and racial constructions in the U.S., the Caribbean, and Latin America. There is a marketing factor to the Puerto Rican exclusion. The U.S. music industry and the media centralized English-speaking African Americans over Puerto Ricans and Latinxs. But Rivera also posits that although conceived as multi-cultural and multi-racial, the Puerto Rican and Latinx identities (formed collectively) tend to reject the African heritage while celebrating Europeanness. This social process has created a false cultural divide between African Americans and Puerto Ricans. (352)

In the mid-1980s, as graffiti and the “breakdancing” craze faded into the media background, hip-hop became commercial popular music and was thought of as almost exclusively African American. Back then [the 1980s], rap’s blackness was a big part of its commercial appeal. But it was not clear if Latina/os were a lighter version of black or not black at all. The industry gatekeepers were not often willing to take a risk by signing Latina/os. That is, until Latina/os, particularly Boricuas, became a ghetto-tropical fad in the mid-1990s. Then it became trendy for Latina/os and non-Latina/os to include words in Spanish and references to Latina/os in rhymes and have Butta Pecan Rican mamis adorning videos. (355)

Group Discussion

How does From Mambo to Hip Hop show this joint Afro-Diasporic cultural movement?

Which testimonies better represented the cross-cultural dynamics of hip-hop as described by Raquel Z. Rivera?

From Mambo to Hip Hop: A South Bronx Story by Henry Chalfant (Dir.)

2007, Journal of Popular Music Studies

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See More Documents Like This

BLACK GROOVES

From Mambo to Hip Hop

Director: Henry Chalfant; Produced by Elena Martinez, Steve Zeitlin

Label: City Lore /MVD Visual

Catalog No.: MVDV4785

Format: DVD-Video, NTSC, all regions

Release Date: March 2009

From the first scene to the last, From Mambo to Hip Hop is fused with classic music from both genres, while also offering a detailed and comprehensive historical overview of the Bronx, the origin of its inhabitants, and the mutual oppression that they faced. Beginning in the 1920s, the documentary follows the influx of Latino immigrants who came to the United States from the Caribbean and settled in the Bronx, as well as the simultaneous migration of African “Americans” who had been emancipated from chattle slavery just over 50 years before. The two were wedded together in the Bronx.

Musically, it all began with the Afro Cuban mambo players. Their exemplary musicianship would eventually place the budding new genre on the world stage. By the mid 1960s mambo was the hippest thing, and both the Black and Latino communities in the Bronx were embracing this new marriage of cultures, dance, music, and freedom of expression (for the most part). Salsa was not only about the music and the dance; it could also be used as a voice for social and political messages. Then, almost as if predestined, the community was once again under attack by their oppressors.

After economic misfortune began to plague the area, the hardships that ensued created the perfect conditions for the birth of hip hop. Before that would happen, the Bronx and the people that lived there would have to go through hell, literally. The landlords of the various housing projects throughout the Bronx began setting fire to their own property in order to collect the insurance money. The landscape of the South Bronx was turned into a desolate wasteland, almost as if war torn. The people moved and, as fate would have it, the impoverishment followed. As the victims of injustices, the people of the Bronx underwent an infestation of crime and violence born out of the poverty that they were forced into. From the 1950s on into the 1970s, street gangs were commonplace on the main stage of the Bronx. Gang violence inevitably followed the youth of the community where ever they went. The film also highlights the importance of the gangs and the gangster hierarchy which can still be seen today in various aspects of hip hop.

After the birth of hip hop in the Bronx, the people of the community nurtured the fledgling lifestyle. Strongly encouraged and influenced by both the Black and Brown cultures of the area, hip hop quickly became a national sensation. It wasn’t long before the lifestyle and culture of hip hop went from one of the most impoverished communities in America to becoming a global phenomenon, sweeping across the planet and communicating with each and every culture.

From Mambo to Hip Hop will cause most to view the origins of the universal vibration known as hip hop through a new spectrum. Being Afro-Latino myself, I was immediately sucked into the content. With a multitude of characters from the classic mambo and hip hop eras, stories are woven together and pictures are vividly painted. The old black and white footage of the Bronx is marvelous, along with the rare footage of mambo and hip hop performances from back in the day.

The hour long documentary is divided into three major parts with each leading into the other. Beginning with the origins of mambo and salsa, the film takes a look at the people and conditions that were the catalyst for the music. Next is an exploration of the street gang subculture that sprang up from the Black and Brown people of the Bronx. From Mambo to Hip Hop does a fantastic job detailing some of the gang activities of the past, with awesome vintage footage of actual gang meetings, and of gang members hanging out. Last but not least is the segment on hip hop, which rose from the ashes of the Bronx like a phoenix. At a time when almost all hope had been lost, hip hop came along to replenish the spirit of the people. In essence, it literally resurrected a people.

If you are a fan of Latino or hip hop music, or if you just want to learn more about American history, I highly recommend that you check out From Mambo to Hip Hop . If you are in a gang or are interested in a unique piece of American street gang history, then you too should see this film. Don’t miss out on the bonus features which include extra interviews with Mike Amadeo, Joe Conzo Sr., and Jo-Jo Torres, among others, plus outtakes of interviews with featured the artists, which includes Angel Rodriguez, Benny Bonilla, Bobby Sanabria, Carlos Mandes, Clemente Moreno, Curtis Brown, Emma Rodgriguez, Sandra Maria Esteves, David Gonzalez, Eddi Palmieri, “Popmaster Fabel” Pabon, Ray Barretto, Willie Colón, and the Rock Steady Crew.

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Music Interviews

The south bronx sound, from mambo to hip-hop.

Nancy Solomon

The South Bronx has transformed musically over the past 60 years. Once, it was once a hot bed of Latin jazz. Decades later, it became the birthplace of the "scratch" and home to hip-hop's pioneers. Now a few local entrepreneurs are running a tour of the neighborhood's historical spots and taking other steps to promote local pride in the borough's unique place in music.

MADELEINE BRAND, host:

And now to sightseeing. If you go to New York City, there are the usual tourist spots: Times Square, Central Park and the Empire State Building, but if you want something a little different, head north to the South Bronx. It was home to some of the country's best Latin jazz musicians in the 1940s and 50s and later gave birth to hip-hop. Nancy Solomon reports on how tourists are learning about this lost musical history.

NANCY SOLOMON reporting:

Angel Rodriguez is a musician, community activist and one-man tour operator whose long grey ponytail betrays his affection for the 1960s. He calls his tours From Mambo to Hip-Hop and will take anyone who asks around his neighborhood.

Mr. ANGEL RODRIGUEZ (Musician, Community Activist, Tour Operator): Yeah, come on in.

SOLOMON: On this day, he's guiding a group of teenagers from Philadelphia around the South Bronx. They've arrived at Casa Amedeo the oldest Puerto Rican record shop in New York.

RODRIGUEZ: This gentlemen here, this is Micah(ph) Amedeo, and he's one of the most famous composers of Puerto Rico.

SOLOMON: It's a tiny shop, lined with photos of Latin stars past and present. The business is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and it's the last remaining legacy of what once was a vibrant center of Latin music.

Mr. RODRIGUEZ: All those theaters and clubs are gone. There was 60 venues that you can go dancing to in the Bronx, and now there's only, like, two or three of them.

SOLOMON: In the late 1940s, 13 and 14 year old Puerto Rican kids were forming bands at school. When band leader Orlando Marin told his group they had their first gig, they almost couldn't go because the piano player couldn't get permission from his mother.

Mr. RODRIGUEZ: So he went back to Orlando and went, man, my mother won't let me go. I don't know what to do. He said, fellow, you're the leader of the band. He went back and told her he was the leader and she said, oh, really?

Unidentified Male #1: The leader of the band. He went back until he was a leader, and she said, oh, really. So she let him go. His name was Eddie Palmieri, a five-time Grammy Award winner now.

Unidentified Male #2: The music was all around us, and that's all he wanted to do was to play.

SOLOMON: Eddie Palmieri and his brother Charlie were just getting started when in the early 1950s, Cubans arrived in the largely Puerto Rican and African-American neighborhood. They brought with them a new beat and a dance to go with it.

(Soundbite of music)

SOLOMON: It became so popular, the brother's enterprising father opened a luncheonette called the Mambo.

Unidentified Male #2: I was in charge of the jukebox. We had the hippest jukebox in the Bronx.

