Hip-hop turns 50 this year and lines to celebrate are around the block. Museum displays, high-profile tributes, documentaries − the music genre born of the Boogie Down Bronx is celebrating half a century in style.
This week, a new exhibit in New York threw its hat in the ring. To mark the dawn of hip-hop in all its industry-making, genre-melding glory Hall des Lumière is putting that history up on the walls (literally.)
The converted bank in downtown Manhattan debuted “Hip Hop Til Infinity” this week, an immersive experience complete with projections and surround sound. The display is part of a growing trend of ‘step inside the art’ style presentations hosted by museums and cultural centers.
“This is something you haven’t seen hip-hop be presented in as of yet, an immersive experience,” Jon Colclough, the VP of Creative Strategy at Mass Appeal which helped co-produce the event said. “Usually, you see the Van Goghs and Gustav Klimpts and these very world-renowned masters but to us − hip-hop − these are our giants. These are our masters, these are the people that we feel are deserved of being presented in spaces like that.”
A ‘visual mixtape’
The exhibit is meant to be a “visual mixtape” celebrating hip-hop’s godfathers (and godmothers) and the radical art form they created.
Heavy beats play in the background as patrons take in projected images of block parties and spray-painted subway cars. New York in the ’70s, widely acknowledged to be the birthplace of hip-hop takes on a life of its own as black-and-white stills of b-boys flash over Hall des Lumière’s stone walls.
Downstairs, further into the well of the bank, a mini-doc outlines the origins of the genre. It’s narrated in part by Questlove, the famed DJ who directed this year’s star-studded hip-hop Grammy tribute.
Like any great invention, there’s some debate over who was first and how they were first. The 50-year anniversary is tied to a 1973 block party hosted by DJ Kool Herc in the…
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