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Grandmaster Flash

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Grandmaster Flash is the stage name of Joseph Saddler, born on 1 January 1958 in New York and raised in the Bronx. There, in the 1970s, he played at parties in parks and community centres, in the world in which hip hop arose. He was less interested in whole songs than in the drum breaks: the short passages in which only the rhythm carries on and which sent the dancers wild.

Music and breakthrough

To make those breaks longer he developed what he himself called the Quick Mix Theory. He placed two copies of the same record on two turntables and switched between them, so that the break began again and again. In doing so he perfected techniques such as the backspin and punch phrasing, and he helped make scratching popular. On The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel (1981) you can hear how he builds a new track from pieces of other records. It is regarded as the first record on which scratching was captured.

Influence

With his group, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, which included the rappers Melle Mel and Kidd Creole, he released The Message in 1982 on the Sugar Hill label. That song made rap more than party music: it describes poverty, violence and hopelessness in the city. In 2002 it was added to the archive of the Library of Congress. In 2007 the group became the first hip hop group inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and in 2019 Flash became the first hip hop artist to receive the Polar Music Prize.

Listening

Listening tip. In The Message, listen to the slow tempo and the synthesizer line that keeps returning, and to how bare the accompaniment stays so that every line of the lyrics can be understood. Also notice the ending, in which the music stops and a scene on the street can be heard.

Discography

Studio albums

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

See also

Categories: Artists