Heeeeeey, ho, heeeeeey, ho!
It’s the 50th anniversary of Hip-Hop, and celebrations are taking place throughout New York City this year. Queens, where the genre really caught fire in the 1970s, gets into the game with a pop-up museum in Jamaica.
Hosted at King Manor Museum via a collaboration with Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning, Paths of Rhythm features artifacts on loan from Hip Hop Hall Of Fame Co-Chair Geechie Dan, a Southeast Queens native who was once Executive Director of the National Hip Hop Museum in Washington, DC, and others, such as DJ Candy Johnson, filmmaker Luc Stephen, and JCAL Director of Program Operations Wendy Arimah Berot.
With such items as British Walker shoes, cassette tapes, and vintage audio recordings, Paths of Rhythm tells the story of an authentic American art form. The accepted narrative holds that Hip-Hop came to life in the Bronx on Aug. 11, 1973. Clive Campbell, whose artistic name was DJ Kool Herc, began spinning vinyl records to animate a birthday party for his sister.
However, Queens (especially Jamaica and Queensbridge) were early hot spots that helped bring the music to the mainstream. LL Cool J, Run-DMC, 50 Cent, Salt-N-Pepa, A Tribe Called Quest (Phife Dawg + Q-Tip), Mobb Deep (Prodigy + Havoc), Roxanne Shante, Ja Rule, Capone-N-Noreaga, Kool G Rap, and Nicki Minaj are only a few borough rappers who made it big.
King Manor Museum is located at 153-03 Jamaica Ave. The free opening reception is on Monday, Nov. 27, at 7 pm.
Paths of Rhythm, which receives support from City Council Member Nantasha Williams, unites modern urban music with King Manor, a three-story, three-chimney mansion with clapboard windows that was built in 1730. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1974, the estate was home to Ambassador Rufus King and his descendants from 1805 to 1896. The King family operated a farm there, but they were also very active politically. Ardent abolitionists, they paid their African American workers wages even though slavery was permitted in New York State until 1827. One of the scions, Lt. Rufus King, won a Medal of Honor for his service with the New York Militia that fought against the Confederates from the South in Battle of Antietam in 1862. The infamous Maryland combat, which included the bloodiest day in the history of American warfare, was a turning point in the Civil War that led to the North’s victory.
Images: Rob MacKay