Caribbean and Latinx influence in Hip Hop
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the creation of hip hop music, which has been and still is greatly influenced by Latin American, Caribbean, and US Latinx musical traditions. Many of the so-called founding fathers of hip hop were of Latin American and/or Caribbean origin, including DJ Kool Herc (Jamaican), DJ Disco Wiz (Puerto Rican and Cuban descent), Grandmaster Flash (Bajan), and Afrika Bambaataa (Jamaican and Bajan descent). Here are some resources to bring the history of hip hop into your classroom:
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- Carnegie Hall has an overall Timeline of Rap and Hip Hop
- NPR has a piece about the role Latin artists have played in hip hop, found here
- They also have a two part “Latino History of Hip Hop” found here
- Harvard’s ReVista has a piece called, “Black Aesthetics and Afro-Latinx Hip Hop: “I’m an African””
- AAIHS’s Black Perspectives features an article called, “Unsilencing the Haitian Revolution in US Hip Hop”
- A CUNY project focuses on “Hip Hop Caribbean Origins”
- Netflix’s “The Get Down” is a dramatized story of the founding of hip-hop, through the eyes of Afro-Latinx and Afro-Caribbean characters
- La Verdad: An International Dialogue on Hip Hop Latinidades from The Ohio State University Press could be helpful in guiding discussions about hip hop in LAC