Last Poets New York
History begins with the word. The crossroads between writing and speaking are where a curious magic starts to happen, and at this point civilizations have an opportunity to share their resources and their wisdom, or to take another path. It’s a remarkable gesture to the compassion of time when there can be something like wisdom and talent in the same body, like a bottle that hold precious liquids that can offer the secrets to eternity. The bottle does not know what it carries. It’s one of the great things in New York where you can enter the city, check into a business hotel, and let New York unfold before your eyes.
You have the chance to witness scenes or to make them up on your own, and there’s never a wrong choice. People from here understand the temptation to participate in everything, and know firsthand what it’s like to burn out in a hundred directions at once. There are histories worth knowing here, however, and one of the most essential in these times would be the history of rap music. This is a serious point of contention in some neighborhoods, and in others it’s a conversation, but it’s a good idea to know something about it. It’s part of the history of the human being, after all, and it will be around for many years to come. Many people put the original rapper somewhere in the 70s, and others would say it comes from much older sources.
These are all true enough, and accurate enough, but it’s also more precise to say that rap music began on June 14, 1968. This is the day that the Last Poets gave a recital on a rooftop in the South Bronx, mixing spoken word with music in a way that was revolutionary. David Nelson, Gylan Kain, and Abiodun Oyewole began this project in part as a response to the death of MLK. It was also a response to 400 years of history. It was also a response to living in human skin with African ancestors. These things all have something to do with it.
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