SOLOMON: Dozens of neighborhood kids went on to successful music careers. But by the early 1960s, the South Bronx began to fall apart. City services were slashed, property values plummeted, and the South Bronx nearly burned to the ground. The mix of cultures that gave ride to Mambo and then Boogaloo broke down and gangs formed. But in 1971 a peace deal was reached between Puerto Rican and African-American gangs. Jeff Chang is the author of Can't Stop Won't Stop, the History of the Hip-Hop Generation.

Mr. JEFF CHANG (Author): And you have an urgency literally for folks on the street to work things out and to bring people together, and so music becomes that glue.

SOLOMON: An immigrant named DJ Kool Hurk introduced the Jamaican dance-hall style of shouting out to the crowd and created something new by incorporating American music.

Mr. CHANG: You know, he brings into it, you know, the idea of rapping over the music, and he brings that to funk. Where you have basic sort of African-American four/four backbeat that's being syncopated by all of these Latin rhythms over the top of it. And, you know, it's a very, very unique kind of blend.

SOLOMON: DJs began competing to mix the best dance beats and MCs tried to outrhyme each other. The DJ Grand Wizard Theodore took me for a drive through the neighborhood while he described the mid 1970's world of hip-hop. One afternoon when he was only twelve his mother came barreling into his room to get him to turn down the music.

DJ GRAND WIZARD THEODORE (Hip-hop): While she was in the doorway screaming at me I was, you know, rubbing the record back-and-forth and forth-and-back and I finally realized what I was doing. I was like, wait a minute. You know, I had no idea that I was, you know, that I was doing what I was doing and it became a scratch.

SOLOMON: Back on the Mambo to hip-hop tour, Rodriguez revels in teaching kids about the history of the music they love and instilling a sense of pride.

Mr. RODRIGUEZ: Yeah, the Bronx was burning down, but all we had was what; our creativity, our music, and our culture, and it was a voice that they couldn't take away, you know. So it was happening on rooftops, school yards, front of the buildings, on the corners, and this is the way our people always been.

SOLOMON: Despite the lack of landmarks, interest in Bronx folklore is growing. There's a new documentary film, Web sites devoted to the roots of hip-hop, and there's even a map of key spots in the neighborhood's musical past.

SOLOMON: For NPR News, I'm Nancy Solomon in New York.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Analysis Of From Mambo To Hip-Hop

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The movie ‘From Mambo to Hip-Hop’ is a great documentary about a revolution in the entertainment industry. It talks of evolution on Salsa music and Hip-Hop culture in suburbs of New York. South Bronx is a ghetto neighbourhood. The people living in the area are challenged economically. There is a record of high cases of violence that exist in the streets due to high crime rate and drugs being traded as a means of survival (Gordon, 2005). Most of the people living in the area are descendants of African immigrants who could trace their origin in the Caribbean islands with a large number Latin American population too. South Bronx has got influence from the Caribbean culture in the beginning of twentieth century. (Gordon 2005) says immigrants greatly …show more content…

They had to look for a solution that would not result to violence confrontation (Taylor 2005). Music was the answer. That led to development of Mambo music. Mambo music was developed after the Second World War as an entertainment tool to fight political and social discrimination. They could articulate issues in the song that were affecting their community. They wanted recognition as the black people who had a right to be in America as anyone else. The Latin Americans never wanted to be left in this music development. The Latin Americans had their own music, Jazz (Gordon, 2005). They wanted to influence in the development of the music. Soon, Salsa was born out if mixture from the Jazz music and Mambo. Salsa took the bodily movements and the Cuban beats as a contribution from the Caribbean culture. The Latin America contributed the wording of Salsa music . Diversity necessitated the growth of Salsa as Mambo had been viewed with suspicion as it was linked to ghetto status hence it was …show more content…

It was used to express the feelings of a certain group towards another. Hip-Hop is spontaneous in that the music was free style. Artist would take up to the stage and start describing a thing of interest. The thing of interest in most cases was a bad thing being perpetrated by the other gang they are competing. They would use that opportunity to rant against and offer remedial measures. At the end of the day they would decide on who had worn the competition. The Hip-Hop culture also used drawings to spread message that was appropriate to accompany their music. Lastly, Hip-Hop has grown into a multi-billion industry that the black community took with lots of seriousness as a means of

King of Latin Jazz, Tito Puente

Latin Jazz is a style of music that blends rhythms and percussion instruments of Cuba and the Caribbean with jazz and its fusion of European and African music. Latin jazz, also called Afro-Cuban jazz, was the culmination of the long interaction between American and Cuban musical styles. A distinctive syncopated rhythm and the Cuban habanera rhythm were endowed to American jazz music in the early 20th century. In the following decades, Latin American melodies and dance rhythms permeated the United States, while American jazz made its way into the Caribbean and Central and South America. In the 1940's the swing era expanded their repertory to include rumbas and congas. The d...

History Of Salsa

The history and development of salsa “cannot be separated from the history of migration”, meaning that the music developed and changed as it traveled the globe (Román-Velasquez: 211). Due to its global influences and popularity, salsa represents many cultures: “Initially associated with the Spanish Caribbean populations of Cuba and Puerto Rico, salsa was soon claimed as the voice of the New York City barrio and as representative of the experiences of the Latino community in the United States” (Román-Velasquez: 211). The term salsa describes more than just the music, but also “ a 'manner of making music' which is a flexible blend of many genres and which is continually reblended and given slightly different 'flavours' in different locations” (Román-Velasquez: 211). As salsa globalized, so did salsa dancing, adding another performance factor to the genre. Salsa clubs and fans in

Hip hop wars

Hip hop is a culture, it is a way many people use to connect to one another, it allowed many African Americans to express their own point of view in their story. But in the early 2000’s it became commercialized and went from storytelling from many perspectives like a party, politics, self-celebration, and gangstas to consisting of mainly of the lives of hustler, pimps, and hoes. Though it has become quite profitable and a successful form of music it cause arguments in American of whether it is more detrimental than beneficial to black community. Hip hop is in fact in a crisis and critics of hip hop believe it is just angry stories of black males and females but do not see it as proof that black behavior was created from the condition of living in a ghetto.

Hip-Hop: A Voice for the Chican@-Latin@ Community

In the words of rapper Busta Rhymes, “hip-hop reflects the truth, and the problem is that hip-hop exposes a lot of the negative truth that society tries to conceal. It’s a platform where we could offer information, but it’s also an escape” Hip-hop is a culture that emerged from the Bronx, New York, during the early 1970s. Hip-Hop was a result of African American and Latino youth redirecting their hardships brought by marginalization from society to creativity in the forms of MCing, DJing, aerosol art, and breakdancing. Hip-hop serves as a vehicle for empowerment while transcending borders, skin color, and age. However, the paper will focus on hip-hop from the Chican@-Latin@ population in the United States. In the face of oppression, the Chican@-Latin@ population utilized hip hop music as a means to voice the community’s various issues, desires, and in the process empower its people.

Keeping Their Own Identity in Black Nationalism

Hip-hop culture has been a global phenomenon for more than twenty years. When introduced into the American culture, the black culture felt that hip-hop had originated from the African American community. The black community was being denied their cultural rights by the supremacy of the white people, but hip-hop gave the community the encouragement to show their black pride and televise the struggles they were facing in the world. The failure and declining of the movements, the influential, rebellious, and powerful music is what reshaped Black Nationalism, unity and to signify the struggle. The African Americans who suffered from social and political problems found that they similar relations to the political movements, which allowed the blacks to be able to voice their opinions and to acknowledge their culture openly.

Analysis Of Hip Hop

Hip Hop a grass movement started in 1974 in the South Bronx in New York City. Created to end gang violence, a voice for the underrepresented minority. Rap music is critical to understanding the hip hop generation’s gender crisis, a crisis between sexes that allows African American males to blatantly disrespect African American women for the sake of the culture. The consistent referencing of African American women as ‘bitches’ and ‘hos’ and the hyper sexualization of their bodies is harmful to the African American community. These images instill that it is alright to represent black women in this nature, and harmful to the young girls who are intaking all these negative images. Harmful to both the perspective of young men and women Hip-Hop is like a pillar in the African American culture. It represents how each generation views themselves in this society and how they internalized these narratives. In this essay I will summarize the main arguments in Chapter 7 of Gender talk , discuss the creation and deconstruction on views

Effects of Hip-Hop Culture on the Youth

Since the beginning of hip hop culture, its music, its style of art, and style of dance has had a major effect on the world and it has increased. ...

