Kool Herc: A Biographical Essay
by Wayne Marshall
Author’s note: the following essay was originally published in a reference volume, Icons of Hip Hop. Citations should provide the following bibliographical info:
Marshall, Wayne. “Kool Herc.” In Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music, and Culture, ed. Mickey Hess, 1-26. (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2007).
Few individuals can claim a life story that so closely parallels hip-hop’s narrative arc as Clive Campbell, better known as DJ Kool Herc. Often considered the movement’s founding father, an early participant in and innovator of the musical and cultural practices that have since swept the world, Kool Herc embodies hip-hop’s roots and routes, its booms and busts, its struggles and triumphs. From his childhood in Kingston, Jamaica to his coming-of-age in the Bronx, from his rise as a streetwise, peerless DJ to his decline in the wake of hip-hop’s new forms and commercial success, from his drug addiction in the 80s to his recent return as standard-bearer and spokesman, Herc’s tale can be read as a thread running through hip-hop history. Although his story has been told and retold and sold many times over, often making it difficult to extract the truth from the myths, the representations, and the press releases, Herc has been generous in granting interviews over the years, and his myriad recollections, as well as those of his peers, provide a strong outline for understanding his role as an architect and inventor, as one who forged so many of the forms we recognize today as hip-hop.
Trenchtown Rock: Clive Campbell’s Knotty Reggae Roots
Clive Campbell was born in 1955 in Kingston, Jamaica, the first of six children of Keith and Nettie Campbell. He spent his early childhood living in an area of the city known as Trenchtown, the same storied public housing scheme and “concrete jungle” that produced such reggae luminaries as Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Alton Ellis. Clive’s father worked as a foreman at Kingston Wharf garage — a respectable, working-class job that eventually allowed the Campbells to move to Franklyn Town, a lower-middle class neighborhood where the family had their own house and yard. It was while living in the government yard of Trenchtown, though, that Herc got his first taste of the powerful sound systems he would later emulate as a Bronx-based DJ.
Although Herc has at times denied the influence of Jamaican-style DJing on his own performance practice, arguing that the Bronx audiences he played for demanded a more local style, he has also acknowledged how being a witness to Kingston sound system dances deeply informed his sense of the power of music and of the DJ in particular — not to mention his sense of what was cool (e.g., suavely-dressed, well-respected gangsters and rebellious, ratchet-knife-wielding rude boys), as much as that may have had to be recalibrated upon moving to the Bronx. When asked about his musical influences by a reporter for the Jamaica Observer (Jackson 2004), Herc broke from his typical list of American performers and disc jockeys and instead named such Jamaican greats as Prince Buster, Don Drummond, the Skatalites, Big Youth, U-Roy, and sound system pioneer, Clement “Coxsone” Dodd.
It was at these dances — or just outside of them (since, due to his age, he often had to settle for spying through holes in the zinc fences that enclosed the dancehalls) — where young Clive got his first glimpses of sound system culture. He would watch the sound systems’ crews wheel in speakers and amplifiers on hand carts, the vendors set up their wares and stew up some curry goat, the gangsters and rude boys and dancehall queens strut their stuff before passing through the gate. But then, seeing was often less important than hearing the sound systems at work — and one need not have gotten too close to hear the selectors and DJs do their thing. Whether Clive was sitting just over the fence or in his family’s home down the road, there was no avoiding the engulfing sonic presence of the neighborhood dance. His body vibrating along with the heavy bass and his ears tickled by the well-designed systems’ crisp highs and clear mid-range frequencies, he developed a taste for the power and clarity of sound produced by the systems’ custom-crafted components. Later, seeking to reproduce this aesthetic with his own system in the Bronx, Herc would distinguish himself from his contemporaries and vanquish his rivals.
