Inspired by the ‘block parties’ organised by DJ Kool Herc and his sister Cindy in the mid ’70s in The Bronx, one Kevin Donovan, aka DJ Afrika Bambaataa, began doing the same. The sound system with MC, that blew over from Jamaica, formed the basis for what would later grow into the globally spread hip hop music that still floods the charts in the year 2014.

Afrika Bambaataa experimented with samples of funk, electro and jazz, and was present at the births of turntablism and mixtapes (together with DJ Kool Herc and Grand Master Flash), electro-funk, the international politically and socially motivated hip hop organisation Universal Zulu Nation and thus hip hop tout court. He was the one to first coin the term ‘hip hop’ and laid down its foundations, the four elements: breakdance-turntablism-MC’ing-graffiti.