Hip-hop is born at a Bronx party

On 11 August 1973, at a back-to-school party in the recreation room of an apartment block at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx, New York, the DJ Kool Herc, a Jamaican immigrant, used two turntables to extend the instrumental 'breaks' of funk records so that dancers could keep going, while his friend Coke La Rock called out rhymes on the microphone. The event, organised by his sister Cindy Campbell to raise money for clothes, is regarded as the birth of hip-hop. With graffiti, breakdancing and rap, it grew into a global culture, and the 1979 'Rapper's Delight' brought rap to the radio.

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