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

By Laban Carrick Hill

Book Overview

A John Steptoe New Talent Award Winner 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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1596435402
• ISBN13: 9781596435407
• Release Date: August 2013
• Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
• Length: 32 Pages
• Weight: 0.98 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 10.1" x 10.1"
• Age Range: 6 to 10 years
• Grade Range: Grades 1 to 5