Hip-hop is the soul of free America

On 11 August 1973, there was a party at an apartment building at 1520 Sedgewick Avenue in the Bronx. The host, Cindy Campbell, was a black immigrant teenager from Jamaica who wanted to earn some extra cash to buy back-to-school clothes. So she put up flyers around the neighbourhood, and convinced her 18-year-old brother Clive to DJ.

Known as DJ Kool Herc (a shortened version of his nickname, Hercules), Clive was locally famous for his physical size and strength and for a style of DJing that involved using multiple turntables...