something like hip hop - which i'm gearing up to teach a course about this spring - has multiple origins, and the question of where or when it began is fraught or as they say in my biz "overdetermined." but here's a good candidate. this is the pioneering deejay dennis alcapone, interviewed by lloyd bradley in bass culture. he's talking about King Tubby's sound system, or, you know, outdoor music/dance parties

"It was in 1969, around the time when reggae was starting to hit big, and Tubby's dance was ram. There was a buzz of excitement - like expectation - because word had got round all week that Tubby's was going to do something special that night. Tubby's sound was so innovative you knew it as going to be spectacular. He had four dub plates he'd made from Treaure Island rocksteady tunes, and this is at a time when you never have the rhythm on the record itself - no dub or version yet, A- and B-sides were both straight vocal.

"But Tubby did it quietly. Him and U-Roy start the dance off as normal, and after a while he play "You Don't Care for Me at All" by the Techniques, then when he lift it up to start it back from the beginning again he'd switched it to the dub version, and after a couple of lines of the original all the crowd could hear was pure riddim, then U-Roy come in toasting, and they went nuts. He had four dub plates, and for the rest of the night it must have been just them he play."

so here are the key elements that begin here: the use of technology to appropriate and alter pre-existing recordings, and the use of that as a setting for a rap or toast that runs over the record. when kool herc or flash took this up in the bronx, the primary differnce was that while tubby made his dub plates - on the fly and improvisationally - he did it in a studio. herc and flash tore down and rebuilt the song using two turntables in real time at the dance. one of the many things they have in common, however, is the tremendous emphasis on the rhythm, as herc would play the bridge or rhythm break over and over, whereas tubby simply removed the distracting treble elements.

both also used references to previous work as motivation: the crowd would get excited when they heard material they already knew, so that there was an element of nostalgia: herc and flash were already kicking it old-school with p-funk or nile rogers tracks that they knew people would dance to; same with tubby and u-roy with treasure island (duke reid) rocksteady. it was the combination of the familiar riddim and the new setting that was so effective, and many tracks (like chic's "good times" or "wear you to the ball") were continuously re-interpreted for years on end.

in both cases, the realization had to dawn that this was not just something you might do at a party, but something you might record in its own right and sell as a record. kool herc didn't think that was right. but in both cases you soon had multiple generations of layered appropriated materials etc, an archeology of sound.

at least on the popular music front, this was the first full realization that the recorded song or sound was a work of art of its own kind, its own medium, and not merely a means for preserbving or reproducing an antecedent live performnce. the way we now think about popular music for better and worse is impossible without these conceptual moves.