Ahead of Baz Luhrmann’s TV dramatisation of rap’s roots, The Get Down, we turn back the clock to 1970s New York, when the youth of the neglected South Bronx sowed the seeds of a musical revolution

History remembers the South Bronx in the 1970s as an urban catastrophe; the ground zero of a city in crisis. Unemployment and poverty were sky-high, as was crime, overwhelming police precincts and fire stations that were squeezed by austerity. Whole blocks were reduced to ghost towns as cynical landlords torched their unsellable properties for insurance money. By the end of the decade, the South Bronx had lost almost 40% of its population. Touring the rubble in 1980, Ronald Reagan compared the neglected neighbourhood to London during the blitz. One local health official called it “a necropolis – a city of death”.

But when I ask the groundbreaking DJ Grandmaster Flash what he remembers about his adolescence on Fox Street, not far from the embattled police precinct known as Fort Apache, he says, “It was wonderful. It was like a village. Everybody knew each other. One of our biggest pastimes was flying kites on the roof. Where the gangs lived, that’s where the rubble was. You didn’t go there. But for me,” he grins, “it was a great place to live.”

Director Baz Luhrmann’s ambitious, panoramic new Netflix show The Get Down doesn’t ignore the problems afflicting the South Bronx in the 70s but it focuses on celebrating the remarkable tenacity and creativity of the area’s black and Latino residents, especially the generation who revolutionised popular culture by inventing hip-hop. Luhrmann’s typically flamboyant direction flows between its myriad characters like a DJ set and gives the young artists a mythological sheen. They were asserting their identities at a time when it seemed the city didn’t care if they lived or died. Hip-hop’s message, says Flash, was very simple and very powerful: “We matter. We stand for something.”

Flash is a burly, charismatic 58-year-old with a booming voice, an extraordinary memory and a gift for storytelling. He was an invaluable source of information for Luhrmann his team. “Baz has been on me for 14 months, asking me over and over and over: ‘Flash, could that have happened?’”

The Get Down’s supervising producer (and writer of one episode) is Nelson George, the veteran critic, author and film-maker who covered hip-hop’s rise as a cub reporter. “I thought I could bring some expertise to the party,” he says. “I’d get a call: ‘Would they use this slang in 1978? What shoes would they wear?’ I put together a 300-song playlist for Baz: funk, disco, salsa, reggae, free jazz, early hip-hop influences. Each one of those forms represents a different part of the New York music world at the time.”

George found it a rewarding experience and not one he anticipated. “If you’d told me that I would be writing on a TV show in 2016 about stuff that I went through when I was 20, that would have been a joke,” he says. “There’s no way that this would have been that enduring.”

According to the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, the official “birthplace of hip-hop” is an apartment building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the West Bronx. It was there, on 11 August 1973, that 18-year-old DJ Kool Herc played to a couple of hundred fellow teenagers at a back-to-school party organised by his older sister. It was a perfect summer’s night. He kicked off with reggae but the crowd didn’t respond – that was their parents’ music – so he switched to tough, percussive funk records such as the aptly titled It’s Just Begun by the Jimmy Castor Bunch. The kids went wild. This small party is considered the first domino in a chain that would create a billion-dollar art form and permanently transform US culture.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Grandmaster Flash circa 1980. Photograph: David Corio/Getty Images

“It speaks to the human need to make art and celebrate,” says Will Hermes, author of Love Goes to Buildings on Fire, a musical history of 1970s New York. “If people don’t have access to instruments or music education, they make stuff themselves. With all credit to Herc, I don’t know if you could say it wouldn’t have happened without him. The cultural need was there.”

These days, hip-hop is usually synonymous with rapping but Afrika Bambaataa, DJ and founder of the Zulu Nation movement, codified its four pillars as DJing, MCing, breakdancing and graffiti. Each form of expression spawned local heroes whom Flash calls “street kings”. Hip-hop culture was a true meritocracy where talent and chutzpah could transform an unknown into a neighbourhood legend. In a 1971 New York Times article that helped popularise graffiti, a 17-year-old Bronx tagger called TAKI 183 said: “I don’t feel like a celebrity normally. But the guys make me feel like one when they introduce me to someone. ‘This is him,’ they say.”