The History of Hip Hop Music and Its Transition to Popular Music

Hip hop originated in the ghetto areas of New York during the 1970’s and is a mixture of DJ, MC, B boy and Beat boxing. In his studies of defining hip hop, Jeffries concluded that these mixtures of art forms do not define hip hop but rather that Hip hop itself is a culture of these elements. “Hip-hop is like a culture, it’s a voice for black people to be heard. Our own style, our own music” (Jeffries. 2011; 28). Jefferies identifies hip hop as a social movement, which stems from the concept of ‘collective identity’ (Jefferries.2011; 27). This can be defined as “an individual’s cognitive, moral and emotional connection with a broader community” (Polletta and Jasper. 2001; 84). Which relate to Smitherman’s views that hip hop is a celebration of black culture uniting these individual to form a collective community. (Smitherman. 1997; 20) .These Theorists generally accept that hip hop is culture and it’s the production of its creators and the individuals who consu...

Hip-hop, Reggae, and Politics

Music is an art form and source of power. Many forms of music reflect culture and society, as well as, containing political content and social message. Music as social change has been highlighted throughout the 20th century. In the 1960s the United States saw political and socially oriented folk music discussing the Vietnam War and other social issues. In Jamaica during the 1970s and 1980s reggae developed out of the Ghetto’s of Trench town and expressed the social unrest of the poor and the need to over-through the oppressors. The 1980’s brought the newest development in social and political music, the emergence of hip-hop and rap. This urban musical art form that was developed in New York City has now taken over the mainstream, but originated as an empowering art form for urban youth and emerging working class.

African American Culture: Hip Hop And Black Culture

Black culture in our society has come to the point where it is allied with pop culture. The most popular music genres, slang terms, to dance forms it all comes from black culture. Hip hop emerged from black culture, becoming the soul of it that is seen in the media. Hip hop helped the black community by creating new ways of expressing themselves, from breakdance, graffiti, rap and other music, to slang. This culture was rooted in their tradition and created from something new. Hip hop created a new form of music that required the use of turn tables, ‘cuts’, loops, rhythm, rhyme, stories, and deep-rooted emotions, but also incorporated black oral forms of storytelling using communal authors.

The Nineties: The Evolution Of Hip Hop Culture

The tardy twentieth century decade often simply referred to as ‘the nineties’ marked extensive gregarious transmutations in American history and gregarious culture. One example of influential incipient trends that took place in the nineties centers on the evolution of Hip Hop culture. The history of Hip Hop stems from ebony community consciousness within the Coalesced States. Supplementally, Hip Hop culture can be viewed as a direct replication to the socio-economic issues that spawned from that history. The ebony community, as well as other traditionally marginalized groups, turned discontent from iniquities into productive protest through the restructuring of gregarious postures and opportunities by designates of musical expression.

Hip-Hop as a Cultural Movement

Hip-Hop is a cultural movement that emerged from the dilapidated South Bronx, New York in the early 1970’s. The area’s mostly African American and Puerto Rican residents originated this uniquely American musical genre and culture that over the past four decades has developed into a global sensation impacting the formation of youth culture around the world. The South Bronx was a whirlpool of political, social, and economic upheaval in the years leading up to the inception of Hip-Hop. The early part of the 1970’s found many African American and Hispanic communities desperately seeking relief from the poverty, drug, and crime epidemics engulfing the gang dominated neighborhoods. Hip-Hop proved to be successful as both a creative outlet for expressing the struggles of life amidst the prevailing crime and violence as well as an enjoyable and cheap form of recreation.

Hip Hop Thesis

It was categorized as a way to be rebellious to the authorities (8). Hip-hop’s purpose had become misunderstood at one point, entertainment to the white youth and blacks began to take pride in it. At one point as a race they had forgotten why hip-hop was created and wore hip-hop as a shirt of embarrassment through life. Artist back then didn’t share their potential with the world because they were afraid of being judged (8). There were artist who were brave enough to show the world what they're capable of which motivated others (8). It was always about becoming greater and transformation (8). Hip-hop was a way to escape your problems back in the 70’s and still is today. One of the problems with hip-hop’s development back then when it became accepted was when artist had become a part of major record labels. Artist did not recognize that their talents were being used for profit and they were being blindsided by the materialistic things. Hip-hop had become a celebration of hiding from the police, “thuggery and tantrum throwing

Why Do Protests Persuasive?

In the reading of Bronx Tales, Johnson described that “Hip Hop was a refuge, a safe space and alternative to the reality of systematic violence dealt out by the state and property owners” (Johnson 5). The property owners and the mafia were busy burning down buildings for money while the authority was escaping from this crisis (Johnson 4). There was no one actually being serious about the people who lost everything because of the fire. Hence, those people were no difference from the homeless. However, hip hop created a shield that contained the sense of belonging to protect these people who had been forgotten by the society. In other words, hip hop constructed a new community for the Bronx

Hip Hop Analysis

In my opinion, the lyrical content of hip hop sets a bad example for audiences, especially young listeners. Firstly, many rappers promote drug use in their songs. Many artists often rap about drugs such as marijuana and the great feeling they get from using it. They make it seem as if using drugs is just a part of the wealthy and glamorous lifestyle they live and that you need to use them in order to have a good time. This is dangerous because today’s youth are very impressionable and, by promoting and glorifying drug use, they are put at risk of trying it themselves. For students, this can be harmful to their school performance and grades because drugs such as marijuana affect memory, attention span and overall ability to learn. Secondly,

More about Analysis Of From Mambo To Hip-Hop

From Mambo to Hip Hop: A South Bronx Tale

A former symbol of urban decay, the South Bronx is also known as a creative breeding ground and for its enduring cultural spirit.

Award laurels-r Created with Sketch. 2007 ALMA Awards-Outstanding Made for TV Documentary

Henry Chalfant

Henry Chalfant studied at Stanford University, where he majored in classical Greek. Later he pursued a career as a sculptor, exhibiting his work in New York and Europe. He turned to photo and film documentation in order to do an in-depth study of hip-hop culture and graffiti art. Exhibits of his photos include the O.K. Harris Gallery and the landmark New … Show more York-New Wave show at P.S. l, and important galleries and museums in Europe. His images of graffiti on NYC trains were included in the Whitney’s exhibition, “An American Century.” His photos are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. Through his company, Sleeping Dog Films, Henry co-produced and handled photo-documentation for the film, Style Wars , first shown on PBS in 1984. He co-produced with Rita Fecher and directed the documentary on South Bronx gangs, Flyin’ Cut Sleeves (1993), and produced and directed music videos for the rap group, The Latin Empire: “Puerto Rican and Proud” for Atlantic Records and “Asi Es La Vida,” chosen as one of the 10 best videos on International MTV in 1990. He recently completed The Carnegie Deli Presents, What a Pickle! (1999), and is currently producing a documentary film, Grand Tour , based on film footage his father shot in 1931 while on a trip around the world. Henry co-authored the definitive account of New York graffiti art, Subway Art (Holt, 1984) and a sequel on the art form’s worldwide diffusion, Spray Can Art (Thames and Hudson, London, 1987). Show less

Steve Zeitlin

Steve Zeitlin served as co-producer of From Mambo to Hip Hop , a documentary about the South Bronx funded by ITVS, and broadcast on public television across the U.S. as part of the Voces series of Latino Public Broadcasting. He received his Ph.D in folklore from the University of Pennsylvania, and is the director and cofounder of City Lore, an organization … Show more dedicated to the preservation of New York City’s — and America’s — living cultural heritage. He also co-directs the People’s Poetry Gathering, a national poetry festival in New York City. Steve Zeitlin has served as a regular commentator for the nationally syndicated radio shows, Crossroads and Artbeat , and The Next Big Thing , heard on public radio stations across the U.S. His commentaries have appeared on the op-ed pages of the New York Times and Newsday . He also co-produced (with NPR producer Dave Isay) the storytelling series American Talkers for NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday and Morning Edition , and serves as an advisor to the StoryCorps project. Prior to arriving in New York, Steve Zeitlin served for eight years as a folklorist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and is coauthor of a number of award winning books on America’s folk culture. He has also co-produced a number of award-winning film documentaries including How I Got Over ; The Grand Generation and Free Show Tonite on the traveling medicine shows of the 1920s and 1930s. His early documentaries were selected by Folkstreams.net for streaming online. Show less

Elena Martinez

Elena Martínez, is staff folklorist at City Lore. She holds two M.A.s (Folklore and Anthropology) from the University of Oregon. Martínez is primary fieldworker for City Lore’s South Bronx Latin Music Project, conducting interviews with musicians, and researching photographic and archival collections. She is also researching hip hop culture in the … Show more South Bronx and interviewing DJs, breakdancers, and graffiti artists in that community. Martínez wrote, filmed, edited, and directed Pasteles and Pilón: Food and Identity for Puerto Ricans , a documentary on Puerto Rican foodways. Show less

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There’s a postage stamp of urban sidewalk known by people of a certain age for having burned to the ground. A more recent generation knows it as the place where hip-hop was born. An older generation remembers the time that this turf produced a New York Latin music sound that came to be known as salsa. From Mambo to Hip-Hop: A South Bronx Tale is an hour-long documentary that tells a story about the creative life of the South Bronx, beginning with the Puerto Rican migration and the adoption of Cuban rhythms to create the New York salsa sound; continuing with the fires that destroyed the neighborhood, but not the creative spirit of its people; chronicling the rise of hip-hop from the ashes; and ending with reflections on the power of the neighborhood’s music to ensure the survival of several generations of its residents, and, in the process, take the world’s pop culture by storm.

