DJ Kool Herc’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame honour energises call for Toots

Even as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last week named legendary DJ Kool Herc among their inductees for 2023, the call for Toots and the Maytals to be similarly acknowledged has been energised.

Double Grammy-winning DJ and producer Wayne ‘Native Wayne’ Jobson, who has worked with artistes such as No Doubt, Gregory Isaacs and Toots and the Maytals, was quick to offer his congratulations to Kool Herc, but he hasn’t stopping singing the song of Toots.

“I am overjoyed that the great Kool Herc has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” Jobson said. “He is the founding father of hip hop, one of the biggest musical genres on earth, and it is fitting that he gets it during the 50th anniversary of hip hop. Herc was the one that took it from Jamaica to America, and then the world.”

In acknowledging the importance of DJ Kool Herc, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame stated: “Everything we now recognise as the massive cultural force of hip-hop began 50 years ago in the Bronx with the turntables of DJ Kool Herc. Herc was a founding father of hip-hop music. He emigrated from Jamaica to New York in the 1960s and started throwing block parties in his neighbourhood in the early 1970s, where he played funk and soul hits on his turntables. One of those parties, a back-to-school event for his sister Cindy, held at 1520 Sedgewick Avenue on August 11, 1973, is widely considered to be the moment hip-hop culture began – when all the elements came together in one place. This seed would eventually grow into global dominance, both for the music and the surrounding culture.”

Jobson noted that “two of the biggest musical stars on earth” Bad Bunny (reggaeton and dancehall) and Drake (hip hop and dancehall) have emerged from the pioneering work of Kool Herc, and added that securing a place in the hall of fame was no easy feat.

“It is very difficult to get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ... as one of the members of the small select committee have to recommend you or you don’t get in. The public can also vote, but, without the recommendation, there is no chance. The reggae authority Roger Steffens and I lobbied heavily and got lots of signatures to get Toots (and the Maytals) into the Hall, but because no member of the committee recommended him, he never got in,” Jobson lamented.

Months after Toots’ September 2020 passing, Jobson started a petition to get the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to induct the reggae icon, who is credited with creating the word “reggae” in his 1968 song Do the Reggay.

Noting that Kool Herc now joins Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff as the Jamaican musical greats in the Hall of Fame, Jobson made a push for two more representatives from reggae music to be so honoured.

“I urge all reggae lovers worldwide to start a grassroots campaign to try and also get Toots and Peter Tosh into the Hall of Fame. Maximum respect to the ‘Originator and Foundation Soldier’,” he said.

SOUND SYSTEM TRIBUTE

Accomplished music industry executive Maxine Stowe was among those hailing Kool Herc’s induction and focused on its significance to Jamaica’s sound system industry. Stowe is the widow of sound system veteran, singer and producer Sugar Minott.

“It is important in its acknowledgement of the role of the sound system in Jamaica’s global popular music culture’s influence and is synchronistic with the 50th anniversary of hip hop, which this award is symbolic of. The dancehall genre’s development with the sound system and Sugar Minott [has been] in the same historical period. I have been conceptually curating this as an ongoing interaction between the two genres and these two significant innovators and [Kool Herc’s induction] gives further credibility to this duality,” Stowe shared.

She, too, pointed to Kool Herc’s seminal August 11, 1973 date as a game-changer, but also highlighted Sugar Minott’s 1974 ground-breaking single.

“At a party in the Bronx, Kool Herc exhibited a technique from the sound system playing that created the opportunity for both rapping/breakdancing ... Sugar’s is the recording of his first solo single Wrongdoers in early 1974, with its noted stylistic relationship to the sound system and the impact,” she said.

According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Herc’s innovation and experimentation with music helped create the blueprint for hip hop and set the stage for future artistes to build upon. He took existing music and technology and innovated, creating new ways of thinking about how the music could be played, how it could directly interact with the audience and, eventually, how emcees such as Coke La Rock and the Herculords would rap over his beats. Herc was instrumental in developing the culture and community of hip hop, and in helping to make a space for young people to express themselves creatively through music and dance. In the words of Kool Herc himself, “And it don’t stop!”

The 38th Annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony will take place on Friday, November 3, at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.

yasmine.peru@gleanerjm.com