These new art forms were a much more positive outlet for competitive energy and desire for recognition than the gangs that had proliferated since 1968. In 1973, the NYPD estimated the Bronx had about 100 “fighting” gangs, including the Black Spades, the Ghetto Brothers and the Savage Skulls, carving up turf and squatting in burned-out tenements. But by then the gangs were waning, fragmenting or moving on. Something new was brewing.

If the best b-boys and b-girls came to your parties and you got them going, you had the best parties Grandmaster Flash

Kool (after the cigarette brand) Herc (due to his size and power on the basketball court) was born Clive Campbell in Jamaica in 1955 and moved to the Bronx 12 years later. His father, Keith, was the soundman for a local R&B band and bought a Shure PA system, which Herc souped up until it was as crushingly heavy as a Jamaican sound system. In 1974, he progressed from rec rooms to outdoor block parties, tapping streetlights for electricity to power his PA. Like Jamaican DJs, he and his MC, Coke La Rock, hyped the crowd with street slang such as “Rock the house” and “Yes yes, y’all”. Most importantly, Herc developed the “merry go round” principle, cutting between the solo percussion breaks in tracks on two turntables – sometimes using two copies of the same record – to create one long groove for the star dancers. Herc called the dancers’ style “breaking”, so the dancers became “break-boys” or “b-boys”.

“If the best b-boys and b-girls came to your parties and you got them going, you had the best parties,” says Flash. “The rapper hadn’t been born yet. These were the kings and queens of the party.”

Joseph Saddler, the kid who became Grandmaster Flash, was born to Bajan immigrants on New Year’s Day 1958 and grew up in a house full of records he wasn’t allowed to play. “I used to touch them when my father went to work and he’d come home and kick my ass every day,” he remembers. “Then I learned how to put them on the stereo and I got my ass kicked some more. I just had the urge to be around this stuff.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Cold Crush Brothers’ Tony Tone with Kool Herc (right), 1979. Photograph: Joe Conzo/Museum Of The City Of New York

As a teenager, Flash attempted graffiti and breaking but competition was fierce. “I was so wack,” he says. He vowed to become a DJ the night he first saw Herc in action, at Cedar Park on 25 May 1974. He could feel the bass from two blocks away and watched the crowd dance till dawn. “He had the greatest playlist,” says Flash. Mainstream DJs played the hits – the “A cuts” on an album – but Herc played “the D cut, the F cut, the cut nobody gave a shit about. People came from all over to hear Herc play jams.”

“There were other DJs doing stuff along these lines but the innovations stemmed from Herc,” says Hermes. “He was the guy who everybody revered. Herc put records together with a logic that Jamaican DJs would use: cut-and-paste.”

An electronics geek with scant funds, Flash constructed a stereo system using parts scavenged from scrapyards and discarded cars and asked the girls he dated if their parents had any records they didn’t want. He was good at finding breaks – the “get down” parts – but they were never long enough. “I was like, ‘Wait a minute, this is the best part of the record! Why is it so short?’ That really pissed me off. I heard this 10-second break as 10 minutes in my mind.”

Listen to a ‘birth of hip-hop’ Spotify playlist.

Herc had good taste and devastating volume but his mixing could be sloppy. Flash approached it as a science. He quit dating and parties to spend every spare minute in his room, innovating radical turntable techniques that would enable him to cut between breaks with unprecedented speed and precision. “I had to violate all the laws of how you treat vinyl,” he says. (Later, his young apprentice Grand Wizard Theodore would invent scratching.) Audiences weren’t instantly persuaded but Flash learned from older disco DJ Pete “DJ” Jones how to read and respond to the dancers’ needs and recruited Keith “Cowboy” Wiggins as his “town crier”, the first member of the MC crew that would become the Furious Five.

