Afrika Bambaataa

Afrika Bambaataa (born April 17, 1957, Bronx, New York, U.S.) American disc jockey (deejay or DJ) and music producer who is credited as being a leading disseminator of hip-hop music and culture. A pioneer of breakbeat deejaying, a style marked by the quick repetition of fast-paced, syncopated drum samples, Bambaataa is often referred to as one of the “godfathers” of hip-hop, along with DJ Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash. For more than four decades, Bambaataa led the Universal Zulu Nation, a music-based youth organization that he founded in the early 1970s. In 2016 he was expelled from the organization following multiple allegations of child sexual abuse.

Early life

Afrika Bambaataa was born Lance Taylor in the Bronx, New York, to parents who had immigrated to the United States from Jamaica and Barbados. He was raised by his mother and uncle, who were active in the Black liberation movement of the mid- to late 1960s. He was first exposed to music through his mother’s voluminous and eclectic record collection. Taylor was raised in the Bronx River Houses, a collection of high-rise low-income housing projects in the South Bronx. The Bronx River Houses were plagued by violence and poverty during Taylor’s childhood, as the Cross Bronx Expressway’s construction had decimated property values and led to dramatic segregation. Street gangs such as the Black Spades, Savage Nomads, and Seven Immortals cropped up in response. Although they offered protection to residents, they engaged in drug and prostitution racketeering and waged bloody street battles against one another.

Taylor was a member of the Black Spades. By the time he was a teenager, he had risen to a commanding rank. He was a natural leader, and so, when he decided in 1973 to form an alternative youth organization focused on uplifting Black culture, many followed him. He called this new organization the Universal Zulu Nation, a nod to the 1964 war film Zulu about the 1879 Anglo-Zulu War in Southern Africa. The Universal Zulu Nation was built upon the core tenets of Afrocentrism, self-improvement, and community service. Many members adopted traditional African names. Taylor renamed himself Afrika Bambaataa, after a 19th-century Zulu chief, Bambatha kaMancinza.

Career

In the mid-1970s, Bambaataa began organizing neighborhood block parties and break dancing competitions that centered on local DJs and homemade sound systems. About the same time, Bambaataa and others identified the four central pillars of the burgeoning hip-hop movement: rapping, graffiti painting, B-boying, and deejaying. Bambaataa’s block parties—anchored by his masterful deejaying—were very popular. He was praised for his turntable techniques and eclectic variety of records. His record collection was so massive and diverse that some dubbed him the “Master of Records.” Alongside DJ Jazzy Jay and DJ Kool Herc, Bambaataa helped crystallize the hip-hop sound, employing a rotation of American pure funk breaks, European disco, and the music of electro bands such as Kraftwerk and Yellow Magic Orchestra.

In 1980 Bambaataa produced his first single, Soul Sonic Force’s “Zulu Nation Throwdown.” The song became something of an electro-funk anthem for the Universal Zulu Nation. In 1982 Bambaataa and Soul Sonic Force released “Planet Rock,” which would be his biggest hit: an electro-funk track built with samples from the songs “Trans-Europe Express” and “Numbers” by Kraftwerk, among others, laid over an infectious Roland TR-808 drum machine beat. “Planet Rock” peaked at number four on the Billboard R&B chart and inspired a number of similar-sounding electro-funk songs over the next few years. On the heels of “Planet Rock,” Bambaataa released a number of influential recordings, including the tracks “Looking for the Perfect Beat” (1983); “Unity” (1984), a duet with James Brown; and “World Destruction” (1984) with Johnny Rotten, former lead vocalist of the Sex Pistols (credited as Time Zone Featuring John Lydon & Afrika Bambaataa). In 1984 Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force performed the song “Frantic Situation” in the hip-hop film Beat Street.

As Bambaataa found success and recognition as a producer, so too did the musical artists associated with the Universal Zulu Nation. In the 1990s, the Native Tongues, a hip-hop collective closely affiliated with the Universal Zulu Nation, including artists such as De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, and the Jungle Brothers, released influential and, in some cases, commercially successful hip-hop recordings. The Universal Zulu Nation also developed a concert security arm called the Zulu Warriors, which was hired to protect artists such as JAY-Z, Nas, Busta Rhymes, and Lauryn Hill at their live shows. New chapters of the Universal Zulu Nation cropped up in a number of countries around the world.

In 2013 Cornell University acquired Bambaataa’s collection of more than 30,000 records, compact discs, and cassette tapes as a permanent part of the Cornell Hip Hop Collection. In 2016 Hassan Campbell, Ronald Savage, E-Jay, and two anonymous victims came forward with allegations that Bambaataa had sexually abused them when they were children. It was alleged that the Universal Zulu Nation and other community members had been aware of the allegations since the 1980s. In May 2016 Bambaataa was expelled from the Universal Zulu Nation. In 2021 an unnamed victim filed a lawsuit against Bambaataa, accusing him of sex trafficking. The case is open in the Bronx Supreme Court, with charges yet to be filed.