Afrika Bambaataa gave this interview to Tim Westwood about his take on hip hop today and how it evolved from other diverse musical influences and cultural references. I found it so enlightening that it inspired me to do some further research research and thinking. The first thing to take from what he said is that hip hop is bigger than rappers and rap music . It has 5 elements - djing (musicianship), b-boying (dance), mcing (spoken word), graffitti (visual art) and finally knowledge that ties everything together. We all too soon forget that hip hop is a culture; influencing the way we express ourselves, think, dress and live but that is for another discussion. Then Afrika Bambaataa referenced hip hop evolution from as early as the 1940s in the form of spoken word/chanting over music to the first rapping over a funk beat. While paying tribute to other spoken word musicians (and radio dj hosts etc) he alludes to the more obvious brigde provided by funk music and gives props to James Brown the Godfather.

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Although nobody can refute the fact that Hip Hop is most at home in America - Afrika Bambaataa shows us that it is global - even in its inception. Firstly; he says he and the other founders like Kool Herc and Grand Master Flash were of West Indian (and ultimately African) decent. Kool Herc pioneered the sound that is today recognised universally recognised as the hip hop beat in th 70s by looping the best parts of identical funk records to keep his dancefloors in the Bronx full. Then came the electronic sounds first from Japan by the Yellow Magic Orchestra and then Germany (and Europe in general) by Kraftwerk. And the rest, as they say, is history. Today hip hop's influence is global and the culture even more diverse covering subjects from gospel to nerdcore and in all kinds of languages. The culture is so expansive and represents so much that no short article or interview can do it justice.

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