Flash’s growing reputation attracted the attention of a local crime clan called the Chandler family and Ray Chandler appointed himself Flash’s manager, booking him at a small all-night club called the Black Door. Flash felt weird charging people to hear him play but relented. “I think it was partially out of fear because they were the gangsters on the block,” he says. “It wasn’t like I could tell them to go to hell! Without Ray Chandler I probably would have kept playing in the parks for free.”

Chandler found Flash bookings in other boroughs, including an ambitious show at Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom on 2 September 1976. Convinced he could never fill the 3,000-capacity venue, Flash expected public humiliation but, as he approached the venue, he saw cars triple parked and a queue around the block. It was the party of a lifetime. “They showed up! That’s when I figured I had something. We was killing it, knocking down everything.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The flyer for DJ Kool Herc’s party, on 11 August 1973 at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the West Bronx, now acknowledged as the moment hip-hop was born.

Before hip-hop was a genre it was a way of saying genre didn’t matter: a new dancefloor ideology. Herc turned bargain-bin oddities like the Incredible Bongo Band’s Apache and Babe Ruth’s The Mexican into must-have anthems. Bambaataa enjoyed making b-boys dance to artists as unhip as Henry Mancini and the Monkees. It could be Chic, Roy Ayers or Thin Lizzy as long as it had an element that was “hip-hoppable,” says Flash. “Some of it was pop, some it was rock, but it was dope! When you search and find a break, you adopt it and make it hip-hop.”

At Flash’s block parties a gang of ex-Black Spades called the Casanova Crew made sure there was no trouble. “They would buy pop and chips for the whole park,” Flash says. “And these were killer-diller people! They were at peace. The police officers loved us. You could see them parked across the street. They don’t have to chase no thugs because the thugs are in the park with us jamming. So we made their job easy.”

Five years earlier, the Bronx had been segmented into gang turfs. Now it was partitioned by the DJs. Herc had the West Side, Bambaataa reigned in Bronx River, and Flash ruled the South Bronx. “We never disrespected each other,” says Flash. “Nobody would tread on another’s area without permission.”

Even in areas where gangs still held sway, Flash’s celebrity formed a kind of forcefield. “It was like, ‘Oh that’s Grandmaster Flash, let him go,’” he remembers. “They respected what I did.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mamoudou Athie (left) as the young Grandmaster Flash in The Get Down. Photograph: Netflix

The Get Down opens in the summer of 1977, an eventful time in New York City. Flash began a weekly residency at South Bronx club Disco Fever and his reputation finally eclipsed Herc’s. Downtown, punk was gathering steam with debut albums from Television, Suicide and Talking Heads. Beleaguered mayor Abe Beame, worn down by battling debt and crime, lost the Democratic primary to his law-and-order rival Ed Koch. David Berkowitz, the serial killer known as Son of Sam, was arrested after a year of murders that traumatised the city. All of it was significant but the one event that affected every single person in New York was the blackout.

Shortly after 9.30pm on 13 July, in the middle of a heatwave, a series of errors and malfunctions caused all of the city’s generators to shut down. Once darkness descended, mobs began looting and burning stores in poorer neighbourhoods. With 3,776 arrests, it was the most intense crime wave in New York’s history. Afterwards, tabloid columnist Pete Hamill described New York as “a city abandoned, a city unrepresented, a city cynical, a ruined and broken city”.

Nelson George was at his mother’s house in Brooklyn when the lights went out. “It was a hell of a night,” he says. “It was festive on one level. On the other hand, there was a sense of total wildness. We were fortunate because we lived next to this crazy family of boys and that kept us safe because nobody was going to fuck with them.”

Flash was at home on Fox Street. “Shit was fucked. You could see people walking by with mattresses on their heads. You could hear glass breaking.” Some local looters presented him with a high-end stereo system. “I said, ‘Where y’all get that from?’,” he remembers. “‘None of your business. Now when you come out into the street you gonna sound good.’”

