August 11 1973 should be a day all of us remember, but sadly many
have not.. It was on that date that two siblings Clive and Cindy Campbell decided
to do a back to school party in order to raise some money for school cloths
and supplies. The party took place in the rec room of their apartment building
on 1520 Sedgwick Ave in the West Bronx.. It would be the first of many parties
the pair would throw..
Cindy was a budding entrepreneurial type who was good organizer who was the
backbone to putting this party together. Her brother Clive was a hulking athletic
type who had access to his father’s speakers, and a nice collection of
funky records including pristine cuts from his idol James Brown.
It was at this party that Clive who was just starting to deejay and had taken
on the nickname Herc, short for Hercules, would introduce a new style of deejaying
that would eventually take hold and change the world. What he did was repeat
the percussion breakdowns of popular songs… he discovered that the crowd
reacted when he played the drum beats so rather than wait for song to play all
the way through , he would go straight to the breakdown.. Herc would eventually
come up with a system to keep those percussion breaks extended indefinitely.
He dubbed it the Merry-Go-Round.. Later we would call them percussion breakdowns,
breakbeats.
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