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Mambo and Hip-Hop: Two Bronx Sounds, One Sense of Dignity

By Jon Pareles

Sept. 14, 2006

Neighborhood pride ties together “From Mambo to Hip-Hop: A South Bronx Tale,” a documentary being shown tonight in New York at 9 on WNET as part of the “Voces” series on Latin Americans.

“From Mambo to Hip-Hop” dances through the history of a borough that nurtured two musical movements: the mambo that evolved into salsa, and the hip-hop that arose from the most desperate days of the South Bronx. Produced by Elena Martinez and Steve Zeitlin, who are principals in the New York folklore group City Lore, and directed by Henry Chalfant, a longtime chronicler of the South Bronx who collaborated on the early-1980’s documentary “Style Wars,” “From Mambo” rushes by, driven by rhythms that change through the decades.

Mambo and hip-hop are the kind of melting-pot phenomena that New York heats and stirs. Their roots are African, refracted through the Caribbean and the city. In their beginnings both styles also reflected, and defied, the ghetto status and economic deterioration of the South Bronx.

Mambo was visceral, sophisticated music that emerged after World War II as Cuban styles were picked up by Puerto Ricans who mingled with jazz musicians, and the Bronx became a night life mecca. The groundbreaking big band led by Machito was named the Afro-Cubans, flaunting the fact that its musicians were black, and it traded ideas with the era’s beboppers.

The documentary has exultant vintage segments from the 1950’s heyday of mambo with musicians and especially dancers who shook everything from head to toe while conga drums and timbales crackled with Cuban rhythms and New York aggression. A younger generation of musicians — now elders, like Eddie Palmieri and Ray Barretto (who died in February), who are interviewed — met playing stickball and grew up on mambo, going on to streamline and sharpen it into salsa.

“Salsa could have only happened in New York and in a place like the Bronx because of the diversity of the people that were playing it,” explains Willie Colón, the bandleader who has become a political figure in the Bronx. “It’s an inclusion and a reconciliation of all the things that we are here, and the Bronx, and the music that we made together. We not only wanted to make music; we had a goal. We wanted to convey a social and political message, and salsa was very important for that because it was our voice.”

But Latinos’ rising expectations met neglect and worse in the Bronx. The documentary shows burned-out buildings, gang fights and other factors — like the Cross Bronx Expressway, which razed and divided neighborhoods — that made the South Bronx a symbol of urban ruin in the 1970’s. But in the wreckage, hip-hop was being created. Public parks and abandoned buildings were turned into clubs as gangs sublimated rumbles into battles of words and break-dance competitions.

Hip-hop wasn’t invented by Latinos (and the documentary fails to note the strong Jamaican element in early hip-hop), but they were still in the neighborhoods, and they took to it quickly. Conga drumbeats sent break-dancers into motion, some of them reviving the most flamboyant moves of the old mambo dancers. Even when much of the South Bronx was rubble, Afro-Latin alliances were made and cultural memory held strong.

FROM MAMBO TO HIP-HOP

A South Bronx Tale

WNET, New York, tonight at 9. (Broadcast later on other PBS stations; check local listings.)

Directed by Henry Chalfant; Elena Martinez and Steve Zeitlin, producers. Produced by City Lore.

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There’s a postage stamp of urban sidewalk known by people of a certain age for having burned to the ground. A more recent generation know it as the place where hip hop was born. An older generation remembers the time that this turf produced a hot New York Latin music sound that came to be known as salsa. From Mambo to Hip Hop: A Bronx Tale is an hour-long documentary that tells a story about the creative life of the South Bronx, beginning with the Puerto Rican migration to the neighborhoods in the 1940s and ‘50, and the adoption of Cuban rhythms by musicians who created the New York salsa sound. It goes on to tell of the fires of the ‘70s that destroyed the neighborhood but not the creative spirit of its people, and then chronicles the rise of hip hop from the ashes. The film closes with reflections on the power of the neighborhood’s music to ensure the survival of several generations of its residents, and, in the process, take the world’s pop culture by storm.

From Mambo to Hip Hop features well known figures in salsa — Ray Barretto, Willie Colon, Eddie Palmieri, footage of Tito Puente and Machito, as well as key figures in hip hop including Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Caz, and DJ Charlie Chase. Yet this is not a film about the stars but about a neighborhood, the South Bronx, a neighborhood that gave rise to and nurtured generations of artists (including the stars). The story captures an interplay of people, place, and music that produced internationally significant cultural movements in one of the world’s least likely places.

From the late 1940s through the 1960s the Melrose, Mott Haven, Longwood and Hunts Point areas of the South Bronx were, according to its residents, “a hotbed of Latin music.” Hundreds of Latino musicians grew up in or moved to this area from East Harlem or directly from Puerto Rico and Cuba. From the late 1950s to the early ‘70s, a deadly combination of factors – public and private disinvestment; official “urban renewal” and “planned shrinkage” policies; loss of small manufacturing to cheaper labor states; loss of live audiences to television; drugs and street gangs – had eroded the infrastructure and begun the decline of the South Bronx community. Ultimately, the result was what came to be known as “the burning of the Bronx.” But what stands out in this story is the resilience of this community and how music and dance–the thread that runs throughout its history–supported that resilience and helped the community rebuild.

During the height of the destruction, Latino and Black teenagers, like the mambo and salsa musicians before them, held parties and jams in schools, basements, parks and playgrounds — even in the burnt out buildings that became their clubhouses. Tying their turntables, speakers and amps into lampposts for power, teens gathered to rap, break, spin and “scratch” records. A chronicle of both hip hop and salsa in the Bronx, the film shows how the mixing of African Americans and Latinos gave a crucial lift to the musical cultures of the South Bronx.

Henry Chalfant Director

Henry Chalfant studied at Stanford University, where he majored in classical Greek. Later he pursued a career as a sculptor, exhibiting his work in New York and Europe. He turned to photo and film documentation in order to do an in-depth study of hip-hop culture and graffiti art. Exhibits of his photos include the O.K. Harris Gallery and the landmark New York-New Wave show at P.S. l, and important galleries and museums in Europe. His images of graffiti on NYC trains were included in the Whitney’s exhibition, “An American Century.” His photos are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. Through his company, Sleeping Dog Films, Henry co-produced and handled photo-documentation for the film, Style Wars, first shown on PBS in 1984. He is codirector of the newly released Style Wars DVD. He co-produced with Rita Fecher and directed the documentary on South Bronx gangs, Flyin’ Cut Sleeves (1993), and produced and directed music videos for the rap group, The Latin Empire: “Puerto Rican and Proud” for Atlantic Records and “Asi Es La Vida”, chosen as one of the ten best videos on International MTV in 1990. He recently completed The Carnegie Deli Presents, ‘What a Pickle!’ (1999), and is currently producing a documentary film, Grand Tour, based on film footage his father shot in 1931 while on a trip around the world. Henry co-authored the definitive account of New York graffiti art, Subway Art (Holt, 1984) and a sequel on the art form’s world-wide diffusion, Spray Can Art (Thames and Hudson, London, 1987). Born in 1940 in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, resident of New York City with his wife Kathleen, an actress. They have two children, David, a musician and producer, and Andromache, a set designer.