“The blackout had a huge impact on hip-hop,” says George. “After the riot, there were suddenly a million crews with stolen turntables.”

That was also the summer that disco became America’s second most lucrative entertainment industry after professional sports. “Now is the summer of our discotheques,” wrote journalist Anthony Haden-Guest. “And every night is party night.” John Badham was filming Saturday Night Fever, Donna Summer released I Feel Love and the elitist hotspot Studio 54 opened its doors with a launch party whose guests included a 30-year-old Donald Trump.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Veteran critic, author and film-maker – and The Get Down’s supervising producer – Nelson George (in green) on set. Photograph: Netflix

Like hip-hop, disco originated as a DJ-led black and Latino subculture, but the two scenes were separated by class and age. “There was a big break between kid culture and adult culture,” says George, who was 19 at the time. “There was a club in midtown Manhattan called Leviticus which I aspired to go to because that’s where all the hot girls were. Even if I dressed up, I was questionable. That’s why hip-hop started in rec centres and on street corners. That’s where the kids in sneakers who didn’t have hard shoes could go.”

“Hip-hop was to disco what punk rock was to commercial rock’n’roll,” says Hermes. “It wasn’t ‘respectable’. It came up in part because of disco’s exclusivity. The kids had to make their own parties that reflected their aesthetic, which was less smooth.”

It was very organic. I didn’t realise what I was doing on the turntables would become rap. No way! Grandmaster Flash

When George wrote his first article about hip-hop, for the Amsterdam News in the summer of 1978, Herc told him: “The kids don’t like music that sounds processed.” George started to see DJs, MCs and bootleg mixtapes spring up across the five boroughs. “It wasn’t hip-hop yet,” he says. “Herc called it b-beats. Flash called it the get down. In ’78, almost every DJ had their own name for it.” (The term “hip-hop” is attributed to either Cowboy or Bronx MC Lovebug Starski as a parody of a drill sergeant’s marching chants but wasn’t popularised by Bambaataa until 1982.)

Disco’s bubble burst the following summer. The ugly Disco Sucks backlash peaked with a riotous Disco Demolition Derby at Chicago’s Comiskey Park Stadium and the genre’s chart dominance abruptly ended. Weeks later, an ad hoc group of MCs called the Sugarhill Gang released Rapper’s Delight, a 14-minute rap (with lyrics stolen from Grandmaster Caz of the Cold Crush Brothers) based on Chic’s recent disco smash Good Times. It felt like a baton being passed from one New York subculture to another.

Flash had been approached by Sugar Hill Records boss Sylvia Robinson but he considered hip-hop a live art form that couldn’t be recreated in the studio. When he heard Rapper’s Delight, it shocked him. “I knew who my competition was and this wasn’t Herc, it wasn’t Bam, it wasn’t Grand Wizard Theodore or Cold Crush. ‘Who are these motherfuckers? This shit is wack!’” He sighs. “But history’s what it is and it broke ground.”

Flash always had problems seeing hip-hop’s financial potential. “I didn’t think that way,” he says. “It was very home-grown, very organic. Thinking big business? No way! We was just thinking, where’s the next party at? I didn’t realise that what I was doing on the turntables to create a musical bed so guys could talk on it would become rap. Who would even think that?”

Flash wasn’t the only one who didn’t see it. Nobody involved in hip-hop prior to Rapper’s Delight expected to sign a record deal or make their fortune. “It really was folk music: ‘I can speak to my peers and that gives me respect,’” says George. “That’s all it was. It wasn’t, ‘I’m gonna play arenas!’ That was inconceivable.”

