DJ Kool Herc

Clive Campbell, known as DJ Kool Herc, was born on 16 April 1955 in Kingston, Jamaica, the first of six children of Keith and Nettie Campbell. He grew up surrounded by the sound system culture of Jamaica, with its huge speakers, toasting MCs and communal dancing, and in 1967 his family moved to the Bronx, New York.

In the Bronx, Campbell began to play records at parties for his own community. With his sister Cindy he began hosting back-to-school parties in the recreation room of their building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue. He favoured hard funk records of the kind typified by James Brown, and noticed that dancers were most excited by the short instrumental sections of the records, the breaks.

His innovation was to isolate and extend those breaks. Using two copies of the same record on two turntables, he switched from break to break at the height of the party, a technique he called the Merry-Go-Round. He also named dancers to encourage them, calling them B-boys and B-girls, and his announcements and exhortations helped lead to the rhymed spoken accompaniment now known as rapping.

On 11 August 1973, at a back-to-school party that Cindy hosted and for which she hired her brother as the DJ, Herc, then 18, showcased the technique publicly in the building's rec room. Music historians credit that night with providing the foundation for hip hop, and 11 August 1973 is now considered the birth date of the culture, with its four elements of deejaying, rapping, breakdancing and graffiti.

Herc is widely known as the Father of Hip Hop. In 2007 New York State officials declared 1520 Sedgwick Avenue the birthplace of hip hop, and he campaigned to keep the building as affordable housing. The surrounding street was co-named Hip Hop Boulevard in 2016, and in 2021 a congressional resolution recognised 11 August as Hip Hop Celebration Day, naming Herc, Cindy Campbell and 1520 Sedgwick Avenue for their contributions.