Elena Martínez Producer

Elena Martinez received an M.A. in Anthropology and an M.A. in Folklore at the University of Oregon. Elena’s Folklore Studies concentrates were in Latin American history and video production,. She was also interested in material culture and urban folklore, so after internships at the Smithsonian Institution’s Folklife Festival and City Lore, she took a full-time position at City Lore in 1997. As staff folklorist at City Lore: The New York Center for Urban Folk Culture (www.citylore.org), she is the primary fieldworker for Place Matters, and its sub-project, the South Bronx Latin Music Project, conducting interviews with musicians from the South Bronx, conducting photo and archival research, and producing public programs. She curated the exhibition, “¡Que bonta bandera!: The Puerto Rican Flag as Folk Art,” which has traveled through the tri-state area, and co-produced the exhibition, “A Float for All Seasons: New York City’s Ethnic Parades,” at the Museum of the City of New York. She is the Festival Coordinator for the People’s Poetry Gathering, a major 3-day festival which explores literary poetry’s roots in the oral tradition. As a student of Rosa Elena Egipciaco, a master in the art of mundillo, Puerto Rican bobbin lace and National Heritage Award winner, she has also worked with and organized programs pertaining to this craft. She is a contributor to Latinas in the United States: An Historical Encyclopedia by historians Virginia Sánchez Korrol and Vicki L. Ruíz, and she is on the Board of Directors for the New York State Folklore Society and the Middle Atlantic Folklife Association.

Steve Zeitlin Producer

Steve Zeitlin serves as Director of City Lore, and received his Ph.D. in folklore from the University of Pennsylvania, and an M.A. in literature from Bucknell University. He is the director and cofounder of City Lore, an organization dedicated to the preservation of New York City’s — and America’s — living cultural heritage. City Lore works closely with New York’s diverse communities to develop strategies for validating and disseminating their cultural heritages. He also codirects the People’s Poetry Gathering, a national poetry festival in New York City. Steve Zeitlin has served as a regular commentator for the nationally syndicated radio shows, Crossroads and Artbeat, and currently develops segments for The Next Big Thing, heard on public radio stations across the U.S. His commentaries have appeared on the Op Ed pages of the New York Times and Newsday. He also coproduces with NPR producer Dave Isay the storytelling series American Talkers for NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday and Morning Edition. Prior to arriving in New York, Steve Zeitlin served for eight years as a folklorist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and has taught at George Washington, American University, NYU, and Cooper Union. He is coauthor of a number of award winning books on America’s folk culture including A Celebration of American Family Folklore (Pantheon Books, 1982); The Grand Generation: Memory Mastery and Legacy (U. of Washington Press, l987); City Play (Rutgers University Press, l990); Because God Loves Stories: An Anthology of Jewish Storytelling (Simon & Schuster, 1997); and Giving a Voice to Sorrow: Personal Responses to Death and Mourning (Penguin-Putnam, 2001). He is the author of a volume of poetry, I Hear American Singing in the Rain (First Street Press, 2002). He has also coproduced a number of award winning film documentaries including How I Got Over; The Grand Generation; and Free Show Tonite on the traveling medicine shows of the l920s and 30s.

Production Credits

Directed by Henry Chalfant

Produced by Elena Martínez, and Steve Zeitlin

Written by Marci Reaven

Edited by Crockett Doob and Benh Zeitlin

Featuring Bom 5 Tony “Peanuts” Aubert Ray Barretto Benny Bonilla Luis Chalusian Willie Colón Roy “Grandmaster Caz” Curtis Sandra María Esteves David Gonzalez Carlos “Charlie Chase” Mandes Orlando Marin Jean Manuel Massenya Luis “Track II” Mateo Louis Mercado Clemente “Kid Freeze” Moreno Luis “Trace” Otero Jorge “Fabel” Pabón Eddie Palmieri Angel Rodríguez Emma Rodríguez Bobby Sanabria

Scholar Consultants David Carp Elena Martínez Bobby Sanabria Roberta Singer

Associate Producer Bobby Sanabria

Narrator Hazel Medina

Cultural Consultants Raquel Cepeda Jorge “Popmaster Fabel” Pabon

Camera Mike Harlow

Additional Camera Aran Fedor Henry Chalfant

Mark Niedelson – Additional Cameraman for 52 Park concert Gerald Prezeau – Additional Cameraman for 52 Park concert

Sound Ryan Kennedy Kenny Chin Theo Carris

Francisco Latorre – Additional Soundman for 52 Park concert Ivo hanak – Additional Soundman for 52 Park concert

Engineer Jonathon Bell

Production Assistant Alex De Leon

Additional Line Producer Mike Harlow

Utility Giovanni Lima

Editors Crockett Doob Benj Zeitlin with Adam Goldstein Mark Landsman

On-Line Editing Valkhn Films

On-Line Editor Jim MacDonald

Post Production Sound Harvestworks Studio

Sound Editor Kenn Babb

DVD copies of this program are now available on the City Lore website: www.citylore.org

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Hip-Hop Digital Essay: The Evolution of Hip-Hop into the Modern Era- By Matt Scott

Trinity College

Digital Essay: The Evolution of Hip-Hop into the Modern Era (Essay #2)

Matt Scott FYSM 212: Introduction to Hip-Hop Professor Markle Due: 12/15/19

Looking back at the history of hip-hop, and the rich culture surrounding the art form, it’s clear that the roots of the genre have been stripped down to almost nothing over the years. I believe hip-hop is an art form, a mix of breaking, DJing, and MCing all coming together under one roof with emphasis on the sound and rhythm of the music, created in black communities as an outlet. In its early days, hip-hop lyrics weren’t preaching any particular message, but the movement and its impact on communities sent a powerful message. The movement was about bringing together communities, stopping violence, and inspiring a generation of youth – and its impact on black culture was positive and powerful. Today we see the art form being used to promote violence, the disrespect of women, drug abuse, and other negative messages that are at odds with hip-hop’s origins. It is now about making money, selling records, and gaining popularity at all costs. The popularity of hip-hop opened the door for many talented black artists and created new opportunities for a community of people who have been mistreated at every turn throughout history. I think the new era of hip-hop has had a negative impact on the art form itself, and it puts a bad label on the community. Without its core principles, hip-hop loses what made it special. When all the lyrics are just hollow and meaningless words, it leaves you with something that’s not hip-hop at all, but just a way to make money. In this essay I’m going to be looking at five hit songs from top artists from each decade, starting with Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rappers Delight” and ending with Migos’s “Bad and Boujee”. The purpose of this essay is to show the evolution of hip-hop from its roots in the Bronx through the present day by exploring the lyrics and message behind each song.

Hip-hop without the other forms of creative expression tied to it is a way of mixing lyrics and beats to convey a meaningful message about the culture and community from which it emerged. If you take away the powerful message of justice and equality that many true hip-hop songs convey, you’re left with a money hungry industry doing whatever it takes to sell records. When hip-hop is being fueled by money, and not by meaning, we see the most damage being done to the community of people the art form represents. This era of hip-hop is hurting the image and meaning that hip-hop once stood for, but there’s still hope for hip-hop moving forward. If we can go back its roots, to some of those early songs from the 80s, 90s and into the early 2000s that represent the true ideals behind hip-hop, there is a chance for the industry and genre to regrow with its strong roots back in place.

Work Cited “Song Lyrics & Knowledge.” Genius, https://genius.com/. Chang, Jeff, and DJ Kool Herc. Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: a History of the Hip-Hop Generation. St.Martins Press, 2008.

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Session Six: Latin Rhythm From Mambo to Hip Hop

Introductory Essay Professor Juan Flores, Latino Studies, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University

In the latter half of the 20 th century, with immigration from South America and the Caribbean increasing every decade, Latin sounds influenced American popular music: jazz , rock, rhythm and blues, and even country music. In the 1930s and 40s, dance halls often had a Latin orchestra alternate with a big band. Latin music had Americans dancing -- the samba, paso doble, and rumba -- and, in three distinct waves of immense popularity, the mambo, cha-cha and salsa. The “Spanish tinge” made its way also into the popular music of the 50s and beyond, as artists from The Diamonds (“Little Darling”) to the Beatles (“And I Love Her”) used a distinctive Latin beat in their hit songs.

The growing appeal of Latin music was evident in the late 1940s and 50s, when mambo was all the rage, attracting dance audiences of all backgrounds throughout the United States, and giving Latinos unprecedented cultural visibility. Mambo, an elaboration on traditional Cuban dance forms like el danzón, la charanga and el son, took strongest root in New York City , where it reached the peak of its artistic expression in the performances and recordings of bandleader Machito (Frank Grillo) and his big-band orchestra, Machito and His Afro-Cubans.

