Latin sorority bring history of hip-hop to Rowan

The room is small, holding maybe fifty people. The soft glow of the fluorescent lighting through the faded plastic coverings casts a yellow tinge over the occupants, bathing them in a lemony haze. People murmur quietly to one another around the ring of chairs, casting their stares at the man in the center of the room. Suddenly, the man turns on a stereo, drops to the floor, and begins to break dance. This man is Gerson Martinez.

Gerson Martinez is a renowned Latino lecturer, traveling mainly throughout New Jersey to talk about issues ranging from how African culture has influenced that of Latinos, to workplace diversity training. Last Wednesday night, however, he visited Rowan to talk about the history of hip-hop.

The lecture was put on by the ladies of the Lambda Theta Alpha Latin Sorority to educate people on how hip-hop came to be.

“We hosted another program on African American influences on Latin culture,” said Yareidis Perez, vice president of Lamda Theta Alpha sorority Inc. “Since hip hop is such an important staple between the Latin American and African American Cultures we started to talk about it and we realized that many of us didn’t know a lot about where hip-hop originated. We thought it was important to get a full understanding of how hip-hop began.”

Martinez opened up by describing how hip-hop originally became popular among impoverished blacks and Latinos who couldn’t afford to get into the disco clubs popular during the early 80s.

Martinez went through the events that shaped hip-hop chronologically, talking first about Afrika Bambaataa. Bambaataa was a young black man from the Bronx who, after a life-altering visit to Africa during the early 80s, began to create modern hip-hop based on the traditional music played by the griots of western Africa. In order to pass down their culture, the griots would combine drum beats with spoken word. Bambaataa went on to echo this concept with his music.

Martinez then went on to explain how many black power organizations realized this was a good way to grab the attention of America’s youth, hosting block parties and break dancing competitions to get kids involved in black-power movements.

According to Martinez, there are nine elements of hip-hop: graffiti, break dancing, emceeing, deejaying, fashion, beat boxing, slang, street knowledge and even entrepreneurialism.

“You think you always talked like that?” asked Martinez of the audience. “That’s slang you’re speaking.”

Over the course of his hour-long presentation, Martinez showed that in the last 25 years or so, hip-hop has become ingrained in American culture, influencing everything from the clothes we wear right down to the way we express ourselves verbally.

Certain groups in particular had a stronger effect on mainstreaming hip hop; Run-D/M/C was the first, when they covered Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way.”

One of the ironies of hip-hop history, as Martinez sees it, is the drug element. Originally, it was common for hip-hop artists to speak out vocally against drug use.