Beyond hearing the sound of the systems, of course, Clive also heard the music they played, as well as their style of playing it. It is worth noting that Clive left Jamaica before the term “reggae” gained currency and before the style that it describes emerged from rocksteady, the soul-infused, balladeer tradition that followed ska’s lead out of American influences and into a distinctive Jamaican synthesis of foreign and familiar styles. So the music that Clive would have heard emanating from the dancehalls in his youth comprised a mix of exciting, new local forms — often infused with the ebullience of independence, granted in 1962 — and imported favorites, especially soul and R&B sides. Although Jamaican popular music increasingly expressed a localized aesthetic over the course of the 1960s, cover versions of American pop songs remained staples of the local recording industry, stylistic nods to rock, soul, and R&B abounded, and the sounds of black America never totally fell out of favor in the dancehalls, though foreign-produced records no longer constituted the bulk of the sound system repertory as they had in the 1950s. Indeed, sound system performance practice, for all its uniqueness, can itself be traced to so-called foreign sources — in particular to African-American singers and disc jockeys. (Though one might ask, given the prevailing cultural politics of the day, what would be considered “foreign” from a Pan-Africanist or Black Power perspective?)
Trenchtown Rock: Clive Campbell’s Knotty Reggae Roots
Clive Campbell was born in 1955 in Kingston, Jamaica, the first of six children of Keith and Nettie Campbell. He spent his early childhood living in an area of the city known as Trenchtown, the same storied public housing scheme and “concrete jungle” that produced such reggae luminaries as Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Alton Ellis. Clive’s father worked as a foreman at Kingston Wharf garage — a respectable, working-class job that eventually allowed the Campbells to move to Franklyn Town, a lower-middle class neighborhood where the family had their own house and yard. It was while living in the government yard of Trenchtown, though, that Herc got his first taste of the powerful sound systems he would later emulate as a Bronx-based DJ.
Although Herc has at times denied the influence of Jamaican-style DJing on his own performance practice, arguing that the Bronx audiences he played for demanded a more local style, he has also acknowledged how being a witness to Kingston sound system dances deeply informed his sense of the power of music and of the DJ in particular — not to mention his sense of what was cool (e.g., suavely-dressed, well-respected gangsters and rebellious, ratchet-knife-wielding rude boys), as much as that may have had to be recalibrated upon moving to the Bronx. When asked about his musical influences by a reporter for the Jamaica Observer (Jackson 2004), Herc broke from his typical list of American performers and disc jockeys and instead named such Jamaican greats as Prince Buster, Don Drummond, the Skatalites, Big Youth, U-Roy, and sound system pioneer, Clement “Coxsone” Dodd.
It was at these dances — or just outside of them (since, due to his age, he often had to settle for spying through holes in the zinc fences that enclosed the dancehalls) — where young Clive got his first glimpses of sound system culture. He would watch the sound systems’ crews wheel in speakers and amplifiers on hand carts, the vendors set up their wares and stew up some curry goat, the gangsters and rude boys and dancehall queens strut their stuff before passing through the gate. But then, seeing was often less important than hearing the sound systems at work — and one need not have gotten too close to hear the selectors and DJs do their thing. Whether Clive was sitting just over the fence or in his family’s home down the road, there was no avoiding the engulfing sonic presence of the neighborhood dance. His body vibrating along with the heavy bass and his ears tickled by the well-designed systems’ crisp highs and clear mid-range frequencies, he developed a taste for the power and clarity of sound produced by the systems’ custom-crafted components. Later, seeking to reproduce this aesthetic with his own system in the Bronx, Herc would distinguish himself from his contemporaries and vanquish his rivals.
Beyond hearing the sound of the systems, of course, Clive also heard the music they played, as well as their style of playing it. It is worth noting that Clive left Jamaica before the term “reggae” gained currency and before the style that it describes emerged from rocksteady, the soul-infused, balladeer tradition that followed ska’s lead out of American influences and into a distinctive Jamaican synthesis of foreign and familiar styles. So the music that Clive would have heard emanating from the dancehalls in his youth comprised a mix of exciting, new local forms — often infused with the ebullience of independence, granted in 1962 — and imported favorites, especially soul and R&B sides. Although Jamaican popular music increasingly expressed a localized aesthetic over the course of the 1960s, cover versions of American pop songs remained staples of the local recording industry, stylistic nods to rock, soul, and R&B abounded, and the sounds of black America never totally fell out of favor in the dancehalls, though foreign-produced records no longer constituted the bulk of the sound system repertory as they had in the 1950s. Indeed, sound system performance practice, for all its uniqueness, can itself be traced to so-called foreign sources — in particular to African-American singers and disc jockeys. (Though one might ask, given the prevailing cultural politics of the day, what would be considered “foreign” from a Pan-Africanist or Black Power perspective?)
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