Machito’s band is often considered the greatest in the history of Latin music. Along with rival bandleaders Tito Rodríguez and Tito Puente, Machito was part of what came to be called the Big Three. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, they offered up memorable mambo performances at the legendary Palladium Ballroom in mid-town Manhattan and other upscale venues. While New York became the hub of Latin music in the U.S, another famous Cuban bandleader, Dámaso Pérez Prado, based in Mexico City and Los Angeles, brought mambo international visibility.

Mambo’s popularity was furthered by its frequent use in movie soundtracks and with the emergence of television as household entertainment. The “I Love Lucy Show” brought a Latino into American living rooms for the first time, introducing Cuban American musician Desi Arnaz. While Arnaz’s most characteristic musical form was la conga, he has been identified with the mambo era, especially after Cuban-American author Oscar Hijuelos structured his Pulitzer-Prize winning novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love around an imaginary episode of the “I Love Lucy Show.”

The mambo was but one genre in a string of dance and music crazes that characterized the fascination of American culture with things “Latin” throughout the 20 th century. In the early decades of the century, the tango swept through Paris and New York. Originating in the underworld of turn-of-the-century Buenos Aires, the tango was based on the ubiquitous “habanero” rhythm from 19 th -century Havana, transported through port cities such as Veracruz, San Juan and New Orleans. The rhythmic features of this music were the basis for early jazz, especially ragtime. When Jelly Roll Morton famously spoke of the “Spanish tinge” as a necessary ingredient of jazz composition, he was primarily referring to “la habanera.”

The tango craze was followed in the 1930s and 40s by the “rhumba craze.” In fact, the misspelled “rhumba” was not the authentic Afro-Cuban ‘rumba’, but a simplified version of the Cuban son made seductive for use in American middle-class lounges and ballrooms. The rhumba craze in the United States began with the immense popularity of the standard “El Manisero,” also called “The Peanut Vendor,” first performed in 1930 on Broadway by the visiting Cuban orchestra of Don Azpiazu. That tune, an early best- selling recording, became familiar to a broad audience through many interpretations; most notably, Louis Armstrong and Stan Kenton’s variation set the tone for what has remained the exotic-erotic romance of American mass culture with the stereotyped image of the care-free, sexualized Latino.

The early 1940s saw Americans doing the conga, the carnival line-dance form accompanied by the conical drum toted by Desi Arnaz/Ricky Ricardo as “Mr.Babalu.” In the 1950s and early 60s came the cha cha cha, whose simplicity of steps allowed for even greater public participation and enjoyment. The 1970s brought salsa, the commercial rubric and musical-cultural modality that became the most widely recognized marker of Latino identity at a nation-wide and international level. Perhaps reggaeton , with its Spanish-language inflected version of hip hop and dancehall, signals the latest Latin soundtrack, co-existing with the new-watered-down version of “salsa” and rap of recent decades.

The glitter and hype of these waves of popularized commercial entertainment provide a version of Latino culture often at odds with the reality of Latino social experience. From the 1940s on, the Puerto Rican community more than Cuban New Yorkers constituted the primary social base of Latin music in New York. After Puerto Ricans were declared U.S. citizens in 1917, working-class families from the Island began filing into New York City. The mass migration starting after 1945 brought the city’s Puerto Rican population to nearly a million, altering the nature of New York’s Latino neighborhoods.

This overwhelmingly poor and working-class community had been reared musically less on mambo or Cubop and more typically on traditional Puerto Rican country music (música jíbara) and on bolero -singing guitar trios. Rather than the Palladium and other mid-town venues, its’ music-making and dancing favored house parties and more humble local nightclubs “uptown” in East Harlem and the Bronx. The uptown-downtown distinction was fluid, however, with overlap between them, and the foremost musicians of the day were equally at home delighting audiences in both worlds. And while the downtown version tends towards commercialization of Cuban-based genres, and the uptown version is a more grass roots, “authentic” expression of ethnic musical traditions, the difference can not be reduced to one of artistic quality. For sheer musicality, no one could beat the great orchestras of the “Big Three” (Machito and the Titos) and other headliners at the Palladium and mainstream venues.

The idea of two divergent currents in New York Latin music is useful in understanding the many dimensions of the history of Latin music in America. Both had different relations to the music industry, with the more mainstream styles finding readier access to big commercial labels, and the more grassroots styles being released on small but important independent labels like Tico, the Spanish Music Company (SMC), and later Alegre. Fania, the founding home of salsa in the late 1960s, began as a homegrown label and devolved into a would-be major by the mid-70s. Interestingly, while record sales of even the premier musical groups remained modest at best, the crossover genres of boogaloo and Latin soul had huge-selling hits like Mongo Santamaría’s “Watermelon Man,” Ray Barretto’s “El Watusi” and Joe Cuba’s “Bang Bang,” among the first Latin tunes to make it onto the Billboard charts.

By the time post-mambo styles evolved in the mid-to-late 1960s, issues of generational change, race and class, and political-cultural affirmation overshadowed those of geographic distinction or artistic virtuosity. The music of second-generation New York Latinos, the “Nuyorican” children of the mass migration growing up on the “mean streets” of the inner city, were bound to create new musical forms expressive of altered social and cultural conditions.

Despite the oft-held notion of how distinct the Latin American and African American communities and cultures are, the story of music in the South Bronx in the late 20 th century illuminates the intersections between them. Starting with the pahcanga craze of the 1960s and proceeding through that decade until all of the music was labeled “salsa” around 1971, the music of New York Latinos became ever more deeply intertwined with African American and Caribbean styles. The largely untutored “young Turks” whose sudden stardom drew the ire of established masters like Tito Puente and Eddie Palmieri, embraced and emulated African American culture by playing songs in English and resting more on the backbeat than on the usual clave-based trappings of typical Latin bands.

In the emergence of hip hop, Latin music’s ties with inner-city African American expression are even more pronounced. The historical relationship between the rebelliousness of the late 60s and that of the 80s is expressed in the statement that while the earlier era turned to revolution, the latter, for lack of access to political influence, created the elements of hip hop. The differences are obvious, musically and politically, but the similarities are found in the common social base of the styles’ original musicians and audiences. Both alternative musical forms in the 1960s and 80s were vulnerable to the ravenous appetite of the mainstream music industry. The avid sacking of the music’s commercial opportunities and the attendant dilution and trivialization of the music are evident in both narratives. So quickly was early hip hop dislodged from its founding social and ethno-racial context that little acknowledgment has gone to the influence of Puerto Rican artists in that dynamic and consequential cultural movement called Hip- Hop. That its origins are even “Latin” at all is placed in continual question, including among many Latinos themselves.

The historic arc from mambo to hip hop describes a diaspora cultural dynamic that shows remarkable resilience in the face of multiple pressures to abandon native and historical traditions and go American mainstream, At the same time, the intricate and vastly creative interaction between Cuban, Puerto Rican and other “Latin” traditions with African American music in its many stylistic expressions, a fusion that shows no sign of abating in the new millenium, has graced contemporary listeners with decade after decade of inspired musical invention. The film From Mambo to Hip Hop, is subtitled “a Bronx Tale” so as to locate its subject geographically and socially, but the impact of the musical forms it explores radiates confidently outward, resounding in multiple incarnations everywhere in the world.

Humanities Themes

Popular Music and Identity . Popular music is pertinent in understanding the circulation of social ideas about race, gender, social class, geographical location, and historical moment. Ethnicity and notions of how to identify oneself as ‘white’ or ‘black or ‘Latino’ are also powerfully represented in popular music. For music like the mambo, and later for the evolution of hip hop, we can examine what these identities meant to generations coming of age in the 20 th century.

Popular Music and Social Stereotyping . The combination of aural and visual stimuli presented in popular music creates the perfect storm for communicating and circulating important ideas about society. It can be an arena where social stereotypes are forged, from the image of country singer as ‘redneck’ to that of young African American men as gangsters to caricatures of Asian and Latin people in novelty songs from the 1920’s - 60’s. But stereotypes can be broken in popular music as well, when musicians defy or comment on such categories. Popular music allows the examination of a wider cultural process about how ideas about social groups are created, formed, reformed and negotiated.

Migration and Immigration . The immigration, migration, and urbanization of various minority groups in America throughout the twentieth-century have provided an environment that fostered numerous styles of pop cultural forms that have had a global impact. With popular music, we can examine how traditions and innovations created within one community are shared and interact with those of another to create new cultural styles, and new art forms.