Rapper’s Delight introduced commerce to hip-hop and prioritised the MC over the DJ, leading to further hits by Kurtis Blow, Spoonie Gee and, better late than never, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. Graffiti artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibited in downtown galleries. The Rock Steady Crew popularised breakdancing nationwide. Bronx street kings mingled with Andy Warhol and David Bowie in hipster venues like the Mudd Club and the Roxy, while hip-hop influenced white artists such as the Clash, Tom Tom Club and Blondie, whose Debbie Harry declared, “Flash is fast, Flash is cool” on their 1981 hit Rapture. In 1983, Queens party promoter Russell Simmons and college student Rick Rubin fully unlocked hip-hop’s commercial potential with Def Jam Recordings and their star signings Run-DMC.

New York also got richer and more respectable under Ed Koch and subsequent mayors. But the popular “broken windows” theory of policing in the 1980s, which argued that tackling trivial “quality-of-life” offences fostered a lawful atmosphere that discouraged more serious crimes, led to crackdowns on graffiti and unlicensed clubs, making the outlaw creativity that spawned hip-hop no longer possible.

“Without lax policing there is no hip-hop,” says George. “There are no parties in the park. There were no quality-of-life crimes in New York back then so the police didn’t give a damn. There was a lot of room to do whatever you wanted.”

“It was the same with punk rock and the early disco clubs,” says Hermes. “The precincts were understaffed and dealing with major issues, not responding to noise complaints. Along with safety and security comes less of the adventurous activities that can be crucibles for new stuff.”

In 2016, decades of regeneration have made the South Bronx livable again, but The Get Down recreates an era when neglect, for all the suffering it caused, inspired freedom, opportunity and a fierce desire to make your mark. In one scene, Luhrmann films a subway train festooned with graffiti. One carriage bears a line from the Persian poet Rumi: “Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.”

The Get Down is on Netflix from 12 August

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hip-hop style, New York. Photograph: Allan Tannenbaum/Getty Images

10 key tracks in the birth of hip-hop

1. James Brown

Give It Up or Turnit a Loose (1969)

Brown’s propulsive hit became a foundational hip-hop break and was later sampled by acts such as 2 Live Crew and Jungle Brothers.

2. The Jimmy Castor Bunch

It’s Just Begun (1972)

One of the hard-hitting funk numbers played by DJ Kool Herc at his influential proto-hip-hop parties in the West Bronx in 1973.

3. Incredible Bongo Band

Apache (1973)

This relatively obscure track (a cover of a Jerry Lordan tune popularised in the UK in 1960 by the Shadows) caught the attention of Kool Herc, who turned its unusually long drum break into dancefloor dynamite.

4. Babe Ruth

The Mexican (1972)

Another Kool Herc anthem, from the first album by British rock group Babe Ruth, The Mexican was later interpolated into Africa Bambaataa’s seminal Planet Rock (1982).

5. Bob James

Take Me to the Mardi Gras (1975)

Dug up by Grandmaster Flash and later sampled by countless hip-hop artists, this jazzy version of a Paul Simon song was valued primarily for its percussive 30-second intro.

6. Thin Lizzy

Johnny the Fox Meets Jimmy the Weed (1976)

The solid, driving beat that kicks off this classic rock track felt tailor-made for hip-hop DJ sets. It has been sampled many times, notably on Ice T’s OG Original Gangster.

7. Herman Kelly & Life

Dance to the Drummer’s Beat (1978)

This track by the Miami-based Latin funk band was heavily mined by early hip-hop DJs and producers.

8. The Sugarhill Gang

Rapper’s Delight (1979)

Rap’s first crossover hit, this upbeat 14-minute track introduced the genre to a wider audience and demonstrated its commercial possibilities.

9. Kurtis Blow

The Breaks (1980)

The Harlem-born rapper Kurt Walker, who signed to Mercury in 1979, made rap’s first certified gold record, selling more than 500,000 copies.

10. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five

The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel (1981)

Anyone who missed Grandmaster Flash’s seminal early DJ sets could get a taste of them on this seven-minute turntable masterclass, sampling the likes of Blondie and Queen.

Killian Fox

This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that third-party cookies will be set. More information.