Cindy Campbell at 1520 Sedgewick Avenue, Photo courtesy of Cindy Campbell via NYMag
by Nadirah Simmons
With its inception coming off of the heels of the civil rights movement, hip-hop emerged as a cultural movement during the 1970s among African American, Caribbean American and Latino American youths residing in the South Bronx in New York City, presenting its four distinct elements-music (oral), turntablism or “DJing” (aural), break dancing (physical) and graffiti art (visual). Widely credited as beginning at DJ Kool Herc’s home in a high-rise apartment at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, the movement later spread across the entire borough. DJs such as Grand Wizard Theodore, Grandmaster Flash, and Jazzy Jay refined and Herc’s technique, and by the late 1970s, DJs were releasing 12-inch records where they would rap to the beat. Tracy Denean Sharpley-Whiting in “Pimps Up, Ho’s Down: Hip Hop’s Hold on Young Black Women” says that due to “technological innovations, consumer capitalism and media and entertainment mergers, hip-hop naturally expanded beyond its DJing, MCing, break dancing, and tagging origins.” In “Masculinity and the mic: confronting the uneven geography of hip-hop, Gender, Place & Culture,” Rashad Shabazz says that in the 1980s rap emerged as the culture’s most dominant element, superseding DJing and graffiti. As a result, hip-hop moved from simply being a tool of cultural and political expression to a mainstream, global, multimillion dollar business.
Much of the scholarship on hip-hop contends that space is a fundamental element of hip-hop-look no further than Mark Anthony Neal and Murray Forman’s “That’s the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader” and Tricia Rose’s “Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America” for affirmation. Rashad Shabazz says that it is this space that allowed young men and boys in hip-hop to use “to not only counter their spatial disempowerment, but also to exclude women from these same spaces (Shabazz 2014).” Thus, although women have been a part of hip hop as rappers, DJs, b-girls and graffiti artists since the culture’s beginnings in New York City, the majority of the origin stories about the founding of hip-hop music and culture name men as the providers and suppliers. That’s why it’s important that you know Cindy Campbell, DJ Kool Herc’s little sister, planned and promoted the very first hip-hop party, thrown in The Bronx on August 11, 1973.
Cindy had the vision to throw the party that is known today as the birthplace of hip-hop. In an interview with Rock The Bells, she talked about how the party came to be:
The whole thing about the Sedgwick Avenue party is, you want to go back to school with something nice, different, and fresh — and you're the only one that had it. Alexander’s was the department store. I put my money together. Then I thought, ‘How am I going to increase my money to turn it over, to make some more money? That's when I had the concept and the idea to do the Back to School Party. It wasn't a birthday party, it was back to school. You’ had to give it a good reason and a theme. I thought, ‘How am I going to promote this party? How am I going to make this happen?’ So we had the recreation room and it was $25 dollars to rent the room.
She charged 25 cents for girls, 50 cents for guys, and wrote the invites on index cards. When 9 p.m. on August 11, 1973 at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue came, a teenaged DJ Kool Herc would spin at the party that would change the course of hip-hop (or chart the course, for that matter). Their parents played the role of security guards, hanging in the lobby with other parents and monitoring the event while their kids enjoyed the party.
Cindy’s impact doesn’t end there. A party promoter and organizer, graffiti artist and b-girl, Cindy Campbell is a hip-hop pioneer and product of it through and through. She is also the founder of Hip-Hop Preserve Inc., a non-profit organization committed to preserving the roots of hip-hop. Over the years she’s also negotiated a movie role for her brother and helped coordinated his 2005 shoot with Vanity Fair.
The invitation to Cindy’s Back To School Jam, written on an index card
I love Cindy Campbell’s story because it’s a reminder of how women have been a part of hip-hop from the very beginning, literally. It’s also a reminder of how many hats we’ve worn and continue to wear. Shout out to Cindy Campbell for creating the space for hip-hop to flourish, and for a space like The Gumbo to exist.