The Ghetto.
African american ghettos.
A ghetto is a section of a city predominantly occupied by a group who live there, especially because of social, economic, or legal issues. The term ghetto was originally used in Venice to describe the area where Jews were compelled to live. The term ghetto now refers to an overcrowded urban area often associated with specific ethnic or racial populations living below the poverty line. From a statistical perspective, ghettos are typically high crime areas relative to other parts of the city
The .
Urban areas in the U.S. can often be classified as "black" or "white", with the inhabitants primarily belonging to a homogenous racial grouping.[9] Forty years after the African-American civil rights era (1955–1968), most of the United States remains a residentially segregated society in which blacks and whites inhabit different neighborhoods. Many of these neighborhoods are located in Northern cities where African Americans moved during The Great Migration (1914–1950) a period when over a million[10] African Americans moved out of the rural Southern United States to escape the widespread racism of the South, to seek out employment opportunities in urban environments, and to pursue what was widely perceived to be a better life in the North.[10] In the Midwest, neighborhoods were built on high wages from manufacturing union jobs; these in-demand jobs dried up during the decline of industry and the ensuing downsizing at steel mills, auto plants, and other factories starting in the early 1970s.[8] Segregation increased most in those cities with the greatest black in-migration and then crippling economic decline, epitomized in cities like Gary, Indiana
Despite mainstream America’s use of the term "ghetto" to signify a poor, culturally or racially-homogenous urban area, those living in the area often used it to signify something positive. The black ghettos did not always contain dilapidated houses and deteriorating projects, nor were all of its residents poverty-stricken. For many African Americans, the ghetto was "home": a place representing authentic blackness and a feeling, passion, or emotion derived from rising above the struggle and suffering of being black in America.[26] Langston Hughes relays in the "Negro Ghetto" (1931) and "The Heart of Harlem" (1945): "The buildings in Harlem are brick and stone/And the streets are long and wide,/But Harlem’s much more than these alone,/Harlem is what’s inside." Playwright August Wilson used the term "ghetto" in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1984) and Fences (1987), both of which draw upon the author’s experience growing up in the Hill district of Pittsburgh, a black ghetto.[8]
Recently the word "ghetto" has been used in slang as an adjective rather than a noun. It is used to indicate an object's relation to the inner city or black culture, and also more broadly, and somewhat offensively, to denote something that is shabby or of low quality. While "ghetto" as an adjective can be used derogatorily, the African American community, particularly the hip hop scene, has taken the word for themselves and begun using it in a more positive sense that transcends its derogatory origins.
Hip Hop
Much like dub music, hip hop as a DJing form started with no vocals and was purely of an electronic nature. However, the roots of spoken hip hop music are found in African-American music and ultimately African music, particularly that of the griots of West African culture.[17] The African-American traditions of signifyin', the dozens, and jazz poetry all influence hip hop music, as well as the call and response patterns of African and African-American religious ceremonies. Soul singer James Brown, and musical 'comedy' acts such as Rudy Ray Moore andBlowfly are often considered "godfathers" of hip hop music.
Within New York City, performances of spoken-word poetry and music by artists such as The Last Poets, Gil Scott-Heron[18] and Jalal Mansur Nuriddin had a significant impact on the post-civil rights era culture of the 1960s and 1970s, and thus the social environment in which hip hop music was created.
Hip hop as music and culture formed during the 1970s when block parties became increasingly popular in New York City, particularly amongAfrican American and Latino youth residing in the Bronx.[19][20][21] Block parties incorporated DJs who played popular genres of music, especially funk and soul music.
When The City Was A House Of Horrors
Photography by John Conn.
The late 1970s and early 1980s — when buildings were burning, fiscal crises were raging and the Dead Boys were playing at CBGB — were a macabre time in New York City’s history, a period when it could be said that the city resembled a haunted house.
The photographer John Conn, 62, spent those years documenting the subway system, what was then the dungeon of the city’s haunted house. His images from underground include a bat-wielding man in a hunchback costume, a nun absorbed in a tabloid newspaper with a front-page headline about an attack on the pope and a disembodied arm brandishing a switchblade through an open subway window. The images have a quality of ghoulishness: fear and madness, as if seen through the eyes of a frightened child on a never-ending Halloween night.
“I liked the edge factor,” Mr. Conn said. “Not knowing what kind of trouble I would get in next.”
He claims to have roamed the subways for hours at a time, with no more than a Hasselblad camera and his own blade in his pocket. For nearly a decade, he photographed the graffiti-scarred trains and the denizens of the subway system — capturing everyone from the homeless to shoeshine boys to bathroom attendants at Grand Central Station. Then one day in 1982, as impulsively as it began, his project suddenly stopped.
“I still see images now and then, but I just don’t take them anymore,” Mr. Conn said. “What I did back then, I feel I did it right.”
The Gospel according to Brother Ali.
BA: Hip Hop first and foremost in my mind, is the expression of oppressed people. Being oppressed and marginalized is what led to the creativity and energy that created Hip Hop, from people who had nothing, by the design of our society. It’s not an accident that these people ended up with nothing. Our society is set up in such a way that someone always has to have the worst jobs, and the worst education, who live in the worst part of town. They fuel the drug and prostitution economy, which is our version of the Red Light District. Poor people, people of color, impoverished people and the marginalized. Our society created a space for them and forced them to be in that space. The people took that however and turned it into, in my mind, the most expressive, and creative, art form in American history.
I believe Hip Hop is right there with Jazz. There is a case to be made that Jazz is the greatest American music ever made, and I wouldn’t argue that, but I do think Hip Hop is right there with it. I know I’m a little biased because I grew up loving and practicing Hip Hop. With Jazz though, you have an instrument, whereas with Hip Hop, it’s literally just you. It could be you with your parent’s records, or just you with your words, though actually now, it can be you with your cello or piano, trumpet or guitar, or even you and your can of spray paint.
In my mind, it’s really important we never lose site of the fact that Hip Hop is music that is created by a poor and oppressed people, people of color. I don’t think you can really appreciate Hip Hop without loving the oppressed people, and that’s extremely important to me. Not everyone sees it that way, but to me, it’s plain as day.
Blast from the past-History of the Boom Box
CBS Sunday Morning 2/13/11
The boom box project.
Lyle Owerko
The ghetto blaster 'Hall of Fame'.
Some really cool examples of Boombox's.
Follow the link. http://pocketcalculatorshow.com/boombox/cool.html
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