Birth of a Culture by Grandmaster Flash: A proud and generous account of the birth of hip-hop

Birth of a Culture

Author: Grandmaster Flash

ISBN-13: 978-1398567511

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Guideline Price: £25; 288pp

Central to the development of hip-hop, Grandmaster Flash ranks highly among the musical geniuses of the 20th century. He figured out how to make new songs out of snippets of old ones by seamlessly interspersing them. This was no mean feat in the predigital era, requiring significant technical innovations, an ability to match up the beats per minute of one song with the next, quick hands and an even quicker mind.

Flash was born in 1958 as Joseph Saddler. In Birth of a Culture he recounts how his obsession with how his father’s cherished turntable made sound led to multiple beatings. After his father left the family, Flash became so obsessed with electrics that he disassembled household appliances. His understanding mother sent him to trade school to train as an electrician, giving Flash knowledge he applied in his musical inventions.

Birth of a Culture is not primarily an autobiography, but rather an effort to set the record straight about the origins of hip-hop. Though it quickly became a global culture in the 1980s, hip-hop emerged in the 1970s as a very particular subculture in the Bronx, an area experiencing acute poverty and racialised inequality. Hip-hop was an inspirational response to the community’s challenges that encompassed graffiti art, breakdancing and the large DJ dance parties where Flash made his name.

Flash is justifiably proud of his own accomplishments yet generous in acknowledging the contributions of many others, especially of women who are often left out of this story. He is ambivalent about the proliferation of hip-hop: glad that it touched the lives of so many, yet disappointed by the ways the music business co-opted the culture. He’s particularly critical of Sugar Hill Records, the first company to release hip-hop records. While The Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five was an early hit, Flash himself and his signature style were absent from the song, the success of which helped split up his group.

Birth of a Culture adopts a conversational tone. At times it rambles and it loses focus as it moves to the 1980s and Flash substitutes discussions with other hip-hop pioneers for his own experiences. Yet Flash and his co-author Scoop Jackson succeed brilliantly in making the reader feel as if they are sitting down to talk to a musical legend who was there when it all got started.

Daniel Geary is Mark Piggott Professor of American History at Trinity College Dublin