Discussion Points

1. 1950s New York City began to publish articles on an emerging "mambo revolution" in music and dance. Recording companies began to use mambo to label their records and local newspapers advertised mambo dance lessons. The mambo dominated the music scene for 20 years through the mid-1960s. What was it about mambo that appealed to so many and across cultures? Why was there a mania? How did the mambo compare to other popular cultural forms of the 1950’s and 60’s?

2. From I Love Lucy to West Side Story , how did American films and television portray Latin music and musicians? Has that portrayal changed in contemporary television and film? Give examples.

3. The popularity of Latin music in America has been closely connected with dance trends. Why do you think this is true? What characteristics are shared by all the Latin music and dance crazes that swept America, from mambo to the rumba to the conga to the cha cha and salsa?

4. Why are the mainstream music industry and many in the hip hop community slow to acknowledge the Latin influence in hip hop’s history? Is that changing? Who were the significant Latino musicians and DJs who were playing hip hop at its beginnings in the Bronx?

5. It has been said that hip hop arose out of the most desperate days of the South Bronx. How was the music a reflection and expression of the times? How did it answer the needs of the generation coming of age in the 1970’s and 80’s in urban America? How were these musicians influenced by the ‘mambo’ and salsa generations of musicians before them?

6. In exploring the impact of Latin Music in American culture, filmmakers, musicians and cultural commentators note that cities like New York set the stage for cross-cultural pollination as well as competition in many musical forms. What are some of the social and political issues revealed by the evolution of Latin music in the American scene?

Latin Rhythm From Mambo to Hip Hop Introductory Essay Professor

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Essaying the pop culture that matters since 1999

From Mambo to Hip-Hop: A South Bronx Tale

There’s a certain sub-genre of films I love to prattle on about … let’s call it “Newyorksploitation”, for lack of a better term. These overheated thrillers painted a now-vanished New York, bracketed by the late ‘60s and Giuliani Time, as a grimy hellhole patrolled by flashy street thugs and littered with crumbling brick tenements.

More often than not, these urban dystopia flicks are set in the infamous South Bronx – think 1979’s The Warriors or the somewhat classier Paul Newman vehicle Fort Apache: The Bronx – and they’ve sold the neighborhood to enquiring minds as a poster child for postwar metropolitan decay. Comedian Robert Klein even recorded a wickedly satirical tune, “The Bronx Is Beautiful This Time of Year”, an FM radio staple in the early ‘80s.

However exaggerated Hollywood’s portrayals were – and Chuck Bronson’s hysterical Road Warrior-esque Death Wish 3 is surely a nadir – the borough named for Dutch sea captain Jonas Bronck had definitely seen better days by the late ‘70s. Buildings stood empty and derelict, abandoned cars decorated the avenues, and those who could escape fled to greener pastures.

If “the Bronx” became shortand for urban devastation during the Me Decade, then what had it represented in earlier times? How did its denizens conduct their lives? What did they do for fun? These questions are answered in Henry Chalfant’s documentary From Mambo to Hip Hop: A South Bronx Tale , revealing a vibrant inner-city culture more often satirized than examined.

From Mambo to Hip Hop aired first on PBS, in their “Independent Lens” series, and like much of their programs, illuminates the non-white ethnic experience in America. We’ve all taken bus tours to view attractions both cheesy and high-toned, but I don’t imagine too many of us have hopped a ride on the South Bronx Latin Music Tour, which opens the documentary.

It may be news to many that the South Bronx, from just after WW II through the ‘70s, was a fertile pot for Latin American rhythms serving up salsa, mambo, merengue, and anything else that got booties shaking. There was live music everywhere, as mambo fever during the Truman/Eisenhower years transformed Jewish catering halls and Irish vaudeville houses into raucous danceterias for the quickly-expanding Latino immigrant population.

Directly following the Second World War, Puerto Rican migrants flooded the Big Apple, taking advantage of the island nation’s Commonwealth status to flee poverty back home. These folks crowded into the Bronx and Manhattan’s famed Harlem district, carrying their foods, Spanish tongue, and musical traditions with them. They would be joined ten years later by a smattering of Cuban refugees who forsook balmy Miami for the job-producing dynamism of New York, as yet unaware that the industrial employment they sought would soon dwindle.

Aside from impromptu games of stickball – “the poor man’s baseball”, many took up music – or continued playing as they did back home. P.S. 52, a popular local high school, was a magnet for young musicians, with a solid arts program, something too many campuses today would envy.

As Chalfant makes clear, these so-called Nuyoricans and cubanos weren’t alone in that borough north of Manhattan. They were joined by African-Americans with Southern roots, seeking cheap – and non-discriminatory – housing, and possessed of the richest musical warehouse of perhaps any people in history. Mixing with an easy camaraderie that even today eludes black Americans and their Mexican-American neighbors in the Sun Belt, these seemingly disparate groups would together introduce salsa – believe it or not, originated in New York — and much later, the world-conquering genre of hip-hop, fomenting a musical revolution equaling that of rock’s early days.

Indeed, New York’s black and Latino communities liberally borrowed from each other, black hipster cool transforming Puerto Rican “hicks” into suave and streetwise “Nuyoricans”, like the slick but doomed Bernardo in West Side Story , or the brilliant, drug-addled playwright Miguel Pinero. Of course, many Puerto Ricans – and their Cuban ‘cousins’ – are partially or wholly of African descent, so maybe it’s no surprise that their music would share stylistic predecessors in Africa with that of American blacks.

Sadly, this vibrant scene would begin to evaporate as darker social forces tore away at the Bronx. Narcotics hit the streets in 1953, prompting the closure of numerous dance halls. Asphalt and concrete would divide the South Bronx in the form of the Cross Bronx Expressway, shoved through close-knit ‘hoods by the New York’s urban planning godfather Robert Moses. Abetted by the looming deindustrialization of the nation’s largest city and a corresponding ascension of gang culture, the Bronx, beloved by generations of recent arrivals, now teetered on a precipice.

The musical landscape of the borough, however, continued evolving in exciting ways. Salsa became an international sensation, inspiring the fabled Tito Puente to perform in the Bronx, and many Latin stars who cut their teeth in Bronx ballrooms would join the newly formed Fania Records, for a time the world’s premiere Latin label. These performers came to be known as the “Fania All-Stars”, appearing in a series of massive concerts, at Madison Square Garden, The Bronx’s own Yankee Stadium, and overseas.

During this period, in tandem with a general social and economic malaise in New York, the concept of the South Bronx among Americans as a hellish snakepit came into full flower. Street gangs slaughtered each other with depressing regularity, hard-up landlords torched their cruddy buildings for insurance loot, and woe to any white kids whose parents hadn’t decamped for the suburbs; they risked an ass-whupping on “Get Whitey Day”, which unfortunately was also inflicted on a few light-skinned Nuyoricans. One middle-aged interviewee discusses the need for having a “stone-cold killer” expression on one’s face in order to stave off thugs who might rob you, kick your ass, or both.

Things took a slightly positive turn in 1973, when a Gang Peace Meeting was called, but a far more epochal development occurred that same year. At 1528 Sedgewick Ave, in an unassuming high-rise apartment bloc, in the first-floor rec room, a party was held in the sweltering summertime. Attendees danced and rhymed to funky instrumental tracks, and records were occasionally spun by hand backwards or forwards, dragging the phonograph needle to create a dissonant scratching sound, and a revolution, devised by ghetto youngsters bereft of the cash to purchase new instruments or lessons, was hatched.

At least, that’s the legend. There’s no credible evidence that hip-hop music originated at this event, just as no one can pinpoint precisely where jazz bubbled up in turn-of-the last century New Orleans, but few would argue that the sound predated this affair.

It’s equally futile to pinpoint exactly when the terms “rap” or “hip-hop” were grafted on to this loquacious, bass-heavy music, but it spread like arson wildfire through the South Bronx. Abandoned buildings quickly became party zones to accommodate this makeshift scene and the younger set, provoking much parental consternation, rejected the brassy grooves of salsa and mambo for this aggressive new beat. Still, there was a definite connection between the frenetic mambo dance style and the rubber-limbed gyrations the kids concocted.

The first rap DJs and “crews” were indisputably African-American, but their Latin brethren came up fierce, bringing a bit of “Boricua flavor” to the mix. For a time, it even seemed that breakdancing “battles” – rigorous dance-a-thons which determined who had the slickest moves – became a substitute for pitched gang warfare, which had escalated to gunplay. Sometimes local fire alarms provided rhythmic accompaniment to these streetside dance contests.

Extras on this DVD are a series of interviews with various noted personalities from the era, including Eddie Palmieri, Joe Conzo, who played on the premiere disc from The Sugar Hill Gang, Ray Barretto, Mike Amadeo – owner of record shop Casa Amadeo, and Paula Grillo – daughter of the famed Machito, among others. These discussions provide valuable information – the documentary itself only runs a scant 56 minutes – but I wish there’d been more details about the streetscapes of the South Bronx, more historical facts, and perhaps a scholarly breakdown of the distinct musical styles.

If From Mambo to Hip Hop: A South Bronx Tale isn’t exactly a comprehensive look at the Bronx music scenes through some crucial years in American history, it’s certainly an infectious introduction to South Bronx youth culture. This repository of rose-tinted memories is also a seminal document of cooperation between two marginalized groups in American society who cooked up some beautiful music…together.

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COMMENTS

PDF Latin Rhythm From Mambo to Hip Hop Introductory Essay
Latin Rhythm From Mambo to Hip Hop . Introductory Essay . Professor Juan Flores, Latino Studies, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University . In the latter half of the 20th century, with immigration from South America and the Caribbean increasing every decade, Latin sounds influenced American popular music: jazz, rock ...
From Mambo to Hip-Hop and Between Blackness and Latinidad in the Hip
In her essay, "Between Blackness and Latinidad in the Hip Hop Zone," Raquel Z. Rivera argues that the Puerto Rican input to Hip Hop has been depreciated or plainly erased because of ethnic and racial constructions in the U.S., the Caribbean, and Latin America. There is a marketing factor to the Puerto Rican exclusion.
America's Music
Latin and Hip Hop; Latin Rhythm From Mambo to Hip Hop Introductory Essay (PDF) Weekly Handout (PDF) April 25 Film: Linebaugh Public Library, 4-6 p.m. Latin Music USA, Episode 1: Bridges This fresh take on American musical history reaches across five decades to portray the rich mix of sounds created by Latinos and embraced by all.
PDF WEEK 5: Latin Rhythms from Mambo to Hip Hop
Mambo to Hip Hop Access a brief background essay for this week's topic by using your mobile device to scan this code: Further reading: Juan Flores, From Bomba to Hip-Hop Raquel Rivera, Ney York Ricans from the Hip hop Zone Ruth Glasser, My Music Is My Flag Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Oye Como Va! Ed Morales, The Latin Beat
From Mambo to Hip Hop: A South Bronx Story by Henry Chalfant (Dir.)
London: Helter Skelter, 2001. Henry Chalfant (Dir.). From Mambo to Hip Hop: A South Bronx Story. 2006 / 55 min Reviewed by Joe Schloss Tufts University There is a comparison to be made—strained, to be sure—between New York City's "Master Builder" Robert Moses and the academic disciplines with which we now study hip hop.
From Mambo to Hip Hop
Catalog No.: MVDV4785. Format: DVD-Video, NTSC, all regions. Release Date: March 2009. From the first scene to the last, From Mambo to Hip Hop is fused with classic music from both genres, while also offering a detailed and comprehensive historical overview of the Bronx, the origin of its inhabitants, and the mutual oppression that they faced.
Born in the Bronx: Mambo and Hip-Hop : NPR
The new documentary features music legends of the era describing how the music scenes in that borough shaped people's lives over the last 60 years. (Soundbite of movie "From Mambo to Hip-Hop ...
The South Bronx Sound, from Mambo to Hip-Hop : NPR
SOLOMON: Back on the Mambo to hip-hop tour, Rodriguez revels in teaching kids about the history of the music they love and instilling a sense of pride. Mr. RODRIGUEZ: Yeah, the Bronx was burning ...
Analysis Of From Mambo To Hip-Hop
The movie 'From Mambo to Hip-Hop' is a great documentary about a revolution in the entertainment industry. It talks of evolution on Salsa music and Hip-Hop culture in suburbs of New York. ... In this essay I will summarize the main arguments in Chapter 7 of Gender talk , discuss the creation and deconstruction on views. Read More. Effects ...
Mambo and Hip-Hop: Two Bronx Sounds, One Sense of Dignity
Neighborhood pride ties together "From Mambo to Hip-Hop: A South Bronx Tale," a documentary being shown tonight in New York at 9 on WNET as part of the "Voces" series on Latin Americans.
PDF Latin Rhythm From Mambo to Hip Hop Introductory Essay
Latin Rhythm From Mambo to Hip Hop . Introductory Essay . Professor Juan Flores, Latino Studies, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University . In the latter half of the 20th century, with immigration from South America and the Caribbean increasing every decade, Latin sounds influenced American popular music: jazz, rock, rhythm
From Mambo to Hip Hop: A South Bronx Tale
Steve Zeitlin served as co-producer of From Mambo to Hip Hop, a documentary about the South Bronx funded by ITVS, and broadcast on public television across the U.S. as part of the Voces series of Latino Public Broadcasting. He received his Ph.D in folklore from the University of Pennsylvania, and is the director and cofounder of City Lore, an ...
From Mambo to Hip-Hop: A South Bronx Tale
By Jon Pareles. Sept. 14, 2006. Neighborhood pride ties together "From Mambo to Hip-Hop: A South Bronx Tale," a documentary being shown tonight in New York at 9 on WNET as part of the "Voces ...
From Mambo to Hip Hop: A Bronx Tale
From Mambo to Hip Hop: A Bronx Tale is an hour-long documentary that tells a story about the creative life of the South Bronx, beginning with the Puerto Rican migration to the neighborhoods in the 1940s and '50, and the adoption of Cuban rhythms by musicians who created the New York salsa sound. It goes on to tell of the fires of the '70s ...
Hip-Hop Digital Essay: The Evolution of Hip-Hop into the Modern Era- By
Digital Essay: The Evolution of Hip-Hop into the Modern Era. (Essay #2) Matt Scott. FYSM 212: Introduction to Hip-Hop. Professor Markle. Due: 12/15/19. Looking back at the history of hip-hop, and the rich culture surrounding the art form, it's clear that the roots of the genre have been stripped down to almost nothing over the years.
PDF Session Six: Latin Rhythm From Mambo to Hip Hop Introductory Essay
Latin Rhythm From Mambo to Hip Hop Introductory Essay Professor Juan Flores, Latino Studies, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University In the latter half of the 20 th century, with immigration from South America and the Caribbean increasing every decade, Latin sounds influenced American popular music:
short essay.pdf
Whether it's hip hop or rock, music has always brought people together through tough times. The influence a community has and the evolution of that one thing that brought everyone together created memories and stories to tell everyone while still having that bond in the community. "From Mambo to Hip Hop: A Bronx Tale" is the perfect example of how music could bring people of different ...
Session Six: Latin Rhythm from Mambo to Hip Hop Introductory Essay
From Bomba to Hip-Hop. Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity" De FLORES, Juan Revista Brasileira Do Caribe, Vol; From Bomba to Hip-Hop Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity 1St Edition Ebook; UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations; Bomba Y Plena, Música Afropuertorriqueña Y Rebeldía Social Y Estética
From Mambo to Hip-Hop: A South Bronx Tale
Another classic Hip-Hop documentary by Henry Chalfant. From Mambo To Hip Hop: A South Bronx Tale is an hour-long documentary that tells a story about the cre...
Short essay.pdf
"From Mambo to Hip Hop: A Bronx Tale" is an extraordinary narrative that talks about the history of the Bronx through its music. A chronicled record of hip hop and salsa in the Bronx, the film shows how the mix of African American and Latino individuals gave a basic lift to Southern Bronx melodic societies. This film is created from the viewpoint of the creative existence of the South ...
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From Mambo to Hip-Hop: A South Bronx Tale
These questions are answered in Henry Chalfant's documentary From Mambo to Hip Hop: A South Bronx Tale, revealing a vibrant inner-city culture more often satirized than examined. From Mambo to ...
latin rhythm from mambo to hip hop introductory essay
Latin Rhythm From Mambo to Hip Hop Introductory Essay Professor Juan Flores, Latino Studies, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University In the latter half of the 20th century, with immigration from South America and the Caribbean increasing every decade, Latin sounds influenced American popular music: jazz, rock, rhythm and blues, and even country music.